War in Ukraine by Hal Brands

War in Ukraine by Hal Brands – Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World is a mix of authors writing on the war-in-Ukraine, which could have been more appropriately called “russia’s war on Ukraine” or something similar. As it is a mix of authors, each one authoring a chapter, the ideas and the quality differs. I will share my thoughts on 2 chapters which stood out for the wrong reasons.

Firstly, Stephen Kotkin’s analysis is not particularly good. Kotkin ignores the issues russia has: not enough personnel (hence they get soldiers from Africa, Nepal, India, South America, and North Korea) and not enough materiel (hence buying from Iran and N.Korea). He is too focused on “russian can’t loose” because of his time in russia to see that in fact russia is and was loosing for months.
Some of his comments sound very much like russian propaganda, for instance: “instructing Ukraine to suffer land-war-scale casualties against russia”. Ukraine has agency, is not instructed to do something by anyone else. But, unlike him, I write these words after being in Ukraine and not from his office at Stanford (his comment).

Alexander Bick’s chapter, Planning for the Worst: The russia-Ukraine “Tiger Team”, is a perfect example of failing to understand Ukraine and Eastern Europe because of an imperialistic approach to understanding. I will share a few quotes:

page 150: ‘In devising our planning scenario, the Tiger Team got the scale, geography, and timing of russia’s military operations almost exactly right. But we were wrong on almost everything else. We overestimated the russian military, underestimated Ukraine’s capabilities and resolve, and failed to anticipate the extent to which fear and public revulsion would reshape European politics in favor of tougher response options, some of which seemed out of reach only days before.’

issues with this:
– on what was based the assessment of the russian military capabilities? Obviously on bad intelligence.
– why was Ukraine underestimated? Because the russophones “experts” didn’t imagine that? Because these experts only learned russian at university and tried to understand Ukraine through the mindset of russia? That is just as accurate as understanding India through the eyes of 19th century British travellers through India.
– who is making assumptions on the public’s response? It was a failure with covid and it was a failure now.

On the following page: ‘While planning for the worst-case invasion scenario proved extremely prescient, our pessimism concerning the outcome on the battlefield over the following weeks may have inadvertently encouraged us to embrace a more modest set of objectives than was warranted.’

Yes, of course, because of the issues mentioned above. The Baltic states wanted to send Ukraine weapons before Feb 2022, but US opposed this move, based on what the “experts” were saying.

Undeterred, the conclusion states: ‘The failure of Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive, faltering political support in the United States and Europe, and russia’s growing confidence all present major challenges—challenges that should be the focus of tomorrow’s plans.’

issues with this:
– the same author said on the previous page that they had “modest” objectives
– 2023 counteroffensive started late because of late deliveries (the 31 American tanks arrived in September!!, no planes, very few HIMARS)
– once again, russia is mighty… Reading this in 2024, when Ukraine showed that there are no red-lines, that they went into the Kursk region of russia, that the 1 October deadline set by putin to retake their own territory passed and nothing happened, is proving once again that US is in dire need of talks around what a coloniser looks like and their own biases in framing a coloniser as the only one with agency
– no mention of Ukraine’s the very successful pushing back from the Black Sea of the russian fleet

Overall the book is worth reading, as part of a wider undertaking of reading on the subject, otherwise the issues raised in this review will be ignored.

War in Ukraine by Hal Brands

Details about the picture: –
My rating: 4/5 Stars
Would I recommend it: yes
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Year it was published: 2024
Format: ebook
Genre(s): Politics
Pages: 324

About the author: Hal Brands is an American political scientist and scholar of U.S. foreign policy. He is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Website & Social Media Links: –