[late]

However, war is not rational. I think we started doing that in Vietnam, and you know how well that turned out.

"At this stage, incrementally expanding military and economic assistance is likely to only prolong the war indefinitely. Instead, in 2023, the United States, NATO, and the democratic world more broadly should aim to support a breakthrough. This means more advanced weapons, more sanctions against Russia, and more economic aid to Ukraine. None of this should be doled out incrementally. It needs to be provided swiftly, so that Ukraine can win decisively on the battlefield this year. Without greater and immediate support, the war will settle into a stalemate, which is only to Putin’s advantage. In the end, the West will be judged by what happened during the last year of the war, not by what happened in the first.

In addition to greater quantities of weapons, the United States and its allies should upgrade the quality of weapons being supplied. At the top of this list should be the long-range missile system called ATACMS. It fires missiles that can travel nearly 200 miles and would thus allow Ukrainian forces to attack Russian airfields and ammunition sites in Crimea and elsewhere that are now out of range and offer sanctuary for Russian soldiers using long-range weapons to attack Ukrainian towns.

But now that the House of Representatives is under Republican control, future appropriations could be less forthcoming. If the war drags through the end of the year without major Ukrainian victories, the Biden administration will struggle to obtain congressional renewal for a new military and economic assistance package, especially as the presidential election heats up.

The best way to commemorate February 24, the anniversary of Putin’s invasion, is to make clear that this is the West’s strategy. This requires a rollout—coordinated by dozens of countries on the same day—of more and better weapons, tougher sanctions, new economic assistance, greater public diplomacy efforts, and a credible commitment to postwar reconstruction. This is also the best way to avoid being in the same place when February 24, 2024, rolls around."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-get-breakthrough-ukraine?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=How%20to%20Get%20a%20Breakthrough%20in%20Ukraine&utm_content=20230203&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017

[Rich]

So one of the repeated memes is that Ukraine needs to prove it can win in order to get more and better equipment. The reality may in fact be the reverse. That Ukraine needs to prove that it can't win with what's its got, before the next increment of equipment will be released. Maybe Ukraine's big victory in September actually came from miscalculation. Did the Ukrainians do better than intended.

I'm not suggesting that our leaders are all in some giant conspiracy. I'm not suggesting that all our leaders have all secretly signed up to some hidden agenda. Politics doesn't work like that. I'm sure some of our civilian leaders and probably more of our military leaders really would like to see Ukraine inflict all out defeat and humiliation on Russia. But that doesn't mean the western leadership class as a whole is committed to this. I don't know but I suspect that a number of western leaders believe Putin must be given a minimum level of victory.

No one's going to say this openly. Anyone who has in anyway tried to inject a note of realism into the debate has been screamed down from the peanut gallery. Look how long it took to accept that post Saddam Iraq was going to be heavily Iran influenced, that Assad was not going to be removed from power and that the Switzerland in the Hindu Kush project was pure fantasy. But no one was thanked for drawing these conclusions too soon. Western public support for Ukraine has already started to wane according to the latest surveys on the levels of arms supplies to Ukraine.

[Rugoz]

I'm not sure incrementalism is a political choice. Training and maintenance could be the limiting factors.

On the other hand, drawing out the conflict comes with certain benefits. It depletes Russia's reserves and makes regime change at the war's conclusion more likely.

[Rich]

I'm not sure incrementalism is a political choice. Training and maintenance could be the limiting factors.

On the other hand, drawing out the conflict comes with certain benefits. It depletes Russia's reserves and makes regime change at the war's conclusion more likely.

Oh please spare us this drivel. Ammunition, spares, artillery tubes, it was obvious from the start that these could be a limiting factor. Never mind western arms manufactures, western industry should have been retooling to produce Soviet calibre artillery shells within weeks. We should have rapidly moving on to produce the simpler spares and replacements for Soviet equipment, this while the West was gearing up to mass produce simplified versions of its own equipment. We saw how quickly incrementalism went out the window in the plandemic when the liberals had their hated filled subjection of the population to medical feudalism.

The banning of Russia from the Eurovision Song Contest was a massively, massively important event. It sent a message, loud and clear for anyone one to hear, we are treating this war as a joke.

As for extending the war making regime change more likely, I really can't believe even you can believe such nonsense. If Putin could have been driven out of the Donbas and Crimea in a matter of weeks, it would have made regime change almost inevitable. Extending the war has only helped Putin. From a military perspective he should have mobilised right at the start, but he only felt politically able to it six months into the conflict.