Finding Ukraine's 38th Parallel

It seems that the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive has finally started, so I wanted to write a short post to explain where I see the war going at the moment. A few months ago, I wrote a series of essays on the war in which, among other things, I predicted that although both sides would try to break the stalemate this year by launching large-scale offensives, neither would achieve a decisive military breakthrough. Moreover, I predicted that after those offensives have run their course, they would both have exhausted their offensive potential and would be unable to carry out another large-scale offensive for a while. I will not repeat my arguments, which were mainly based on a lot of bean counting, back-of-the-envelope calculations and my admittedly still very cursory reading of the literature on modern warfare (if you’re curious you can check the essays I published in December, January and February), but I will say that I have not changed my mind since then. In fact, Russia’s underwhelming performance during the offensive operations it launched this winter has so far vindicated me, but this was not the controversial part of my prediction and now it’s Ukraine’s turn to go on the attack.

I think that while it will probably recover some territory, it won’t achieve any strategically significant victory and, in particular, it won’t be able to take Melitopol and cut the land bridge linking Russia to Crimea. As I have discussed previously, this is clearly the Biden administration’s plan, because it would put Ukraine in a position to threaten Crimea and, so US officials hope, force Putin to cut a deal to end the war and save it. This strategy was recently defended publicly by John Herbst and Daniel Fried. However, as I have also argued, I don’t think it would work even if Ukraine actually managed to take Melitopol. Moreover, as I just noted, I don’t think Ukraine will pull it off anyway. Maybe I’m underestimating the Ukrainians and they will surprise me again, but I don’t think so. In any case, we should know soon, because with the amount of ammunition Ukraine has I doubt it will be able to sustain large-scale offensive operations for more than a month. So what I think is going to happen is that after Kiev’s counteroffensive has run its course, both Russia and Ukraine will have lost too much equipment and manpower to mount another large-scale offensive anytime soon and they’ll find themselves in a situation reminiscent of the Korean War at the end of 1950, when both sides fought each other to a standstill around the 38th parallel and were unable to break the stalemate without increasing their commitment significantly, which neither of them was willing to do because they were not prepared to fight a much larger war.

It’s increasingly clear that Putin and the people around him are not willing or able to commit the amount of resources that would be necessary to have a chance of achieving a decisive military victory and force Kiev to agree to terms they find acceptable. Russia is still not behaving in the way you would expect a country that is fighting a war of that magnitude to do. It’s spending very little on it compared to the resources it could in theory allocate to it, has not cut non-military spending or raised taxes to reallocate resources toward the war effort and has not been conducting waves of mobilization since the “partial mobilization” in September but instead still tries to convince people to sign contracts. In general, the government continues to do everything it can to maintain the fiction that it’s not fighting a real war, hence is not willing to do anything that would significantly disrupt the daily life of the population. Meanwhile, Western officials use a very strong rhetoric, but actions don’t match it. Western countries keep procrastinating to send military aid to Ukraine and, while they have made a real effort earlier this year to help it mount a counteroffensive, it still came way short of what I think would have been necessary for Kiev to achieve a decisive breakthrough and they’re still withholding several weapon systems the Ukrainians badly need. The Ukrainians are the only ones who are trying to make their actions match their rhetoric, but they need the West and we are not willing to give them what they want. The truth is that both the West and Russia sleepwalked into this and neither has a realistic exit plan.

After Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalls, there will be renewed calls for negotiations in the West and, assuming Russia is even interested (which is hardly obvious), Kiev may even agree to resume formal negotiations at some point to avoid giving the impression that it’s unwilling to give diplomacy a chance. However, since I think neither Ukraine nor Russia will be prepared to make the kind of concessions that would make a deal possible and the West isn’t going to lean on Ukraine to accept whatever terms Russia might offer, it won’t go anywhere and I expect that eventually one or both sides will make another push to try to break the stalemate. I don’t think it will work though, because Russia and Ukraine will both have lost so much equipment and manpower by then that, in order for them to achieve a decisive military breakthrough, they would have to commit a vast amount of resources to reconstitute their offensive potential and I don’t think either the West or Russia is willing to do that. Eventually, after they have both gone through enough failures (which may take years), they’ll accept that it’s not going anywhere and will start negotiating seriously. However, the negotiations themselves will probably last years, so I think we’re unlikely to see the end of this war anytime soon, even if the intensity should go down after Ukraine’s counteroffensive has run its course. This is what I think is the most likely scenario anyway. I’m not saying things couldn’t escalate, but it’s clearly not what anyone wants, except the Ukrainians.

If I’m right and my analogy with the Korean War is correct, we’re in October 1950 right now and the Ukrainian counteroffensive will determine approximately where the future line of contact is going to be. I think at this point it’s totally unrealistic that, when the negotiations start, they can achieve a lasting settlement of the political issues, so they will likely revolve around finding a way to freeze the conflict. According to the media, some US officials are currently exploring this option, so it’s not a far-fetched scenario. Neither Ukraine nor Russia would recognize the other’s territorial claims, but a ceasefire agreement would be reached with mechanisms to prevent the resumption of hostilities and the hot phase of the war would end, at least temporarily. In my opinion, this would still be a vast improvement over the continuation of the war, especially since I don’t think it will go anywhere. Unfortunately, I think this will be more difficult to achieve than in Korea (where it still took 2 years before a deal was struck), because unlike in Korea the US isn’t directly fighting in Ukraine, so it won’t have the same degree of control over the ceasefire negotiations. Back in 1953, the US was able to force Syngman Rhee to accept the terms it negotiated with China and North Korea (at some point US officials even considered overthrowing him because he was being difficult), but it won’t be able to do that so easily this time.