While the Western response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine was clear from the start, the objective has been nebulous. After over a year of fighting, the likely direction of this war is coming into focus.
While the article indulges the common tropes about Russian army not being able to dominate Ukraine, it is ultimately advocating for freezing the conflict. If RAND believed that Russia would not win a long conflict against the west, then they would be advocating the opposite. The whole point of the proxy war as RAND explained in this article in 2014, was to weaken Russia. So, if that goal was being accomplished through attrition in Ukraine, then why would RAND all of a sudden advocate looking for an offramp?
You are doing some elaborate theorizing about why their article that doesn’t support your view or the title you gave it actually does indicate RAND supports your view.
I notice you haven’t answered my question there. The title RAND gave it is “An Unwinnable War, Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine”. So, you tell me why US needs an endgame in Ukraine if the proxy war is going as planned.
Well if you read the article you’d see they’re saying that neither Ukraine nor Russia are going to be able to knock the other out of the war, and that therefore we need to think about what a negotiated settlement will ultimately look like.
Again, if the goal is to weaken Russia then a protracted war is precisely what US would be interested in. It’s also a fallacy to frame this as a war between Ukraine and Russia given that all of NATO is propping up Ukraine.
While the article indulges the common tropes about Russian army not being able to dominate Ukraine, it is ultimately advocating for freezing the conflict. If RAND believed that Russia would not win a long conflict against the west, then they would be advocating the opposite. The whole point of the proxy war as RAND explained in this article in 2014, was to weaken Russia. So, if that goal was being accomplished through attrition in Ukraine, then why would RAND all of a sudden advocate looking for an offramp?
You are doing some elaborate theorizing about why their article that doesn’t support your view or the title you gave it actually does indicate RAND supports your view.
I notice you haven’t answered my question there. The title RAND gave it is “An Unwinnable War, Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine”. So, you tell me why US needs an endgame in Ukraine if the proxy war is going as planned.
Well if you read the article you’d see they’re saying that neither Ukraine nor Russia are going to be able to knock the other out of the war, and that therefore we need to think about what a negotiated settlement will ultimately look like.
Again, if the goal is to weaken Russia then a protracted war is precisely what US would be interested in. It’s also a fallacy to frame this as a war between Ukraine and Russia given that all of NATO is propping up Ukraine.