Are You Prepared for the Next Global Conflict? Here's What the War in Ukraine Should Be Teaching You
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The Logic of Attrition: War, Will, and the Battlefield in Ukraine
By all indications, the war in Ukraine has entered a phase that belies the illusions of peace-brokers, the sentimentalism of liberal democracies, and the post-heroic values of consumer societies. What is unfolding is not a tragedy of misunderstanding or a deviation from diplomacy. It is war in its classical form—Clausewitzian in essence, Schmittian in consequence—waged until the enemy's capacity or will to resist is broken.
In this context, the Western commentariat, particularly in liberal quarters, continues to traffic in fantasies. Their discourse pivots on "cease-fire," "truce" and the delusional belief that negotiation can short-circuit the foundational logic of armed conflict. But war is not a misunderstanding to be corrected; it is a contest of wills prosecuted through organized violence. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv is in the mood for compromise—not because they lack imagination, but because they understand the stakes in existential terms. Russia fights for imperial restoration; Ukraine, for national survival. There can be no settlement between these incompatible aims.
It is characteristic of liberal societies—shielded by oceans, navies, and the accumulated capital of older victories—to deny this. Their elites specialize not in understanding war but in evading it. For them, war is something others do, preferably off-camera, sanitized by euphemism and moral grandstanding. This is why Western policy too often swings between naïve idealism and cynical indifference: the two poles of a worldview unable to metabolize the brutal clarity of combat. But for the nations at war, no such luxury exists. For Ukrainians, surrender is national death. For Russians, defeat is imperial emasculation.
This is not to romanticize the Ukrainian cause or demonize the Russian one, but to stand sure on the shoulders of analytical honesty. One side will lose because it will no longer be able to kill or endure being killed at sufficient scale. The task for outside powers—if they choose to engage—is not to avert this reality but to shape it. That means structuring violence, not suppressing it; it means allocating weapons, training, intelligence, and support in ways that produce tactical advantage and strategic collapse—not moral comfort. Mass killing, in this view, is not an aberration. It is war’s vector.
What matters is not the number of dead but the consequences of who dies, where, and how fast. This is the arithmetic of attrition: crude, unfeeling, effective. The Ukrainian war effort, sustained by Western logistics and native willpower, must exhaust Russia’s capacity to regenerate force. The Russian state, bloated by delusions of grandeur, must be made to recognize the price of imperial nostalgia.
The outcome will not be decided in Berlin or Washington press conferences. It will be decided in trenches, in drone strikes, in missile exchanges, and in the unrelenting pressure of one side’s ability to outlast the other’s. Those who pretend otherwise merely advertise their disqualification from strategic discourse.
War is not evil. It is a tool, the failure of the political but also en extension of politics by other means. But it must be understood in its own grammar. Ukraine’s war with Russia is not an episode; it is a paradigm. The West must learn again what it once knew: the only thing more dangerous than structured violence is violence misunderstood.
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Word of the day: Mathematics
Sample sentence: War is math. Combat is arithmetic, artillery fire missions are trigonometry.
English: Mathematics (n)
French: Mathématiques (f)
Spanish: Matemáticas (f)
German: Mathematik (f)
Estonian: Matemaatika (f)
Russian: Математика (f)
Sample sentence:
English: War is math. Combat is arithmetic, artillery fire missions are trigonometry.
French: La guerre, c'est des mathématiques. Le combat, c'est de l'arithmétique. Les missions d'artillerie sont de la trigonométrie.
Spanish: La guerra es matemáticas. El combate es aritmética, las misiones de fuego de artillería son trigonometría.
German: Krieg ist Mathematik. Der Kampf ist Arithmetik, Artillerie-Feuermissionen sind Trigonometrie.
Estonian: Sõda on matemaatika. Võitlus on aritmeetika, artillerii autamispaigad on trigonometria.
Russian: Война - это математика. Бои - арифметика. Огневые налеты артиллерии - это тригонометрия.
Final line: Mathematics often reveals beauty and elegance, especially in its higher forms.
Français: Les mathématiques révèlent souvent la beauté et l'élégance, en particulier sous leurs formes les plus élevées.
Español: Las matemáticas a menudo revelan belleza y elegancia, especialmente en sus formas más altas.
Deutsch: Mathematik enthüllt oft Schönheit und Eleganz, insbesondere in ihren höheren Formen.
Eesti: Matemaatika kasvatab tihti ilu ja noodet, eriti tema kõrg emas olemuses.
Русский: Математика часто раскрывает красоту и элегантность, особенно в своих высших формах.