The Wrong Questions About Ukraine’s War

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American legislators demand scenarios for war termination that neither Ukraine nor the Biden administration can provide, because critics of Ukraine aid are asking the wrong questions.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

• The most consequential act of sabotage in modern times
• The new face of the “Great Replacement”
• Why this math professor objects to diversity statements

Survival Is the Only Strategy

In my previous career, when I was teaching strategy and national-security affairs to U.S. military officers, we used historical case studies to analyze the decisions—some good, some disastrous—made by leaders in the United States and other nations. The specter of Vietnam and the still-painful wounds of Afghanistan and Iraq played a large role in the curriculum.

These open-ended conflicts in Asia and the Middle East convinced generations of American strategists that planning I was required to teach this concept, but I have always vehemently disagreed with it, and I wish I could ban the term itself from the strategic lexicon. Exit strategies are the kind of thing that appeal to American hubris: Only very powerful countries, captured by the delusion that planning and firepower grant near-complete control of events, can afford to think about how to “exit” a war before it’s even been won.