Accidental Nuclear War: Don’t Lose Sleep over It

May 22, 2023 Recently, I got into a fruitful exchange on Twitter about the dangers of accidental nuclear war during the Russo-Ukrainian conventional war. Since this is an argument / fear I hear expressed quite often, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why the risks of this particular road to nuclear war are …

The Coming Ukrainian Offensive

May 11, 2023 It has been a month since my last comprehensive update, and now there is enough accumulated material to write an update on the eve of the coming Ukrainian summer offensive. There is a lot of speculation about what it would mean for the war, how it could pan out, and a lot …

What Macron Doing?

April 11, 2023 The entire Western press is buzzing with analyses of Macron's visit to China, and the interviews he gave in its wake. I was not planning to write about this -- for reasons that will become clear soon enough -- but it seems like the Politico article set off a firestorm of indignation …

The Russian Offensive That Wasn’t

March 31, 2023 It has been two months since my last comprehensive update right after the start of the Russian winter/spring offensive operations, which I called the "Gerasimov Offensive." I have been waiting for some important changes in the front lines to write another update, but now the Russian operations around one of the key …

How to fake a scholarly argument — Abrahms in The Atlantic

March 8, 2023 This article caught my eye because its author, Max Abrahms, charges that there is "frequent disconnect between international-relations scholarship and common espoused views in Western media about the war." Now, I do not know why common views should reflect IR scholarship necessarily, but I do have an issue with the claim that …

How not to reason about the war — Allison in The Washington Post

February 28, 2023 Graham Allison, one of the most cited political scientists and respected analyst, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post that has one scratching one's head in bewilderment. It is a mashup of unexplained and unsupportable assumptions presented as fact, and sloppy reasoning that hides its shortcomings behind rhetorical flourishes. I am …

NYT publishes another call for Ukraine to surrender

February 7, 2023 This morning I woke up to an email from Hein Goemans and a link to an op-ed in The New York Times by Christopher Caldwell. It is yet another call for the US to abandon Ukraine in order to force its surrender to Russia, dressed up as a call for negotiations. I …

The Gerasimov Offensive isn’t “coming” — it’s here

January 30, 2023 (This entry collects, and expands upon, several FB posts I made over the past few days.) Ever since the news about the appointment of Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, to command the Russian forces in Ukraine, everybody has been expecting a large offensive by VSRF. I do …

The turning point in the war happened today

January 24, 2022 Just four days after I worried that the West might fail Ukraine, I can report that it did not happen. In fact, today we are seeing some seismic changes in foreign policy that I consider the turning point in the war: the West committed to Ukrainian victory by sending Western tanks. You …

Western Support & the Gerasimov Offensive

January 20, 2023 The West is at risk of failing Ukraine. It seems strange to write this amid all the hoopla about unprecedented levels of military aid that the collective West has committed to Ukraine, but it's a case of a too little, too late. Or, hopefully, not too late, but late enough to make …