If Clausewitz is right and war is politics fought with other means, Russia has already lost the conflict Putin finally called a war. Russian failure to reach the political objective Putin published in July 2021--erasing "not a real country" Ukraine--is guaranteed. The only question is how long it takes for military reality to catch up to this political outcome. The real danger is in widening the gap between this political outcome and Russia's understanding of the military reality:
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/ukraine-has-already-won-dae2ea36e24
Russia's is an analogue WWII era army fighting an AI-driven digital opponent. Ukrainian victory is inevitable IF sufficiently supplied. Reducing or delaying that supply only prolongs the war and makes it more dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqZJb8KhI8M
Soviet victory against the Germans was guaranteed IF the Anglosphere sufficiently supplied it with Studebakers, Mustangs, locomotives, food, jeeps. Stalin knew this and said so in Tehran in November 1943 in a toast to American war production. But no German useful idiots opposed the need to supply the Soviets and their mass murdering tyrant Stalin with whatever they needed to destroy Nazi Germany. Hitler invaded Soviet hell, and Churchill and FDR fed the Soviet devil's war machine to defeat the Nazis.
Today's Russian military lives off the mythology of The Great Patriotic War cult. Here's the truth: today's Russian military resembles its 1905 predecessor. How corruption destroyed the Russian military:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4&t=70s
Defense Minister Shoigu's official salary: $120k/year. In the video view his $18m mansion outside Moscow.
The 20th century was a story of the defeat of land-based empires--German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Chinese, the China and Korea-occupying Japanese empire--by maritime empires--the Anglosphere + France. Russia is a resource-cursed land-based colonial empire that always loses wars against more advanced militaries when it has no Anglosphere partner (Crimea 1.0, vs Japan in 1905, WWI, Peter's Azov defeat vs the Ottomans).
Today's Russian military is at war against Lendlease, not in alliance with it. Its only allies and weapons suppliers are Belarus, Iran and North Korea. The recent interception of Russian chips and weapons smugglers in Estonia tells you how desperate Russia's situation is.
This war will be no exception to this pattern. As in the 1940s to 1980s, the liberal maritime core of the global trading system (maritime empires) will not defeat its totalitarian statist opponents (Russia and China) simultaneously, but in sequence. This is how to understand Biden talking up defending Taiwan, Japan's increased defense spending, the CHIPS Act, TSMC's investments in the US).
History has patterns that repeat. That's how I know Ukraine will win and forecasting a land-based Tsushima-scale defeat makes absolute sense.
