Ukraine's 2025 Campaign: Early Counterattacks - At Home And Abroad
Ukrainian offensive efforts are growing more numerous, contradicting media narratives about Ukraine's supposed exhaustion. A new battlefield rhythm is emerging; Ukraine is winning the adaptation race.
It is still very early days, but over the past few weeks Ukrainian forces have, on several fronts, made a clear shift from area to active defense. The distinction may seem technical, but represents a major change in Ukraine’s posture as it continues to fight for everyone’s freedom from russian fascism.
In area defense, the priority is minimizing friendly costs while maximizing the enemy’s. Territory only matters insofar as a chunk of dirt helps advance that core mission. Interestingly, the rather epic Oval Office blowup you may have heard something about this past week was also part of the process.
Active defense often looks similar to area defense, but intentionally incorporates sustained counterattacks that go beyond reclaiming positions in the grey zone. Over several days the defender will attempt to push the enemy back in a target sector before - usually - reverting to an Area defense scheme as hostile reinforcements arrive.
The best moment to make the switch is when an enemy advance has begun to falter for lack of resources along the front. Done right, the change can destabilize the enemy to such a degree that the initial limited effort evolves into a bigger, operational-level event.
I can’t forecast anything major happening just yet, as the approach of spring makes movements of more than 3-5km tough to sustain. But the choice to take the risk of higher casualties that this kind of operation entails suggests that Ukraine has big plans for 2025 - including a sustained series of major counteroffensives, resources permitting.
Of course, a slowing or halt to American aid could threaten this. And after Zelensky rather brilliantly called Trump’s bluff about securing peace with Putin in epic fashion, fears of an interruption are understandable.
But that fool Trump let Vance - who appears to own foreign policy on Team Trump - walk him straight into a disaster. While the duo clearly intended that Oval Office sit-down to be an ambush, Zelensky made the best move possible and turned it right back around on them, as one must in such situations. His complete humiliation of Trump and Vance destroyed their cynical ploy to make Ukraine surrender and call that peace.
Zelensky just performed an incredible service to the entire democratic world: he revealed America’s leaders and their ambitions for exactly what they really are nowadays. There’s no going back - though this victory will be dearly bought, it helps open the door to the greatest one of all.
I’ll go into more detail on why Zelensky made the right and necessary choice in the third section. The first covers developments on the active fronts, where orc progress has been mostly stalled for yet another week while Ukraine has intensified local scale counterattacks. And this week I’ve got a science section prepared that will describe at a high level how offensive operations have to work in the Network Age.
There’s no big secret, nor has anything fundamentally changed in the art and science of warfare: what’s happening in Ukraine is not revolution, but rapid evolution. Not to downplay what Ukrainians have achieved, but they’re more or less filling gaps that a sufficiently robust test of NATO, particularly American, military doctrine would have revealed years ago.
The ingredients of combined arms warfare have to be reassembled and the way elements and people managed rethought, built on truly enduring basic scientific principles. Needless casualties and painful defeats are the natural alternative. Institutions that cannot adapt will fail - even the United States Armed Forces.
Especially if ignorant fools like Trump, Biden, Vance, or Harris are running the show. National security might as well be run by robots built in the 1990s. The need for an autonomous Pacific American Forces has never been more clear. Protecting the Constitution against all hazards, foreign or domestic, across the Pacific Rim. Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand - you all are our natural allies. Want to help secure your own future? Get in touch - I have battle plans.
At some point, the Big Ideas business has got to be back in the hands of ordinary people, not moguls and divas. Otherwise, a whole lot of people gonna die for no good reason. Better democratic institutions are key - and they start with security.
Weekly Overview
Key Trends
Ukraine has shifted modes on several fronts, launching aggressive counterattacks that go beyond seizing a few positions after an orc push is smashed. In multiple locales, but especially the Pokrovsk and Toretsk fronts, Ukrainian forces are punching back far more aggressively than was typical over winter.
The reason? Moscow’s forces are visibly tired across the board. The depth and intensity of attacks continues to decline, and the latest orc attempts to creep around the flanks of a large Ukrainian grouping - Kupiansk, Pokrovsk, Southern Donbas - have by and large failed.
Slowly pushing forward one tree line at a time, even if this does force Ukraine to withdraw bit by bit, is not a recipe for victory. Putin is relying on Trump throwing him a lifeline by freezing the conflict somehow. But Ukraine appears to have conserved enough resources to prevent this and even claw back ground.
With the proper support from European and Pacific leaders, Ukraine stands a very real chance of launching a serious, sustained counteroffensive effort in 2025. If it happens, the strike will come at a moment of extreme ruscist vulnerability, Putin’s ground war stuttering for lack of trained troops and quality gear while Ukraine’s drone fight escalates, from the front line to 2,000km or more behind. At the same time, the ruscist economy is racing towards a precipice: these converging trends are leading Moscow to catastrophe.
The door is open to a radical shift in the balance of power in Europe and the globe. As Trump and Vance inherit the vain effort by Biden and Harris to hold back the tide by preventing Ukraine from destroying Putin’s regime once and for all, reality is starting to bite. There’s no going back, and Victory in Ukraine is the key to our common future.
Northern Theater
The fighting in Kharkiv is largely unchanged, most of the action in this theater still taking place in Kursk. Attacks on Kharkiv now primarily take the form of drone strikes, with the old S-300 missile bombardments now largely a thing of the past since the operation in Kursk began and the threat of ATACMS attacks inside russia became critical. So much for the theory that those were actually long-range guided missiles fired from rocket launchers I’ve seen pushed by some - these wouldn’t be so easily suppressed.
Speaking of S-300 systems, one of those still in Ukrainian hands and supporting the Kursk front was attacked by an Iskander ballistic missile. One launch vehicle was destroyed, which is actually a pretty pathetic result given the cost of an Iskander. The critical element in most air defense systems is the control vehicle and its radars - launchers are much easier to replace. Still, it’s a good reminder that nothing can park out in the open closer than about fifty kilometers from the front. Hope the vehicle wasn’t occupied when it burned.
Sadly, another ballistic missile strike hit a Ukrainian training center this past week. Reportedly the new and troubled 157th Mechanized Brigade - its forward elements on the South Donbas front - lost dozens of soldiers, drawing promises of harsh punishment of responsible commanders from Ground Forces chief Drapatyi. More than justified. Crowds are death in modern war, and classic-style military formations probably ought to be immediately banned for teaching bad habits.
On the ground, in Kursk the fighting remains a horrific slog for the orcs and their North Korean allies, who have started to be used a bit more effectively. Still, despite a new intensive round of attacks on the western flank of Free Kursk, Ukraine has given up only a small amount of ground around Pogrebki and Sverdlivkovo.
Pogrebki was the northernmost Ukrainian defensive stronghold along the perimeter, and sits on the wrong side of the narrow Malaya Loknya river, so I’m kind of shocked it held out this long. But three months ago I figured Ukraine would have been forced to shrink the perimeter in Kursk a lot more than proved the case. Moscow is still struggling to get close to Malaya Loknya itself despite launching attacks from three directions, and the battle for the place seems set to take a long while.
On the southern edge of Free Kursk, the orcs have renewed their long drive towards the highways linking Sudzha to Sumy, retaking Sverdlivkovo and clearing the southern bank of the Snagost to the international border, even raiding across. But to cut off Ukraine’s supply line will require breaching another small river, the Loknya, against what will probably be a stiffening defense.
Ukrainian forces haven’t recently scored more visible gains on the eastern flank of Free Kursk, where they’ve launched at least two substantial counterattacks over the past six weeks. But they also haven’t been forced out of the positions they seized. The orcs would dearly love to pair the attacks through Sverdlivkovo, which have to cross open ground, with an advance through the forests between Kurilovka and Guevo. So far this plan seems to have been totally upset by Ukraine holding positions on the outskirts of Ulanok.
I have to forecast ongoing slow compression of Ukraine’s perimeter in Kursk, however at this stage a broad collapse looks highly doubtful. The more ruscist troops advance near the international border the greater the risk they’ll be hit by a sustained counterattack on their flank. Push too hard near Sverdlivkovo, and the road to Korenevo through Snagost might open up, which would completely dismantle the push towards Sudzha.
Unlikely, but possible. As Putin’s forces weaken, local vulnerabilities will emerge. Each one successfully exploited accelerates the process of global degradation.
Eastern Theater
Along with Kursk, Pokrovsk saw the most intense fighting this week, with Ukraine launching a new local counterattack that threw the orcs out of Kotlyne, the furthest extent of the ruscist bridgehead over the Solona river. With Ukraine having previously launched successful counterattacks on both sides of the base of the orc spearhead, the bulge threatens to collapse entirely.
Moscow is now forced to choose between reinforcing an area where Ukrainian drone dominance has made it almost impossible to resupply troops in forward positions, or pulling back. The operation to liberate Kotlyne was greatly eased by the enemy being able to keep only fifty or so soldiers in the village. It isn’t a big place, with roughly a hundred or so homes, but normally every other basement would shelter orcs before they were prepared to make a new push, so stopping this buildup counts as a victory in its own right.
All in all, it looks as if the collaboration between 25th Airborne and 3rd SSO - a separate special forces regiment skilled at spearheading attacks with fast-moving light troops backed by lots of drones - was a demonstration of Ukrainian efforts to come. Recon drones maintained constant surveillance of the target area, allowing strike drones to hit reinforcements or supplies coming in. Once the orcs were properly starved, concentrated drone strikes followed by special forces raids allowed airborne troops to fully reclaim the village, taking prisoners.
It also helps when the enemy is fixed in place for so long that the assault troops can conduct realistic rehearsals. I consider this to be further evidence that better digital simulations are needed to rapidly develop scenarios during operations - better for troops to move through a pixelated three-dimensional representation produced from drone footage a few times before the real event than nothing when you don’t have time, space or resources to build a full physical mock-up. Now there’s a business idea pursue…
Anyway, Ukrainian counterattacks in Uspenivka, Pischane, and now Kotlyne may mark the effective end of Moscow’s Pokrovsk campaign. As I expected, once the orcs were within ten kilometers of the small city their going got a lot tougher. Ukraine is now punching back against the spearheads that sought to surround Pokrovsk, reclaiming an outer defensive ring of settlements. Moscow will have to reinforce to sustain the campaign, but is reportedly trying to move forces to the Kostyantynivka front.
So far Ukraine has maintained control of the highway junction on the Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka road that Moscow has repeatedly tried to seize, even launching a local counterattack to reclaim it and hold onto nearby Vodiane Druhe in late February. And the lines between this point and the southwestern outskirts of Toretsk has not yet been hit as expected. Taking advantage of Moscow’s slow pace, Ukrainian forces have also unleashed a fairly substantial counterattack in central Toretsk.
There’s been a lot less attention paid to the fighting here than on other fronts, but over the past few weeks it has been vicious, sustained, and going poorly for Putin’s orcs. Last week’s brief reported that Ukrainian troops had launched an attack into the ruins of downtown Toretsk from the north, where they still control a mine tailing hill, but soon after this was joined by an attack on the eastern side. Pushing several kilometers straight down the road to Kostyantynivka, there are reports of orc troops surrounded in the town center. Worse for Moscow, Ukrainian forces also appear to be operating in the Zabalka neighborhood to the southeast.
The Ukrainian brigades in this area are largely from the National Guard, including numerous battalions from the national police service. They also happen to be some of the quieter formations, at least when it comes to media coverage, regular brigades in the area like 93rd and 28th Mechanized as well as 12th Offensive Guard “Azov” better-known than the national police regiments or even 100th Mechanized, despite it being one of the better-equipped Ukrainian brigades with both Bradleys and Marders.
12th OG is one of the brigades slated to form the heart of a new corps, and whether the goal is to interrupt preparations for an orc push to Kostyantynivka or this is an opportunistic effort to reclaim a chunk of Toretsk and deliver the enemy a bloody nose, it’s having an impact. At least two ruscist groups in Toretsk could be surrounded already, though there is a clear risk of an enemy counterattack overwhelming the Ukrainians in the city. But another possibility is that an expanding drone front makes holding positions in Toretsk mighty difficult for the orcs.
Up in Chasiv Yar there has been no visible enemy progress in a week, and Ukrainian soldiers even pushed back into the western half of the northern suburbs. If more resources are devoted, Ukraine might be able to maintain a stable defense line in the ruins of Chasiv Yar instead of pull out of the last bastion of concrete high rises in the center.
Jumping back to the other side of Pokrovsk, down on the South Donbas front Moscow has maintained a slow pace of advance on the northern and southern edges of the sector, but are stalled everywhere else. And really, only the advance to the north of Velyka Novosilka has been remotely successful, with Ukrainian troops now pushed off the ridge overlooking the town that had allowed 110th Mechanized and its fellow brigades to shoot down on orcs trying to muster for a new push.
At the moment, Ukrainian troops are in the process of establishing a new stable defense line to the west and north of Velyka Novosilka. Once the orcs have pushed out around ten to fifteen kilometers - and they’re almost there now - the going should get tough enough that the advance peters out. If that happens, and the northern pincer moving southwest from Sribne that Moscow aims to generate is also defeated, Ukrainian forces might hold Bahatyr and Oleksiivka after all.
All in all, Moscow’s strategy on this front remains obvious and, quite frankly, a waste of effort. In the year that Putin has sent his orcs marching west from Donetsk City towards Pokrovsk, Ukraine has learned how to radically scale up drone operations sufficient to almost freeze the front. In 2025 Ukraine stands to deploy three times as many drones on the battlefield and ten or more times in the deep strike role.
The magnitude of the defeat facing Putin’s horde is visible in the near-total inability of the orcs to get a major effort going even on minor fronts that Ukraine might be expected to neglect. On the long stretch from north of Kostyantynivka all the way up to Kupiansk the enemy advance has been limited to almost nothing this past week, and in Kupiansk Ukraine has apparently launched some kind of counterattack not against the bridgehead at Dvorichna, but on the other side of the Oskil closer to Kupiansk, near Synkivka.
Muscovite forces also launched a new round of attacks on the massive mining complex at Bilohorivka on the Siversk front (qualification required because no matter where I move a digital map of Ukraine a Bilohorivka seems to be there). But Ukraine swiftly mounted their own, 81st Airmobile having owned the defense of the area for so long it will be a real shock if they’re ever kicked out.
The main takeaway here is that on nearly every front across the east Ukraine is more than holding its own. Where Ukrainian forces are still retreating, there wasn’t much sense in fighting hard anyway. Moscow has made an utter shambles of its post-mobilization campaigns, save the use of its best troops to blunt Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. One has to wonder how many of those are left after a year and a half of human wave tactics.
At a certain point, the survival odds of the average orc goes up if they turn around and march on Moscow all alone. If a big enough group pulls another Wagner rebellion, the empire will topple. Its slaves will be better off for it.
Southern Theater
There’s been a slight uptick in activity on the Dnipro front and around Crimea, which Ukrainian drones have to skirt to reach oil refineries in the Caucasus, across the Black Sea. Ukraine still hasn’t launched any major direct strikes on Crimea in a while, at least nothing publicized but it’s under constant threat from drones.
Along the Dnipro, there’s been a bit more skirmishing of late, with ruscist forces trying to hold positions near a ruined bridge that Ukraine has long used as the node of a small beachhead. Each side trades drone and artillery attacks on a regular basis, but Moscow is alone in using drones to hunt civilians.
Air, Sea, & Strike
Developments on key supporting fronts are also trending Ukraine’s way. The most important and potentially earth-shattering news this past week was that Ukrainian engineers have come up with a way to jam orc glide bombs, causing them to miss by hundreds of meters. These very dangerous weapons, however, share a vulnerability with a whole lot of American-made gear: they rely entirely on satellite data to correct errors in the onboard inertial navigation center.
To sum up how this works: when launching a GPS-guided weapon, knowing target and friendly GPS coordinates is the first step. A computer can calculate how to get between the two points automatically. However, without a constant signal from a GPS satellite reaching the weapon as it flies, it can’t compensate for tiny errors that accumulate with time. Accuracy goes from a few to a few dozens of meters - enough to make even a glide bomb useless.
Jamming GPS signals substantially reduced the effectiveness of many US-made arms. But this approach to protection only interferes with satellite guidance, and there are many other cues that a properly equipped precision weapon can use. But incorporating thermal, terrain recognition, or other forms of supporting information adds costs and takes time. If Ukrainian troops get even a few months of partial reprieve from glide bomb attacks, that’s huge.
Another area where Ukraine is rapidly becoming a world leader is micro-scale air defense. The need to take down waves of up to five hundred drones - Moscow’s goal in 2025, apparently - has led to small and more affordable air defense missiles produced in Britain. It’s also brought Ukrainian drone designers and the folks responsible for building the multispectral sensor network that tracks drones in Ukrainina skies together. The result: small interceptor drones that can knock down Shaheds and the decoys that accompany them when they fly near enough to hit.
In an intriguing contrast, drones are making movement on the battlefield incredibly difficult without extreme levels of coordination, but radically democratizing the war in the skies. Suddenly the size of the Muscovite empire is a serious liability, as the increased area orc air defenses have to cover compared to Ukraine means that drone bombers will always get through.
Ten percent of overall Muscovite oil refining has been consistently kept offline, and this number is expected to increase throughout 2025. Ukraine is also picking apart elements of the orc industrial complex, seeking to create bottlenecks, especially in sectors exposed to sanctions.
Small wonder that Putin appears to be relying on Trump to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! But now that Zelensky has escaped the trap Trump and Vance set for him, it’s going to be very difficult to bring him to heel. And if Trump can’t leverage ongoing US support for Ukraine to make Putin negotiate, he’s stuck.
Leadership & Personnel
As the entire next section is dedicated to this topic, the only point I’ll make here is that the process of reform takes time. Looking more broadly, the past week has demonstrated that as Ukraine enters the fourth year of all-out war, Kyiv has been holding back part of its strength. Once the right reforms to doctrine, training, and organization take hold, provided Ukrainian troops get enough weapons this war really can be won in 2025.
Attacking In The Network Age
I often rely on the metaphor of cooking to describe the mechanics of warfare because the two activities are remarkably similar from a systems point of view. Each ingredient added serves its own distinct function, and though all mix together, the end result is never quite right if any component is lacking or present in the wrong proportion or even added at the incorrect time.
A recipe may still serve even if not done to perfection. But the ideal of a perfect meal, even if never attained, is important as a guide. In terms of warfare, that would translate to a military operation that achieves all goals with no serious casualties suffered on either side. This happens, but rarely. Yet good cooks are able to turn out a product that more often than not avoids the big mistakes that would lead to total ruin. Those who follow the Ulysses Grant leadership model of just send in more bodies and hand me another drink are bound to perform poorly in the Network Age when put to the test.
I kind of hate using metaphors when even as I type these words someone who deserved better is being horribly killed somewhere in Ukraine. But science is a grim business conducted in a harsh world, which is why most American students prefer art or literature. And why too many wind up clueless when the illusions of society are stripped away.
My systems-based approach to the study of people and their ways is inspired a lot by biochemistry. Life as we know it depends utterly on the interactions of countless complex molecules that no one without an electron microscope can even indirectly perceive. But if one develops a flaw, it can cause a breakdown in the delicate mechanics of everything around it.
Though most people don’t realize it, and fewer enjoy thinking about it, most of our daily behaviors are more or less programmed by our biology. The shifting balance of certain kinds of molecules in the body radically alters how we perceive and interact with the world. Go a few days without water or food and the harsh reality of life becomes starkly apparent, a test anyone can try.
An odd thing about human ecology is that society evolved to ensure that most people don’t have to experience the consequences of forgetting the facts of life very often. This is the heart of why combat veterans have a notoriously difficult time re-integrating into “normal” life - they’re about the only people who comprehend exactly how artificial normal in fact is. Interacting with those who still believe in the illusion of normality can be taxing and isolating, but it’s no good trying to yank the unprepared out of the Matrix, so to speak, because they can’t truly understand until they’ve felt the thump of explosives and the whizz of bullets - hence their use early on in military training. The felt impacts of stuff like PTSD aren’t great, obviously, but it’s mainly the fact that people often act like it isn’t a perfectly standard physiological reaction to the trauma of combat, a condition that can be treated, which leads to the tragedy of self-harm.
Warfare always reduces down to groups of people trying to survive while accomplishing some task that other people are risking their lives to impede. Ideology and other social delusions rapidly dissipate on the battlefield; even if they may remain an animating cause in the minds of those in the thick of the fighting, few who prioritize abstract ideals over the material threat of bullets and bombs survive for very long. Ironically, this is sometimes used against soldiers to force them to fight when they otherwise probably wouldn’t - orc assault troops face death if they retreat or advance, with a roughly 10% shot of surviving the latter and being promoted to a specialist position with a modicum of safety offering a shred of hope to cling to.
It’s vital to understand why and how soldiers fight at the individual and team level because of the technological shifts that characterize the Network Age. The best metaphor I can come up with is acid: the bonds that hold groups together have been rendered incredibly vulnerable by cheap sensors and networks. This is not, however, any kind of comprehensive revolution. The specific tactics used in the First and Second World Wars were very different thanks to radical advances in technology, but broader patterns of how operations were structured remained intact. As they have for thousands of years. It’s just a whole lot easier to kill people efficiently now.
The flavor of war may change, but the essence does not. All that shifts is what ingredients are available and the right combination to achieve the desired impacts.
What networks and sensors have mainly done is radically democratize many aspects of combat. Teams on the front line can, thanks to modern sensor networks, get information about their own and adjacent sectors deep into enemy territory. Combining their intimate knowledge of the local terrain and their situation, they can maneuver and engage independently, making it extremely difficult for the enemy to predict and plan.
Higher level command elements can monitor a flood of information across a far wider area, allocating resources to threatened sectors and advising local commanders of emerging dangers. While still preserving a formal area-based, hierarchical chain of command to prevent confusion and conflicting movements, the decentralization of information flows can offset the risk of a headquarters being located and destroyed.
The essential rhythms of operating in this context differ greatly from the textbook assumptions nearly every serving military professional outside of Ukraine currently lives by. No longer can a team in contact with the enemy be expected to wait for higher-level commanders to authorize movements, and centrally micromanaging firepower won’t work either. The contact line is defined by essentially market-based principles: teams need enough support to repel enemy attacks that can come suddenly and range in size from a small team to a battalion with dozens of armored vehicles. This is true whether they’re trying to attack or defend - quite frankly, I see the distinction as close to meaningless.
Groups of personnel, whatever their size or role, will always seek to create safe - or at least, safer - spaces where they don’t face immediate threat to life and limb. This is of course relative, with glide bombs being able to destroy a bunker no drone could ever penetrate. But a universal requirement of survival on any battlefield is the ability to establish a perimeter, a kind of cellular membrane that repels incursions from outside to allow elements inside space to do stuff other than fight. This happens whether you’re moving into enemy territory or holding your own. And each cell must maintain connections with others on its side, whether continuous or pulsed during windows of opportunity. Otherwise, they’ll be overwhelmed.
Networks and drones make the basic tasks of creating this cellular structure an order of magnitude (ten times) harder than it used to be. Even ten years ago soldiers could usually tell whether they were currently in a place where they needed to be ready to take incoming fire of certain types. Direct fire is line of sight, and whether aimed or not it can’t be ignored because it means bad guys could be moving on your position. Indirect fire, on the other hand, comes from distant sources that rely on targeting assistance from others. It’s inherently less accurate, though often more destructive when it hits, and tends to come in briefer waves with some warning before impact.
This distinction between hazards is one basic scientific reason why, for a couple centuries now, the battlefield has been defined as having a front and rear. Industrial warfare has allowed coherent defense lines to extend across vast spaces, where in earlier times - barring sieges - armies maneuvered into the best possible position to engage the other in a pitched battle that could last, at most, a few days. Networks make the process of applying firepower where and when it’s needed most smoother than ever, reinforcing the relative thinness at the point of contact.
Between the forward positions along each side’s line is a grey zone, or no-man’s land, where historically patrols skirmish, often backed by indirect fire, seeking information about where the opposing force’s positions and reserves are deployed. In Ukraine, mostly thanks to drones and the networks that let their operators control them from a safe distance, ten kilometers may separate the two sides unless someone is attempting to advance. The increasing range of drones is also extending the effective front-line area subject to attack by direct fire, meaning that reserves and supplies have to be positioned even farther from the front line than before.
The net effect of this is to make movement by large groups exceptionally visible and therefore vulnerable. Any operation that depends on a lot of distinct moving parts must be carefully coordinated, taking place during a limited span of time when enemy drones and networks can be systematically knocked back across the target area. Naturally, this makes launching successful attacks very, very difficult. As soon as an operation begins, reinforcements can flood the area and bog it down.
A successful attack of any size is all about overwhelming the enemy in a target area seized because it can be subsequently defended with reasonable efficiency. The essential steps of an assault reduce to:
Suppress enemy supporting forces to prevent interference,
Overwhelm defenders in target area before they can effectively react,
Consolidate positions, dig in, resupply and bring up support,
Defeat enemy counterattacks and prepare to push forward again.
If you’re a combat soldier, this is pretty much the rhythm that controls your day to day life. You go through it over and over until deployment is over or you’re incapacitated. And at some level, step 3 will always involve somebody physically moving into a dangerous area to seize control, even if drones help. If a world leader won’t fully entrust their security to drones alone, you can’t expect soldiers to either. Everyone needs to know someone is watching their back and they have a chance to do their job and come home alive.
Unfortunately for the poor bloody infantry assigned to storm hostile positions, the job of the defender is much simplified by the fact that the attacker informs the defender of their intentions by crossing into the grey zone. In the Network Age, feints can become costly thanks to swift and accurate targeting of anything spotted by a drone. Ukraine ran headlong into this problem in the 2023 Zaporizhzhia counteroffensive.
Generally speaking, as firepower has improved over the past few centuries, military organization has been forced to respond with increased functional decentralization. You try to execute a classic NATO or Soviet-style assault plan derived from Second World War experiences using big divisions and brigades in motion together, and the result will be disappointing. These rely on overwhelming firepower applied to paralyze as much of the enemy organizational structure as possible, allowing assault forces in armored vehicles to punch through the disorganized defense then repeat the process before the enemy can recover.
The standard alternative, under classical military thinking, is more or less to apply continuous pressure at whatever cost until something cracks. Yet unable to pull off mobile warfare, the grind approach is what Moscow has been trying for a year and a half. But the resource burn inherent in this sort of thing nowadays is much too high; even if the cost to Ukraine is no laughing matter either, it remains proportionally worse for Putin’s horde. Drones cost hundreds of dollars, while even an untrained soldier sent to die requires at least ten times that simply to participate in a doomed assault swiftly crushed.
Ukraine’s solution has been very different: use technology to adapt. Behind an ever-strengthening drone shield, Ukrainian forces are slowly gathering strength and reorganizing the fight. The Kursk Campaign was an early sign of how Ukraine’s operations are evolving, and the limited counterattacks on the Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka fronts over the past month offer strong evidence of Ukrainian forces honing the essential techniques.
Timing is always of paramount importance in operations, but the effective acid bath that networks and sensors have plunged military affairs into render it as if not more important than raw surprise. If my opponent knows exactly what I’m about to do, but can’t do anything to stop it, I still win. Those sorts of victories are the most fun of all, I find.
The threat of rapid detection and attack makes the eternal challenge of keeping a group of people organized whenever they have to get up and move near the front line very, very tough. Explosives-toting drones are filling a functional role previously served by crewed aircraft, which extensive air defense systems have been designed to counter.
For the past century, the danger of being bombarded by artillery and aircraft on the move has required that infantry ride to battle in a vehicle with sufficient armor to survive being hit by shrapnel and stray bullets and enough speed to get into action and out of it before something with enough power to kill them arrives. Air defenses and friendly airpower are supposed to neutralize airborne threats, while artillery plasters likely defensive spots and enemy artillery to mitigate the risk of ambush. Once in close, infantry can leave their transports and fight for control of the target area then dig in. Vehicles move into hides and help ward off enemy counterattacks.
Ideally, this is happening at multiple points along the enemy’s front at the same time, with the majority of efforts focused at one or two in particular. Preventing the enemy from figuring out which attack will be a big one is essential, because you want the enemy’s reserves moving to the wrong place, wasting energy and time. With enough pressure applied at critical points in just the right configuration, the enemy’s front can be shattered before reinforcements arrive. This destroys the secure membrane separating the front from the rear, which can trigger panic among the ranks.
Precision weapons developed over the past half century have allowed attacking forces to overwhelm the enemy without investing as much time and energy in applying a sufficient number of warheads to a target area. However, most have been traditionally delivered by expensive platforms, like ballistic or cruise missiles or crewed aircraft, and the level of accuracy required demands large warheads, restricting available numbers. So even a force that came under attack from these could count on relative calm between waves or lots of space separating enemy targets.
What networked small drones do is enable smaller warheads to be delivered with astonishing regularity and sufficient precision that individual vehicles and soldiers can no longer rely on numbers to mask their personal vulnerability. The basic infrastructure required to support drone operations is already commercially available, with technicians able to constantly modify and customize as needed to cope with changing conditions and enemy capabilities.
Going forward, any organization tasked with security has to be able to master drones and the electronic infrastructure they rely on. Every weapon has one or more natural counters, and drones are no exception. But exerting control over the electromagnetic and lower air domains isn’t quite the same as dominating the upper sky or ground.
Where it was once sufficient to block the enemy from owning the sky and be able to bombard critical targets with expensive precision missiles, now forces must also be able to actively block enemy signals and destroy automated aircraft performing surveillance - eventually direct attacks - in jammed zones. They must also be able to maintain a steady flow of logistics support in small packages using drones, while pulsing major reinforcement waves, handling troop rotations as if these themselves were distinct offensive efforts in their own right.
Rather than a distinct, carefully scripted grand counteroffensive, Ukrainian operations look set to evolve towards a more systematically aggressive posture that suddenly intensifies in vulnerable locations beyond the enemy’s ability to respond. Limited counterattacks will aim to dissolve and destroy the enemy’s front on a micro-scale, slowly, with pressure ramping up wherever the enemy appears to be having trouble maintaining troops in forward positions.
The goal is to constantly fix and destroy groups of orcs in one-sided fights that keep Ukrainian casualties to an absolute minimum while establishing useful fighting positions capable of absorbing a new round of orc assault waves - or pressing them harder, if they appear weak. The pattern of operations involves short, sharp thrusts with just enough force to overwhelm the enemy in a company or battalion-size sector, isolating positions by more or less extending the gray zone to envelop them with a combination of drone and direct ground attacks.
Movements must be both carefully timed and of limited duration because of the challenges involved with jamming enemy signals without interfering with one’s own. It’s way more difficult to blanket the airwaves with noise without your transmitters drawing attack than a lot of people realize thanks to the power requirements. And doing that also blocks friendly signals, unless you’ve set up a system where the jammers leave small windows open for a brief period of time in a pattern friendly systems can follow.
Modern secure military communications have long relied on frequency hopping, with transmitting and receiving systems synchronized with a little electronic device that NATO sergeants and officers get really mad if one ever goes missing. Like, and entire base with thousands of soldiers gets locked down until the inventory is reconciled kind of upset, same as happens if the armorer reports a weapon of any size absent.
The reason for this paranoia should be obvious: so long as the frequency hop pattern appears totally random to the enemy, you don’t even need to encrypt transmissions. All any lucky listener will ever hear is a useless fragment before the signal jumps to a new carrier wave. Radio, internet - it’s all built on the same signals and information theory principles, which in turn are at the heart of systems science.
It is possible to accomplish broad-spectrum jamming in a particular area, but since transmitters must be moved around to avoid attack, their density isn’t the same everywhere, and each side’s tactics constantly evolve, there will always be limited windows of opportunity where movement can take place with limited risk of signal fratricide. During these windows, a lot has to happen, fast, and the risk of electromagnetic defenses or communications failing without much warning means that ground teams still have to stay spread out for safety.
The challenges involved with coordinating a lot of small teams will lead to offensive campaigns that last much longer and are inherently impossible to carefully script. Local autonomy and the ability of leaders at every level, down to the individual fire team, to reason through the demands of the situation as they impact the broader mission, are critical to success. This remains the age of the strategic corporal, as it were, because in theory a single hidden element that finds itself in the middle of enemy forces but can still establish a secure signal to friendly fire support is able to turn the tide of an entire operation.
The initial objective of any attack towards enemy-held territory will be to secure a portion of the grey zone, using it as a base to extend drone operations deeper into enemy territory. At the most fundamental level, attacks will be intended to seize just enough ground to isolate enemy forces in forward positions using drones. When the time is right, a subsequent push can advance the zone of control a few kilometers deeper, deforming the enemy’s front and pulling adjacent sectors fully into the drone-infested grey zone. Additional efforts in adjacent sectors will further complicate the situation, forcing the enemy’s leadership into a no-win situation where they must either throw more resources into a deteriorating situation or surrender additional territory to stabilize a new line.
If anything about these tactics sounds familiar, it’s because ruscist generals have evolved their fight in this direction out of necessity. Only instead of drones, they send “disposable” infantry. While effective in pushing Ukraine back from areas it would always have trouble controlling against an all-out, reckless assault, being right next to occupied urban centers, Putin’s military has been gutted in the process. The gains have been in no way commensurate to the cost, even if you don’t care one bit about human life. Putin is desperate to bluff Trump into a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact reboot because he knows full well his empire is on the brink of self-immolation.
Ukraine’s reliance on drones is a far more adaptive solution, especially in the medium to long term. With production set to triple from the already-staggering 1.5 million units delivered in 2024, and the vast majority of parts now made in Ukraine, often by civilian volunteers using 3D printers, the implications for military operations going forward ought to be clear. The Ukraine War is no fluke or one-off: it’s as much a demonstration of where war is heading as the American Civil War was in the 1860s. Then the European experts largely dismissed the bloodletting as having little to do with the way war would be waged in civilized countries. Germany showed otherwise in its triumph over France a generation later, and still the lesson was ignored. Then came World War One, featuring Verdun and the Somme and Gallipoli and all the rest.
Long before anyone fields a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence capable of automating grey zone drone combat, hundreds of thousands of people will sit at terminals in bunkers or roving vehicles watching over a smaller number who follow a wave of drones into action to take and hold territory. There may even come a time when the pace of battlefield movement once more matches that of 1939-1942, when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan shocked experts across the world, or late 1944, when the Allied-Soviet war machine took their innovations to the next level.
But in Ukraine in 2025, we’re still far from that point. To mount an effective attack in Ukraine is no easy task. Leaders must ensure that a long checklist of requirements is met before allowing more than a tactical push. I expect it looks something like:
Multiple days of continuous surveillance of target area and mapping of positions.
Shaping HIMARS, air strikes behind target and adjacent sectors - HQs, depots.
Counter-drone operations escalate 1-2 days before attack, assault troops deploy.
Maximum jamming as movement begins; interceptors swarm enemy recon drones.
Mass drone attacks on target area; HIMARS, air strikes in rear, remote mining.
De-mining drones go in, engineers and special forces infiltration teams follow.
Groups of 3-4 vehicles follow clear paths to assault points, led by ground drones.
Direct seizure and clearing of enemy positions, emphasis on taking POWs.
Dig in to new positions as rapidly as possible, drone resupply and casualty evac.
If this all works out, then commanders have the option to expand the operation. The goal is, over the space of several weeks, to grind down a target orc brigade or even division to the point that it can no longer maintain a coherent front. Either the orcs reinforce and soon lose another complement in similar fighting, or they give Ukraine an opportunity to launch a deeper strike.
Barring a total shutdown of US aid Ukraine aims to do something like this somewhere on the contact line on an increasingly frequent basis throughout 2025. If successful, the tsunami unleashed could be unstoppable. When Muscovite dynasties crumble, they tend to go in a flash. Once the illusion of invincibility is shattered, russia itself is no more. If that were not the case, when why would nearly all orc propaganda hinge on mighty russia being too big to lose?
In Putin’s desperation to put the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact back together to avert the inevitable end of Muscovite domination of regions with large populations of Russian-speakers and their few friends, he’s ironically following the same essential path: overstretch, then collapse. I guess that when you play in the power casino the Kremlin will always be until someone finally nukes it into glass, when you reach a certain level there’s nothing for it but to roll the dice on one grand fateful gamble. Everybody wants to be Caesar. They always seem to think they’ll escape his end. Looking at you in particular, J.D. Vance. Beware the drones on the Ides!
Geopolitical Brief
North America
Far removed from the fronts in Ukraine, in places where petty would-be kings bicker over infantile delusions, that Trump guy is doing a real heck of a job shooting himself - and American greatness - in the face. Naturally, American media is missing the deeper implications of the Oval Office fracas.
For background, as you might have heard, Zelensky was told to leave the White House last Friday after a press conference turned into public spat pitting Trump and Vance against Zelensky. The full video is worth a review. I’m no partisan, and routinely savaged Biden on Ukraine. I stand with Zelensky, full stop. Far as I’m concerned, he’s a truer defender of the Constitution than any American politician alive.
To sum up what happened on Friday, what was billed as a simple photo op slated to end in Zelensky and Trump signing an agreement on joint development of Ukraine’s mineral reserves was in fact a planned all-out attack by Trump and Vance on Zelensky’s leadership. Most analysts agree that the fight was manufactured, and it most certainly was - but the way it played out indicates that Zelensky knew exactly what he was getting into. He took control of the situation as best he could, and his response was absolutely correct in a strictly scientific sense.
More background is required to pierce the veils of misdirection woven by the diplomatic dance. This White House meeting came at the end of an already strange negotiation that was never really about Ukraine’s minerals.
Trump and Vance needed Zelensky in the White House last Friday to use the prospect of an agreement to set him up for the planned ambush. Their goal was, however, not to attack Zelensky or provoke the conflict that erupted. The plan was to force Zelensky to state on camera that he was ready for peace, relying on the fact that no world leader normally wants to be seen contradicting the President of the United States on live TV, especially not on a matter like that.
Had Zelensky done so, even if indirectly or with caveats, Team Trump would have used that as a permanent leash. From then on, anything they decided would lead to or mean peace would bind him and Ukraine. This was an assault less immediately deadly but no less fatal in the long run to Ukrainian independence than the kinetic one Putin unleashed three years ago.
Trump and his compromised VP would have been able to do a deal with Putin - probably in Moscow - that gave in to most of Putin’s demands, then present this as the best Ukraine could ever possibly hope for and threaten a total end to support if Zelensky refuses. America gets to be the savior, and Zelensky - a competent communicator that a C-grade reality TV personality like Trump is bound to envy and despise in equal measures - is finally put in his place.
Any objections raised by Ukraine to anything decided by Trump would be immediately used to cast Ukraine as being the party against peace in a scenario straight out of Orwell. This would allow Trump to wash his hands of Ukraine if Zelensky chose to fight on. Trump would be free to lean hard on the Reagan Republicans who still mostly back Ukraine and remain the key to his ambition of passing anything through Congress before Democrats wind up in control of the House in early 2027.
In American politics, everything devolves into whatever best boosts someone’s tiresome brand. Apparently now un-retired Democratic Party strategist (an oxymoron if there ever was one!) James Carville is revealing the true essence of Team Blue’s brand every time he insists that his party should go into hiding and claim the mantle of resistance after ordinary people do all the hard work on their own. Trump and Vance are merely the inverse of this rank corruption, subordinating Ukrainian and American interests to their own at every turn.
That an ambush was their plan all along is evident in the fact that the meeting even happened at all after Trump began embracing Putin’s narratives about the Ukraine War towards the end of his first month in office. After spending a week or more throwing a tantrum because Zelensky wouldn’t sign a minerals deal that would have given America incredible control over sovereign Ukrainian assets while offering zero security guarantees in return, Trump suddenly pivoted to celebrating a new prospective agreement that dropped all of his previous demands.
It seemed too good to be true, and was. Fortunately, Zelensky walked into that meeting prepared. When Trump started in making up facts out of thin air, as he so often does, Zelensky patiently but politely corrected him. This naturally enraged Trump, who can’t stand to lose control of a conversation and tried even harder to assert dominance. That’s why he says half the random stuff he does - to throw everyone balance and make them fixate on things that don’t really matter.
The press conference had devolved well before Vance took his chance to score some cheap points. Opportunistic coward that he is, he only dared to go after Zelensky only after it was abundantly clear that Plan A was a botch. His comments were selected to boost his own brand while continuing the charade that he’s more or less Trump’s adopted, doting son.
This is why he immediately attempted to portray Zelensky to the audience as a kind of spoiled, ungrateful, disrespectful sibling fighting over the family fortune. What a joke! Those who publicly demand respect rarely deserve it, and in doing so prove it. Biden had the same ego issue as Trump.
Vance probably didn’t make a career of a Marine Corps because he’s not a very capable fighter - or committed to any distinct value other than his own self-interest. Marines - and this is part of why I enlisted in the Army around the same time Vance joined the Corps - spend the first couple months of recruit training teaching basic combat skills before assigning you to the job you’re best suited for. In Vance’s case, that was journalism.
I was afraid that would be my fate, since I was enlisting with a college degree, and I wanted to be qualified in a combat specialty before ever being responsibile for leading anyone into battle as an officer. The Army guaranteed me my choice of job as a cavalry scout, and in those days basic and specialty training were integrated in a four month program, so it was pretty solid.
Now, I didn’t make a career of military service either - thanks, stupid bad knees - and wound up getting discharged before having to spend 15 months in Iraq, like the scouts I trained with did. But something I’ll always know about myself is that I was once qualified to lead a team of scouts in combat, and that the people I worked with as a soldier wanted me to go officer then return to the unit. Heady praise
Vance may have spent six months in the sandbox as a Marine journalist, but that doesn’t make him a war hero or even remotely educated about the realities of modern combat. And as he’s desecrated his oath to uphold and protect the Constitution on multiple occasions, I feel no obligation to show him the respect I normally would a veteran - something I don’t actually consider myself to be, since I didn’t go abroad in a time when that was typical. No valor here, stolen or otherwise. I merely served for a time, something that turns out to have granted a unique and useful perspective.
But I did know a fair few good fighters, and Vance is nothing more than a medicore lawyer and hack author: words are all his kind has. That and the craven lack of morals required to cater to whatever audience is willing to buy what he’s selling.
There’s a reason Vance has never traveled to Kyiv, much less a frontline city like Kharkiv. I haven’t either, but I’ve got no reason to burden a country at war with my presence (and don’t travel well anyway). Vance, being Vice President of the United States of America, could make important material contributions to the only sort of peace that can possibly be sustained at this point - one won through strength and resolve. Supposedly Vance is a big Lord of the Rings fan, so as Treebeard the Ent said of Saruman the traitor wizard, he should know better - does no better. Vance is exactly the sort of orcish American that Tolkien despised. Tolkien probably wouldn’t have accepted him as being a real Catholic, either.
Unlike Vance, Zelensky is true to his faith, country, and anything remotely resembling true traditional values worth fighting for. So small wonder that Vance’s response to Zelensky hitting back hard once crudely provoked was to essentially appeal to the audience like a trial lawyer whining to the jury about a witness they hope to discredit. When you’re married to someone who trained and practiced as an attorney - and a competent one at that - cheap courtroom antics are irritating to witness. They give lawyers a bad name, and ought to be beneath even the far-from-lofty office of the Vice President.
Zelensky treated Vance with all the respect he deserves, and even Trump appeared to have recognized how badly that ambush turned out for him once Vance jumped in. Towards the end, he sardonically commented that the event would “make for great television,” and in doing so revealed (as that egomaniac so often does) the essence of his con. That was probably exactly what Vance or some ally insisted that their planned mugging of Zelensky would be when they pitched Trump on the idea. And Trump’s been in the business long enough to know when he’s been radically upstaged. Never give someone a live television feed when they might turn it against you.
What is absolutely vital to understand is that this moment was inevitable - eventually, Zelensky had to kowtow or push back. By choosing the time and place, Zelensky seized the initiative and achieved the best outcome he possibly could. The USA now cannot force Ukraine into peace even if Trump withdraws all military aid and abandons NATO, and doing either would be a massive and unpopular self-own on Team Trump’s part that would annihilate their already limited store of domestic political capital.
The US media is happily pretending that Trump is somehow all-powerful, waiting to turn and lambast him when the random destruction his acolytes are wreaking across the federal bureaucracy blows up in a big and public way. Democrats are able to hide in the shadows, waiting to pretend they were the ones who brought Trump down when he falls. They couldn’t do it themselves, but he’s his own worst enemy. Trump badly needed a visible win, and was convinced - probably by Vance - that Zelensky was the easiest target. He was wrong. One positive thing I will say about Elon Musk is that the guy is better at pretty much everything he does than J.D. Vance. Albeit in much the same way that Goebbels was objectively more effective than Goering.
Thanks to Zelensky forcing Trump to reveal his hand, if Trump does sabotage ongoing Ukraine aid he’s giving both the Democrats and Putin a win for no gain. Worse for him going forward, Zelensky just exposed for all the world to see how American leadership actually operates. Make no mistake: what Trump and Vance attempted to do to Zelensky is what all American leaders do behind closed doors even to the USA’s closest allies. The resentment this breeds has been mounting for decades: now that anyone can see the way everyone else gets treated by D.C., folks across the globe have the excuse they need to unite against America’s out of control federal government.
If Zelensky can walk into the White House and turn an ambush around on Trump and Vance, so can dozens of other formerly compliant world leaders. In fact, unless they’re cowards, they’re almost compelled to at this point. Zelensky proved that if push came to shove Trump would sell Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, or Pacific America to anyone if they have a big enough nuclear arsenal and a gift for flattery. Because those are the sole metrics left that anyone could credibly use to argue that Moscow (around 2% of world GDP) is a power equal to the USA (around 25% of world GDP) - the insane, self-diminishing message that Trump sends whenever he adopts Putin’s point of view.
The dramatic lack of face they’ve experienced before the eyes of the world is why Trump and his boosters now pathetically insisting that Zelensky must resign. They can’t stand that he did the one thing that actually works when up against threats and blackmail: walk away and let your assailant try their worst. The moment you give in, you’ve set a precedent that they’ll refer back to over and over. Refuse to play their game, and they lose the majority of their power, which mostly relies on bluff.
The US has too many moving pieces to manage to cope with more than a few at a time. If you want the best deal possible from D.C., make sure its overwhelmed when negotiations are held. Extra points if US leaders are actively dismantling the government infrastructure needed to carry out policy.
With Trump yammering on about annexing Greenland and Canada and his people putting partisan tools who talk seriously about military action against cartels in Mexico in charge of the Pentagon, pretty much everybody now has an incentive to put D.C. in its place. This includes most American states, taboo as that apparently is to say.
World leaders are eating Trump alive left and right, and markets are already beginning to wonder if their rush to pretend it was 2017 again might have been premature. Meanwhile, talk of peace or even a truce in Ukraine is turning out to be equally so. On the contrary, Ukraine’s military is showing signs of feeling out where the orcs can be rolled back.
Zelensky pulled off a daring diplomatic counterattack last week. It was telling that he immediately flew to Europe with prominent voices lining up behind him, pretty much only the head of NATO and Prime Minister of the UK politely advising Zelensky to mend fences, as they must. Behind the scenes, a tipping point has been reached, and the Transatlantic relationship will never be the same.
Europe
Trump is set to be remembered as the idiot who gave the European Union a new lease on life at the expense of the USA. It’s actually a bit fun watching him and Vance awaken a proverbial sleeping giant, with the Zelensky blowup serving as NATO’s diplomatic equivalent of Pearl Harbor. That Germany’s prospective chancellor Merz came right out of the gate declaring that Europe must replace America is a pretty big indicator of how badly the USA has screwed up. Germany wants to rearm, and Europe is cool with that. Wow.
Though Americans are led to believe that Europe’s economy is always weak and faltering, in truth it’s just at a different place in the adaptive cycle right now. The U.S. economy is in the latter days of summer, more fragile than appearances make it seem, sustained mostly by high interest rates and perception of political stability that have pulled tremendous amounts of capital into the country since the pandemic. Cheap energy that doesn’t come from Moscow helps too.
But one of these three pillars is gone, and you park money in markets with high interest rates when growth is uncertain elsewhere. Europe’s economy was hit by a double-whammy collapse thanks to the pandemic then the all-out ruscist invasion of Ukraine that forced a shift in where Europe bought its energy. Costs went up, prolonging the pandemic-era inflation, and Brexit didn’t help either.
Now, Europe is faced with a situation where the bloc has to either spend big or die and the UK is moving closer to the continent, probably bringing the whole Anglosphere along with it. Japan and South Korea are paying attention too, because goodness knows they understand how American leaders play perceived dependents behind closed doors. They look down on all allies, including the UK and Australia.
Lowering interest rates and guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars in annual security spending will act as a kind of Second Marshal Plan in Europe, and the debt load incurred won’t do Europe serious harm because major financial rivals - the US and Japan - are worse off by far. You don’t get a happy confluence of political, economic, and social interests like this very often.
Global geopolitics right now becomes pure black comedy when you consider that there is a serious risk of Vance and maybe Musk having convinced Trump that he can pull a new Nixon goes to Beijing - only this time Moscow plays the minor power the USA turns against its bigger partner. Might as well hug a hungry crocodile, but such a juvenile strategy would appeal to the sort of audience deluded enough to seriously believe that Trump is several moves ahead in some grand chess game. Get real. Team Trump would sell Alaska to Putin for a nickel if Trump thought he might get a Nobel Peace Prize, like Obama.
Middle East
At least at the moment, the Middle East is far from quiet, but there hasn’t been renewed hostilities on a large scale between major combatants. Instead, Israel is back to periodically starving Gaza while testing out an expansion of tactics used there to the West Bank. The ceasefire with Hamas doesn’t seem destined to last, but what renewed fighting would mean at this point is anyone’s guess. They’ve still got their tunnels, and Israel’s air force making the rubble of Gaza bounce won’t change that.
Iran is happily enriching uranium to the point that when it does declare the existence of an arsenal, it’ll have several dozen warheads scattered around the country for safety along with missiles to deliver them. Too late to stop it now, though I strongly expect that when Trump runs into walls everywhere else, he and Netanyahu will attack Iran.
One very interesting story from the region came out this week - I’ve in the past referred to a tacit alliance between Moscow and Tel Aviv, and if you wanted to see evidence of how this works, Reuters released an excellent report. I suggest opening it in a private Firefox browser window to get around their soft paywall. Summing up: Israel wants Moscow to keep its military bases in Syria with US approval. People, it’s long past time to stop thinking of Israel as part of the “west” or even the democratic world. It’s just another Middle East despot regime, playing all sides.
Pacific
As a Pacific American, I can offer no more compelling evidence of the effective collapse of the United States federal government than what was on display in the Oval Office this week. To be clear: it is now the functional policy of the United States to negotiate with terrorists over territory - provided they have nuclear weapons. Americans have zero guarantee that D.C. will actually defend every state and territory it is legally obligated to if under nuclear threat. The much-repeated warnings of World War 3 starting over Ukraine translates directly to surrender in the Pacific if China moves on Taiwan or North Korea the South.
This is one of the many reasons that Pacific America needs its own federal government with the right to uphold the Constitution according to the democratic will of Pacific Americans. D.C. will never represent or protect our natural interests. If some partisan mob decides that we don’t deserve federal support in a future disaster or that the risk of a nuclear conflict with China means that we have to cede Guam or half of Alaska, the rule of law might not matter.
That’s the world Team Trump is unleashing, and folks had better get ready. Governors of states need to be putting together contingency plans to replace all functions presently performed by the federal government. Waiting for the Democrats to magically fix everything in D.C. someday is not an option. They may change all their positions tomorrow anyway.
Despite what some people say about the USA being protected by big, beautiful oceans, out here on the Pacific Rim we know that the Bering Strait is rather narrow. When my father was serving in the Navy decades ago, he was part of an operation in Hawai’i that tracked Soviet submarines when they sent signals back to their home bases. Typically, one was always sitting off the coast of Hawai’i, and another hung around San Francisco. Oceans are highways, not barriers.
Right now every single orc warship ought to be tailed by Pacific American military assets. We should be deploying missile defenses to protect our airports and harbors. D.C. would probably find a way to reinforce North Dakota or Ohio first if Moscow or Pyongyang threatened to attack.
And as far as America’s allies in the Pacific go, my recommendation is this: start working closely with state governments, the EU, and the Commonwealth, which suddenly became a lot more important. It’s time for creative approaches, because the world is changing fast.
Concluding Comments
Well, I think that about covers this rather intense week in global affairs. I’ll leave readers with one final takeaway.
No one could have possibly devised a more effective device to reveal the malicious vanity that drives America’s leadership caste in full view of the public than what happened last Friday in the Oval Office. Zelensky deserves full credit for walking into that snake pit with eyes wide open and a hand grenade behind his back. He demonstrated to all the world what American power amounts to.
When those vipers tried to bite, he went frag out, took a bit of shrapnel, and ultimately walked away stronger than before. All Trump and Vance can do is whine or suffer even more humiliation. That’s how you handle a guy like Trump. The truth of the matter is that America needs the world right now a whole lot more than the world needs America. Ukraine is a more reliable and fundamentally democratic partner. And it has a far more battle-hardened military.
American perfidy has always been a key obstacle to victory in Ukraine. Whether fear of the consequences of Putin’s fall or envy of his power, American leaders have allowed Putin to occupy their minds. And in so doing, they’ve betrayed their responsibility to the Constitution. If a rogue meteor hits D.C. during the State of the Union this Tuesday evening, it will be no great loss to the world. So long as one gets Moscow immediately after.