The current military balance of power clearly favors the defender. What does that mean for the war in Ukraine?
I’ve consistently been more pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances of winning the war than many other Western observers. I keep coming back to the basic fact that Russia is a larger country with a more sophisticated arms industry. All the morale, tactical and strategic brilliance, and moral high ground in the world is unfortunately largely useless if the other side has more men with more guns. Ukraine’s current counter offensive has been far less successful than many thought and most hoped, even with all the kit the West has sent. From that we can draw one important conclusion: there’s a defender’s advantage.
The common theme since the war started has been that whichever side is currently defending is at an advantage. Most, myself included, thought Kyiv would fall in the first week or two of the war but the Ukrainians held fast. Now the Russians are defending every small depopulated town it controls with tooth and nail and the Ukrainians can’t seem to get an opening. The one time this theme of the defender’s advantage hasn’t held was when Ukraine retook the occupied areas of Kharkiv province in its first counter offensive, but in retrospect that seems to have been because Russian didn’t think it was important to hold on to that land, not because it couldn’t have defended it. The implication of this is that Ukraine will struggle to regain its lost territory, and the idea that it can get Crimea back is a fantasy. If the Russian’s can defend a front line which runs for hundreds of kilometres with a few months of preparation, imagine how difficult it would be to dislodge Russian forces when they have real fortifications.
War is famously politics by other means, and the political implications of the defender’s advantage are massive. For one, it reframes how we see Russia and its armed forces. If the odds are stacked in the defender’s favour, then Putin’s armies have not been unexpectedly incompetent but rather frighteningly dangerous. After Russia lost the battle for Kyiv there was a lot of talk about how Russia was a paper tiger, unable even to defeat its poor neighbour. But perhaps the correct way to see the battle for Kyiv is to focus on how close Russia was to winning rather than focusing on how it lost. The political reality is that Russia will almost certainly be able to hold on to the territory it is occupying, so Ukraine’s hand will be quite weak in an eventual peace negotiation.
As the war has gone on, I think my pessimism has turned out to be warranted. Ukraine has good chances of stopping Russia from taking more land, but it has conversely poor chances of liberating land in my estimation. As always, I hope I’m wrong but so far I unfortunately haven’t been.
If you liked this post you can read my last post about bad press in American politics here, or the rest of my writings here. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Ray Bilcliff from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
Comments