Russia Is Losing the War of Attrition
Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse. That makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic.
Ukraine has no “cards” according to President Donald Trump, while Russia has many. Vice President J. D. Vance has asserted that superior Russian firepower and manpower mean that the war can end only in a Russian victory. Other supposedly realistic commentators agree, arguing that Russia’s advantages are insurmountable.
As military historians, we think this a misreading not only of what is happening on the ground, but of how wars unfold—and, in particular, of the difference between attritional campaigns and those built on maneuver. The Luftwaffe and the German submarine force during World War II, to take just two examples, were defeated not by a single blow, but by a technologically advanced, tactically and operationally sophisticated approach that rendered those organizations, large as they were, unable to function effectively. In the same vein, the advances of the German army in the spring of 1918 concealed the underlying weakness in that military produced by attrition, which ultimately doomed the Kaiser’s army and the regime for which it fought.
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Become a SubscriberWe have been here before. Prior to the war, the intelligence community, political leaders, and many students of the Russian military concluded that Russia would easily overrun Ukraine militarily—that Kyiv would fall in a few days and that Ukraine itself could be conquered in weeks. We should consider that failure as we assess the certainty of Vance and those who think like him.
