Twelve days and counting... for many more days - 8 March 2022

Putin directed the Russian forces to invade the non-Crimea part of Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022, about twelve days ago.  The larger war started in about February 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea and started an on-going conflict in Donbas.  Many American citizens, American journalists, and people around the world are cheering the military resistance of the Ukrainian forces and take some sort of a positive view of the imminent results.

I regret to say that I believe this is going to be a long war.  Years long, if not perpetual (for a poetic definition of "perpetuity").  I will lay out my thinking here.

Afghanistan.  The Soviet-Afghan war ran a decade, from about 24 Dec 1979 to 15 Feb 1989 (says Wikipedia).  This was a bloody war, an expensive war, and a losing war, but they pursued it doggedly.  (I am sad to add that the American political leaders learned nothing from this and proceeded to repeat the foolishness from about 2001-2021, but that is another screed.)  The Soviets learned nothing from their Afghan invasion and are applying that same stupidity to their present war.  This is a repeating theme.  Another way of saying this is to observe that blood and treasure mean little to the Russian elite in their attempts to gain land and prestige; I do not pretend to understand what they see as "prestige" but it is clear that it is important to that leadership.

Chechnya.   The Russians fought a scortched-earth policy to pursue the Chechen wars and all they got was a phyrric victory or two.  As in Afghanistan, the (now) Russians poured blood and treasure into the wars, claimed land and prestige, and learned nothing.

Crimea.  The Russians annexed Crimea in about March 2014 at minor cost.  They continued some form of war in Donbas at minor cost.  They learned something from this case - that military force can be applied without major consequences.

Trump.  The Russians learned that a stooge like Trump can give them everything they want without overt cost.  It has taken a year, but Putin has finally realized that the stooge is out of office, so he has returned to traditional methods - military force.

Ukraine.  Although the early days of the Russian invastion of Ukraine in 2022 are going badly for Russia, the willingness of Putin to pour blood and treasure into the invasion in order to achieve his political goal of restoring Ukraine to the Russian Empire will make it impossible for him to give up or turn back.  The blood and treasure are not important to him, but the land and prestive are - as we have seen before.  

This leads to consideration of the possible outcomes.  In no particular order, I shall tread heavily where learned people fear to tread.

Low-level war for an extended period.  I suspect this is the most likely outcome.  The Ukraine government and people will resist with the covert and overt support of other countries throughout the world, but featuring support from the US, EU/NATO, and allied countries.  As in Viet Nam and the East, as in the colonial struggles across Africa, and as in South America, one bloc of the world will stimulate military action and the other bloc of the world will support efforts to resist military action.  Nominally, the Ukrainian resistance will be a democratic government against the autocracy of Putin, but the West has shown that this is not required.  Expected duration is on the order of a decade and the expected result is unclear (hard to predict).  In any outcome, it will not be pretty for Ukraine.  One big unknown is the duration of the firm resistance (sanctions) by other governments.  If Biden or Macron are replaced by weaker individuals, the alliances could well slip into posturing and this would allow Putin to survive and even prosper.  The bumbling of Boris Johnson and the UK government is a case study, especially as they are distracted by the aftermath of Brexit.  If Biden is replaced in 2024 by a dimwit from the Republican ranks, resistance to Putin will quickly go the way of BJ et al.

Putin's exit.  If things get bad enough in Ukraine and in Russia, the autocrats and bureaucracy in Russia could find a convenient replacement for Vladimir Putin.  This is very unpredictable.  Putin is happy to crack down on the population to quell opposition and independent journalism, so it is unlikely that the populus will rise up against Putin.  That means the oligarchs and autocrats must manage and direct the bureaucracy (and the military) to move Putin out of the picture, either suddenly (perhaps through violent means) or gradually (less violent).  Putin will not go willingly, and he has spent the better part of the last two decades pruning the bureaucracy to eliminate dissent and nurturing the oligarchs to cement their loyalty.  The pressure of sanctions must hit hard against the wealthy in Russia, hard enough to make their lives miserable, before they will even consider action.  Eventually, one of them will be brave enough to restack the apples on the cart so that Putin is rolled into the bin.

Putin's trauma.  Senator Lindsay Graham has called for the assassination of Putin (I find it strange  and seriously out-of-character that Senator Ted Cruz opposes this, but the idea is so blindly stupid that even Cruz sees it as a bridge too far;  so far, we have no word from the nutcakes like Greene and Boebert, so maybe the spoke to Cruz before blathering in public).  To be complete, there is a remote chance that Putin will suffer a sudden health set-back, either through natural forces or as induced by an otherwise unpredictable vector.  I call this The Mule Factor after the character in the Asimov Foundation novels.  The character of The Mule is an unpredictable factor that intrudes on the orderly predictions of Hari Seldon and his mathematics, destablizing the Foundation and placing the Galatic order at risk.  Putin, himself, is somewhat of a Mule, and an anti-Putin would also be a Mule.  While we can make predictions about large groups of people, the actions and decision of a single individual are very difficult to anticipate.  Therefore, the singular event of trauma that removes Putin from consideration cannot be predicted with any confidence at all.  

The rise of Putin has been a singular event and that event or process can end in many ways.  There is a much longer screed that could be written about this, but Yeltsin (a Mule) gave way to Putin (a Mule), creating much unpredictability and confusion.  In a similar way, the incompenance and stupidity of Trump (a Mule) was easily manipulated by Putin, creating much unpredictability and confusion.  In light of this compounded confusion of unpredictable players and forces, the rest of the world has fallen back into traditional patterns that are derived from the Cold War.  We are looking at a restoration of a Communist bloc and a Western bloc with new names and revised players.  There is also the possibility of a Chinese bloc rising, but the world would align along two or three great divisions.  We may learn yet more from the foresight of Orwell.

I would like to hope that Putin slips away in his sleep in the next few days, but then we have to think about his replacement and it is not at all clear who that would be or what policies they might pursue.  The future is very hard to predict, so let us think of cats.