The difference between the 20th and 21st century battles of Kursk is a geopolitical metaphor for Russia. For Ukraine to definitively win its independence and sovereignty it must visibly humiliate and nullify Russia's imperial identity by taking the war into Russia and to ordinary Russians. Clausewitz's lesson is that to gain this political result Ukraine need not retake all the territory Russia has occupied. Ukraine must merely reach the same goal Giap did in 1968: expose its enemy's war as unwinnable, futile and endless. Since Russia has no free media and no Cronkite, Ukraine's route to this goal is through Ruscist milbloggers, youtube, vkontakte, Meduza, destroying more oil refineries and gas pipelines, covert action supporting Tatar, Bashkiri, Dagestani and other potentially breakaway nationalities.

The ultimate question is whether Russia can be deimperialized without breaking up the empire from within. I doubt it because defeating and deimperializing Russia as Germany, Japan and Italy were de-Nazified/de-Busidized/de-fascistisized is impossible because occupying Russia like the defeated fascist powers were is, of course, inconceivable.

I remember Tet very well. I then marched against the war a year later and in 1970 walked around my suburban Long Island neighborhood gathering petition signatures for the Hatfield-McGovern amendment to stop the war. I had #96 in the 1973 draft lottery, which became irrelevant when Kissinger and Le Duc Tho signed the Paris treaty a month before my 18th birthday. I don't know whether South Vietnam's president Thieu and his northern enemies knew of Kissinger's later famous aphorism, "to be an enemy of the United States is very dangerous, but to be America's friend is fatal."

I expect Zelenskiy does.