Ukraine War, 2024: Into The Winter Campaign
Ukraine War, 2024: Into The Winter Campaign
The fighting in Ukraine is unlikely to die down despite the approach of bad weather. With the Middle East War going at full tilt, the world system is careening towards the Ragnarok of our time.
It’s difficult not to feel as if the whole world is plunging into something very dark right now. International affairs is in visible chaos because the people making policy are mostly guided by bad science.
Just as the Covid-19 pandemic death toll revealed a massive gap between countries run by governments that actually care about their citizens (much of Europe, East Asia, and Australia-New Zealand, while Canada at least tried) and those who treat them as resource inputs (China, russia, USA), so have the material responses to the outbreak of major wars in Europe and the Middle East. The root of the problem is that the knowledge production ecosystem is polluted by rank pseudoscience that feeds the ridiculous conspiracy theories which plague the world today.
In short, it’s the blind leading the deaf out there. The situation looks more and more like a repeat of what happened in 1914. Delusional fools with a lot of power are thrashing around, demolishing the vestige of global order their parents sacrificed so much to gift to future generations.
Strangely, one of the few brighter spots in all the ruin continues to be Ukraine. And that’s despite nearly all the media in the US portraying the Ukraine War as doomed to end in deadlock, pundits latching on to every Ukrainian tactical retreat to downplay Ukraine’s achievements.
Unfortunately for the great many English-speaking experts who clearly want to move on to other more interesting wars, Ukraine isn’t letting its allies walk away. There is perhaps no better validation of Ukraine’s strategy in striking Kursk than the ongoing effort by self-proclaimed supporters, particularly American, to cast the operation as a strategic error. That they fail to appreciate how radically Ukraine has upended the game is a sign of why they’re not equipped to lead in the emerging era.
Weekly Overview1
Kursk is a good place to begin a look at the fronts over the past week despite the lack of movement on the ground. It’s been interesting to see commentators continue to suggest that the Kursk Campaign is a strategic failure because it doesn’t seem to have altered Putin’s strategy.
What Putin does is a poor standard to judge any op by. This allows him to portray it as a strategic failure by doing exactly what he has: commit substantial forces without curtailing the biggest ops underway in Ukraine, despite their cost and strategic futility. Yet the forces dispatched so far have proven insufficient to repel Ukraine’s incursion, and each day that passes gives Ukrainian troops more time to dig in.
Meanwhile Moscow has been forced to reduce the intensity of attacks on lesser fronts across the eastern and southern theaters. A key aspect of Moscow’s strategy has been keeping Ukrainian forces tied down everywhere. The intensity of ruscist attacks on the Dnipro, Orihiv, and Velyka Novosilka fronts has noticeably declined, Chasiv Yar still stands, as does the Siversk bulge, and orc progress against the Zherebets and Oskil bridgeheads closer to Kupiansk is still glacial.
The map below shows what Moscow appears to be hoping to accomplish in the next year, and it’s a far cry from the conquest of Donbas. Instead, these are spoiling attacks designed to prevent Ukraine from having the space to launch its own offensives.
Anywhere Moscow’s attacks ease, Ukrainian troops get more chances to rest. In a system, movements in one domain always feed back into others. Ukraine’s own movements in Kursk have been appropriately slow and deliberate after the first lunge, the function of Ukrainian forces in Kursk being to impose as high an exchange rate as possible on the orcs.
That is what Ukraine’s fight on every front has been about since July of 2023. You are only going to get spectacular, fast-moving breakthroughs once the enemy’s combat power in an area is sufficiently thinned. To make this happen somewhere as soon as possible requires that Ukraine maximize the damage done to the enemy everywhere and at all times.
As the northernmost active front, Kursk should be the first to feel the onset of autumn and winter. When the leaves come off the trees, hiding positions becomes a lot tougher. This will be the first winter where Ukraine is fighting under a drones-first paradigm. Given the recent adoption of thermite-spewing drones designed to burn away vegetation and the orcs’ increasing reliance on infantry, it could well be that Ukrainian forces expect to gain a marked advantage in winter fighting.
Since the Kursk Campaign initiated Ukraine’s return to large-scale counteroffensive operations, I’ve suggested that Ukraine might launch up to three successive waves of attacks on various fronts before the weather turned. It now appears that Moscow’s progress towards Pokrovsk and Toretsk pushed Ukraine to commit the second echelon for defensive operations, though hopefully with a potential for local counterattacks at the right moment.
The extreme casualty rates the enemy has been suffering all year implied, I thought, a slowdown in Putin’s summer offensive heading into fall. However, the unfolding political situation in the US may have changed his calculus. Putin’s long term strategy for winning in Ukraine now depends on Trump’s re-election and Ukraine losing access to US military support early next year, and for a while Harris looked to be turning the tide.
Putin needs to advance his case that Ukraine can’t possibly win; this requires maintaining visible pressure on Ukraine, relying on western media and politicians to spread the message of futile stalemate. Putin also needs to minimize the odds of Harris going big on Ukraine as a campaign issue, so reinforcing the silly claim that russia is good at war but might also go nuclear at any time to avoid losing in Ukraine is essential.
Trump - and Putin’s probable asset Vance - proved happy to oblige Moscow’s need for the Ukraine War to be intensely politicized. They have chosen to depend on turnout by infrequent voters, many attracted to the conspiracy theories that russian propaganda specializes in - like Covid-19 being leaked from a lab. Yes, russia was behind that lunacy - I first heard the nonsense from my ruscist brother-in-law before the pandemic was first declared. Musk is in on the big con now too - these types run together, united in thinking they’re smart enough to play all sides without anybody noticing.
Media allied with Harris have responded by trying to mute Ukraine as an issue entirely, except where a pundit thinks points can be scored with a particular demographic, like Cheney Republicans (not the allies you want to have). Thanks to the Democrats’ impossible balancing act of trying to satisfy all factions on Israel, they prefer to avoid foreign policy entirely right now - except to score cheap points against China in front of any given Rust Belt audience.
In Ukraine, ruscist personnel losses are still running at record levels, Moscow pressing a series of reckless offensives with its dwindling resources, hoping to leave Ukraine too exhausted to mount a major counterattack before US aid is interrupted again. However, none of Moscow’s operations as they stand pose a real risk of penetrating deep into Ukrainian territory, and despite slowly losing ground Ukraine is largely ceding what it can afford to temporarily lose.
The essential logic of Ukraine keeping up the fight in Kursk is that it makes the orcs bomb their own territory and lose troops at a higher rate here than they might on a different front. Having more brigades fighting near Pokrovsk might not have slowed the enemy advance there much because until the glide bomb threat is reduced, Moscow will always be able to slowly reduce a Ukrainian line to rubble, forcing even the best brigade to retreat.
In Kursk, Moscow continues to try and nibble at the base of the Ukrainian incursion. Ukraine, while holding a line anchored on higher ground in an arc around Sudzha, still maintains troops just south of Glushkovo, threatening to cut off hundreds or possibly several thousand orcs to the west. East of the new incursion ruscist forces trying to advance towards Sudzha from the Glushkovo direction are in a cauldron pounded from three sides.
There can be little doubt that Moscow will continue to mount major attacks against Free Kursk, and I would not be surprised to see Ukraine ultimately pushed back to a strip some 10-20km wide across the border. But the point of the Kursk Campaign was never to seize a comparable percentage of russian territory as Moscow has taken in Ukraine to do a swap. It’s purpose is to demonstrate the fragility of Putin’s illusory grip on power and reveal the empty nature of his nuclear threats.
If you want a chunk of russia, go ahead and take it. On that note, if anyone would like to fund an operation to seize Big Diomede Island in the Bering Strait off Alaska, get in touch. I have some ideas… just have to talk to a lawyer first to figure out if it’s against any US law to plan and execute an attack on foreign soil. Probably. Hm, I wonder how one obtains letters of marque and reprisal these days?
Even if Putin outwardly pretends that losing a chunk of Kursk doesn’t matter, so long as Ukraine holds a single square kilometer of Putin’s empire this serves a potent reminder of Putin’s impotence. This is a nuclear superpower humiliated, and Kursk isn’t the only border region Ukraine can break into. If the heat gets too high in Kursk, there’s always Bryansk or Belgorod. This will remain true until Moscow or its successors realizes that moving borders by force won’t end well for anyone and stops trying.
As far as the fighting itself, a few aspects of the Kursk Campaign are noteworthy. First, Ukraine is somehow able to conduct air strikes despite Moscow supposedly beefing up air defenses in Kursk very substantially. Glide bombs, some of them equipped with rocket motors for a nifty range boost, are toss-bombed by Ukrainian jets every few days. While smaller than ruscist equivalents, they’re a lot more accurate.
Ukraine also operates a fair number of drones with sufficient power to reach the Zala, Supercam, and Orlan models the orcs use for area surveillance. Not every drone battalion is equipped with them, but those that are often release footage of multiple successful intercepts. If the density of interceptor drones is scaled up enough that Moscow’s officers lose sight of the battlefield for hours on end, artillery support will get spotty, allowing Ukrainian ground forces to conduct operations with less risk.
On the opposite side of Ukraine, unfortunately, orc attacks have met with more success of late. Vuhledar finally fell - I say finally because though a lot of the media is acting like Moscow’s offensive effort here is new, it’s actually been underway for over two full years. After helping repel the orc assault on Kyiv in the spring of 2022, 72nd Mechanized Brigade deployed to the Vuhledar area and has fought ferociously ever since.
Vuhledar functioned as a fortress because it featured a lot of Soviet-style concrete high rises on a low ridge overlooking the Kashlahach River. The region is mostly open steppe, so even a rise of a ten or twenty meters can give a defending force substantial advantages. This allowed 72nd Mech to inflict truly legendary losses on numerous massive orc assaults.
To the north, 79th Air Assault has spent about the same amount of time holding the orcs back along the road to Kurakhove, fighting hard for Marinka before having to pull back and refocus efforts on defending Novomykhailivka and Kostiantynivka further south. Joined by 33rd Mechanized Brigade in late 2023, previously one of the brigades that spearheaded the penetration of the Surovikin Line south of Orihiv, the group has done an admirable job with limited resources.
They’re at the farthest edge of Ukraine’s logistical tether - in truth, I’ve felt like they were fighting too far east for some time now. The proximity to Donetsk City makes it easier for the orcs to muster forces for big ops undetected. Largely ignored by western media, Ukrainian brigades here have punched well above their weight.
The loss of Vuhledar, like the loss of half a dozen other ruined towns over the past two and a half years on this front, is unfortunate. But as a fighting position it more than served its purpose and likely should have been abandoned even sooner. Glide bombs have altered the fortress equation, allowing the orcs to pummel any fixed target until the thing is no longer usable. Even if rubble can usually be held for a long time against ground attacks, the shock waves from big bombs travel through empty spaces - these jets have simply got to be shot down before Ukraine can play fortress.
Way too much is being made of Vuhledar’s fall in some circles: I’m not even sure if it’s a reliable sign of the 72nd as a whole growing exhausted. With Ukrainian forces fighting in smaller formations anyway, good brigades have likely worked out a rotation scheme at the company level or even below that gives soldiers some space to recuperate away from the front lines. Preserving continuity of experience in a particular geographic area is proving important, with units unfamiliar with a front prone to losing ground to sudden orc attacks.
So while the 72nd might be fully withdrawn now or will be soon, I have to wonder whether it isn’t being actively expanded behind the scenes. Regardless, on this front Ukraine’s posture appears to be one of area defense, allowing the orcs to advance slowly and at extreme cost. The farther they get from Donetsk the tougher the going will get, and the Velyka Novosilka-Kurakhove line is about the same distance from Vuhledar as ruscist lines were to the town back in the summer of 2022. This pace of advance does not lend itself to a general collapse of Ukraine’s lines.
Moscow’s main effort this week has continued to be delivered against Pokrovsk. Many attacks have targeted the northern flank, but the south is the only place the orcs have made much progress; here Selydove and the Hirsk-Kurakhika positions are under intense pressure. Selydove itself is still in Ukrainian hands, the Kara-Dag brigade conducting a stout defense. However, the orcs are firming up control of a ridge to the south and trying to seize the one north of town. At this pace, I’d expect Ukraine to have to pull back to the next defensive line in a week or two.
South of Selydove, Moscow is applying relentless pressure on the north flank of 59th Motorized Brigade and several Territorial Guard battalions fighting with it. Tsukuryne has fallen, and this village is one that I and other analysts have used as a rough benchmark for deciding when Ukraine will likely need to retreat from Hirnyk barring a substantial counterattack that probably isn’t worth it. Moscow has been relentlessly trying to encircle Ukrainian troops in this area for weeks, foregoing a more direct march on Pokrovsk to eliminate any threat of a counterattack against the orcs’ southern flank.
It’s still a long march to the southwestern side of Pokrovsk. And with winter coming, I’d want the orcs having to drive as far as possible to get close to my people’s positions. If the glide bomb threat can be mitigated, basements make for cozy dens while the orcs fight drones and the cold to get close enough to attack with small arms.
One of the few themes that connects Moscow’s operations is a visible terror of being caught out by a major flanking attack. Probably because Muscovites are as obsessed as Americans with a pure legend of how the Second World War was really won, terror of encirclement deeply structures orc campaigns. A relative lack of Ukrainian attempts to try this in a big way over the past two years is probably down to Moscow always expecting it - another reason for punching into Kursk: always attack where the enemy isn’t looking, if you can.
The other theme that has started to emerge is what looks like an overt effort to prevent Ukraine from carrying out several of the exact counterattacks that I previously speculated Kyiv might attempt. Putin has thrown an astonishing amount of effort into taking Vuhledar over the past two years mainly because of its proximity to Volnovakha, a crucial rail junction and therefore juicy operational target.
Likewise, the orcs continue to try and throw Ukrainian forces back between Kupiansk and Lyman despite the limited success they’ve had across two years of fighting. To make matters worse for themselves, the orcs placed some of their most legendary formations in this area, including the First Guards Tank Army. Yet even though Ukraine’s own commitment of troops has been relatively limited, many brigades on this stretch of the front being new, Moscow has only been able to crawl a few kilometers west.
Moscow’s essential goal here, ever since the Kharkiv Offensive was stopped at Vovchansk, is preventing Ukraine from reigniting the counterattack that reached this area in 2022. The apparent goal is to slowly push Ukraine behind the Oskil and Zherebets rivers to protect Kreminna and Svatove. That would allow Moscow to redeploy soldiers elsewhere - something it now desperately needs.
Speaking of Vovchansk, over the weekend some orcs pushed back into the aggregate plant that Ukraine recently cleared. There has been talk of Moscow trying to build up an attack force here, so it could be that a bigger assault is underway. Even if that’s the case, though Ukraine appears to have moved brigades from Kharkiv to Kursk this still looks like another spoiling attack intended to keep Ukraine from liberating the sliver of territory Moscow holds here - or pushing into Belgorod.
Moving down to Donbas, Chasiv Yar still holds firm, fending off renewed orc attacks. Several experienced Ukrainian brigades are covering Chasiv Yar, and every orc effort to secure a viable bridgehead over the canal west of town has so far been smashed.
In a very odd note, the other day a ruscist jet was spotted shooting down an apparently rogue drone well behind Ukrainian lines in this area. Why the orc jet responsible wasn’t hit by a SAM and why the orcs took the risk to ensure the drone was destroyed only for it to crash in Ukrainian territory are both unknown. I’d be wary of a trap intended to seed bad info or have some other unpleasant covert purpose.
Not much has changed on the ground in Toretsk. The orcs are still trying to break into the center of the town along the main road but meeting heavy resistance. Both sides are battling over a group of concrete high rises, and the loss of these would probably force Ukrainian troops to pull out. A number of terikon mining hills could anchor a defense northwest of the town, however, and an orderly Ukrainian withdrawal wouldn’t produce a major crisis, as there are viable fallback positions closer to Kostiantynivka. These should hold so long as Chasiv Yar does, though there have been many reports of shoddy construction of fortifications by contractors who don’t understand these have got to be placed under cover.
The fall of Toretsk would, however, substantially reduce Ukraine’s chances of launching a major counterattack against the northern flank of the Pokrovsk front. I get the sense that Ukraine faces an important decision point before the autumn mud arrives in this area and the leaves come off the trees. Either a counteroffensive towards Avdiivka gets going in the next couple weeks, or the moment will have passed - if the orcs are too ready, they’ll find a way to slow it down and apply firepower.
In what I see as strong confirmation of my suspicions about Moscow waging a series of spoiler offensives this fall, this weekend ruscist forces launched an attack on Kamianske, next to the former line of the massive Dnipro reservoir. We’ll see what success this has in the coming days, but I find it interesting that I recently flagged the area as a potential site of a Ukrainian counterattack, depending on what the terrain actually looks like on the ground.
Over the past few weeks media reports have emerged suggesting that ruscist forces in the southern theater are preparing for a round of offensives towards Orihiv and Velyka Novosilka. I see this as a pre-committment of what operational reserves Moscow has left in hopes of forestalling a powerful Ukrainian punch when the weather makes operations elsewhere in Ukraine more difficult.
The weather is now the big variable to watch out for in Ukraine - each side will be trying to gauge how well its new techniques perform when the leaves fall and snow comes. On average, I’m inclined to see winter as an opportunity for Ukraine on the military front overall. Unlike last year, Ukraine is able to fire three rounds for each one the orcs do, implying rough parity in quality. The situation has improved through the summer and should continue to well into next year.
One of the biggest challenges Ukrainian troops face when they overrun orc positions is that the enemy is adept at digging in. Small groups will hole up for weeks if contact with command is lost. They can’t be ignored, though, because if they do get back in touch with their superiors they’ll be forced to launch attacks. If enough mass in one area, they’ll press on, repeating the cycle.
Ukraine has learned to isolate and starve out trapped orcs. So Moscow tries to send drones to resupply them and will launch local attacks to surprise Ukrainians mounting a siege. Once leaves are off the trees, it should become much easier to track and attack these efforts. Ukrainian companies and their parent battalions should be able to play seek and destroy in their area of responsibility for a day or two while hostile drones are shut down by electronic warfare and a flood of interceptors comes in to kill ruscist spotter drones.
To cut off groups of orcs, Ukraine will need to mount small tactical attacks using tracked vehicles that can cope with the mud. You can’t count on a lasting hard freeze any more and cold tends to negatively impact drone performance, so this is probably short-range, high-intensity fighting that leaves orcs trapped in an expanding gray zone.
It could be more advantageous for Ukraine to hold back whatever firepower it was mustering for an October counteroffensive wave. If the differential impact of fighting in winter hurts the orcs more, combat power is better spent then. Area defense can serve to exhaust as much of the enemy’s strength as possible and leave orc formations spread out.
Slow but steady improvements in Ukraine’s air defense capabilities should also play an increasingly important role in the months ahead. Ukraine has just taken delivery of another tranche of F-16s, this batch coming from the Netherlands. Though not much has been publicly announced in this regard, the F-16 training pipeline details revealed earlier this year suggest that as of October Ukraine boasts up to twenty combat-ready pilots.
Only one Viper pilot has been lost, so it stands to reason that Ukraine now has a small squadron of 10-12 jets in service. That should be enough to keep at least a pair in the air 24/7, with another one or two pairs able to get airborne in five minutes in an emergency while the others sit in hardened shelters.
There are some indications as of today that Moscow is preparing another massive missile raid across Ukraine with ships and aircraft. There have been a lot of drones flying to reveal Ukrainian air defense positions lately, and Moscow tried another Kinzhal strike on Kyiv over the weekend, so I have to assume the orcs are on a Viper hunt. They’ve already tried to claim destroying several without any evidence.
Sadly there is no evidence that Ukraine’s F-16s will be equipped with long-range air-to-air missiles. And to use them effectively Ukraine would need to run AWACS patrols anyway, but there’s no word on when this will happen. NATO could allocate an E-3 Sentry to operate 24/7 over central Ukraine, of course, but won’t because of bureaucratic politics. At least regular NATO recon flights over the Black Sea usually wind up sending useful data to the Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s deep strike campaign continues apace, another airfield and some more oil facilities hit in russia and Crimea. The inability of ruscist air defense to handle even simple attacks with a batch of cruise or ballistic missiles does not bode well for Moscow’s ability to withstand more complex barrages using missiles in close coordination with drones.
It should be noted that Ukraine’s strike campaigns manage to achieve important effects without killing thousands of civilians, unlike Israel’s. It’s no longer even the slightest bit ironic to watch Israel receive so much support and protection when it needlessly escalates a fight while Ukraine is chided for doing anything that might upset Putin.
But that’s the best word to describe international affairs right now. Exactly as both the Adaptive Cycle Theory and Voluspa in the Norse Eddas predict, the end of the world comes about because the powers-that-be run out of ideas and choose to fight it out. They crash everything because the incentive structures that rule them demand it.
Blind and witless they rush over the abyss. Then the world changes, and their story becomes just another cautionary tale. Until the next time around the bend.
A World On Fire2
On the geostrategic front, Ukraine is navigating some seriously choppy seas. This week another NATO Ramstein meeting is set to be held, and at it Ukraine badly needs to get some hard material commitments.
The full details of Zelensky’s Victory Plan are yet to be revealed, but the outlines seem clear: peace through strength. He had to come to the USA the other week to make American leaders feel important ahead of traveling to where the real decisions will be made. With American sources sending the signal that they don’t fully agree with but won’t stand in the way of Ukraine’s plan, it’s probably up to Europe to make it happen.
Israel’s defiance of any and all limits the Biden-Harris Administration even deigns to think about threatening to impose is an abject humiliation of a so-called superpower ally. The level of public gaslighting about what’s really happening in the Middle East right now fully rivals what happened in the runup to the Iraq War in 2003. American media outlets and politicians are visibly bored of Ukraine, and Israel’s spectacular use of American weapons is far more conducive to running ads from giant defense companies than the grim tale of Ukrainian perseverance and loss.
People need to be aware that America is being frog-marched by Netanyahu’s Israel into a hot war with Iran. No political operator with the longevity of Netanyahu can fail to see how easy it will be to make Trump fight Tehran. There are suspiciously timed rumors of Iran-backed assassination plots going around the media, and many of the Republicans who have backed Ukraine are already turning to advocate bombing Tehran.
American journalists are letting this happen, adamantly refusing to admit that they report the story of the conflict from the Israeli government’s perspective even when it puts Israeli lives in jeopardy. Israel’s government is falsely presented as a loyal, devoted ally of the USA, which is absolutely ridiculous given the number of American citizens it has killed over the years. That agents of the Israeli government actively try to shape what counts as free speech in the USA by pushing anti-boycott laws is another indicator of how Israel’s government views America: a great big useful idiot.
Meanwhile, like the Bush Administration wheeling from Afghanistan to Iraq, Netanyahu is proclaiming Israel to be at war on no fewer than seven fronts, all organized by Tehran! You reveal what you fear in your choice of targets, which says a lot about why Israel has killed tens of thousands of Gazan civilians and at least two thousand Lebanese. Behavior is what reveals future intentions, and Netanyahu has made it clear that he aims to destroy any and all enemies of Israel as he defines them.
This is why Iran finally took the plunge of launching a major ballistic missile barrage against several Israeli military and intelligence bases last week. If it hadn’t, its claim to be leading an Axis of Resistance to Israel would have been proven hollow and a critical element of its ability to harm Israel in a war lost. Many in the region were wondering if Iran was playing its allies for fools. So Tehran launched a response calibrated to be just big enough to prove Israel’s missile shield was pierced, but still small enough to avoid killing too many people and triggering an all-out Israeli reply the USA might be forced to join.
Up until now, Tehran has chosen to avoid playing Netanyahu’s escalation game. Only lately have the mullahs realized he may mean what he says about regime change in Iran, and so now they’re preparing for a fight. For almost twenty years, since Iran’s nuclear program became a global concern, it has been Netanyahu’s dream to be the guy who took it out the way a predecessor smashed Iraq’s at Osirak back in the 1980s. Only he can’t get it done without the USA: Israel can bomb Iran, sure, but it lacks the power it would need to totally demolish Iran’s nuclear sites and offensive military capabilities - unless it uses nukes.
If it did, you’d see how fast the so-called Nuclear Taboo would disappear. If past American pundit behavior when it comes to Israel is any guide, Israel’s actions would be declared totally justified. After all, everyone knows the USA had to wipe out whole cities to win the Second World War because their history professor, history channel, and politicians talking about history all insist it’s true. Never mind the US military’s own assessment after the conflict after intensive study, American military leaders’ serious ethical qualms during the time, or the simple fact that Israel flattening Gaza still hasn’t defeated Hamas. In fact, the organization is still able to periodically launch rockets at Israel and did so just today.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon are supposed to be about removing the threat that Hezbollah poses to people living in northern Israel, but despite intense bombing of targets across Lebanon, Hezbollah was also able to fire a barrage that easily penetrated Israel’s defenses around Haifa despite being rather small. While it’s a northern city, Israelis thought it would be better protected against anything less than a major strike.
After weeks of American media pumping out triumphalist content, always taking care to feature the cool US gear Israel has imported, Hezbollah is far from beaten. Israel claims to have destroyed half or even more of its missile arsenal, but it claims a lot of things. And even a residual 40% of an arsenal reported to be twenty times bigger than the one Hezbollah was able to use until the last day of the 2006 war remains a serious threat.
Why it hasn’t been used more intensively already is a very interesting question - Israel fans will say that Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership is responsible, but whatever impacts this is having on the organization at large, it sure doesn’t seem to be registering with frontline fighters. Israel’s long-awaited ground invasion of Lebanon is underway, reportedly meeting fierce resistance.
It’s never a good sign when the first major videos coming from a war zone is a couple helicopters swooping in to evacuate wounded soldiers. Israel has admitted to around ten dead and dozens wounded. That’s not a large toll in Ukraine War terms, but Israel is a country of 10 million with a military that depends on mobilizing active members of the economy to fight. Proportionally, this is like the US losing hundreds of people in a couple days. Small wonder that Israel’s progress over the border has been slow and methodical.
Israel’s decapitation campaign also presents the hazard of empowering radical elements - Hezbollah’s vulnerability proved that much of the organization had become organized as a classic government, not a militant group. That will change, unless Lebanon’s weak army can somehow establish control despite Israel’s attacks. Lucky for Israel, it appears that use of missile is more tightly bound to the senior leadership. This would explain why it’s taking time to more fully utilize the arsenal - partly confusion, but largely Iran’s desire to preserve as much of Hezbollah’s arsenal as possible in a bid to deter Israel from hitting Iran too hard.
Israel has taken quite a while to deliver the promised retribution to Iran for the barrage last week that was supposedly easily stopped but was also so heinous as to demand a vicious reply. Israel fans have been telling a tall tale about US and Israeli air defenses having neutralized the attack, but easily obtainable open source evidence proves otherwise.
Not just twenty, as videos showed, but up to forty warheads impacted Nevatim, damaging hangars and leaving craters all across the base. Now that Iran is guaranteed to go nuclear in a matter of months, that means the logic of mutual assured destruction will apply - something Israel does not want to tolerate. You kind of can’t when you claim to be opposed by radicals bent on your destruction at the cost of their own lives.
Iran used around 180 missiles, some possibly carrying independent warheads, and most were shot down. But enough weren’t to suggest that Iran wanted to do only superficial damage. In April, after telegraphing its plans by launching waves of drones, then cruise missiles, then a few older ballistics, this time Iran only gave warning to russia and the US before firing off the salvo. April was like a shot over Israel’s head; this one was meant to clip the earlobe. The next will go into the shoulder or leg, though it will force Israel to hit back even harder.
Tehran wrapped up the strike by announcing that if Israel replied in kind, it would escalate to the next level. The threat is real, as if 180 missiles targeting two parts of Israel can allow up to 25% to get through, the country is in trouble. Iran could repeat this barrage twenty times, or ten times at double the intensity. Once the missile defense threshold is known and its capabilities saturated, additional hits are easy to score.
Worse, Iran can accompany future waves with drones and cruise missiles, which while intercepted by different systems will dramatically complicate the operation. Israel’s Air Force relies on being able to generate a high number of sorties - it’s perhaps the most efficient on the entire planet. But aircraft are vulnerable upon takeoff and landing, and if raids are coming in at unpredictable intervals you can no longer flush all those ready to fly and secure the rest in reinforced hangars.
To respond to the Iranian barrage will require a complex operation to knock out air defenses in Syria and give the US more time to protect the thousands of personnel it has pointlessly scattered across the region. That probably explains Israel’s delay in acting, though it is still to be hoped it will stick to covert operations, since Mossad is supposed to be so magic at those.
Israel can’t hope to destroy even a fraction of Iran’s missile arsenal, as Iran is a big country a thousand kilometers away, requiring a lot of sorties to tackle. And the inevitable counter-barrage will do tens of billions in economic damage. But Netanyahu doesn’t seem to care, so the fireworks may start up at any time.
At least Iran should studiously avoid striking US forces. Of course, keeping two carrier groups in the region is a major strain, since one has to come from the Pacific Fleet thanks to that inane “Indo-Pacific” blather. Lincoln is off the coast of Iran, while Reagan is probably in need of yard time after spending so long in the West Pacific. If China decided to deliver an October Surprise in the form of a blockade of Taiwan, the US would have to rush old Nimitz and the slightly newer Vinson with refurbished Washington while Roosevelt recovers from another extended deployment. Have fun maintaining whatever deployment schedule you’ve got planned out to fiscal year 2035, Navy, if Beijing plays the same game with you that it does Taiwan.
The situation in the Middle East is having all kinds of hidden effects on Ukraine. Putin doesn’t have to be sending flowery letters to Netanyahu for both to see the mutual benefits of Israel’s ever-widening war. Israel has long cooperated with russia to avoid incidents during Israeli raids on Hezbollah in Syria - one just happened this week, in fact. And Putin very much doesn’t want to see Israel’s eight retired Patriot batteries winding up in Ukraine. The more conflict in the Middle East, the less chance Ukraine has of accessing the treasure trove of military gear hoarded by all the Gulf regimes.
Coincidence of interest is a material fact, not a conspiracy theory - the more Iran is locked into a fight with Israel, the more it needs russia. That has allowed Moscow to import Iranian gear in exchange for slightly improving Iran’s air defenses - like it does Syria’s. Putin would dearly love to draw the US into a war with Iran, as the impact on oil prices would be severe and russia would get to play mediator across the Middle East. That’s why Putin, Trump, and Netanyahu are all silent partners locked in a sick little dance, laughing at Biden and Harris.
As of now, it looks more likely than not that Netanyahu’s government will disregard the real risk of serious damage to domestic infrastructure and numerous civilian casualties in order to conduct a public and painful retaliation against Iran. The next step in the escalation ladder appears to be at least an intensive strike on Iranian missile bases, but Israel is currently acting as if it must always be able to out-escalate, so attacks on Iran’s oil infrastructure look likely. Nuclear sites will probably be left alone or only lightly attacked, as Israel needs US help for that one, and Trump’s victory is not guaranteed yet.
Though as far as the American election goes, well, it’s all looking too painfully familiar. As usual, pundits are a couple weeks behind the polling evidence, only now realizing that the standard pattern is playing out where the Democrat loses ground as September bleeds into October.
Harris remains unable to transcend what her party has become: a stakeholder committee with no binding glue beyond sustaining the feeling of being better than the other side. Everything Harris says is calculated to not offend anyone - except voters the party has already written off. Even friendly reporters have noted how few unscripted events she’s done, while those she has were middling performances at best. The Democrats are desperate to appeal to every sub-group in their coalition as if their interests are always compatible by avoiding policy. It’s a novel approach, to put it mildly, and doesn’t appear to be reaching the right voters.
Swing state polling averages show the tied race at best, Trump narrowly ahead at worst, and they’re slipping his way. Polls are not perfect, but remain highly informative when you look at averages and make apples-to-apples comparisons like where a race stands relative to those in the recent past in a particular place. Data continues to warn of serious erosion among key demographic groups that should be backing Harris along with a chunk of voters who will probably break for Trump but prefer to say they’re undecided because of the public scorn his heel act attracts.
The most likely scenario is that Trump wins by a few tens of thousands of votes or even less in five of seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Harris could easily manage to scrape out a win Pennsylvania but still lose the electoral college despite being ahead by several million votes nationwide. Wisconsin has been the state with the biggest polling error in favor of the Democrat in the past couple presidential elections, so though the raw numbers look better for Harris it’s got to come with a huge question mark.
The next most likely scenario is that Harris wins by thin margins only to have a new Stop the Steal effort attempt to throw out the result in one or more swing states. The institutional guardrails, as they are often termed, held in 2020. But after the Republican Party as a whole punished election officials who withstood Trump’s scam then, nobody really knows what happens this time.
A fight over ballot counting or election procedures that allegedly disenfranchise voters in other states merely has to ensure the Supreme Court gets involved as it did in 2000. It would probably punt by interpreting the Constitution in such a way that the Contingent Election procedure is invoked and Congress decides rather than invoke Bush V. Gore to decide the winner in a particular state. In the House, thanks to the majority of states almost certainly sending a Republican-led slate of Representatives to D.C., Trump stands to win unless something very strange happens.
And if Trump somehow doesn’t get his second term, there’s no telling what his supporters might do. In 2020 I didn’t expect anyone to hold a violent riot at the Capitol as there’s zero Constitutional process for changing the outcome of an election once the states have ratified the results. All the rioters could have accomplished, in theory, maybe, under the strictest literal interpretation of the Constitution, was prevent Biden from taking office. Interim President Mike Pence, Kamala Harris, or Nancy Pelosi were the only possible outcomes in that scenario.
Even if Harris takes office in 2025, she’s all but guaranteed to face a Republican controlled Senate. The House is an open question, but the Supreme Court definitely isn’t going anywhere and will not be expanded. No major liberal policy will pass for at least two years, and there’s a very real chance that angry Republicans would fully obstruct government for years.
And what if Trump does take office after the Supreme Court gets involved? Democrats have insisted that democracy is on the line in 2024. What are people supposed to do when democracy falls? What will they do?
I’m certain the Democratic Party leadership would go full Vichy even if Trump seized power in a violent coup, but its voters would likely demand the same level of obstructionism that Republican hardliners have embraced. Good luck passing any legislation if Democrats stop forever trying to patch the federal system and instead allow it to crumble by embracing state’s rights the way Republicans like to.
This all needs to be laid out because the Ramstein meeting next week could well be the last chance Ukraine’s allies get to insulate Ukraine against the madness of American politics. Ukraine needs ironclad commitments of support through 2025 sufficient to get the job of winning this war done. If Trump does win, the Biden Administration will have less than three months to flood Ukraine with aid or be remembered as a tragic disgrace.
If Putin’s dream is achieved and America is removed from the game, Europe and East Asia have more than enough military potential to see Ukraine through. But first, folks have got to accept once and for all that the era of US leadership is over. Even the best case scenario of a crippled Harris administration is far from comfortable.
A formal invitation to join NATO at Ramstein might sound like a stretch, but it’s the best option for Europe and Ukraine now. When a situation is getting exponentially worse, linear reactions always fall short.
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