Breaking International Relations In Ukraine
The past three years have revealed the field of international relations to be dangerously flawed. A paradigm shift is required. On the ground in Ukraine, the struggle continues.
The world system is in a state of geopolitical convulsion. By world system I mean something very specific: the relationships between countries. These largely determine the scale and intensity of international violence when it breaks out - usually when the system collapses.
Though it may seem hopelessly abstract, remote from the bitterness of the trenches, the true reason that human beings are sent to the slaughter generation after generation is deceptively simple. The struggle between great powers is as old as humanity, responsible for many of the worst tragedies humans endure. And at its heart, the fight is little more than an ongoing contest between mafia families over certain rights and privileges.
Ironically, save for a few rare instances, their ultimate cause is simple fear. In human affairs power is inherently destabilizing, the threat of its abuse generating a structure to life that never quite prevents power interests from tearing everything apart in certain moments.
Usually Great Wars are triggered by at least one country’s belief - usually its ruling regime’s - that it must take extreme action now while it can, as future conditions are perceived as being more hostile. That’s what drove Germany to adopt such a fatefully aggressive posture in 1914, and might still China in the first half of this century. These sorts of wars can nearly always be resolved through diplomacy, but sadly aren’t for various reasons.
Infrequently, a Great War is caused by a country that turns cancerous. This is what happened with Germany, Japan, and Italy in the Second World War. Each was dominated by an elite clique that sought conquest for the sake of it, chasing naked imperial ambition. Only raw force stops that kind of cancer from spreading at whatever speed it can get away with: the sooner the better. Waiting makes everything worse. It’s the same with Putin and Ukraine.
The outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2014 served as a natural experiment that said a great deal about the true state of the Postwar System. Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was an even more extreme test. Most of the scholarly communities that purport to understand international affairs have, before and after, utterly failed to address the gaping holes in their claims about how the world works.
When the blind lead the blind, how on Earth can you expect to develop effective policy? What stands in its place are effectively random ideas selected because they become popular with the right people. That's about as sensible as staffing a nuclear power plant with chimpanzees. To understand the relationships between countries demands a systems approach where independent but also interdependent actors pursue interests defined by political convenience and perceived capabilities.
The Ukraine War is an ongoing global shock that continues to defy the understanding of most academics and policy professionals who aim to bring it to a close. The science portion of this week’s post will describe how leading theories in International Relations keep getting Ukraine wrong and how to integrate their perspectives to effect a fix. This should add useful context to the geopolitical brief that follows.
Before that, an overview of the state of the fronts after the fourth week of 2025. However you prefer to think about the high level stuff, it’s still the people bleeding and dying on the ground who really matter.
2025 Week 4 - Overview Of The Fronts
Northern Theater
Kursk and Kharkiv have both been pretty static over the past week. Heavy fighting continues in several sectors of the Kursk front, and every day the orcs probe Ukrainian defenses on the Kharkiv front. But Ukrainian troops stand firm.
In Kursk, the extreme casualties suffered by the North Korean contingent appear to have forced it to regroup. At least third are dead or seriously wounded after being in action for about a month, corresponding to a 1%-2% daily attrition rate - pretty standard for aggressive offensive operations. More are reportedly set to be shipped in from North Korea, and the survivors will become more effective over time, so the threat isn’t over.
However, despite thousands of losses, Ukraine’s lines were pushed back just a few kilometers across a 15km front. Several dozen North Koreans were sacrificed for each of the hundred or so square kilometers of Kursk their blood helped buy Moscow. Meanwhile, South Korea was just gifted an object lesson in how North Korea fights - and how to beat it at the lowest possible human cost. If Ukraine can produce a million drones in a year, South Korea could probably manage ten million. Pyongyang can only drive so many bodies across the DMZ.
As I routinely remind readers that raw territory alone doesn’t matter, it’s only fair to look at what critical logistics nodes the North Koreans seized. The answer is zero: all that death has only enabled them and their orc masters to approach Malaya Loknya, not secure even a single basement to hide in. Even increasingly rare mechanized assaults are cut up on the drive in. And it’s a long way to Sudzha still.
In retrospect, Ukraine’s limited attack toward Bolshoe Soldatskoe a few weeks back was likely a limited effort to improve the eastern flank of the defense of Malaya Loknya. A supporting attack towards Russkoe Porechnoe was thereby outflanked, and moving Ukraine’s lines to the Berdin area allows positions to sit behind an upper course of the Reka Sudzha river.
So Ukraine is holding on tight in Kursk, and seems to be slowly rotating in battalions from brigades that had been fighting on other fronts. Moscow is all but certain to intensify operations as it can - Kursk is an ongoing epic humiliation for the Kremlin, not least because the operation to recapture it has been such a shambolic affair. Instead of containing the breach, building up sufficient forces, then hitting Ukrainian positions from all sides, Moscow made the classic mistake of sending combat power in piecemeal and getting small chunks chewed up to little effect.
Had Ukraine been able to commit enough forces last summer to seize Korenevo, Glushkovo, Kromskie Bykie, Bolshoe Soldatskoe, and Belitsa, Moscow’s disaster would have been an order of magnitude more painful. Threatening to accomplish precisely this helped Ukraine force Putin to rush in forces that were then aggressively hunted down and destroyed. Once finally able to establish a coherent line and mount proper counterattacks, Ukraine then withdrew to a tighter perimeter it could defend, including a wide buffer space which troops contest, but don’t actively hold.
Southern Theater
Down on Ukraine’s coastal flank there’s nothing new to report, save what might be a decrease in direct drone attacks on civilians in Kherson. Probably just a fluke. Be nice if someone quietly had a word with the orc drone teams working down there. Rule #1 of Network Age warfare is that whatever you do locally reverberates globally. Hate giving advice to the other side, but fewer dead civilians is a universal good in my book.
I expect few changes on the ground for a while to come. Moscow might try an operation in Zaporizhzhia using local forces, but Ukraine has several brigades on watch for any such move. 72nd Mechanized Brigade, an elite formation that was withdrawn after the fall of Vuhledar several months back, is reportedly recovering in Kherson. Hopefully it has received modern vehicles and plenty of replacements.
Eastern Theater
To nobody’s surprise but, apparently, the massive Khortysia operational grouping’s public affairs office - Ukrainian troops were forced out of Velyka Novosilka this week. Thankfully, reports suggest that the retreat was planned and executed well, the last members of the defense moving quickly over the Mokri Yali river where it bends north of town.
For some reason a Khortysia spokesman and someone handling public affairs for 110th Mechanized Brigade decided to deny over the weekend that the town had fallen. I suppose the fact that Ukraine appears to hold a forest plantation just outside of town offers some technical justification for the claim, but it feels the same as Khortysia insisting that Kurakhove hadn’t fallen because there were still a few Ukrainian positions on the outskirts. Everybody sees right through this, guys.
There’s a lot of media vultures circling right now, seeking any opportunity to discredit Ukraine’s military leadership from the front lines all the way back to Kyiv. It’s best to avoid handing them live ammunition. They have few solutions of their own, most repeating something they read in a textbook once if pressed, just making their business exploiting hopes and fears. But it still takes time and energy to differentiate signal from noise.
The South Donbas front, as I’m calling the area for the time being since there isn’t an obvious target town any more, remains very difficult for the Ukrainian troops assigned to cover it. While I assess Ukraine’s strategy here as a slow retreat away from Donetsk City to a more logistically advantageous line while inflicting extreme losses on the way, the division of the Khortysia operational grouping covering the Velyka Novosilka-Vuhledar front has routinely attempted to hold positions longer than made sense.
If that trend continues, Ukraine will wind up losing more people than strictly necessary to achieve unclear goals. This is why I was relieved to see Velyka Novosilka evacuated swiftly, and am likewise glad that evidence of a withdrawal from the Dachne pocket is emerging.
Part of 71st Jager Brigade, which is kind of like an air assault brigade but focused on wooded and mountain terrain, has appeared in the Dachne pocket. The last trace of this brigade was up in Pokrovsk. Appearing in Dachne suggests that it has been tasked with holding open avenues of retreat for forward elements of 33rd Mechanized, 79th Air Assault, and 46th Airmobile. The 79th appears to be covering Kostyantynopil now, while the 46th has started blasting orcs from Andriivka. The 33rd can hopefully go into the reserve or join the 32nd west of Pokrovsk. If the 71st slowly falls back to Ulakli, it’s possible the triangle of these small towns can hold.
However, as I wrote last week, orc jaws are already closing from the north and south. While halted so far by 37th Marine Brigade and 23rd Mechanized between the Sukhi Yali river and Rozlyv, the loss of Velyka Novosilka will very likely lead to intense orc pressure towards Bahatyr. That’s less of a problem than the slow encroachment of ruscist forces on the eastern fringes of Andriivka and their movements across the highway leading to Pokrovsk through Yasenove.
The northern bank of the Vovcha river, which runs east-west through this sector, is steep, making for an excellent overwatch position suited to stopping attacks from the south. But pressure from the north or east does much to neutralize the effect. And like Velyka Novosilka, Ulakli and Kostyantynopil are in the lowland. Andriivka is set along the slope below the ridge peak. None have many reinforced concrete structures that will withstand heavy bombardment, meaning residential basements are the focus of close quarters fighting. Unless Ukraine’s defense stiffens - and probably at too high a cost - the area will probably be overrun in a few weeks.
That’s why, broadly speaking, I continue to forecast that Ukraine’s best option is to build a strong defensive line about twenty five kilometers to the west by March. Running along the Solena and Sukhi Yali rivers, large forest tracts next to the Vovcha as it winds west should offer good cover. A strong road and rail network heading back west serves the area, and Moscow’s forces will be divided by the Vovcha until it meets the Solena and Sukhi Yali. Every kilometer the orcs creep west over this winter will leave them effectively weaker, vulnerable to a vicious counterattack in early summer. Holding in Kurakhove for as long as possible made sense, but that won’t be true of every town.
While the South Donbas front is looking rough, Ukraine’s resilience in Pokrovsk continues to impress. For the most part Moscow appears to understand that a direct assault will be too costly to sustain for some time to come yet. Most efforts are directed at the flanks, but while grinding progress continues to the west of Pokrovsk, out east the orcs still haven’t been able to dig in at the highway crossroads a small group reached a couple weeks ago. Their bridgehead at Vozdvyzhenka has firmed up, but keeping it intact appears to be all the orcs can manage for now.
East of Pokrovsk, intense fighting has been underway for the towns of Kotlyne and Udachne for a week. Ukraine mounted at least one local counterattack from Pokrovsk to stabilize the lines between the city and Kotlyne, and is still in control of half of Udachne. The ruscist rate of advance at present implies that it will take until March to reach the critical rail line along the E-50 highway. And that’s if Ukraine doesn’t mount a counterattack.
So far, open source reporting suggests that 32nd Mechanized Brigade, a newer but reasonably experienced outfit, along with the troubled 155th, are handling this sector, along with several separate battalions. Moscow may be again targeting sectors held by brigades seen as newer or less effective.
The 155th is, like most 140, 150 and 160 series brigades, by all appearances just a shell. Battalions from all - some have half a dozen - are split off and assigned to fill gaps just like Territorial Guard battalions are, which is why a good portion of the criticism about the management of the 155th is confused. It was never going to deploy intact, nor would the battalions trained under its flag in France necessarily be assigned to its headquarters element in Ukraine.
If the orcs think they’re going to beat up a weak and confused brigade, they’re liable to be in for a shock. Newer battalions seem to be sandwiched between more experienced ones to mitigate the impact of the breaking in process. This doesn’t mean it won’t be painful - elite brigades of today like the 46th and 47th had their share of teething troubles - but trading lives for competence is the way it usually goes in war, unfortunately. Better training lowers the butcher’s bill.
There seems to be little threat of Ukraine losing Pokrovsk any time soon. But the situation on the western flank remains tense, and any sudden worsening could produce a real crisis. Ukrainian forces have avoided large-scale counterattacks because of the inevitable cost, but the more the enemy can be deflected to the west, the easier it will be to set up a trap for when one eventually happens, as it must at some point.
To the northwest, the fighting on the Kostyantynivka front proceeds much as it has for months now. The orcs here tend not to use armored vehicles, instead launching waves of infantry teams that try to accumulate in large enough numbers to seize a nearby Ukrainian position. Ukraine also commits fewer armored vehicles to this more urban front, relying heavily on National Guard brigades staffed by national police officers. 24th, 28th, 42nd, 92nd, and 100th Mechanized Brigades back a much larger number of light infantry brigades and detached battalions and 5th Assault.
This is another endless orc grind, the likely capture of Chasiv Yar and Toretsk in full by March of little importance in the long run because these are no longer priority fronts for Moscow anyway. Ukrainian troops also have a great deal of useful terrain to work with behind them even though the land slopes down toward Kostyantynivka. It’s a big settlement, meaning lots of places to hide troops and drone operators. In today’s battlefield context, it’s a fortress. I doubt that it will fall unless Pokrovsk does.
On the long stretch of the battlefield between Chasiv Yar and Kupiansk there’s little to report. Localized fighting continues near Terny and on the approaches to Borova, but either because of weather or lack of resources orc advances are a tree line here and there. Ten or so standard and as many lighter Ukrainian brigades cover a wider area than the space between Velyka Novosilka and Pokrovsk with little fanfare. My hope is that Ukraine routinely rotates battalions from brigades in tougher areas into the brigades here to give them at least some kind of rest.
Kupiansk deserves some special attention to close out the brief on the state of the ground fronts. Here a crisis is beginning to develop thanks to the persistence and slow expansion of an orc bridgehead over the Oskil river.
Moscow is putting a lot of deliberate effort into this operation, not throwing large forces over the river but instead steadily pushing Ukrainian troops back at such a slow pace that a major response isn’t triggered. This could well be intentional - looking at the slow evolution of this front sped up suggests a coherent plan of action.
The orcs have now cut the road from Kupiansk to Dvorichna, entrenching on heights north of Zapadne. If they can establish a firm front here and muscle Ukrainian troops out of Dvorichna, it looks possible to maintain a hard surface crossing over the Oskil that Ukraine can’t easily destroy. Or at the very least a series of pontoon bridges, with replacement gear hidden in the local forests.
This opens up the possibility of Moscow coming at Kupiansk from the northwest, bypassing defenses that have held strong for over a year against ceaseless attacks. You don’t hear much about 14th, 43rd, or 115th Mechanized Brigades, but they and as many light brigades plus a bunch of separate regiments and battalions have done great work keeping this important node secure.
Another danger is that the orcs attack Ukraine’s northeastern corner, centered on Velykyi Burluk. A breakthrough here would allow the orcs to threaten Vovchansk from the south, reviving the moribund Kharkiv offensive. It would also protect Valuyki, a critical orc support base just 35km across the international border and possibly in striking distance of a sudden Ukrainian attack, Kursk style.
A battalion from 10th Mountain was dispatched to help crush the first bridgehead that the orcs won last autumn, but it clearly isn’t enough. Small wonder, given the increased terrain relief and poor weather conditions, both of which are conducive to infantry based infiltration when drones can’t fly. While the flat steppes of Ukraine allow a single combat team to control space out to a kilometer, the line of sight limitations created by more frequent and substantial elevation changes mean more guns are needed for each chunk of front.
It seems clear that an experienced brigade should be deployed to contain and ideally eliminate the Dvorichna bridgehead. Under normal circumstances, letting Moscow stick a bunch of soldiers into a trap would be worth considering. But the challenge of taking ground without suffering serious casualties presently makes it important to squash threats before they can gain traction.
Air, Sea, & Strike
Ukraine continues to launch large strike packages of one-way drones deep into the enemy’s homeland once or twice a week. Both jet and propeller models are used, though the term drone is actually a misnomer - these are miniature cruise missiles, plain and simple. A democratized realization of what German engineers began when they fielded the V-1 and V-2. Choice of propulsion is a matter of flight pattern and payload, and it is unlikely that the weapons are actively controlled instead of launched at a programmed set of coordinates.
Having a user be able to log in and monitor one of these little robots mid-flight could be useful, as I doubt very much that a machine learning system capable of fine target differentiation is going to fit into a drone. Or if it did, good luck hiding the thermal signature of a chip. But I’ll get into the irritating way AI is being hyped some other day.
Regardless of whether a user can modify targeting after launch, the ability to send large numbers of projectiles a thousand kilometers into enemy territory radically changes the balance of power on the strategic strike front. As Moscow’s own ability to destroy targets in Ukraine continues to wane, it is forced to work out how to cover an astonishing amount of territory with sufficient defenses to handle an attack 100+ drones strong targeting one site together or several at once. This will be a novel challenge for the orcs, who have always relied on space and robust forward defenses to protect their centralized oligarch-run factories.
Notably, Moscow has begun to refrain from expending as many of its own missiles as was common in the past, despite maintaining production. Needing a hedge against NATO in case Trump does something weird is one possible factor. The overall ineffectiveness of Moscow’s strategic campaign in the face of improved Ukrainian air defenses is another.
Unless Putin wants to fire off a huge fraction of his arsenal at once too many missiles keep being intercepted to do sufficient damage, even if drones are employed to confuse the defense. Worse for him, Ukraine has dispersed as much industry as it can and become very good at repairing or hardening centralized stuff. Power cuts happen often, but they’re not 24/7; people and industry cope.
As for the big, scary “new” missile tested on Dnipro last year - that tactic hasn’t been repeated. It only proved Putin’s weakness - and, thankfully, that Europeans aren’t cowed by mere fireworks.
In the air and at sea Ukraine continues to build up strength while Moscow is forced to husband its own. Glide bomb attacks continue, but now appear increasingly ineffective at accomplishing anything but destroying fortifications. A third to a half of these are in Kursk. Both of these fronts will likely throw surprises when the weather improves.
Leadership & Personnel
Finally, a quick look at the ongoing challenge of staffing Ukraine’s combat formations is worthwhile. I’m making this a regular weekly section because the troubles aren’t going away in a hurry, and by summer a lot of glitches had better be fixed.
Zelensky and Syrskyi have confirmed that there are no plans to form any new brigades, and this is sensible. Some observers are trying to claim the fact that Ukraine continues to staff the last wave of brigades that began forming last summer as evidence of a lie, but that’s an incredibly disingenuous argument.
The 140, 150, and 160 series brigades are by all appearances being used, as intended, as personnel banks. In the new corps structure Ukraine is supposed to be moving towards, there’s not going to be a sudden shift to a totally new organization chart. Things will happen gradually, as they must to avoid breaking down existing structures that are keeping the front from looking a whole lot worse. Using newer brigades in this way can create a sector-level reserve where they are informally subordinated to an experienced formation.
That’s no excuse for the battalions fielded by these brigades field not having proper gear, training, or support. There’s a definite systemic issue with that affecting Ukraine’s defense forces. And the corruption in the headquarters overseeing the 155th’s formation is obviously a serious concern - hence arrests being made.
But these sorts of problems are distinct from the fact that Ukraine had to have more battalions on the rolls so that existing ones could get assigned smaller areas of responsibility and more frequent rest. And as for staffing these formations instead of directly sending replacements to established brigades, well, sure, Ukraine could have gone down that road - at the cost of those experienced battalions having twice as much work to do.
Would the outcome be superior? Possibly. But the same number of bodies are still covering the same amount of frontage in either scenario. Myself, I’d have leaned towards reinforcing experienced brigades just like most everybody who is criticizing Ukraine on this point. But that’s easy to say at a distance. And with the benefit of hindsight. Most of the people who fixate on the new brigade issue the most now weren’t questioning it two years ago - only whether putting all the modern kit from NATO in new brigades was wise.
In the realm of leadership, my biggest concern for Ukraine just got alleviated: the new and much-respected Ground Forces commander, Drapatyi, has taken direct control of the overwhelmed Khortysia operational grouping. It is to be hoped that this establishes a direct link between the general staff in Kyiv and the tactical groupings under Khortysia that need to become the foundation of six to eight distinct corps to manage the Eastern Theater appropriately.
His boss, Syrskyi, on two public occasions in three months has had to personally appear to order Ukrainian troops out of a pocket they had inexplicably been left in for too long. Here’s hoping Drapatyi can get things straightened out.
Understanding The Field Of International Relations
The affairs of great powers may seem a hopelessly abstract concern, especially to anyone anywhere near the front lines. Yet the wars that break out when the international system convulses alter the lives of billions in countless ways.
The science of international conflict is habitually held by the media to be the province of select few individuals - usually scholars and retired policymakers - with a vested interest in shaping the public record. Every country develops its own national mythology as generations of power players portray the actions of themselves or their allies in the best possible light. In the process, truly scientific understanding gets crowded out, and so the future is too often condemned to rhyme with the past.
In the United States, the problem is compounded by the way the education system functions. Most students are given only a brief introduction to most fields during their course of studies - as is only natural, considering how much science there is to learn. But which fields have a place in the general education curriculum is a matter of intense politics, everyone warring over scarce student credit hours. Professors often pretend otherwise, but theirs is a business like any other, subjects to market pressures. Those who deny this are usually trying to safeguard their interests.
Successful fields and departments actively market themselves to convince students to select majors in their area. Professors in departments also select the students to bring into graduate studies. The US academic system creates a natural channel of indoctrination that leads to the emergence of distinct intellectual lineages which come to act as tribes. Elders preserve the prevailing status quo as it stood when they were putting in their dues, lacking any material incentive to innovate outside of artificially narrow boundaries set by convention.
International Relations, once cutting-edge, is now little more than a combination of applied philosophy and popular history. Yet leading scholars purport to advise political leaders and the general public about how the world operates! Small wonder disastrous lunacy like Putin’s assault on Ukraine and the entire American War on Terror prevail.
Unlike a true, hard science, no unifying theory of how the international system operates is accepted by IR scholars. Three dominant paradigms have been stuck fighting the same old battles since the middle of the Cold War: realism, idealism, and constructivism.
There are other, smaller traditions, but if you read rags like The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, or Foreign Policy, these are the ideological positions that dominate policy. What’s ironic on a level so deep it almost hurts to think about is that advocates of each have not only been wrong at nearly every turn on Ukraine, but the policy prescriptions they peddle contradict their own core assumptions!
Each of the three major IR paradigms is derived not from scientific, but political sources. All three serve a different set of interests, helping them justify policy preferences by adding a veneer of science to them.
All that Ukraine has withstood to this point has revealed that a vast chunk of what passes for science in IR is little better than astrology. Realists like Mearsheimer, Walt, Charap, and a cluster of others, even if they rarely agree on specific aspects of Ukraine’s fight, all take for granted a curious idea imported from the misbegotten realm of russian studies: that Moscow’s empire is somehow special, ruled by a uniquely savage race that can tolerate suffering indefinitely.
It’s pure 19th century snake oil, but it sounds great if you want to play the sage at dinner parties or on TV. Or, as was the case after World War Two, you were a senior German general trying to explain away your defeats. If you want an example of a field that should have been extirpated a long ago, russian studies is one. But the way the academic division of labor works, no one is willing to offend a tenured colleague by pointing out that they are little better than an orc propagandist. The object ‘russia’ is a simple myth, as language alone does not a country make. Yet once granted tenure, a professor can only be gotten rid of it you eliminate their entire department. Which happens, sooner or later. Yet until then, the tenured get to state all kinds of nonsense as if it’s scientific fact.
What’s sad is that the entire point of classical realism is to posit the existence of centers of power that, if provoked, will inflict on those with less power whatever they choose. The identity of that power or its supernatural claims about itself are irrelevant. A simple look at history shows that powers rise and fall - understanding and managing this eternal fact of life was part of the impetus for the development of International Relations as a field in the first place.
Realism, as a body of theory, suggests that the threat posed by any power aiming to consume valuable territory ought to be directly countered, because power relations are a zero-sum game. Either Ukraine is allied with us, or them, whoever you take us and them to be. A realist understands this to be why Putin invaded in the first place - that and the bet that he’d be able to pull it off without suffering any real consequences. He never cared about sanctions - the possibility of killing American soldiers and triggering a national outcry, now that terrifies him.
So when so-called realists insist that Ukraine has to trade away territory for peace because Moscow is strong, it’s unclear what data they’re using to make that evaluation - except mythic nonsense imported from russian studies. Moscow’s inability to subdue Ukraine should alert everyone to the simple fact that Moscow has less far less power than it pretends. This means all boundaries are subject to negotiation - and should be, because why let Moscow have what it can’t hold on to?
Realism as a way of thinking about relationships between countries has tremendous value: it’s just that realist scholars as a group are apparently craven fools, mostly shills for some powerful interest. Much the opposite is true of a newer branch of IR, a group of approaches often lumped together under the label Constructivism.
Its proponents ask, what is power, really, and who actually has it? Measuring power has never been a simple thing, nor has it ever been possible to accurately predict how effectively it will be wielded if committed.
All the fancy simulations the Pentagon ran before Putin marched on Kyiv predicted that it couldn’t possibly stand - the key error they made was the same as Putin’s: underestimating ordinary people if properly motivated. Organic resistance rooted in communities bought Ukraine’s regular military time to recover from the shock of the invasion and apply its resources to countering the most threatening orc formations until the assault ground to a halt.
The appeal of Constructivism rests in going straight to the heart of what power is and why it is used. On the face of things, having a lot of tanks and jets alone does not make a country powerful. Heck, even the USA has rarely been able to achieve all but the most minimal foreign policy goals across my four-plus decades of life - probably more. That’s despite spending as much as every imaginable American adversary on the military.
Constructivists look at the way leaders and groups conceive of power as an object, examining the cultural constraints that shape how they see fit to use it. It’s only by asking questions about what power means to a specific group can you hope to predict behavior.
Applying a straightforward constructivist view, it is Putin’s obsession with Ukraine that made the conflict in Ukraine inevitable: he chose to invade, offering whatever pretext a given audience seems receptive to in a pathetic bid to justify the act. To some he insists that Ukraine is corrupt and not worthy of support; for others Putin spins a tale about Ukraine not actually really existing in the first place, being little more than a rebel group of russians controlled by Nazis. He’ll keep on making excuses, so must be physically defeated to make his claims irrelevant for the safety of all.
It’s the fact that he chooses to use his power to pursue the subjugation of Ukraine, and not one of a thousand other objectives, that an honest constructivist should latch on to. Yet most in practice take the tired postmodern position that all views are equal, and scholars are supposed to be entirely impartial. This is little more than an attempt to evade the hard issues of material power, something they tend to dislike considering because of the obvious measurement issues.
Constructivists are less likely than realists to label their paradigm by name when talking to the public; instead they restrict their commentary to the humanitarian aspects of a conflict, mostly avoiding military affairs. On Ukraine, most get uncomfortable when asked to reconcile the genocidal intent of Putin’s assault with the standard constructivist desire to treat Kyiv and Moscow as equals to promote mediation. For the most part, they blanket assume that any ceasefire is a good ceasefire because violence is always bad. Here again the perspective trends towards inadvertent victim-blaming.
A minority of constructivists, especially abroad, do back Ukraine, often passionately. Most of these hail from the domain of post-colonial studies and so understand the importance of what’s happening in Ukraine as the last European empire enters its death throes. The systems approach that I employ is a hybrid of constructivist and realist views, taking the working parts of each.
The third major sect of IR, Idealism, is often termed Liberalism because of the utopian connotations of the former in the English-speaking world. But deep down, it really is all about ideas; chief among them the default presumption that Dictatorship and Democracy are distinct (hence the capitalization) and inherently opposed structures, one good, one bad.
They’re the set that talks the most about democracy, alleging that Putin went after Ukraine because he’s afraid of it, not simple imperialism motivated by the reality that russia has been dying for a long time and needs a foreign victim to mask ongoing consumption of domestic treasure by oligarchs. Putin’s empire does nothing for the vast majority of the people it claims to rule; most russians would be far better off as citizens of russian-speaking city-states. It’s not the mythic west that Putin fears, but Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan - all the parts of Moscow’s empire that are already free. So they must all be destroyed, lest other bits of the empire realize how they’re being deliberately bled dry.
Idealism as a paradigm reduces to simple magical thinking: that there exists a special, unique, divinely blessed “western world” with shared values and a common leader - D.C., of course. It’s heritage goes back to ancient Greece and Rome, and like these progenitors of democracy The West is locked in a perpetual ideological struggle with The East. Sometimes The East is the Muslim world, other times China, and now and again the Muscovites have taken on the role. It all depends on the generation. The logic may yet spark a full-on third world war.
Idealism is the prevailing bipartisan view among Americans, usually paired with a latent assumption that everyone agrees D.C. is the inheritor of supposedly democratic Athens. It’s basically a cult; the thing is impervious to data, happy to twist even the most banal statistics to serve the quasi-religious aim of banishing thought of any world with more than two poles. A branch of realism known as neo-realism actually went the exact same way - only Kenneth Waltz at least thought that two poles would balance out. Idealists can now be seen writing think pieces wondering how to inspire more citizen participation in any conflict with China.
As with most fields that haven’t been properly reformed over the past fifty years - or, as is more frequent, faded into irrelevance or died off - International Relations stands to be totally rebooted using systems concepts. It would try the patience of too many readers to go into the full thing in a single sub-section of a post, but a general sketch is possible to offer in just a few hundred words.
It’s necessary to see countries as independent agents, each with their own worldview. This evolves with time, shaped by domestic and international pressures, with the result that countries can only use the patterns of behavior exhibited by other countries as evidence to estimate their intentions. Each also seeks to understands the capabilities of others and itself.
Countries are not, of course, singular entities: they’re complex systems in their own right. But countries establish governments to handle services that markets or society don’t make enough of on their own. These are human institutions, governed by rules and shaped by incentives, including keeping themselves alive and reasonably intact. This makes them reasonably predictable. Only in special cases do they become suicidal, and even this choice is on some level rational.
It is not necessary to observe all the deeper levels that define a country’s interior metabolism: the policy choices made by its government are an outcome variable, though shaped by perception of the balance of capabilities. This might be incorrect, though, and what’s more, countries can be driven by such dysfunctional internal dynamics that their leaders look outward for solutions to policy problems. Hence the basic need for every country to commit to at least some level of military spending as a hedge.
The amount and what it buys, as well as how the capital is used, offer important clues about capabilities. Intentions are always murkier, but here again patterns of behavior are key: especially when dealing with a large bureaucracy, the default is to trend towards consistency. Countries really do take on a certain character, develop a kind of personality, for the same reason that individuals and communities do. Democracies tend to be safer to have around because they tend to be better at internalizing change and reform, where the danger of being killed by a rival forces dictators to cling to stability at home even if that means launching futile wars abroad that wind up destroying their domestic position over the long run.
Unfortunately, material power is a real thing and always taken into account. At the same time, its increase is prone to triggering competitive spirals that produce instability. And even though, like all systems, human and natural, stability may prove the rule for a long time, eventually change comes. A shift away from prevailing conditions that promote stable and predictable relationships is always jarring - mistrust naturally rises, and this can lead to a downward spiral.
In moments of confusion, the calculations made by leaders in every country are scrambled. Investments become gambles, which tends to lead to gambling behavior. Additional risk-taking further destabilizes the situation. In the worst case scenario, a cascade failure erupts as countries begin to test every relationship. The system may completely reorganize.
At the level of a single country, this is often called revolution. When it’s the whole world, it usually gets named a Great Power Conflict by future historians. Managing such moments correctly is of paramount importance. A new spring always comes, often a better one, but a lot that was good can be lost during the reboot.
Geopolitical Brief
North America
I think that’s a good portal into what’s happening in the USA right now. At least from where I sit, American politics has become more predictable in broad strokes even as it seems to be chaos at more local levels. The USA is a complex system in the process of crashing hard, deterioration of the real economy over the past generation in half the country leaving a huge chunk of the population angry and afraid.
This is indeed the classic soil fascism sprouts in: the fundamental processes aren’t different from the ones which produced Putin’s empire. It’s entirely understandable that rational people with their eyes open in Canada and Europe are nervous about Trump’s blather when it comes to expanding the USA.
That’s just hot air, but as domestic crises mount and Trump’s cartoonish policy programs implemented by TV show hosts prove unable to deliver on promises to lower grocery or fuel prices, a knee-jerk foreign adventure becomes very likely. Iran is a probable target, but might be too risky for Trump. Mexican cartels might seem a better fit, but I’d put money on at least one taking revenge by launching random drone strikes on civilians in the US. Not a box worth opening, especially when cartels will exist so long as demand does but remains illegal.
The whole Greenland acquisition thing is mostly a joke likely caused by Trump or an adviser binge-watching Borgen on Netflix - but one that could metastasize into something weird. So it’s completely understandable that the Danes are shocked enough to be quietly warning their fellow Europeans that the Americans are totally unreliable now. According to the systems theory of International Relations I described in brief above, that’s how you decimate an alliance and wind up creating a democratic rival with an interest in hedging against D.C. and Moscow alike. I can hardly think of a better way to sabotage your own national interests.
On Ukraine, at least, as I’ve been forecasting for about a year now, Trump is pretty much stuck. Leave Ukraine in the lurch, and what little influence the US has over Europe dies. Have fun bullying the entire world to go along with your trade policy when right about now China looks like as reliable a partner as the USA.
With Biden and Trump both, it’s as if the powers-that-be are bound and determined to ignore material reality. US debt loads are now to dangerous and probably unsustainable levels, the Dollar is way too expensive, and trade wars stand to provoke the return of inflation - as do mass deportations. Meanwhile, China apparently just worked out how to do AI at about a tenth the cost of anything US companies can manage. Quick, better ban Chinese chips, D.C., now that you’re going after apps!
Though there was a flurry of concern this week when the announcement dropped that foreign aid was being paused for three months, that only applies to civilian stuff. Trump’s official position on Ukraine remains completely unrealistic, talk of ending the war in a hundred days as likely to pan out as the promise to end the war within a day of taking office. Technically I’m pretty sure he promised to end it within a day of being elected, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here and assume he misspoke. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Still, there just aren’t any working grounds for serious negotiations yet: Putin is still demanding total capitulation, and Zelensky’s show of being open to them is him being polite out of need. In the US media there is already a growing desire to portray Zelensky as being unwilling to compromise, because that lets them make him out as extreme. Trump periodically says something critical to remind Zelensky that he can inspire the press to turn very nasty in a bid to protect its access, now that Politico and TheHill are pretending that a plurality victory equals a landslide.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv is likely to negotiate until visibly out of resources to continue the fight. Even without the US playing an active role, Kyiv with most of Europe backing it won’t be the first to collapse.
Europe
In Europe, Trump’s first week back in office is being taken in stride. He appears to realize that he can’t afford being blamed if Ukraine collapses. Attempting to impose a ceasefire remains a possibility in late spring, but so far Trump has been politically savvy enough to not force something like that when it could easily blow back on him - and would, because good luck enforcing a ceasefire without the deployment of U.S. troops to Donbas.
Trump would very much like to expand the House majority and not be a lame duck by the end of 2026, so until then the world has leverage on the guy. The biggest thing right now is that European aid to Ukraine keep on increasing; equally as important is the ongoing process of establishing factories in Ukraine. It’s a pretty straightforward equation: guaranteed need for a whole new generation of kit for an expanded European military means long-term profits for industrial partners relocating to Ukraine. Lower costs of production are good for everybody - plenty of profits to go around and European forces still get lots of new gear.
Armored vehicles are far from obsolete: soon they will get effective anti-drone defenses. Tactics will be devised to let ground troops break through enemy drone kill zones. Certain processes, once kicked off, play out as they must. The quicker European leaders realize how the USA is going to be from now on - there’s zero guarantee that a future Democrat won’t be Trump-lite - the sooner they can get to work reducing dependence on America. As you might expect, the countries closer to Moscow are leading the charge. They know the stakes.
Middle East
The Gaza ceasefire is holding, and the surviving Gazans are heading home to an uncertain future in the ruins. Hostages are being released by Hamas, which has swiftly emerged to demonstrate that it remains unbeaten and can control any place Israel doesn’t keep boots on the ground. Reportedly every member killed by Israel has been replaced and portions of the rocket arsenal survived in portions of the tunnel network. Hamas is calling this a win after surviving for so long despite losing most of its leaders.
The deal finally inked is almost identical to one Israel rejected last spring at Netanyahu’s behest, too. Ah, the banal cruelty of politics. And the next round will probably be even more vicious. What will Israel do when small explosive drones start randomly crashing into people’s homes? Wipe out Gaza… again?
Up in the north, the ceasefire with Hezbollah is holding, though it might be getting shaky because both sides are accusing the other of not withdrawing from southern Lebanon on schedule. On this front as well Israel has fought only to a draw, killing a lot of Hezbollah leaders but unable to defeat the battered organization in the field. So like Hamas, Hezbollah gets to walk away claiming a victory on its terms. Neither will likely want to be proxies for Iran now that Tehran has betrayed them, but in the end that’s good for them - less so for Israel, which will lose the ability to gain intel by monitoring Tehran.
Iran is probably no more than a few weeks away from having half a dozen nuclear bombs. If the mullahs are smart, they’ve done everything but final assembly already. It was too late to stop a nuclear Iran fifteen years ago. Let’s hope the powers-that-be understand this. For Israel, classic nuclear deterrence will have to do from here on out. At least Iran’s actions over the past year have amply demonstrated that the mullahs are not, as certain Israelis and Americans allege, suicidal.
Elsewhere, Syria has officially told Putin’s orcs to evacuate their bases. Talk is that they’ll ship out to Libya. We’ll see how long the thug regime that Moscow backs there survives.
Also, the Houthis appear to be honoring the ceasefire Hamas agreed to with Israel. Here’s hoping attacks on shipping are over and the US can deploy the carrier group positioned nearby somewhere else. I just hope it isn’t the Persian Gulf. Though the Houthi attacks against U.S. naval vessels were all repelled, there were close calls. This is a group with only rudimentary targeting capabilities, limited numbers of weapons it can use at once, and no desire to draw a full U.S. bombardment. The era of carrier groups parking close off a hostile shore and running strikes with impunity is drawing to a close.
Pacific
Speaking of carriers, the French have dispatched the De Gaulle and her escorts to participate in joint exercises with countries along the western Pacific rim. If she ever came up to the Pacific Northwest close enough to see from shore, I’d probably find an excuse to watch her pass by. Been a long while since I was in San Diego, where sometimes three Nimitz-class carriers would be berthed at once, visible from Interstate 5. I’d rather the French deploy her to the Black Sea or up off the coast of Norway, though. U.S. Pacific Fleet has the orcs pretty well handled if the need arises. Our carriers are bigger, and we’ve got half a dozen on this coast.
Now, there’s always the remote possibility of Trump - more likely Vance after a drone assassination - so badly abusing the Constitution that the West Coast states have no choice but to uphold and defend it on our own. Relative to the rest of the USA, we’ve got a higher share of sane Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We’re also culturally - and increasingly legally - distinct, plus our economy has long been deeply internationalized. Trump’s trade wars have always been about shifting wealth from the West Coast back east. Whether you voted for him or not, his policies threaten the wellbeing of everyone on the West Coast.
55 million people and a roughly $5.2 trillion GDP makes for a pretty neat Autonomous Constitutional Region, is all I’m saying. A West Coast Defense Force organized to cope with all hazards, foreign and domestic, could integrate neatly with allied forces along the Pacific Rim. And we could actually afford to spend 4-5% of our GDP on defense, unlike poorer regions of the USA - a good thing, too as out here natural disasters are usually a more pressing threat than military conflict. Though if necessary, along with the other Pacific democracies, we could handle China. Very probably better than if everything is managed from D.C.
Concluding Comments
I think that covers enough ground for one week. As February dawns, expect a lot of coverage to talk about the war entering it’s fourth year. Hopefully it will be the last, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Even if, as I both hope and forecast, Ukraine launches a major series of all-out counteroffensives this summer, Putin might be able to drag out the endgame into 2026. It depends on whether it takes the collapse of one front or defeat in an entire theater to shake his country into cutting him loose by any means necessary.
Still, a quick end to the madness is worth shooting for. It’s entirely possible that Putin, like Assad, is one good shock away from ignominious flight. Pyongyang would probably welcome them both.