Grasping Reality · Economics & Policy
TIER 4 Tue, 14 Oct 2025 17:31:33 +0000
Putin's theory of victory must be a bet on attrition, not maneuver. IMHO, the right strategy to go for is appeasement with teeth: Appeasement with teeth: acceptance of Russian conquests, EU for... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- --- This is Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality--my attempt to make myself, and all of you out there in SubStackLand, smarter by writing where I have Value Above Replacement and shutting up where I do not… Upgrade to paid * * * # Kyiv & Muscovy 'Rus Today ### Putin's theory of victory must be a bet on attrition, not maneuver. IMHO, the right strategy to go for is appeasement with teeth: Appeasement with teeth: acceptance of Russian conquests, EU for... | | Brad DeLong --- | Oct 22 --- | --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- ###### Putin's theory of victory must be a bet on attrition, not maneuver. IMHO, the right strategy to go for is appeasement with teeth: Appeasement with teeth: acceptance of Russian conquests, EU for Ukraine, taxes on Russian energy exports for reparations, NATO "trainers." in Ukraine. For it is now a conventional military situation of drones, rubble, and no quick victories either by frontal assault or, now, maneuver. And so with modern firepower Benjamin Franklin's maxim that there "never was a good war, or a bad peace" is more true than ever… Share | | ---|---|--- Share DeLong's Grasping Reality: Economy in the 2000s & Before * * * What Kamil Kazani says here is very true: > **Kamil Kazani** : On the Russian-Ukrainian War<https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-russian-ukrainian-war>: 'The behemoth [Russian] military machine had been built, once, for a thunderbolt strike towards the English Channel. Whatever remained from it, is now decimating itself in the useless battles over the useless coal pits of the Donetsk Oblast…. On February 23, 2022, Putin considered Ukrainians as Russians. Perfectly integratable, assimilatable and draftable. By the twist of fate they ended up in a separatist entity, he thought, and, well, that can and should be fixed…. Now the next generation of Russian leaders will not see Ukrainians as Russians anymore. The integration of Ukrainians into Russia proper will not be seen as either possible, or even desirable. It will be seen as a hostile foreign country, and a hostile foreign population, that cannot be realistically integrated into Russia. So, this may be the most important final result of this war… Give a gift subscription The Muscovy 'Rus military is now engaged in battles in places where Graf Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheskiy and his soldiers fought for Tsaritsa Vsekh Rossiy Yekaterina II Alekseyevna dom Romanov late in the 1700s. It is a mighty retreat from the days in 1815 when Tsar Aleksandr I Pavlovich dom Romanov and his soldiers danced in Paris. Over and above that unwinding of 250 years of Muscovy 'Rus expansion, Kamil Kazani rightly, I think, judges that Vladimir Putin has transformed the people of Kyivan 'Rus into effective Poles, as far as their view of Muscovy 'Rus is concerned. Four generations of Tsarist Russian occupation of Poland and all officials could do in the way of education and propaganda did not turn Poles into Russians. In fact, the reverse. And that was reinforced by two generations after World War II as a satellite of the USSR. Back up: Ukraine 'Rus thought that it had struck a deal in Budapest in 1994 to be Finlandized <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances>.But as I see it, that possibility of Finlandization went off the table with Putin's conquest of Crimea. And so in 2022 Putin thought it was time to demonstrate that the post-Crimean conquest drift away from Finlandization was not to continue--that Ukraine was at best a satellite, and perhaps a breakaway province to reabsorbed; with perhaps a fallback position of partition along the historic Borderland-New Russia line, with the western half of Ukraine then re-Finlandized. And so the war came. Now for years I have been, relative to the great and good of the foreign-policy establishment here in the United States, a relative appeaser on Ukraine 'Rus. Ukraine 'Rus--and the NATO alliance--should have, 3 1/2 years ago, offered: * full UN recognition of Muscovite 'Rus's borders as including the Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea oblasts, * in exchange for the accession of Ukraine 'Rus to the EU, * a Marshall Plan for Ukraine 'Rus rebuilding funded by a tax on Muscovite 'Rus's oil and gas exports. * Muscovite 'Rus permission for NATO "training" battalions permanently located outside of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Kyiv (and Kishinev, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki for good measure), * And if Muscovite 'Rus wants further concessions, it needs to offer some counterbalancing ones of its own. Yes, that would be a betrayal. Yes, that would be a "Second Yalta". But a bad peace is better than a good war. As Benjamin Franklin said in 1783: > **Benjamin Franklin:** Letter to Joseph Banks of July 27, 1783 **< >: **'I wish the continuance of the peace to the world, and that mankind would at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for, in my opinion, there never was a good war, or a bad peace… Get 50% off a group subscription And a bad peace is, I think, realistically, the best way the war could come to an end. The war could come to an end if Putin gives up. Or if Putin is overthrown. But I do not see that happening until there are major shifts within Muscovy 'Rus, shifts that would occur slowly and take a decade or more. The war could come to an end if Ukraine 'Rus's willingness to keep fighting collapses. It does have less than 1/3 of the potential resources of Muscovy 'Rus, after all. But I see that as a low-odds eventuality as well.d Now Putin does have a theory of how he will get to victory soon, or so Lawrence Freedman thinks: > **Lawrence Freedman** : Putin's theory of victory <https://samf.substack.com/p/putins-theory-of-victory>: 'Why should he be more optimistic now that victory will come soon?… Aspeech at the Valdai Discussion Club… backed by a lot of detail… straight from… Valery Gerasimov… [who] consistently exaggerates Russia's position…. In 2024 the thesis was that Ukraine lacked sufficient weapons; now it is sufficient men. According to Gerasimov and Putin the losses are so severe that the Ukrainian army is on the brink of collapse…. And if they cannot succeed on land might they push Ukraine to the brink through their remorseless strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure?… Refer a friend Cast your mind back more than 160 years, to June 27, 1862. On that day, John Bell Hood led two regiments from his Confederate Army Texas Brigade, the 4th Texas and 18th Georgia, in a late-afternoon attack up the hill at the Battle of Gaines' Mill. A year and a bit later, on November 25, 1863, the Army of the Cumberland launched a spontaneous, unorganized, and unordered assault up the hill of Missionary Ridge. Those were, perhaps, the last two successful frontal assaults against a competent and prepared opposition. Since then, firepower, cover, concealment, suppression, and staggered movement have ruled. Perhaps the toll of the bell was Wellington's reverse-slope deployment victories in Portugal and at Waterloo. Perhaps it was the defense of the Great Redoubt at Borodino. Few outside the United States understood Andrew Jackson's victory at the battle of New Orleans--indeed, few inside the United States understood it, falsely attributing the victory instead to the backwards sharpshooters of Kentucky. Rate of fire. Rifled barrels. Breach loaders. Artillery. Barbed wire. These meant that if you could be seen, or if your location could be inferred and pinpointed within a sliding-scale amount that depended on opponents fire power, you were dead. That was what modern firepower meant, and means. The response has to be: cover and concealment. But how then do you move? In very short bursts, when the enemy firepower can be temporarily suppressed. But you cannot stay still either. When your firepower is traced back to your position and pinpointed, then you are dead as well, unless you have moved. That was the only way to succeed on the attack. And that was always very difficult to do. That was how it was at the Meuse River in 1940, on the flanks at Stalingrad in 1942, at Kasserine Pass in 1943, Operation Cobra in 1944, or the Fifth Panzer Army's attack on US VIII Corps in the Ardennes in 1944. Although--note well--not the Sixth SS Panzer Army next door, nor around the town of St. Vith, nor either prong of the Nazi attack at Kursk in 1943, and I have never yet figured out what really happened with the 5th Guards Tank Army's counterattack at Prokhorovka. Thus we get the tactical dance of professional modern warfare. Attackers creeping forward in small mutually-supporting combined-arms on the ground, and defenders dancing backward, abandoning each position just before attacking artillery registers on it. And in the air above are the eggshells-armed-with-hammers that must rely on their own speed and on the suppression of enemy fire to stay alive themselves. Things get even worse for the attackers when they move from the countryside into the city, at least unless the attackers are willing to complete level the place--yet even when the city is bombed until the rubble bounces, the settled rubble create many opportunities for cover and concealment. For the defender in the city, the key skill is figuring out when it is time to bug out through the hole in the back of your current building and move to the next one. For the attacker in the city, the keys are… well, there are very, very few good keys. All of this is well known, and it makes modern warfare a matter for professionals. Not conscripts. And it makes for quagmires, even without rural or urban guerrillas hiding the fighters within an indistinguishable adult male civilian population. And now we have drones to strike and cameras to guard against flank moves and surprises everywhere as well. All of which is prelude to the question: Just what the hell does the Muscovy 'Rus Red Army think it is doing in Ukraine? No. This is not likely to end at all quickly, even if support for Ukraine 'Rus is limited to whatever is provided by the Europeans, and the U.S. stands down. Quick victory on the battlefield for Muscovy 'Rus is not on the cards. But that leaves: > **Lawrence Freedman** : Putin's theory of victory <https://samf.substack.com/p/putins-theory-of-victory>: 'And if they cannot succeed on land might they push Ukraine to the brink through their remorseless strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure?… There never was a good war, or a bad peace. If there is a choice. And there just might be. * * * #### References: * 1994\. "Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances". _Wikipedia._ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances>. * **DeLong, J. Bradford**. 2022. "For Appeasement in Ukraine".****_DeLong 's Grasping Reality._**** May 31. <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/for-appeasement-in-ukraine-and->. * **Franklin, Benjamin**. 1783. **"** Letter to Joseph Banks of July 27, 1783". _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_. Vol 9. Ed. Albert Henry Smith. New York: Macmillan. <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-40-02-0161>. * **Freedman, Lawrence**. 2025. "Putin's Theory of Victory". _Comment Is Freed_. October 14. <https://samf.substack.com/p/putins-theory-of-victory>. * **Kazani, Kamil**. 2025. "On the Russian-Ukrainian War". October 9. <https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-russian-ukrainian-war>. Leave a comment Upgrade to paid ##### _**If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers --and myself--smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail…**_ * * * ###### #kyiv-&-muscovy-rus-today _Please forward the email & otherwise share it to everyone you think would appreciate it…_ Share --- | | | Like --- | | Comment --- | | Restack --- (C) 2025 J. Bradford DeLong Holgate House, P.O. Box #5488, Berkeley, CA 904705 Unsubscribe