Molly McKew: There is no way back. [Part 1]

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Mike Madrid
@madrid_mike
This is the most powerful essay on Russia/Ukraine and the west I’ve read. This articulates why I think the Cold Warriors have it wrong. This is why you must follow @MollyMcKew - Read this…please.

greatpower.us
There is no way back. [Part 1]
If we want the war to stay in Ukraine, we have to win it in Ukraine.
5:10 PM · Mar 6, 2022

Day 11

If we want the war with Putin to end, we must see why the Ukrainians have defied all expectations — as a government, as an army, as a nation, as a people — and learn to think as they do. We must learn to see not only the risk, but the opportunities that are born from taking those risks that would otherwise not have existed.

We see now the Russian war machine is hollow, and that their war planning is founded on delusion. Again, this creates more opportunity. They are second guessing themselves in the face of Ukrainian resolve. But we talk as if the war is essentially over.

Since the first boom, Ukrainian strategic decision-making was actually about looking for victory — which technically is what strategy is for; strategy is a theory of success in war — and about creating opportunity for something other than just dying quietly in the mud and the rubble. This has given them an incalculable advantage over Russia. And honestly, over us.

We haven’t caught up yet. We desperately need to.

* * * * *

This week — as Putin’s war in Ukraine moved toward a third week; as Russian forces in Ukraine switched to pummeling civilian areas with air strikes and heavy artillery because Putin has never paid a price for violating the rules of war; as Putin’s strategy of trying to force Ukraine to submit via organized terror advanced; as Putin reminded us that his intention is to erase Ukraine entirely — there was still this pretty typical wrong-thinking discussion of what must be done by the West. About how we must “give Putin a win” so he will relent, about how Putin “the trapped rat” must be left with “some way out.”

*snip*