Drones or tanks? How to spend rising defense budgets

In this video, I address the ongoing revolution in warfare caused by unmanned technology, and what NATO countries need to consider when they procure new equipment. I find that many people still haven't fully understood how disruptive this new technology is, and how significant its consequences will be for future warfare. Watch the video and share your comments on the website. Or you can read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Lately, there's been a lot of discussion about how Western militaries should prepare for a war against Russia, and what types of equipment they should invest in now that defense budgets are increasing. Should the money be spent on traditional platforms such as tanks, fighter jets, and large warships, or should the focus be on new technologies, such as the drones and unmanned systems that have proven their worth in the war in Ukraine? What I want to do in this video is offer a few points that I think are important to keep in mind when we make these decisions, because if Western militaries have the wrong focus and purchase the wrong equipment, the consequences can be catastrophic if there is an actual war with Russia. So let's talk about it. With growing defense budgets in many countries, that naturally raises the question of how the money should be spent. The answer is not obvious, because while the threat is growing and countries see the need for increased defense spending, it's also clear that a revolution in military affairs is happening, driven by the technological developments we can see in the war in Ukraine. That raises questions about whether the old types of equipment we would otherwise traditionally invest in are still relevant, or whether they've become obsolete, replaced by unmanned platforms and artificial intelligence. I obviously can't give precise answers on how the money should be spent in each country, but what I want to do in this video is offer a few points that I think are important to keep in mind when we have these discussions. The first point is that it's important not to underestimate the consequences of the drone revolution. Unmanned technology is a revolution, and it's a revolution on the scale of the invention of the airplane or the invention of the tank. We don't want to be the ones still advocating for horse-mounted infantry twenty years after the invention of the tank. We want to be the ones who have the foresight to see what's happening and what's going to be needed in the future. Drones are an invention on that scale. There's going to be a clear distinction between the time before and after the mass emergence of drones on the battlefield. It will require militaries to adopt this new technology, but it will also require that all doctrines be adjusted accordingly. Soldiers will need to learn how to fight alongside drones, and there will still be a place for soldiers on the front line. Manned platforms are not going to disappear, but their roles will change. Fundamentally, drones have done two very important things on the front line. The first is that they've made the battlefield transparent. The element of surprise that used to be an advantage for the attacker has largely been neutralized by the defender's ability to monitor everything in real time. Secondly, drones have brought down the price of firepower to a level where the overall amount of firepower that can be fielded in a war is much larger than it used to be. That means that in the age-old debate between attritional warfare and maneuver warfare, the pendulum is currently swinging toward attritional warfare. That's going to challenge many Western militaries, because what pretty much all Western officers have learned in military academies is that maneuver warfare is superior to attritional warfare. But with the emergence of unmanned technology, that is no longer the case, and it's going to be difficult for many soldiers and officers to adjust to this new reality. The way I think we need to understand this going forward is that there will be a division of labor between manned and unmanned platforms. We will need to use unmanned technology for the attritional part of the battle, and then, once the enemy's capabilities have been degraded, that can open the path for maneuver warfare. Because we will still need maneuver warfare — we will still need the ability to conduct offensive operations. That maneuver warfare can then be conducted with a mix of unmanned and manned platforms. But if we introduce manned platforms into the battle before the enemy has been sufficiently degraded, that will lead to disaster. That leads to the second point I want to make, which is that future warfare is, to a large degree, going to be about attrition. This is simply a result of these systems becoming more affordable. Firepower is cheaper today than it used to be, and therefore countries are going to field more of it. That means that when we make procurement decisions, we need to consider attrition. We need to expect that the equipment we buy is going to be destroyed in the war, and that has consequences for which types of equipment it makes sense to buy. In the past twenty-five to thirty years, Western militaries have largely transformed into organizations designed for expeditionary operations and counterinsurgency warfare. That's a kind of military reality where we expected to suffer very few casualties. If we bought, say, a hundred infantry fighting vehicles, we would expect to lose only very few of them. So it made sense to buy the best of the best. We could afford to go for the most expensive infantry fighting vehicle if it had some advantage over the second-best, because the priority was to equip the units deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq with the best possible equipment, and it mattered less what kind of equipment the units at home were using. It was also not a priority to have large reserves of these vehicles sitting in garages ready for mobilization. That procurement mentality has to change. Now we need to think about quantity differently. We need reserves so that we can mobilize for war, and we must expect that much of the equipment we have when the war breaks out will be destroyed and will need to be replaced. That is actually the third point: we need to be aware that the military we start the war with will not be the same military that wins the war. Although this might sound counterintuitive, we actually need to move beyond the tendency to think that we must build an army capable of defeating Russia in a war. What we need to build instead is a military that can ensure we get a good start to a war with Russia. Some of the equipment we have when the war begins might be the same equipment we have when it ends, but a lot of it will not. So we need to start thinking about how to gain the capability to scale the production of military equipment, and to have the innovation processes that will enable us to stay technologically ahead of the enemy. In peacetime, we build the army that will fight when the war begins. Then, during the war, as soon as it breaks out, we start producing the next army that will take over once the first one is used up. That's how you prepare for a war of attrition. And that's also why it's so important to embrace the revolution in unmanned technology — because it's much better if the first army that gets consumed mostly consists of unmanned technology. We would much rather have the Russians trading their soldiers for our robots than the other way around. The fourth point I want to highlight is the revolution in long-range fires. The pace at which Russia can produce drones and missiles is overwhelming compared to Europe's current ability to defend against them. There is a lot of work going on, especially with Ukraine spearheading efforts to build effective and affordable missile defense systems, but there is a long way to go before all of Europe has anything resembling meaningful protection. That's the defensive side — we need to prepare for the long-range fight. But just as importantly, Europe really needs to get its act together in terms of building offensive capability so it can also strike back. Far too few European countries actually have the capability to strike deep into Russia, and those that do have far too small a quantity of these long-range capabilities. You're not going to win a war if all you can do is defend yourself against the enemy's missiles. You really need something that can strike back, so you can take out production facilities and defeat Russia's war economy. So it's important to understand that the revolution in military technology on the front line, in terms of drones and robots, is accompanied by an equally important revolution in long-range missile technology. Finally, just to complicate things fully, the last point I want to make is that even though this new technology changes many things, it's not going to change everything. There will still be humans on the battlefield, and it's much better if they're transported in armored vehicles instead of civilian cars. If the armored vehicle is hit, it might get damaged, but the soldiers have a chance of surviving. So we will still need armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. We will also still need tanks. And there will be tasks that only infantry can solve, which cannot be solved by a robot — simply things like having the ability to communicate with people in a war zone. That's something you can really only do well through face-to-face human communication. This discussion is especially relevant when we look at the maritime domain, because classical warships are extremely expensive, and at the same time the war in the Black Sea has shown that they're also very vulnerable. So the question is whether it makes sense to spend billions on a new frigate when you could get a ridiculous number of drones for the same price. This is where it's important to keep in mind that the new technology also has limitations, and there are many things drones simply cannot do. Warfighting is not the only thing militaries do. Looking at European states broadly, they will face many future challenges that are not specifically high-intensity warfare, but other types of responsibilities where they need to use military assets to solve a task — or expeditionary operations where they need to deploy forces away from Europe to operate elsewhere in the world. In those types of situations, you really need to bring something that is capable, that can make a difference in the operational area, and that can also sustain itself over time. That's why there will also be a future need for frigates and destroyers in European navies. Even though they are perhaps not the most suitable platforms to bring into the Baltic Sea if there is a war there, they are pretty much the only thing we have to deploy to situations like the Strait of Hormuz, or to counter-piracy operations, or whatever else we need to do around the world. So it's going to be a challenge to find the right balance. On the one hand, we need to embrace the new technology. We need to understand that drone technology is revolutionizing warfare to an extent that requires us to reconsider pretty much everything, and we need to stay on top of this development. Otherwise we risk taking horrific casualties if we end up in a war with Russia. But we also need to understand that drones, unmanned vehicles, and new technology are not going to solve everything. There is still a need for many of the old capabilities — either because we still need them in a war with Russia, where they will still play a role on the battlefield working alongside unmanned platforms in different ways, or because we need them for expeditionary operations or other types of missions around the world where we need our militaries to project power. We need to be able to send powerful capabilities that can operate independently and sustain themselves for a long period of time far away from Europe. And that is just not a drone. So we will need to find the right balance. Okay, I'll end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, please give it a like, and remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I publish new videos. If you want access to bonus videos and to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Nord Stream follow-up: The location made it easier to repair

In this video, I address some feedback I received about my Nord Stream video regarding the location that the saboteurs chose for the attack. I've kept this video outside the paywall because I think it's relevant for everyone who has watched the original YouTube video. Watch it on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Hi. I recently released a video about Nord Stream and the story of how it was destroyed by a group of Ukrainian scuba divers. In that video, I raise a lot of questions that create some doubt about the story. It was meant to complicate things and make clear that we should not take for granted that this story now explains the truth, because I think there are many weaknesses in it and we need answers to some of these questions. There are just so many things that are weird. One of the questions I raised is about the location. Why did the divers choose exactly the location that they did, where the water is very deep? It's very complicated to dive there. It's very dangerous. It's a very hard diving operation, and the risk of failure is pretty big because it's so difficult to do. They did have an alternative. They could have done it not that far further east, and then it would have been a much easier dive — only half the water depth, much less complicated, with a much greater guarantee of success. I say there that this is a weird choice, because the only reason it really makes sense is if they wanted to get the attention that they did. Choosing this location brought it much closer to Denmark in particular — just outside the 12 nautical mile territorial water border — but some of it also happened in the Swedish economic zone, and that meant more governments would be involved. So that seems like the reason. I received some feedback that I want to address in this short video, and that is that there is another reason they could have chosen this location — and it's actually the explanation given in the new book that's out about the Nord Stream sabotage and the story of the Ukrainian group doing it. The reason they picked this very deep location, the book says, is that they wanted to make it as difficult as possible to repair the damage. They did it to maximize the effect and to make sure it would be very difficult to repair Nord Stream. There is another location along the pipeline where it's actually deeper — around 100 to 110 meters. But that's so deep you can't actually dive there. It's so complicated it would not be possible for them to do it. But this location, where it's 80 meters, is physically possible. So they chose the deepest possible location where they could still do the dive, in order to maximize the damage and make sure it wouldn't be repaired easily. I don't really think this explanation makes sense, and that's what I want to explain here. So the thing is, if you look at what actually happens when you blow a hole in a pipeline — I might put some graphics on the screen to try to explain some of these things — of course, water will come into the pipeline. But conceptually, I think the way to understand it is more that the gas is escaping, because the pressure inside the pipeline is much bigger than the pressure outside in the water. At 80 meters, that's a pretty high water pressure, but the pressure inside the pipeline from the gas is much bigger. So the gas flows out of the pipeline, and of course it rises to the surface. That's what was discovered. Gradually the pressure in the pipeline goes down, and then water starts coming in. But because water can't really run uphill, at some point it equalizes. The pressure from the water and the pressure from the remaining gas become the same, and that's where the surface of the water inside the pipeline stabilizes. That section of the pipeline is then flooded. But what happens if the rupture is in a local high point on the pipeline instead of in the low point? The divers chose a location in a low point. But if we take the rupture and say it is in the high point instead, then of course the gas will still run out — but you also have the question of gravity. When we get to the point where the pressure in the gas and the water is the same, gravity starts playing in, and the water will fall to the bottom while the gas rises to the surface. That means the water will spread out a lot more in the pipeline if the rupture is at a local high point — which would have been the case if they had chosen the easier location, about 100 kilometers further east. So the easier location would have given a greater guarantee of actually being successful in destroying the pipelines and creating the ruptures, but it would also have flooded a much greater part of the pipeline. That would have meant that, if it wasn't immediately cleaned up, a much greater part of the pipeline would later need to be replaced, because it's the corrosion from the water that really is dangerous to the pipeline. So the more that is flooded, the more is potentially destroyed, and the more will need to be replaced if you want to repair the pipeline later on. So I think we can actually add to my list of things to say about the location these divers chose. They chose a location where it was an extremely difficult, dangerous, complicated dive with a lower chance of success. It was also a location with high publicity, because it was close to the territorial waters of Denmark, and it involved both Denmark and Sweden. But on top of that, it seems they chose a location where the damage would actually be fairly localized. A fairly small section of Nord Stream would be damaged badly enough that it would need to be replaced if at some point you want to repair Nord Stream and start transporting gas from Russia to Germany again. So this group of Ukrainians say they chose this location to make it difficult to repair, but in reality, choosing this location probably made it easier to repair Nord Stream. So I don't really think that objection, or that explanation they give in the book, actually makes sense. All right. I hope that made sense. See you next time.

logicofwar.com

Did a group of Ukrainians blow up Nord Stream?

In this video, I look at the Nord Stream sabotage and the story about how a group of Ukrainian divers was behind the operation. I raise some questions that journalists need to address before it is meaningful to say that the explanation makes sense. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ A Ukrainian citizen has been charged in Germany in connection with the Nord Stream explosions in 2022. Also, there is a new book out that describes the details of how a group of Ukrainians committed this act of sabotage. So I thought this might be a good occasion to talk about the story of how this group of Ukrainians apparently destroyed this Russian pipeline, especially because I think much of the Western media tends to focus on the wrong questions. I also think it can offer an interesting glimpse into how military planning processes actually work, how you would approach such a task as destroying this pipeline, and how, as analysts, we can approach the challenge of trying to make sense of the things that happen. So let's talk about it. Nord Stream is probably one of the most requested topics that I get. It's also one of those things that the trolls in the comment section of my videos like to bring up when they want to question my credibility because I was quick to point to Russia back when the incident happened. Since then, there is now a lot of information that points to this story about how a group of Ukrainians did it instead. So many people think I should just admit that I was wrong and that actually Ukraine, or a group of Ukrainians, did it. Let me just say right away, I don't know who did it, and I also don't have any inside information on this. But I will say that I think there is a tendency among Western journalists and also people in the general public to consider this case solved when, in reality, that's not really warranted. That's also the impression you get if you read the new book that's come out. It gives the impression that it's now an established fact that this group of Ukrainians blew up the Nord Stream pipelines and that we can treat it as a fact rather than as a mystery. This is where things go wrong, because I think if you start looking at the story, then you pretty quickly run into some quite dramatic unknowns or big unanswered questions. You have to accept some quite wild assumptions in order to consider this a solved case. What I want to do in this video is to first highlight some of those questions that I think we still need answers to and that I think the media should focus more on. Then I am going to finish up with some comments about why I think it's so difficult to speculate meaningfully on what actually happened with the Nord Stream pipelines back in 2022, given the information gaps that are still out there. If we start looking at what we know now, then I think we can say for sure that this group of Ukrainians was actually in the area. That's pretty much an established fact. They rented a yacht. They were sailing around in the area. We know pretty much who they were. It was a group of people specializing in these types of diving operations, and they also had knowledge of how to work with explosives. So I think the presence of these people in the area is an established fact. What I think is less certain is what their role was in the mission. This is where we get into the more interpretive part of the analysis. If you look at how a military operation is conducted, then you can say quite a bit about what the purpose was and what the attackers were trying to achieve. So you can do a bit of forensics on the operational design. If we look at Nord Stream, it is a pipeline that runs from the St. Petersburg area all the way to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The attackers could have chosen any place along the entire stretch of the pipeline for the sabotage. They chose exactly this place east of the Danish island of Bornholm. So what's special about this place? What can we say about it? I think there are two things that jump to mind. The first one is that the water is very deep. It's about 80 meters deep, and there's also a very strong current in this area. That means that it's a very complicated dive to conduct. It is possible for a human to do such a dive, but it requires special equipment. It takes a long time. It's very complicated. You have very limited time on the seabed to actually do the work because you spend most of the time transiting between the surface and the seabed and then back up to the surface again in order to avoid decompression sickness. The other thing that I think jumps to mind about this area is about maritime borders. What you see here is that the solid borders are the territorial borders, and the dashed lines are the economic zones of the countries. This is something that confuses many people, but economic zones are actually international waters. It just means that the country has certain rights to extract resources from those areas. So what we can see is that the explosions happened in international waters, but as close to Danish territorial waters as possible. Also, most of the explosions happened just on the border between the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. So choosing this location meant that the attack would get maximum exposure and also that it was guaranteed that both the Swedish and the Danish authorities would get involved. So why did the attackers choose this place? What are the advantages of choosing this place? Why didn't they go about 100 kilometers further east where the water is only half as deep? That would have been much easier. It would have been a much safer dive, and you could perform it without special equipment and with much greater certainty of success. That is a weird choice, unless the purpose of the operation actually is not just to destroy Nord Stream, but to gain maximum exposure about destroying Nord Stream. Because doing it over there would have meant that it would have happened in a much more remote area of the Baltic Sea and it would have reduced the number of countries that were involved because it would only have led to an investigation by the Swedish authorities. So just by looking at the location that the attackers chose, I think we can say that they did not just want to destroy Nord Stream. What they were after was maximum publicity about the destruction of Nord Stream. Then we get to the question about the yacht. The group of Ukrainian divers rented the yacht and they sailed from Rostock in Germany on September 6th, 2022. They spent the next two and a half weeks sailing around the area. In those days, they visited the harbors of Wiek, Christiansø, Sandhamn, and also this city in Poland whose name I cannot pronounce, before they returned the boat to Rostock on September 23rd. They were, of course, not going in a straight line between those harbors. They were sailing around in the area where the explosions happened. But they also managed to visit every country in the area, and they were not trying to be particularly discreet about it. They were flying the Ukrainian flag on the boat, and they were speaking Ukrainian. So it was noticed in these harbors that there is this group of Ukrainians here on this yacht. Now, a yacht is a strange choice of platform for a diving operation. It's difficult to maneuver and to keep in position for several hours while you conduct a very precise dive on a very specific location. It's puzzling that they picked this platform and not a more suitable one. I mean, they could have just rented a motorboat and that in itself would have been a step up, but they chose a sailing yacht. So there are some things here that also raise questions that I think journalists could meaningfully ask. Like, why did they rent a sailing yacht and not a more suitable diving platform? Why did they visit so many different harbors in so many different countries? Why were they flying the Ukrainian flag? Why did they not stay at sea and anchor instead of going to port? These are all operational choices that somebody made while planning and conducting this high-level military operation. Then when they returned the boat in Rostock, they had not cleaned it. There were traces of explosives. They also managed to get a speeding ticket in Germany, so their presence was documented that way. All this points to a strange combination of skills and behavior. On the one hand, these people had to be top professional operators in order to execute these extremely complicated dives under such difficult conditions. But then on the other hand, they also made some very weird choices and they behaved in a strangely amateurish way. So these are some of the questions that I think the media should be asking instead of just uncritically reporting that it is now established that Nord Stream was destroyed by a group of Ukrainians. Why did they choose this place and not an easier one? Why did they choose an operational design that would guarantee maximum exposure and would make sure that the trails would point toward Ukraine? What was the purpose of that? And why did they deliberately decide to make the sabotage operation more complicated in order to achieve this goal? That leads to the more strategic questions that I also think are still unanswered, because what did Ukraine actually get out of this? And why did they choose to go through with the operation? In the reporting, it's a bit unclear if this was something that was sanctioned by the Ukrainian government or if this group supposedly acted independently. But regardless, I think there are many unanswered questions here or strange decisions that journalists could try to uncover instead of just assuming that things are kind of self-evident. The first one is that I see many people saying that Ukraine had an interest in blowing up Nord Stream because they wanted to prevent Germany from returning to using Russian gas. But how is that supposed to work? If we go back to 2022, the situation was that Ukraine was extremely dependent on Germany to provide equipment for the war. The Nord Stream pipeline was already closed because Russia had done that. Surely the Ukrainians did not want the Germans to start making concessions to Russia to get cheap gas again. But on the other hand, having a good relationship with Germany at that time was a matter of survival for Ukraine. Blowing up critical infrastructure in Germany seems like something that the German government might get angry about. So if this Nord Stream sabotage was sanctioned by the Ukrainian government, then why did Zelensky decide to run the risk of potentially losing the war in order to close a pipeline that was already closed? It seems like an extreme chance to take and just very bad judgment. Definitely this is something that journalists should ask themselves instead of just assuming that, well, obviously Ukraine would do it. Then this group of Ukrainians, if they acted without Zelensky's approval, then why is it that the Ukrainian government has not cracked down on them afterwards? Is this really something that Zelensky would accept, that private Ukrainians go around waging their own foreign policy and blowing up stuff in allied countries? And also, why are they now allowed to talk about it to Western journalists and brag about their actions without the Ukrainian government stepping in? You'd think that Zelensky would want these people to shut up and stop damaging Ukraine's relationship with Germany, but he doesn't seem all that bothered by it. That's weird. That also leads to the logical question. Why is it that the German government did not actually get angry at the Ukrainians about blowing up Nord Stream? Sure, we have the German law enforcement authorities that are investigating the case and they're pressing charges. But the German government has almost entirely ignored it. In fact, after the sabotage, Germany moved on to become one of Ukraine's strongest supporters and one of the largest donors in the world. That's remarkable because it's just an astonishingly tolerant attitude from the German government. How can that be? Again, a good question for the journalists. Now, I don't know the answers to all these questions. My purpose here is entirely to complicate things by highlighting some of the questions that are still unanswered, even with all the information that has come out about these Ukrainians on a sailing yacht, and why I think it is a mistake to now consider this case solved. We need better explanations for some of these questions because otherwise we can't really say that the story makes sense. This is where we get to the question of why I also don't think it's necessarily all that productive for me to start speculating about what the answers to all these things will be and what might actually have happened with Nord Stream. Because the thing is that I'm pretty confident that if Western governments have information that points in a totally different direction than this story about the Ukrainians in a sailing yacht, then we're not going to hear about it. Because they don't want to tell us. Many people mistakenly think that it is inconvenient for Western governments if the trails point toward Kyiv, but the reality is that it's not. It's super convenient. It is the best thing possible for Western governments. The last thing anyone wants is for the trails to point toward Russia. If you're interested in knowing why that is the case, then I have a separate video about that. I'm going to link to it in the description. But that also means that trying to figure out what's actually up and down in the whole Nord Stream case, it's a bit like shadowboxing. There is a lot of information coming out about one story that has a lot of weaknesses in that there are so many unanswered questions that need answers in order to be credible. But at the same time, we pretty much know that if there is any information that points in a different direction, then we're not going to be told about it. So it may be true that Nord Stream was blown up by this group of Ukrainian divers. But I think we need the journalists to start answering some of the questions I've mentioned in this video because there are too many gaps in the explanations for the story to be truly credible as it stands today. Before I finish, I just also want to correct an error that I've often seen in the reporting. That is that the Nord Stream sabotage is supposed to have _permanently_ halted gas supplies from Russia to Germany. Allegedly this was the motivation for this group of Ukrainians to make sure that Nord Stream was destroyed once and for all and that Germany would never again be able to resume purchasing Russian gas through this pipeline. That's just not true. The pipeline can be fixed. Sections of the pipeline are destroyed, but those sections can be replaced. It would cost some money, but compared to the money that Russia is spending on the war in Ukraine, we're talking about peanuts here. It's a rounding error. The reason Nord Stream has not been repaired is not that it's impossible to do, but that Russia and Germany have just not decided to do it. That's, of course, also important to keep in mind when we're talking about what Ukraine would have gotten out of sabotaging Nord Stream. We're talking about a _temporary_ interruption of gas supplies between Russia and Germany, not a permanent destruction. That, of course, also means that the benefit for Ukraine in destroying this pipeline is much smaller than it would have been if it were impossible to repair. Before I finish up, I also just want to make a quick channel announcement. I recently created a new YouTube channel for long-form interviews and conversations. The first video is an interview I made with Anthony Scaramucci. Whenever I participate in long-form things, I'm going to put it there instead of on this channel because I really want to keep the format separate. So if you're interested in longer conversations with me, then be sure to head over to my conversations channel and also subscribe there. I'll put a link in the description. And if you found this video about Nord Stream helpful or informative or thought-provoking, then please give it a like. Also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I publish new videos. And if you want to support this channel and get access to some bonus videos, you can subscribe to my website, www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Interview with Anthony Scaramucci

Here is an interview I did with Anthony Scaramucci. It's a bit unusual compared to my normal videos in that it is mostly about domestic U.S. politics. Scaramucci is an American political commentator and former Republican official. I didn't agree with all of Anthony's points, but I do think they give an interesting view into the thinking in the Republican Party, especially. For Europeans, it's an eye-opener in the sense that there is a segment of the American population that has a very different view of the world than most Europeans do. I used this occasion to launch a new YouTube channel specifically meant for these types of long-form interviews or conversations. I don't plan on making a lot of interviews, but things work out better on YouTube if there is consistency in the type of videos that a channel publishes. The occasional interviews I did always broke the pattern, so it's better to separate it off to a different channel where people can sign up for long-form content specifically. So, if you are interested in watching longer conversations or interviews that I participate in, then please do subscribe to this new channel. Best, Anders

logicofwar.com

Why a Russian frigate fired warning shots at a British yacht

In this video, I discuss how warships deal with asymmetric threats and why that contributed to the incident where a Russian frigate fired warning shots at a British yacht in the English Channel. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ The other day, there was an incident in the English Channel where a Russian frigate fired warning shots at a yacht. This created quite a discussion about what this Russian frigate was up to and why they behaved so aggressively. And while some of that criticism was justified, I think this discussion also demonstrated that many people don't quite understand how warships operate in these types of situations, and that led to misinterpretations. So what I want to do in this video is just explain how warships deal with these types of situations, what considerations go into the planning of reactions, and why that can create situations where it seems that the warship behaves in an excessively aggressive manner. So let's talk about it. What I'm going to do in this video is first, I'm going to talk a bit about how warships in general defend themselves against asymmetric threats. And then I'm going to finish off with some comments about what happened in the English Channel. But first, it's necessary to discuss two important conditions that influence how warships operate. The first condition is that warships are vulnerable. This may sound very trivial, but the fact is that if a warship is hit, then it can sink. One hit can lead to the loss of the entire platform, and the entire crew can perish. And that means that there's a lot at stake for the warship and for the crew members on board. So a warship is a potent platform that can carry formidable firepower, but it's also extremely vulnerable. And that means that there's basically zero tolerance for taking a hit when you prepare the warship's reactions to threats. The second condition that it's important to be aware of is that a warship is a complex organization with a large crew that needs to work together to solve any task. You will have people on the bridge, people in the operations room, people in the radio station, people in the engine department, people on the deck to operate machine guns, people in damage control units, etc. So in total, that's a lot of people who all need to understand what's going on and what their job is in the larger system for the ship to be able to perform any task. And they need to be able to solve those tasks under time pressure where there is a lot at stake, and basically there will be no time for discussions or explanations about what's going on. The way you organize things so that this complex system is able to perform tasks is by developing standard procedures for various situations. And then you practice those procedures until every crew member understands what they're supposed to do and how the task is solved. But that also means that there is quite a bit of rigidity in how warships handle tasks. So of course, you can apply judgment in the specific situation. But as the commanding officer, you really don't want to be improvising how tasks are solved because that's just going to lead to chaos. And as the commanding officer, you also want to think through the various scenarios and dilemmas before you face them in a real situation because this allows you to free up mental bandwidth so you can stay on top of the situation when it occurs and actually follow events. You want to incorporate all these dilemmas into the standard procedures for such situations because that ensures that you have considered all the different aspects and that your crew is prepared to execute the reactions you want. So those are the two basic conditions or considerations you need to keep in mind if you want to understand how warships prepare to handle asymmetric threats. The first point is that warships are vulnerable and that avoiding taking a hit is the absolute first priority. And the second point is that warships need to operate based on standard procedures because that's the only way to ensure that the organization can perform under pressure. So what would such a procedure look like when you're talking about reactions to asymmetric threats? And by asymmetric threats, I mean something like a speedboat or a yacht that's filled with explosives that just sails up to the warship and detonates on the side. Or perhaps that the peaceful-looking crew members suddenly pick up grenade launchers and start firing at you. Or it could be something like a slow, low-flying plane that crashes into the side of the warship. So those types of threats where you're not up against enemy missiles or something similar, but rather you're up against something that's asymmetric. And I'm going to give a very simple example of how this could roughly look. Of course, these things will be specific for every type of warship. Just take this as an example to give an idea of the types of things that would be included in such a procedure. But typically, the steps you take will be determined by the distance you have to the threat or to the target. And in this type of situation, it seems reasonable that the first step would be taken at a distance of about maybe two nautical miles. So when the sailing yacht gets closer than about two nautical miles, that's when things will start happening on the warship. The first thing that happens is that the warship increases its level of readiness. You call more people on watch. The bridge crew is augmented. You have more people in the operations room, in the engine department. You start getting people ready in damage control units. You man the guns on the deck. So many things will start happening inside the warship that you can't see from the outside. And of course, that's kind of inconvenient if it's not necessary. So warships typically do everything they can to avoid the situation. As the officer of the watch, one of your primary tasks is to ensure that no yacht unnecessarily gets closer than two nautical miles. And you really don't want to be the guy who has to call the captain and wake him up in the middle of the night because you weren't paying attention. So warships try to do what they can to actually avoid getting close to the threat. And that is the first step in self-defense. But if it's not possible to avoid it, then that's what will happen. The next step in the procedure could occur at a distance of maybe one nautical mile, so that's about two kilometers. Typically, this would involve hailing the other ship on the VHF radio. In the beginning, you might be friendly and polite, but if that does not get the reaction you want, then you're typically going to be saying some pretty aggressive stuff on the radio to make sure that the other ship understands the seriousness of the situation. The VHF radio is not some bulletproof system that guarantees that you can always talk to everyone at sea. In fact, you very often find that you get no response from the other ship, especially from yachts. I'd say there is maybe a 10% to 20% chance of actually making a connection. And that's just because the physical conditions on yachts are not conducive to maintaining a constant radio watch. On a yacht, it very easily blends into the background noise and it becomes difficult to hear. If hailing on the radio does not work, then you might take the next step at, say, half a mile, which is about one kilometer. And that could typically involve actions like sounding the horn and flashing your lights to attract attention. If that does not work, then at 0.3 nautical miles, you might take the next step, which could be to fire warning shots into the air. At 0.2 nautical miles, you might escalate the situation further by firing warning shots into the water in front of the other boat. So this way, they will not only hear the gunshots, but they will also see splashes in the water. And then if that does not work, at 0.1 nautical miles or a little less than 200 meters, you might start shooting directly at the other ship. So this is an example of what a procedure to counter asymmetric threats might look like. And then you can, of course, have variations of it. For example, there might be differences in how you react to a sailing yacht compared to a speedboat because the speedboat is going to be traveling the distances much faster. So maybe you want to react sooner to that. In the case from the English Channel, the British couple on the sailing yacht explained that they were at a distance of about 400 to 500 meters from the Russian warship when it started shooting with shots going into the air. That is a distance of about a quarter of a nautical mile. So that's about the same distance at which I said it would be reasonable to have in your procedure that you would be firing warning shots. And this is when we get into the different mental states that this British couple and the Russian warship were in. Because the yachters were thinking in terms of collision danger. From their perspective, four or five hundred meters, that's a long distance. That's pretty far when you're in a yacht. In fact, very often, yachters will feel absolutely comfortable passing each other at distances of, say, 50 meters. But from the warship, four or five hundred meters, that's extremely close and it's dangerous. I don't know how fast this British yacht was sailing at the time, but if we say that it was going six knots, then that would be sailing 0.1 nautical mile per minute. This would mean that the yacht was only about two minutes away from the Russian warship. That's not a lot of reaction time, and that's why this yacht could not be allowed to get any closer from the warship's perspective. Something I've seen many people saying about this situation is that the Russian warship overreacted. The argument is that they should know that the English Channel is not a war zone, so there is no reason to be so hysterical about a sailing yacht with two British pensioners. There is some truth to that in the sense that, of course, warships can't maintain a two-mile safety zone from all yachts everywhere at all times. If you are in constrained waters, ships are going to get closer than that. And if you're not in a war zone, then typically you would be kind of okay with it. But the thing to understand is that Russia is a country at war, and the Russian Navy is vulnerable everywhere they go. Ukraine constantly targets Russian warships, and there is absolutely no reason to expect that the Ukrainian intelligence services wouldn't also try to hit a Russian frigate in the English Channel if they get the chance. So I think it's understandable that the Russian captain would operate under the assumption that every yacht or fishing boat that they see is a potential threat, and it could be a concealed Ukrainian intelligence operation. In this specific case, it's been mentioned that the Russian ship was actually drifting at the time of the incident. It's been speculated that this is because it's low on fuel and that it doesn't really have reliable means of refueling in the English Channel. If that is the case, then it explains why the Russian warship did not simply maneuver to increase the distance from the English yacht. It also means that to a large extent, this Russian frigate is a sitting duck that is even more vulnerable to various types of asymmetric threats. So you can see why the crew would be on edge. I've also seen many people saying that this Russian frigate shouldn't be in the English Channel in the first place, that it's just there to intimidate Britain and France and to cause trouble. And since it doesn't really have any good reason to be there, it should just leave and stop behaving like a bully towards the other shipping in the area. And that is true in the sense that the presence of this Russian warship in the English Channel is obviously not benign. It is there to intimidate NATO. It is there to complicate the effort to stop Russian shadow fleet tankers from passing through the Channel. But the problem with that argument is that it's not particularly actionable. Sure, it's super annoying that this Russian frigate is doing what it's doing, just as in any war, it's super annoying that the enemy is fighting back, but that's kind of just how things are. And just because you say that you think this Russian frigate should go home, they're not going to go home. The captain has been assigned to do exactly what he's doing, so he's going to keep doing that. And that's also why I think people who are yachting in the English Channel or anywhere where Russian warships operate, such as the Danish Straits or the Baltic Sea, just don't go near them. You might trigger the actions I mentioned above without realizing it until you're pretty close. From your perspective, everything still looks fine, but I can tell you that on the other side, on the Russian warship, there will be sailors who are extremely nervous and who are manning the machine gun. And they are prepared to defend themselves against a threat that you probably haven't even considered, but that's extremely real to them. So just don't go near them.

logicofwar.com

Ukraine's drone war is isolating Crimea

In this video, I discuss Ukraine's success with mid-range drone strikes, and how it challenges Russia's logistics especially on the southern part of the frontline. If this continues, it could turn into a new hotspot in the war. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ It's been a long time since I've made videos about the tactical situation on the front line. The reason is that it's been very static, so there hasn't been all that much to talk about. But there are some significant things happening right now that indicate that things might be changing. So in this video, I want to discuss the situation on the southern front line and what's happening with what the Ukrainians call mid-range strikes. That's where they target Russian logistics and command centers up to maybe about 100 to 150 kilometers from the front line. They are having quite a lot of success with this, and it's something that can potentially have very big consequences. So let's talk about it. Ukraine has been having a lot of success with drone warfare, and it's a large part of the reason why we are now seeing things shifting on the front line. I also mentioned Ukraine's success with mid-range strikes in my recent video about what options Putin has now that things are not going Russia's way in the war anymore. But I thought it might be useful to unpack this concept a little more and explain the different types of drone warfare that we can observe. Conceptually, it makes sense to distinguish between three different types of drone warfare that Ukraine is waging. On the front line itself and until a depth of maybe about 20 kilometers from the front line, they have what they call the drone wall. This is where you find the small first-person view drones that hunt individual Russian soldiers and vehicles. It's called a drone wall because the area is so saturated with drones that it's almost impossible to go anywhere without being discovered. So we can see the drone wall as a barrier that's designed to keep the Russians from advancing, but it also serves the purpose of maximizing the number of Russian casualties. Most Russian soldiers that lose their lives do so in the meeting with the drone wall on the front line. Another element of Ukraine's drone war that has received a lot of attention is the deep strikes on Russian territory. Ukraine has developed very long-range drones and missiles that can reach targets up to about 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine. Especially over the last six months, we've really seen them expand these strikes and hit the Russians hard. They have especially targeted Russian oil production facilities and different factories that produce various things related to the war. The Ukrainians call this long-range sanctions, which is obviously a sarcastic term. I would probably call them strategic airstrikes. But the purpose is to defeat the Russian war economy and to make it impossible for the Russians to produce enough equipment to sustain the war. So these are the two types of drone warfare that I think most people in the West would think about when they hear about Ukrainian drones: the drone wall on the front line itself and the long-range strikes deep into Russia. But there is a third category, which is something that the Ukrainians have been having a lot of focus on for a long time, and that's what they call mid-range strikes. The categories of short range, medium range, and long range can be confusing because they can mean many different things depending on the context. But what the Ukrainians are talking about when they say mid-range strikes are strikes that are beyond the area where small FPV drones from the drone wall can hit. So mid-range strikes are in the area from maybe about 20 kilometers to the front line and then up to 100, maybe 150, or even 200 kilometers. But that range there between 20 and out to 150-ish kilometers. If I were to put a label on what Ukraine is doing here, I would probably not use the term mid-range strikes. I think I would lean towards talking about tactical strikes. But the purpose of these attacks is to target Russian logistics and command centers. The Ukrainians are now talking about wanting to do what they call a logistics lockdown for the Russians. And that pretty much also explains the concept. The goal is to make it impossible for the Russians to bring supplies to the frontline. So conceptually, we can say that the difference between Ukraine's strategic deep strikes and these tactical mid-range strikes is that they have different purposes. The strategic strikes aim at making it impossible for Russia to produce enough equipment and supplies for the war. The tactical strikes aim to prevent Russia from bringing those supplies that have already been built to the soldiers that need them on the front line. Ukraine now has the capability to be successful in all these three different areas: the drone wall, the mid-range strikes, and the deep strikes. Earlier in the war, there was a lot of discussion about whether the West should provide the weapons that were needed for this type of mid-range campaign that Ukraine is now waging. That's something like the American ATACMS missiles, for example. Ukraine asked for them for a long time and they were never really given them in substantial quantities. But now Ukraine has, to a large extent, managed to build alternatives that can solve the task at least well enough to have a significant impact. So because of these mid-range strikes, Russian units are experiencing supply constraints in many areas. We're generally seeing many examples of shortages in the occupied territories, especially things like gasoline and diesel. But the area where the impact is the largest is without question the southern area along the so-called land corridor to Crimea and on Crimea itself. The reason for that is that the number of supply lines is limited. The Russian soldiers on the front line in the southern area can basically receive supplies from three different directions. One way is from Crimea, another is along the coastline from the Russian mainland, and the third one is with ships coming across the Sea of Azov and then distributing the cargo with trucks. Earlier in the war, the troops could receive supplies from Crimea, but Ukraine has efficiently targeted both the bridge across the Kerch Strait and the ferries that service that connection. The bridge is still there, but after the last time Ukraine attacked it, the bridge has been closed for heavy trucks and for trains, so only light vehicles can cross it. That means, of course, the bridge is pretty much useless as a supply route. And then Ukraine has also hit the ferries that were put into service instead of the bridge. So they have been mostly offline. So that means that today Crimea is not a provider of supplies for the soldiers fighting on the front line in Ukraine. On the contrary, Crimea needs to be supplied via the land corridor close to the front line. And that's been working quite well for Russia until now. But with Ukraine's success in the mid-range strikes, suddenly this supply line is becoming questionable. When it comes to maritime transportation, there are essentially two ports that the Russians can use: the port in Mariupol and the port in Berdiansk. But Ukraine has begun targeting ships quite heavily. So we see ships being hit while in port and also at sea by different drones. So maritime transportation to the area is also being limited. Along the roads, Ukraine has started to deploy massive numbers of drones to hunt down military vehicles and supply trucks, especially along the M14 highway that runs from Mariupol to Mykolaiv. This highway has been called the Highway of Death by some Russian commentators because there are just so many destroyed trucks along the road. Russia has also been trying to build a railroad connection in this area, but Ukraine has been targeting that as well. The consequence has been that there is now a significant fuel shortage in Crimea. And the discussion, of course, goes about how far Ukraine can take this. I've seen some people speculating about whether Ukraine is now preparing for an offensive on Crimea if the situation gets bad enough. And while I wouldn't rule it out entirely that Ukraine could try to do something like that at some point, depending on how the war goes, I think it's not something that's an obvious next step. But I will point out that I think it's important to be aware that this area here, the Kherson region and the western part of the Zaporizhzhia region, are without question the most vulnerable of the Russian-occupied areas. The reason is that the soldiers here depend entirely on supply lines that now suddenly begin to look fragile. Over the last couple of months, Russian progress on the front line has pretty much stalled. Ukraine has also started to take back some territory in some areas, and this is one of them. I think if this trend continues and things continue to tip in Ukraine's favor, then this is an area where we might see things beginning to happen first. It's worth remembering that back in 2023, when Ukraine had their attempt at a big counteroffensive, this was the area where the biggest results were supposed to be achieved. What Ukraine was aiming for at that time was exactly to cut the land corridor. So the occupied areas would be split into two, and this would have cut off the supply lines to the western part of the area and to the Crimean Peninsula. It's interesting that Ukraine now seems to be achieving some of those same effects with drones. But the point back then, of course, in cutting the occupied area into two was to create conditions for further offensives in the western part of that occupied territory that now would have been isolated and cut off from supplies. It will be interesting to follow whether the mid-range strikes can over time create the conditions that would allow Ukraine to try something similar again and maybe attempt to take back some territory in these areas. So while there is a lot of focus on Crimea and discussions about whether Ukraine can take it back, I think the more immediate question is whether we're going to see Ukraine try something in the western part of the Zaporizhzhia region. Ukraine would not need to advance all that far from the current frontline before the Russian forces would be facing a dilemma. Are they going to defend the city of Melitopol, or are they going to focus on defending the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant? And in that case, I think the Russians would probably prioritize Melitopol. But that means that if the mid-range strikes continue to weaken Russian defenses on the frontline, then it's not perhaps totally outrageous to start thinking about whether Ukraine might eventually get the chance to take back the nuclear power plant. So there are some interesting perspectives in what's going on with the southern front right now. Of course, the Russians are not going to just let the Ukrainians do that. They're going to try to find different countermeasures and stabilize the situation, but this area is well worth watching and it could become one of the hotspots in the period to come. Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like and remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I upload new videos. And if you want to support the channel and get access to some bonus videos that I make in a more informal vlog style format, you can subscribe to my website, www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Putin's options after the war has stalled

In this video, I discuss what Putin can do to turn the war around. Russia is pretty much stuck, and it seems inevitable that Putin will need to do something. But there are multiple ways he could go, and I think it's important that we start thinking about his options. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ The war is not going particularly well for Russia right now, they are no longer making progress on the front line, and Ukraine is having more and more success with deep strikes that hurt the Russian economy. The recipe they've been following for the last two years that has ensured progress on the front line does not work anymore, but what's Putin gonna do about it? In this video, I want to look at the options that he has and discuss what he might do. So let's talk about it. There are multiple reasons why things aren't working out for Russia right now. One reason is that Ukraine has been very successful at scaling its drone production to the point where they have more or less created what they call a drone wall that it's very difficult for the Russian soldiers to get through. Another reason is that Ukraine is increasingly having success with what they call mid-range strikes, which are strikes from around 50 kilometers up to maybe a few hundred kilometers from the front line. So it's beyond the area that you can reach with small FPV drones, but not the type of deep strikes that we're talking about when they send drones on Moscow or other Russian cities far from Ukraine. So these mid-strain strikes, they take a hard toll on Russian logistics, which again means that the units on the front line have less strength to fight with than they otherwise would. We're also seeing that the Russians are having more and more trouble replacing their losses with new recruits. Over the last six months, it has appeared that the Russians have not been able to recruit as many soldiers as they lose, which means that in broad strokes, the Russian army is shrinking in size. Obviously, if that continues, they will find themselves in a kind of downward spiral where they get weaker and weaker. So things are not working out for the Russians right now, and we are approaching a point where Putin has to do something. Just maintaining the status quo is not going to be sustainable, and it's also not going to lead to victory in the war. So Putin has to do something. And what I want to do in this video is discuss some of the options he has. I've identified four basic ways that he can go, and I'm going to measure those on three different parameters that I think are the most important for Putin to consider. The first is whether this given option gives Russia a chance of actually winning the war. The second is what it will do to the Russian economy. And the last one is how big the regime security risk is for Putin. So that is, how much does this undermine Putin's legitimacy as the leader of Russia? And does it increase the risk of him losing power in the coming years, whether by revolution or a coup or by other means? The first option Putin has is, of course, that he can accept that Russia is never going to achieve the military goals of the special military operation. So essentially acknowledging the defeat. He can change his attitude toward negotiations with Ukraine and accept a deal that basically have the terms that are very close to what the Ukrainians are demanding in the peace negotiations. If we plot this into the matrix, we can see that this gives Russia basically no chance of winning the war. And when I say that, it's very important to understand that the fact that Russia has taken territory from Ukraine since 2022 does not in any way mean that ending the war right now would constitute any kind of victory. In fact, the Russian war aims were from the beginning to gain total political control over all of Ukraine. It was never the goal to take territory. So it was the goal to gain political control, which would not be achieved if they accept defeat at this point. It's also very important to understand that since 2022, when they formally annexed four oblasts in Ukraine, that changed the perspective from a Russian point of view. The war today is, from the Russian perspective, not actually taking place in Ukraine, but it's taking place on Russian territory that is occupied by Ukraine. So that's the kind of legal logic that the Russians apply when they look at the frontline. So if the war ends along the current frontline, then from Putin's perspective, that would mean that Russia is actually giving up territory to Ukraine in order to end the war and that part of Russian territory would remain under foreign occupation. So this is by no means a victory. It's a clear defeat. It might, however, save the Russian economy. The biggest problem for the Russian economy is the war, which keeps draining resources and forces the government to keep spending money that they don't have. So ending the war is a prerequisite for beginning to do things that over time can improve the Russian economy. Overall, I think choosing this option would involve a medium regime security risk for Putin. In the short term, I think he would probably get away with it without the Russians protesting because most Russians today actually do indicate that they would like the special military operation to come to an end. But in the medium term, it would be problematic for him. Everyone would be able to see that Russia had lost the war. There would be significant questions about whether it was worth it. There is also the big issue of what you do with all the veterans that are going to be returning home when the war ends. They would come home deeply traumatized, and somehow they would need to be reintegrated into Russian society, and that will likely create huge social problems in that process. Also, although this option might make it possible to save the Russian economy in the long term, it's still going to be really rough in the coming years, even if the war stops now. So overall, ending the war without a clear victory will significantly undermine Putin's legitimacy as the leader of Russia. And there is a real potential that it could lead him to lose power in the coming years. The next option that Putin has is that he can try to freeze the conflict. The reason the Russian army is losing more soldiers than they can recruit right now is that they insist on staying on the offensive and keep attacking. If they stop doing that, then it might suddenly solve their manning problem, and the war could become sustainable again. The problem with that, of course, is that in order to achieve its war aims, the Russian army basically has to advance because they haven't achieved their war aims yet. They need to take more territory. So if they stop attacking and instead focus on simply freezing the front line, that would mean that Russia has no chance of winning the war in the near future. The difference between this option and the one about accepting defeat is that in this situation, the war doesn't actually stop. There will still be fighting and the long-range strikes on Ukraine can continue as can Ukraine, of course, keep striking Russia. The only difference is that the Russians would stop trying to advance on the front line, which would mean that they'd stop taking such heavy losses because they wouldn't keep sending infantry into the Ukrainian drone wall. This option of freezing the front line could perhaps also be combined with Russia accepting Zelensky's offer of an energy ceasefire. That would mean that Ukraine would stop striking Russian oil refineries. Russia would also have to stop striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, but they could keep striking everything else. I actually think that the prospect of freezing the conflict might be the most toxic outcome for Ukraine because it would essentially turn the war into a forever war with no prospect of ever ending. If Russia stops advancing on the front line and agrees to an energy ceasefire, that would totally disrupt Ukraine's war strategy because taking advantage of Russia's willingness to be on the offensive on the front line, and hitting Russian energy infrastructure in the rear are basically the two core pillars of Ukraine's strategy for how they see themselves winning the war. So freezing the war is not going to lead to a military victory in the short term, but it might create some conditions that could seriously challenge the governability of Ukraine in the longer term. So I'm going to be a little bold here and say that this option actually gives Russia a medium chance of winning the war. However, this also means that the war would continue to be quite intensive and demand a very large portion of the resources that the Russian state has. So this solution won't offer much hope for saving the Russian economy. In terms of regime security risk, I think it's pretty low for this option. Actually, the war will continue and Putin can use this both to say that the war is not lost and also to justify all kinds of necessary repressions. He also does not have to bring the soldiers home from the front line because the war is still ongoing. The economy is still bad, but I think he might be able to deal with that in different ways so that it doesn't turn into too much of a regime security problem. The third option Putin has is that he can go for mass mobilization. The advantage of this option is that Russia can essentially maintain its current military strategy, which is to keep attacking until it eventually gains control of all the territory it claims is Russian. So it's a convenient option in the sense that the Russian leadership doesn't actually have to change its approach and they don't have to acknowledge that the approach so far has been wrong. The problem with it is that it's hard to see how going for mass mobilization is really going to fundamentally change the dynamics of the war compared to what they already are today. Ukraine is still growing its drone production, and that doesn't really change just because Russia throws more infantry at the drone wall. So going for this mass mobilization option is essentially just going to prolong the pain. It's hard to see how it would give Russia the resources to change the overall direction of the war, and that's why I'm going to set the chance of Russia winning the war with this option as low. Going for mass mobilization will also give no chance of saving the Russian economy. In fact, it would be a total catastrophe for the Russian economy because you would be pulling all these people out of the workforce and increasing the resource strain at the front line when you throw even more people into the fight. Overall, I think the mass mobilization option involves a high regime security risk for Putin. If you want a deeper explanation of that, I recently released a video about the question of when Russians will start protesting, but the short version is that going for mass mobilization is exactly the type of thing that can lead Russians to start pushing back because it would be the state trying to impose changes to the Russian society in a way that directly challenges the coping mechanisms that people rely on in their daily lives. In fact, It's hard to think of anything more invasive in people's personal lives than the state telling you or your husband that they have to go to war. So overall, the mass mobilization option is pretty bad for Putin because it doesn't really have many advantages, but it carries a very high risk. The last option Putin has is to try to do something dramatic and fundamentally change the dynamics of the situation and set a whole new direction for the war. This is where he tries to address the root causes of Russia's problems, which essentially is that the European countries keep providing financial support to Ukraine. If the European countries would just stop doing that, then Ukraine's war economy would collapse pretty quickly and Russia would win the war. So this escalation scenario means that Putin directly threatens NATO in a way that diverts resources away from Ukraine and into defending NATO itself, or that it scares the European countries so much that they decide it's not worth it and that they need to let Russia win in Ukraine because the alternative would be that they themselves would be involved in a war against Russia. There are many ways this could play out, but one example could be a limited Russian attack on the Baltic states. Those who think that Russia does not have the resources to do that, they're simply wrong. Russia has plenty of resources to allocate a couple of divisions to an attack on one of the Baltic states, if that's what they want to do. That would be plenty to put massive pressure on NATO and to scare the European populations into thinking that we're just two steps away from World War III. Doing this would be a massive gamble by Putin because there is no guarantee that it would work. But if we put it into the matrix, I'd say there is maybe a medium chance of it actually winning the war for Russia. It might work. I think it's very difficult to predict how Western countries would react to this situation, but there is definitely a possibility that some governments in Western Europe are going to decide that it's not worth it and that they have to stop supporting Ukraine in order to appease Russia. There's also, I think, a pretty good chance of this saving the Russian economy because if it can actually end the war in Ukraine on terms that are favorable for Russia, then it might also make it possible to do things that will save the economy. So I'm going to put the chance of saving the Russian economy at medium. But it would be a gamble. It's far from guaranteed that the rest of the European countries would react the way that Putin hopes. And it's quite possible that it could also have the opposite effect with Europeans doubling down on their support for Ukraine. That would leave Russia in a worse situation than before Putin decided to escalate this war. So I'm going to put the regime security risk for Putin at high in this scenario. If it doesn't work out for him, I think it's pretty safe to assume that this would be the end of his time in power in Russia. Option | Chance of Russia winning the war | Chance of saving the Russian economy | Regime security risk for Putin ---|---|---|--- Accept defeat | None | Medium | Medium Freeze conflict | Medium | Low | Low Mass mobilization | Low | None | High Escalation | Medium | Medium | High So those are the four basic options that I see Putin having, and which one he's going to choose, I don't know. But I can, of course, speculate about it. I think it's unlikely that Putin is going to accept defeat. It's just too risky in the medium to long term, and it doesn't really achieve the political goals that Putin has with the war. And we need to understand that this great power project thing that he's going on, in his mind, it's a kind of divine mission about Russia's place in the world. So it's unlikely that he's just going to give up on that. Of the other options, the most dangerous one is obviously the escalation scenario where Putin triggers a military confrontation with NATO. From Putin's perspective, this option has the advantage of being the only one that offers a significant chance of winning the war quickly. It addresses the root causes of Russia's predicament, namely that Western Europe is willing to keep funding Ukraine's war. And because it aims at ending the war quickly, it also offers the prospect of saving the economy. So it's a high risk gamble, but it's one with potentially a big reward. If I were to say what I think would be the smartest choice for Putin, I would say it's probably to try to freeze the conflict. I think that's his best option. And the reason I say that is that I think a frozen perpetual war is the most toxic sort of outcome for Ukraine in the long run. Whenever I say something like that, I'm going to get comments where people say, "oh, for heaven's sake, don't tell Putin what the smartest thing to do would be because he just might do it". But don't worry, Putin is not listening to me. If there's anything we can take away from the last five years, it's that Putin consistently seems to be doing things that are the opposite of what I think would be smart. So if anyone asks me what I think Putin is most likely to do, I would actually say that I think the most likely thing is that he will go for another wave of mobilization. I think there is a pretty good chance that his generals are going to convince him that if he just gives them another three or four or 500,000 troops, they can solve the problem. And as you can see from the matrix, that's actually the solution I think is the stupidest one of them all. But I also think it's the one Putin is most likely to choose. So we can argue about these different options and what variations there can be and what we think Putin is going to do. And I could have made an entire video about each of them, but I just wanted to give a quick overview. I think the most important thing to take away from this is that the current situation is unsustainable and Putin will have to do something. So we need to start thinking about what that might be, and I think whatever he does, it's going to be something that speaks to one of the options that I've described in this video. And that also means from a Western European point of view that we need to be prepared for the possibility that he might choose the most dangerous option. We might be heading into a military confrontation with Russia in the final phases of the war in Ukraine. And with all the uncertainty surrounding the United States and NATO, Europe needs to be ready to handle that situation on its own. * * * ### Sponsored segment But the military is not the only area where Europe needs to learn to stand on its own feet. Another area is digital sovereignty and gaining independence from American tech giants. And that's where this video's sponsor Proton comes into the picture. I use Proton Mail myself because I want my email to be hosted by a European service that is both secure and private. Proton has very high standards for those things, including zero access encryption. So not even Proton can read what's in your inbox. But in addition to that, it also just works very well. I think that's an important aspect as well. Tools that provide privacy and security also need to be easy to use and reliable so people will actually use them. Proton Mail is all of those things. Changing email providers can sometimes be a daunting task. That's why Proton has created migration tools to make it as easy as possible. you can move your emails, your contacts, your calendars from other providers such as Google in just a few clicks and it just takes a few minutes If you want to try Proton Mail and support the mission of moving Europe toward greater digital sovereignty, you can get started for free. Proton has a very generous free tier and most people will probably never need to upgrade to the paid plans. So they are really trying to make it as easy as possible to choose the European alternative to big tech. If you want to check out Proton Mail, you can click the link in the video description. And with that, I will say thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

What does the US get out of NATO? — And why Rubio is talking to Trump through the TV

In this video, I reflect on Marco Rubio's statements about whether the United States should leave NATO. It is remarkable that in all his communication about it, Rubio always makes sure to emphasize the benefits for the United States of being a member of NATO. It looks like the type of communication that is well known in Russia, where leading figures try to convey messages to the president through the media rather than through direct communication. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ It's been a while since I released a video because I've been very busy and also sick, but I thought I'd get back into it by making a pretty simple video about something that Marco Rubio said recently that I found interesting. It's about whether the United States should withdraw from NATO given that many NATO allies have been reluctant to help the United States with a war on Iran. I think it says something interesting both about what the United States actually gets out of being in NATO, but also about how communication works internally in the White House today. So let's talk about it. There are several interesting aspects to what Marco Rubio has been saying about NATO in the wake of the war in Iran. But before I go into those things, I think it would be helpful to just hear an example of how Marco Rubio talks about it. So here is Marco Rubio talking about a meeting he had with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. > Mr. Secretary, can you say in your meeting with Prime Minister Meloni whether you talked about the possibility of withdrawing U.S. troops from Italy as well as the possibility of the United States withdrawing from NATO altogether? > We didn't discuss any specifics like that, and that's a decision for the president to make. It's a decision every president makes. The fact of the matter, though, is—and I said publicly and I've said repeatedly—I've been a strong supporter of NATO throughout my career in the Senate and even now. One of the advantages of being in NATO is that it allows us to have forces deployed in Europe and bases that allow us a logistical ability to project power in case of contingencies. Well, we had a contingency, and some countries in Europe, like Spain as an example, denied us the use of those bases for a very important contingency. In some ways, the denial of those bases actually impeded the mission. Not severely, but it had a cost, and in fact, even created some unnecessary dangers. So if one of the main reasons why the U.S. is in NATO is the ability to have forces deployed in Europe that we could project to other contingencies, and now that's no longer the case, at least when it comes to some NATO members, that's a problem and has to be examined. But ultimately, that's a decision for the president to make. His team and people like myself and others will provide him with what those potential options are. But ultimately, he'll have to make that decision. He hasn't made those decisions yet. I think there are fundamentally three important things to say about what Marco Rubio said here. The first one is that it is going to make people angry in Europe. These statements are not going to be well received here. The reason is that Rubio essentially argues that the United States is engaged in NATO, not because it is interested in defending other alliance members, but rather because it enables the United States to project power outside of NATO. And that's a problematic statement because NATO is fundamentally a defensive alliance, and it's not in any of the founding documents of NATO that any member state needs to assist with wars of aggression that other member states might conduct around the world. So the way people hear Marco Rubio's statements here in Europe is that the United States doesn't really care about protecting the European allies against Russia. And that's kind of problematic because in Europe, it really seems like the most important task for the alliance at the moment is to defend against Russia. So many Europeans get angry when they hear Rubio saying these things. But I think it's important to understand that it doesn't really matter what the Europeans think here because Rubio is not actually talking to the Europeans. It sounds as if he is, but in reality, he's not. What Rubio is actually doing is trying to contribute to the American debate about NATO by framing the answer the way he does. The argument he's trying to bring to the table is that there are actually important benefits for the United States in being part of NATO, and that's an important perspective because many of the other top figures in the American administration don't really seem to share that perspective. They only complain about how the Europeans are useless as allies and how they try to take advantage of the United States and things like that. So what Rubio is trying to point out here is that there are actually significant advantages for the United States in having this global system of alliances that was built after the Second World War. Having allies across the globe has allowed the United States to project power worldwide by taking advantage of bases and infrastructure, intelligence networks, and all kinds of other things and resources that come along with having partners that are scattered around the globe in strategic positions. So when Rubio complains about how the Europeans have not allowed the United States to use those bases during the war on Iran, on first glance it sounds like criticism of the Europeans and that he's arguing that maybe the United States should perhaps withdraw from NATO. But in reality, what he's saying is that the Americans need to think very carefully before starting to dismantle that system that has given the United States this global reach as a military power. I think it's actually perfectly fair for American politicians to make that argument and to justify their contribution to NATO by looking at what kinds of benefits the United States gets out of these global alliances. It's a bit naive if Europeans think that the United States is only engaged in NATO for our benefit. The reality is that NATO is just one part of a global system of alliances that has, in fact, been extremely beneficial for the United States. It is this system that has made the United States a global superpower. It's also the system that's made the United States the richest country in the world. And that's also why I think it's an absolute tragedy for the United States that they are now dismantling this system because that is, in fact, what Donald Trump's policies are leading to. So there is something almost absurd about the richest country in the world complaining about how everyone else is taking advantage of them. But that is actually the message coming from many people at the top of the American system right now, from Trump, from Vance, from Hegseth, and others. And Rubio is trying to set up a counter-argument against those people and to point out that maybe it's not the greatest idea to withdraw from the alliances that have made the United States such a strong country over the last century. So that's the second point. Rubio is not actually talking to the Europeans here. He's trying to contribute to an American debate about engagement in the global alliance system and whether it's a good idea to withdraw from NATO. And of all the people at the top of the American administration, Rubio actually seems to be the one who understands what's at stake. The last thing I want to point out is that what Rubio is doing here says quite a lot about how things work inside the Trump administration today. If you've been following Russian politics for a longer period of time, this style of communication that Rubio demonstrates is going to be remarkably familiar. Because that's exactly how people in the circles around Putin have been trying to communicate for years. They don't have access to Putin personally, or they can't tell him directly what they think. So instead, they try to transmit messages to Putin through the media. And since they also can't say directly in the media that they disagree with Putin or that they think Putin might have missed something, what they do instead is wrap it in a container where ostensibly they are explaining to the public what Putin is doing and why it's brilliant and smart because it addresses this or that issue. But then they attach the message that they want to get through to Putin as if it were an issue that he's already trying to address, when in reality it's not. But it's something that they would like Putin to be aware of and they would like him to address. This message by Rubio smells exactly the same. He's trying to get a message through to Donald Trump about how the United States is actually benefiting from NATO and that it would be a bad idea to do anything drastic. But he's trying to conceal it in a way that makes it appear as if he's simply explaining to the public what kinds of considerations Donald Trump is already making. I think it says quite a lot about how things work inside the White House today that Rubio appears to be resorting to this type of public communication to get a message through to the leader. Rubio is, after all, both the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. But apparently, he does not have direct access to discuss these issues face-to-face with the president. Now, I don't think it's actually because Rubio doesn't have physical access to Donald Trump, but it does correlate with stories about how Trump is really difficult to deal with in face-to-face meetings. As his advisor, you're not really allowed to tell him something he doesn't know, and you are not allowed to appear to be lecturing him because he doesn't like that. And he also doesn't like to receive long briefings. So every message has to be a maximum of forty-five seconds long. But at the same time, it's also well known that Donald Trump likes to watch TV and to consume a lot of news that way. And what this type of communication from Rubio indicates is that his closest advisors apparently find it easier to reach the president through TV interviews than they do in actual physical meetings with him. Or at least that they feel what they tell him in private needs to be reinforced by making sure that he gets the same message again when he watches the news on TV in the evening. So I do think this message from Marco Rubio is interesting for several reasons. First, it does lay out the argument for why the United States actually benefits from this global system of alliances that has been built up over many decades and has made the United States the richest and strongest country in the world. But it also tells us something about how decision-making in the White House happens and how Donald Trump's closest advisors apparently feel the need to communicate with him through the media rather than doing it face-to-face. So suddenly we see this strange phenomenon from Russia that we've known for a while, where people try to influence the president's policies by pretending to explain in the media what the president is doing. That this phenomenon is beginning to show up in the American media landscape as well. And I think that's worth noticing. ### Book announcement Now, before I wrap up, I just want to mention that my book is finally out in international bookstores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other international retailers. The book actually came out in English around Christmas, but so far it's been kind of difficult to order internationally because you could only get it through bookstores in Denmark or you could get it directly from me. And unfortunately, that has meant that shipping costs have been very high. Actually, for most countries, the shipping costs have been higher than the price of the book itself. And obviously, that is not great. But now that you can get it in international bookstores, the costs are much more manageable. I'm going to leave a couple of links in the video description where you can get the book, but really you can just search for it anywhere and it should be easy to find. If you order it this way, it will be a paperback and not a hardcover like this one, but the words inside are exactly the same. I've also received quite a lot of requests for the audiobook. It is coming. It was supposed to be out a long time ago, but we ran into some problems with it. It's actually quite an interesting story. I will tell it at a later point, but the audiobook is coming and we're working hard on it. And with that, I am going to wrap it up. But if you found the video helpful or informative, then please leave it a like and remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon so you will get notifications when I publish new videos. And if you want to support the channel, you can get access to some bonus videos if you subscribe on my website, www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

When will Russians start protesting?

Putin's recent crackdown on internet freedom raises new questions about what it will take for Russians to start protesting against their government. In this video, I share some thoughts about when we might expect that to happen and discuss whether dissatisfaction with internet restrictions can lead to more widespread protests. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ What I want to do today is to address the question of when Russians will start protesting. This is, of course, one of the big questions that's been discussed a lot since the full-scale invasion in 2022. It's an important question for two reasons right now. One of them is that the prospect of protests in Russia is seen as something that might force Putin into ending the war in Ukraine. And the second reason is that we currently have an interesting situation with crackdowns on internet freedom, which have sparked protests in Russia in a way that we haven't seen before. It's still small scale, but the big question is, are these internet protests the beginning of a bigger movement or are they going to lead to nothing? So let's talk about it. Before going into the discussion about internet crackdowns and what that might lead to, it's helpful to have an idea of what it will take for Russians to start protesting in the first place. And this is something that's received quite a lot of attention during the war in Ukraine, because for people in the West and in Ukraine, it can be hard to understand why the Russians are not protesting. So I'm going to start with a theoretical discussion. When it comes to the question of Russian protests, there are different schools of thought. I'm going to describe three perspectives and I will be leaning heavily on the work of Professor Sam Greene from King's College in London. And I'm going to put a link in the video description to a blog post where he discusses some of these topics. The first perspective is what can be called the social contract theory. The idea here is that there is a kind of tacit agreement between the Russian elite and the population. The population will stay out of politics, and then in return, they will receive security and economic prosperity. This is a very common way to describe the Russian system, especially among Western analysts. The problem with the social contract theory is that it implies Russians would start protesting if the political elites stopped delivering on promises of security and prosperity. And indeed, that doesn't really seem to be the case. Putin has, in fact, delivered the exact opposite over the last few years. There's less security and less prosperity, but Russians are still not protesting. So the social contract theory is not actually very good at predicting when Russians will start protesting. The second theory is what Sam Greene calls passive adaptation. This theory is more popular among some Russian analysts, and I'd say it's also quite common to find among Ukrainians. The idea here is that Russians have become so accustomed over many years to hardship and bad interactions with the government that they have learned to just passively adapt to whatever the government throws at them. They know that the government is bad, but they have a very cynical attitude about it where they don't expect that any government could be better. So protesting doesn't really help because even if you remove the politicians that are in power, the ones that are replacing them will just be just as bad. So instead of protesting, what the Russians do, according to this theory, is that they just decouple from politics. They adapt to the situation and they try to get the best out of it. What that means is that we should not expect Russians to begin protesting as long as they still have the resources to make ends meet in their personal lives. Even if things get really bad, they are still willing to absorb that because they don't have any expectations from their politicians about actually doing anything good. They fully expect their politicians to make bad decisions, and as long as they can find ways to work around the system, then things are fine. The problem with the passive adaptation theory is that we have actually seen quite a few examples of different kinds of protests in Russia over the years. Most of them have not been sweeping demands for reforms or things like that, but instead they've been more local protests, something about specific causes that have managed to mobilize the population to some extent against the government. And in these cases, the government has often given in to the pressure and they've rolled back the proposal or plan or whatever people were angry about. So the passive adaptation theory is also not very good at predicting protests in Russia. The final theory is what Sam Greene refers to as aggressive immobility. The point here is that Russians are not just passively adapting to whatever the government imposes on them. Russians have indeed experienced lots of hardships and dysfunction, and they are very cynical about their government and politicians. But what they've done is to start to rely heavily on different kinds of coping mechanisms and ways to work around the system. This means that the lives of Russians depend heavily on their ability to continue using those coping mechanisms and for these workarounds to continue functioning. And that means that they are heavily dependent on the system not changing. The system may not be good today, but at least I know how it works and I have my workarounds. So the last thing the Russians want is for their government to start changing anything. They just want things to continue working the way they do because any change is dangerous and any change can break the coping mechanisms that I depend on to make my life work. So it's an extremely conservative position. That's why Sam Greene calls it aggressive immobility. Russians are not just passive, they are aggressively conservative. Even if the government is trying to do something good to make the system less dysfunctional, there are going to be protests against it because they don't want the system to change. So that's a bit about the academic debate about protests in Russia and when we might expect Russians to start protesting against Putin's policies. I find the aggressive immobility theory most convincing to me. It seems to best explain what's going on and when we have historically seen protests in Russia about different kinds of things. So if we work with that theory, what that suggests is that the interesting situations to look for if we want to be able to predict protests in Russia are those where the government takes steps that fundamentally change how society functions, because those are the situations that can lead to protests. It's not going to lead to protests just because the economic crisis is getting worse or things are hard. But if Putin starts tampering with the fundamentals of how Russian society operates, that's worth following because those are exactly the kinds of ingredients that can mobilize Russians into aggressive protests. And that's why the current turmoil regarding internet regulation is worth following, because it's playing with the basic infrastructure of how society works. It challenges many of the routines that Russians depend on in their daily lives. What's happening is that the Russian government has decided to bring the internet under control. This is a crackdown at a level that is far beyond what we've seen before. Russia, of course, has a long history of blocking certain websites or slowing down internet traffic on platforms like YouTube, for example. But what's happening right now is on a completely different scale. It seems that Putin has given the task to the second service of the FSB to implement whatever measures they deem necessary to get the internet under control for the Russians. And the idea is to have a whitelist of websites and services approved by the Russian government that Russians can access, and everything else will be impossible to access. This is actually quite difficult to do, technically speaking. So what Russians are experiencing right now is that the internet is, broadly speaking, becoming less and less usable. They can't use social media the way they used to. Telegram does not work. YouTube does not work. Instagram does not work, et cetera. Many websites don't work. They can't access their banks. They can't order pizza. They can't pay their taxis. Their bank cards often don't work. All these things depend on the internet, and this is what the FSB is currently attempting to block. Some of these things are not new. The Russian government has tried to ban Instagram for a long time, for example. But what is new is that they're also increasingly targeting VPNs. So that's a workaround Russians have started using. And what they do is they have VPNs on their phones and computers so that they can get around the restrictions. But now they've also decided to put an end to everyone just using a VPN to circumvent the blocks. So the Russian authorities are targeting VPN providers and there is a cat and mouse game going on. They block certain IP addresses that VPNs use, and then the VPNs change those IP addresses and this keeps going back and forth. But they've also implemented another measure. If you are a Russian business and you want your website to be on the whitelist of approved websites that Russians can access, then you need to block VPNs from accessing your website. And this makes it much more complicated for people to use VPNs. Essentially, it means that you have to turn your VPN on and off all the time, depending on which website you're visiting. And you can only write to people that currently have their VPN on, et cetera. So overall, Russians are experiencing that the internet is becoming increasingly unreliable and useless. And that's exactly the kind of thing that according to the theory about when Russians might protest has the right ingredients to potentially be something extraordinary. And that's why I think it's worth watching. And we have seen some fairly high-level Russian personalities expressing discontent with the direction that the government is taking here. We've seen protests among the Z-bloggers who depend heavily on Telegram to reach their audience. We've seen longtime Putin supporters like Ilya Remeslo, who suddenly come out against the authorities and demand that Putin be put on a war tribunal. Right now, there is an interesting case that involves a Russian Instagram glamour blogger named Victoria Bonya who has published some very critical videos about the direction of things in Russia. I think Bonya's case is especially interesting because this is a person who has not traditionally had any political views, but now suddenly she does. And she does so under the headline, "Mr. Putin, people are afraid of you, but I'm not". I've had discussions with people who say that this is just a Kremlin-controlled information operation, but I'm pretty sure that it's not. Her message hits all the right points to be something that is potentially dangerous. It's exactly about how the government is now altering the fundamentals of how society functions in a way that challenges people's coping mechanisms. The idea that this would be a Kremlin-controlled information operation could make sense if Putin were preparing to suddenly emerge as the big savior who reprimands the FSB and rolls back all the internet restrictions, and so people can go back to live the way they did before. But Putin is not preparing to do that. So I'm pretty sure that this is not something that the Kremlin has staged or initiated. Now, they're of course going to do damage control as best as they can. I would not be totally surprised if they tried to recruit Victoria Bonya, for example, into politics and have her run for Putin's party in the Duma elections in September or something like that. But I'm pretty sure that it's not something that the Kremlin has planned. And they don't like this situation because they know it's dangerous. And that leads to perhaps the bigger perspective in all this. Right now, there is the question about internet restrictions and how that is a government-enforced change in the structure of Russian society. This has the potential to mobilize Russians in protests against the government. But we are now at a point where due to the war in Ukraine, Putin will need to take multiple such steps in the future because the current system is broken. The war, in combination with the bad economy, will force him to make more and more changes that interfere directly in people's lives. The time when Putin could shield the Russian population from the war is approaching an end. So that is also the context in which we should see these internet crackdowns. They're trying to shape the information environment to lay the groundwork for future decisions that they know will be controversial. These steps will more directly interfere in people's lives, and they're exactly the kinds of changes that can mobilize that aggressive conservatism, that desire to keep things just as they were yesterday, and can lead to protests in Russian society. So even if you don't think these current internet crackdowns are going to lead to broader protests in Russia, it's absolutely worth following the developments in the coming time because there are going to be other things that might.

logicofwar.com

Ukraine's role in European security

In this video, I discuss Ukraine's role in European security and why Ukraine is an attractive alliance partner for European countries concerned about the potential loss of the United States as a security partner. Watch the video on the website, or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ With all the turmoil about NATO's future, it's important we have a conversation about the role of Ukraine in European security. In many ways, Ukraine will be key if European NATO countries want to continue deterring Russia from aggression, especially if the United States withdraws from the alliance. So let's talk about it. In discussions about the war in Ukraine and what European security will look like after the war, there's sometimes a tendency in the West to see Ukraine as a burden. Ukraine is described as someone who needs our assistance during the war, and then after the war they will need our security guarantees so they can stay safe and prevent another Russian attack. In that view, Ukraine is seen as someone who consumes resources from Western Europe rather than someone who gives something back. That perspective is problematic because it overlooks how important Ukraine actually is for European security, and it also gives a misleading impression of the military strength of the different countries in Europe. It suggests that Western Europe is stronger than Ukraine in military terms, and that's not true. So what I want to do here is go through why Ukraine is so important for European security. I'll focus on two aspects: military strength and geography. First, military strength. Many people have a misconception about why the Russians are struggling to make progress on the front line in eastern Ukraine. They think it's because Russia is weak, and therefore see the stalemate as evidence that Russia isn't as strong as sometimes described. That perception is wrong. The reason Russia is struggling to make progress is not that Russia is weak, but that Ukraine is very strong. Russia has the biggest army in Europe, but Ukraine has the second biggest. What’s happening in eastern Ukraine is a war between the two largest armies in Europe. It's important that Western Europe doesn't fool itself into thinking our armies would perform better than the Ukrainians are doing, because that's not true. The Ukrainian army is much bigger than the German, French, or British armies. It's a huge army, and it's combat proven. They have expertise and doctrine for modern drone warfare at a level we simply do not. So, if the United States is withdrawing from European security and Europe is losing the strongest military power in NATO, it's almost self-evident that we need to look around our neighborhood to see what other great military powers we could potentially ally with. Ukraine is an obvious choice. When the threat is the largest army in Europe, we need the second largest army on our side. Ukraine is a huge military power, and that's exactly who we need to be allied with right now. Second, geography. Ukraine is next to Russia and has a long land border with it, so being allied with Ukraine pushes the front line eastward, which is beneficial. But to fully understand why Ukraine's geography matters, we need to consider Belarus and the role it would play in a war over the Baltic states. When people talk about a potential war between NATO and Russia, the Baltic scenario often comes up—an attack on Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. If you look at the map, the land border between the Baltic states and Russia is not very long; the land border with Belarus is much longer. So a Russian attack on the Baltic states would almost inevitably have to go through Belarus. This includes fighting in the so-called Suwałki Gap between Belarus and Kaliningrad. That gap is often seen as the place where Russian forces would try to cut off the Baltic states from reinforcements by severing the land border between Poland and Lithuania. In an age of maritime drones, it might be very difficult to use maritime transport across the Baltic Sea, so the Suwałki Gap is extremely important for the Baltic states' defense. From NATO's perspective, the last thing we want is for Russian and Belarusian forces to be allowed to concentrate on Belarus's western and northwestern borders. What we want is for them to have to spread out their forces because they'll be facing threats from many directions, so they'll have fewer forces available for an attack on the Baltic states and the Suwałki corridor. This is where Ukraine comes in: Ukraine covers the entire southern border of Belarus. If you count Ukraine as part of the Western alliance, Belarus is almost surrounded by Western forces. The only safe border Belarus would have is the border to Russia in the east. If we want to pull Russian and Belarusian forces away from a front line between Belarus and the Baltic states, Ukraine has the near-perfect location to achieve that. If you look at this through the eyes of a Russian military planner preparing an attack on the Baltic states, they might view NATO forces in the area as something they could handle, because NATO doesn't have much forward presence there and Russia could probably mobilize faster. However, the presence of Europe's second-largest army standing on Belarus's southern border, allied with the people you're trying to attack, would seriously complicate their planning and could be a deal breaker. So Ukraine is vital for European NATO states' ability to deter Russia from aggression and potentially win a war. We need to elevate the discussion from how the coalition of the willing can provide security guarantees to Ukraine into more of a discussion about building a real mutual defense alliance with Ukraine. Ukraine is never going to be a NATO member because that requires unanimity and it's not there. So that's not going to happen. But we need to build something else that covers more or less the same. We can copy the same treaty, give it a different name, and call it the new European Defense Alliance. We need to discuss how Ukraine can support us, not just how we can support them. Security goes both ways. We might deploy forces to Ukraine as part of security guarantees so Russia won't attack again, but Ukraine could also deploy troops to, for example, the Baltic states. We could have a Ukrainian division in Lithuania. The point is, for our security, we need to formalize this alliance with Ukraine. At a time when the Americans are becoming unreliable as a security guarantee, Ukraine is an absolutely necessary partner. A third point in Ukraine's favor is determination. In addition to a huge army and important military geography, Ukrainians have extraordinary determination to fight Russia. You won't find anyone in the world with greater determination to stand up to Russian aggression, and that's important because it means Ukraine will be reliable. We can trust they'll be ready to fight if needed, and that political determination is not something we can take for granted with all the other NATO countries right now. I'll end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, give it a like. If you want access to bonus videos and want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Will higher oil prices save the Russian economy?

In this video, I discuss whether the war in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will save Russia's war economy. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. I am again experimenting with a new video player, so if you run into problems, please let me know in the comments. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Hi. It has received a lot of attention that the oil prices are going up. I think that's pretty hard to miss, and that's a result of the war in the Middle East and the fact that Iran is blocking the Strait of Hormuz. This benefits Russia in the sense that the oil prices are going up, and they export oil, so they make more money. Until recently, Russia was actually selling oil at a loss because they need to give discounts because of all the sanctions and the risks of secondary sanctions on the buyers of Russian oil. So they need to give discounts to countries such as China, India, etc. to take Russian oil. And they were actually selling that at a loss a few months ago. But now the oil prices are very high and Russia is again selling oil at a profit. So there's a lot of talk about how the Russian economy is now being saved by this war in the Middle East and the fact that the oil prices are high. And I just want to add a few things to nuance that picture a little bit. I think we should be careful not to overestimate the extent to which this is helping Russia and how the Russian war economy is all of a sudden great and sustainable. First I will say that the Russian economy is overall just really bad. They have run out of money. They are printing money. The way they are doing that in practice is that the central bank is giving money to the banks, which is then purchasing bonds from the government so that money runs back into the state budget. But basically, that's just the modern version of printing money. They have a very high degree of people who cannot pay off their debts. The banks are weak. There is a risk of a banking crisis. Inflation is high. Pretty much everything in the Russian economy is bad. And then now we have this thing with the oil prices going up, and that helps a little bit. But overall, all the indicators are bad. And that also means that the Russian economy is in an extremely bad shape to handle rising global inflation. Russia still imports many things from other countries. They might not be able to import things directly from many Western countries, but they can then do it through middlemen and evade sanctions in that way. That means that if there is inflation globally, the prices of those things will also increase, and that will further push to inflation in Russia. And their economy is just not geared to handle that. So the things that we see actually is that the Russian Central Bank and different kinds of financial institutions in Russia are very concerned about the situation in the Middle East. They're not at all celebrating that the oil prices are high right now. They are instead talking about the risks of increased inflation as a result of that. So I think it's important to be aware that things are not necessarily great just because the oil price is high for Russia. And another thing I think it's also important that we don't miss is the fact that Ukraine's long-range strikes are getting more and more impactful on Russia's ability to export oil. Just this week, we've seen massive strikes on the ports in the Baltic Sea. That is the port in Primorsk, the port in Ust-Luga, and the port in Vyborg, all close to St. Petersburg. These are massive strikes. If we look at the capabilities that Ukraine had in 2025 when they started hitting Russian oil refineries, that was impactful in the sense that there were suddenly many strikes. Ukraine suddenly had the capability to hit these things that they didn't have before in regular attacks. But they were still small because they were smaller drones with smaller warheads. But what we're seeing now is much larger units that Ukraine can field. It's missiles. In the case of these attacks this week in the Baltic Sea, it's an airplane kind of things fitted with large warheads. So, these are very damaging strikes. And Ukraine suddenly has the capability to do that. Right now, Russia has three of these very large ports that they use for oil exports. Two of them have been struck this week. It's the one in Primorsk and the one in Ust-Luga. The third one is in Novorossiysk in the Black Sea, which has already been hit. So Ukraine has taken out the three large ports that Russia uses for oil exports. Currently, it's assessed that about 40% of Russia's export capacity has been taken out in one way or another as a result of Ukrainian strikes and the war in general. And this is, of course, going to continue. Ukraine is not going to stop here, especially with rising oil prices. They're not going to just sit around and look at the Russians suddenly making their war economy sustainable as a result of rising global oil prices. So I think it's important that we are just aware that despite this thing going on in the Middle East, the Russian war economy is still actually pretty screwed. And there are still many things that point to this being a very, very tough year for Russia. And of course, there is also still the possibility that the war in the Middle East could be sorted out and the oil prices might be going down again in a few months. So that's just what I wanted to add here, that it's more complicated and things are still tough for the Russian economy. See you next time.

logicofwar.com

Trump, Putin, and the war in Iran

In this video, I discuss what the war in Iran reveals about the relationship between Trump and Putin. Many people assume that Trump is a Russian agent who always acts in Russia's interests, but the reality is more complex. I also discuss how Biden providing US weapons to Ukraine has made it possible for Trump to wage a war on Iran without being too concerned about Russia's position. Watch the video on the website, or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ** _Transcript:_** The American War in Iran raises some important questions about the relationship between the United States and Russia. Allegedly, the Russians are providing targeting data to the Iranians so that they can more efficiently hit American targets. And overall, I think it's fair to say that the Russians are not happy about the fact that the Americans are now waging another regime-change war in the Middle East. This seriously challenges this assumption that many people have that Donald Trump is secretly some kind of Russian agent. What I want to do in this video is to use this war as a way to examine the relationship between Russia and the United States and to discuss how I think we should better understand it. So let's talk about it. The war in Iran does not seem to be particularly well thought out. From a strategic point of view, it's very unclear what the Trump administration is trying to achieve, and it also appears to be dragging on and taking much longer than they intended it to do. So there's a lot of uncertainty about where that war will go, what will happen and whether the Trump administration is now heading towards getting their own version of a three-day war that turns into a year-long conflict. But what I want to do in this video is to focus on another aspect of the war where I don't think there is all that much uncertainty. I think this war demonstrates something that is important about the relationship between the Trump administration and the Putin regime in Russia. To begin with the obvious, it shows that Trump is not a Russian agent. There is this story on social media that Trump was recruited by the Russians a long time ago, and his code name is Agent Krasnov, and he was installed into the White House as a Russian agent. And that's not true. The Russians are really struggling with Trump because they don't know how to deal with him. He's so unpredictable. It's a huge challenge to them, just as it is to us. In some ways, they can find common ground with Trump. For example, they have very similar views on what a good end state would be regarding the war in Ukraine. They also have ways of influencing him that they did not have with former U.S. presidents. This comes down to how Trump personally views Putin. He has this belief that he and Putin have some kind of special relationship, and that's something that the Russians can use in negotiations. But there are also many areas where the United States under Trump has acted in ways that are directly contrary to Russian interests. Russia did not want this war in Iran. They did not want the Americans to kill the Ayatollah. They also did not want Trump to take out Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. But aside from those spectacular examples, there are also many lower profile foreign policy steps that the Trump administration has taken that are extremely frustrating from Moscow's point of view. The Americans have tried to expand their influence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, for example. We had J.D. Vance visiting Armenia and Azerbaijan recently. These are things that annoy the bejesus out of the Putin regime in Moscow. So we need to understand that when Trump and Putin find common ground on questions such as Ukraine, it's not because Trump is a Russian agent. And it's not because Trump always agrees with the Russians. It's just that in this particular case, he actually shares the view that the Russians have on how this war should end. So, it says a lot about how Trump feels about Europe and the Europeans and how he sees European liberal democracies and how he sees that as a threat that should be undermined. He shares that view with Putin. And it says something about how he believes that they can make business deals with the Russians and how that they can make more money with the Russians than they can with the Ukrainians. But it does not show that the United States and Russia are generally aligned on all issues because that's clearly not the case. Another fairly obvious point is that what's happening in Iran right now is largely an expression of how Russia has lost power on the world stage as a result of the war in Ukraine. It highlights Russian weakness. If this had happened just five years ago, the United States would have had to consider Russia's position much more carefully before starting a war in Iran. They would have been concerned about how Russia would react, and what role are they going to play. What if there is an escalation in the Middle East? What's Russia going to do? Can they escalate in other places around the world? Five years ago, the Russians would also almost certainly have been present on the ground in Iran. Not with official Russian forces, but with private military companies such as the Wagner Group. They would have been present there with sophisticated systems. They could assist with air defense, but they would also be there with forces that could help the Iranian security forces and make sure to keep the population under control and prevent that regime change would happen. We would also see the Russian Navy operating in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Persian Gulf. They would have been there to complicate the maritime operations by the US Navy. Russia was also back then in a much stronger economic position. They had a very strong position in energy exports, and the Trump administration would have had to consider the Russian stance because Russia could influence financial stability in Europe and the United States. But today, Russia has lost a lot of that power, and that's the reason why the United States and Israel could start a war with Iran without thinking too much about the Russian position on this. And it's also why the United States can then suddenly start to gain influence in other areas, such as Central Asia and the South Caucasus, where Russia has traditionally been very strong, but now they are weak. The third point is that the reason Russia is weak today is because of the war in Ukraine. Four years of war of attrition have degraded Russia's ability to act as a great power. To some extent, this is also a kind of obvious point. You don't have to be a genius to understand that it's the war in Ukraine that has created the situation. It has weakened Russia and reduced the resources that they have available for other purposes. But when you follow the messaging from Donald Trump and the White House, it doesn't seem all that obvious to them. It's like they don't see the connection. Donald Trump and Karoline Leavitt have argued that the United States has a problem in the war with Iran because there is a shortage of certain munitions, and that the reason for that is that Joe Biden provided these weapons to Ukraine. So their argument is that the United States would be in a stronger position against Iran if Ukraine had not received these weapons. That argument is not particularly wise because it's precisely due to Joe Biden providing these weapons to Ukraine that Russian influence in the Middle East is weaker today and why the United States has been able to attack Iran without being too worried about the Russian reaction. So, from the perspective of great power competition, it was a good idea to provide those weapons to Ukraine. It was a smart move because it opened opportunities for the United States in other places, and that's what the Trump administration is capitalizing on now. That leads to the last question that I want to cover in this video, which is: Why is it that the Russians are now supporting the Iranians with targeting data on American military assets? There are actually two dimensions to this question. The first one is: Why are they only providing targeting data and not more substantial help? And the reason for that is what I covered before, that Russia has been weakened by the war in Ukraine. But the other aspect is, why are the Russians doing this when on other issues, such as the peace talks in Ukraine, they seem to have more common ground with the American administration? There are several layers to the answer to this question. The first is that the Russians want to do the same to the Americans as the Biden administration did to them. They would also like to see the Americans bogged down in a difficult war that consumes a lot of resources and weakens America in the long run. Another reason is that Putin genuinely despises this American habit of regime change in foreign countries. This is the second time that Donald Trump has done this in just a few months, and he absolutely wants Donald Trump to stop doing this. And the way to achieve that is to ensure that it turns into a really bad experience, so Donald Trump does not want to do it anymore. So in that sense, it's about Putin trying to do what he can to avoid regime change in other places, such as in Cuba, for example, where Donald Trump is also talking about regime change. And finally, it's about the oil price. The Russian economy is really bad right now, and the only thing that can really give them some relief is if the oil price goes up. So now that the Americans have started a war in Iran, Putin would obviously like the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz so this can trigger a global oil crisis. If he can help them do that, then that would be a win for Russia. So those are some things that I think we can say about the relationship between Trump and Putin based on what we're seeing in Iran that go beyond this idea that Trump is a Russian agent and that he always just does what the Russians want. We need a more nuanced understanding of that relationship if we want to be able to explain what's going on. Trump is not a Russian agent and Putin and Trump are not aligned on all issues. There are significant disagreements, and the Trump administration is capitalizing on the fact that Russia has been weakened due to the war in Ukraine and is unable to exercise power in the same way that they could just a few years ago. So when Biden provided the weapons to Ukraine, that helped set the conditions for what Trump is doing now and made it possible for Trump to wage this war in Iran. And now the Russians are providing targeting data to Iran because they would like to see the United States also getting bogged down in a war and they also want to see if they can use this to drive up the oil prices to help their economy. I'm going to end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications whenever I upload new videos. If you want to support the channel, you can also get access to some bonus videos if you subscribe on my website www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

What to expect in year five of Russia's invasion?

In this video, I discuss some things to expect in year five of the war. I'd love to hear your opinions about the format. I hired an editor for this video as an experiment, and it's a lot different from what I usually do. I have for a long time thought about outsourcing that part of the workflow because it takes a lot of time, and frankly I don't particularly enjoy it. But do you think this format works for my content? You can watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ We've now entered year five of the full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia. In this video, I want to share some thoughts about what we can expect in the coming year and what to look out for. Obviously, we can't predict the future, but it can still be useful to reflect on where we are. I want to start with the broad picture of where the war is and where it's going. The big picture is still that this is a war of attrition and the two sides are wearing each other down until the point where one of them is likely to gain the other hand. Wars of attrition tend to take a very long time because the determination on both sides to find solutions and to keep the war going is very strong. Wars of attrition are characterized by a very long attritional phase where the fighting continues and there is a lot of destruction but both sides are still able to make things work and sustain the fight. The last couple of years of this war has been this kind of middle phase where the fighting just continues and the two sides are wearing each other down. At the beginning of year five of the war, we are approaching the end of this middle phase. We're getting closer to the point where this current level of attrition becomes unsustainable. And the deciding factor is going to be the economy. It's the economy that decides which of the two sides, Ukraine or Russia, that can continue the longest. When Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not result in a quick victory, then Vladimir Putin essentially had two choices. Either he could go for this war of attrition, or he could find some way to end the war early by declaring victory and going home. He chose the war of attrition. And he did that knowing that the countries that supported Ukraine at the time had a vastly greater economic potential than Russia did. So essentially, his bet was that Russia would win through determination, and that Ukraine supporters would lose interest in the war and give up. And he was right about the United States. The United States has stopped supporting Ukraine and is no longer providing military aid. But he was wrong about Europe. The consequences of Ukraine losing the war would be really bad for the rest of the European countries. So it's not really an option for the Western European countries to let Ukraine lose. And therefore we've seen European support remain high. We can always discuss whether they should provide even more help to help Ukraine and the war faster. But the basic level of support is quite robust. But on the Russian side, it's quite clear that the economy is now struggling. Pretty much everything about the Russian economy is bad. The war economy had a boom at the beginning of the war. That's quite normal. There's a lot of money being pumped into society. And that boom lasted for about three years. But in the fourth year of the war that has now ended, it became clear that this type of war economy is unsustainable and that Putin's war effort is essentially on a countdown until the economy can't sustain it anymore. The Russians are going to do whatever they can to ensure that the defense industry will get the resources that it needs to continue the war for as long as possible, while other parts of society, they will just then have to suffer to support the military effort. But it's not possible to do this indefinitely, and eventually this will lead to a decline in Russian military capacity. So what I'm saying here is that the big picture is that Russia is losing this war of attrition and that year five of the war is going to be the year when this becomes obvious. And this also means that the things that I will highlight as important to watch for in the coming year will be those that move in that direction. It's always important to think about alternative outcomes and how your assumptions might be wrong, but that's not really what this video is about. What I want to do here is to name some of the things that are most likely to happen and not all the other things that I think are less likely to happen. So that was really the first thing that I think we should expect in year five of the war, that it will become obvious that Russia's war economy is unsustainable. And that will create a dilemma for Putin because to save the economy, he would have to end the war. But if he ends the war, then Russia will not achieve its war aims, which from a Russian perspective is the same as losing the war. The big question is whether we will suddenly see Russia beginning to engage in the peace negotiations with a more realistic approach and a willingness to find solutions. So far, we've seen nothing of that. But I will not rule out the possibility that it will happen over the coming year as the Russian economy deteriorates. Ultimately, the big question is whether Putin believes that the war economy poses such an existential threat to his regime that he must address it, even if that means ending the war and at least postponing his imperial ambitions. Personally, I doubt it. I think there is a greater chance that he will insist on continuing the war, but I won't entirely rule out the possibility that he could reach the opposite conclusion and that suddenly over the coming year we may see Russia becoming more interested in a negotiated solution. Importantly, that of course does not automatically mean that the war between Ukraine and Russia will end or that they will achieve a peace deal. It just means that Russia will engage in the negotiations in better faith. The next thing to watch out for is whether there will be another large wave of forced mobilization in Russia. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the Russian military to replace its losses. Over the last couple of months, it appears that the Russian military has actually lost more soldiers than they've been able to recruit, meaning that the Russian military is actually declining in size. One reason for this is that the Russian military has relied on voluntary mobilization, and this means that people are signing up for military service in exchange for some very large salaries and substantial bonuses. There are essentially two problems with this way of manning the Russian military. The first one is that there is a limit to how many people even in Russia are willing to sign up for a bloody war for large bonuses. And the other problem is that it's really expensive. You end up paying a lot of money to people that you will need to replace in a couple of weeks because they died in the meantime. And in a time when the Russian economy is under stress, then there's just not going to be enough money to keep doing that. So I think it's likely that we will see Russia move towards more forced mobilization over the coming year. They will do that in an effort to try to make the war both more sustainable and also more affordable. I also think it's likely that over the coming year we will see more protests inside Russia. It will not be anti-war protests about how it's a mistake to wage war on Ukraine or something like that, but it would be about all kinds of other issues, such as protests about the bad economy and the cost of living, or protests about forced mobilization, or protests about how those who were mobilized in 2022 have not been allowed to return home or protests from the pro-war community about how the Putin government has been unable to achieve its stated war aims and how the general staff is incompetent. So many different avenues of protest and the response from the Putin government will be more repression. We've already seen how they are cracking down on social media platforms such as Telegram and this is something that they do in anticipation of protests and trouble that lies ahead. It's a way of making repression possible. On the front line, I think it's fair to say that there is already a deadlock. That's been the case for a long time. But that deadlock will get even worse over the coming year. It will become even more difficult for the Russians to make progress. The key aspect to watch for is whether Ukrainian counterattacks will actually become so successful that they reverse the overall trend. So far, the picture has been that every month Russia has been gaining territory. I think it's likely that over the coming year, we will see at least some months where the Ukrainians gain more territory than they lose. This does not mean that the Ukrainians will suddenly expel the Russians from all the occupied territories. That would require a complete collapse on the Russian side. But it does mean that when Putin looks at the Russian gains over the last 30 days at the end of the month, then he will see a negative number. And that is something that would seriously challenge Putin's narrative about the war and the story that they're trying to tell in the Russian media about how Russia is winning. The air war is going to intensify. Both sides will increase the production of long-range missiles and drones, and we will see new record-breaking airstrikes. This winter, which is now about to end, has been the worst for Ukrainian civilians in the war so far. And unfortunately, I think there's a chance that next winter might be even worse. So it's worth starting to think about how to prepare for next winter. This includes both making sure that the necessary air defense assets are in place, but also finding ways to better address the problems that arise. The last thing I will mention is that I think we should expect over the coming year that Russia's hyper war against Western Europe will intensify. As I had mentioned in the beginning of this video, the reason Russia is losing the war is that Europe keeps supporting Ukraine and that this determination to ensuring that Ukraine prevails has been stronger than Putin expected. This means that what stands between Putin and victory is Western Europe. And if he can persuade the Western Europeans to stop supporting Ukraine, he will win the war. In the military, we have this idea of the center of gravity. If I were to conduct a center of gravity analysis of Russia's war effort, I would probably identify Western European support for Ukraine as the center of gravity that Russia needs to target in order to create the changes that are necessary to win the war. So I think it's very likely that they are going to increase the pressure on Western Europe through their hybrid campaign. I would not rule out even the possibility that they might escalate this to a level of open conflict, which is sort of higher than what is usually termed hybrid warfare and more into the realm of actual military confrontation. And that's because this is necessary. If Putin wants to win the war, he really does not have any alternative but to intensify the direct attacks on Western Europe. So I think the Western Europeans better need to be prepared for that. So those were some of the things that I think we should look out for and expect in the fifth year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This will be the year when it becomes obvious that Russia's war economy cannot sustain the current level of intensity in the conflict. It's likely that we will see another wave of forced mobilization in Russia to prolong the war and to make it more sustainable. It is also possible, maybe not likely, but at least possible that we will see the Russians begin to engage in more realistic peace negotiations because it becomes obvious to them that they need to find a way to decrease the intensity of the war. I also think it will be the year when it becomes even more difficult for the Russians to make progress on the front line. We are likely to see months when the Russians actually lose territory rather than gaining it. And we will see the air war intensify on both sides. And with that, there will be even worse consequences for the civilian population. Finally, we are also likely to see an intensification of Russia's hybrid war on Western Europe. There are many other things that one could point to, but those are the things that I decided to include in this video. Before I end, I'm going to say something I thought I'd never hear myself saying, but here's a word from the sponsor of this video, which is Proton. But before I do that, let me just explain why I now have a sponsor for the video. When you're a creator on YouTube, you are constantly approached by companies that want you to talk about their products. And so far, I've always said no because I don't think everything has to be commercialized. But I also have some ideas about how I would like to improve my videos and what I want to do with the channel. And those ideas require that the videos generate a bit more money than what I can get from YouTube ad revenue alone. So when Proton came to me with an idea for a campaign about digital sovereignty and creating European alternatives to American big tech, which is a cause that I genuinely believe in and have talked about on the channel before, then I said yes, because it creates some exciting opportunities for the channel. Now, that was not actually the sponsored segment. That was just me explaining why there now is a sponsor. Here's the actual sponsored segment. Proton is a European alternative to American big tech. They have Proton Mail, Proton Drive with documents and spreadsheets. They have a VPN, a password manager, the whole thing. I think Proton plays a vital role in creating European independence from American tech companies, which is really important given the geopolitical pressure that Europe is under right now. The reason Proton is so important is that it is already well established and it works very well. It's an alternative that you can actually use right away. They have more than 100 million users. I have been a user of Proton Mail for years and it works great. The reason I started using ProtonMail was because of the privacy. It's based in Switzerland, which has strong privacy laws, and Proton has built in very strong encryption. So if you send an email between two ProtonMail accounts, it has what's called zero access encryption. So not even Proton can read your emails. But aside from that, it's just very easy to use and I enjoy using their mail client, they also have a generous free tier. So you can get started for free. I think the free tier is more than enough for most people. Personally, I actually have a paid account because I use some of the premium features. I use custom domains. So if you send an email to me at my email address, it will actually go to Proton. But if you don't need that, then the free tier is very good. So if you care about digital sovereignty and becoming less dependent on American big tech, I recommend checking out Proton. The link is in the video description. So thank you to Proton for sponsoring this video, and I look forward to talking to you all again very soon.

logicofwar.com

How are the peace talks going?

<p>In this video, I give a rather pessimistic status on the peace talks. Despite Trump's attempts at brokering a deal, almost no progress has been made.</p><p>Watch the video <a href="https://www.logicofwar.com/how-are-the-peace-talks-going/" rel="noreferrer">on the website</a> or read the transcript below.</p><p>Best,<br />Anders</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><a href="https://www.logicofwar.com/how-are-the-peace-talks-going/"><img src="https://www.logicofwar.com/content/images/2026/02/Sk--rmbillede-2026-02-06-kl.-23.24.18.png" class="kg-image" alt="" loading="lazy" width="1470" height="832" srcset="https://www.logicofwar.com/content/images/size/w600/2026/02/Sk--rmbillede-2026-02-06-kl.-23.24.18.png 600w, https://www.logicofwar.com/content/images/size/w1000/2026/02/Sk--rmbillede-2026-02-06-kl.-23.24.18.png 1000w, https://www.logicofwar.com/content/images/2026/02/Sk--rmbillede-2026-02-06-kl.-23.24.18.png 1470w" /></a></figure><hr /><h3 id="transcript"><em>Transcript:</em></h3><p>This week, there was another round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine about a peace deal, and unsurprisingly, it ended without visible progress. A deal was made about the exchange of prisoners of war, but it's quite normal that they do that as a kind of good faith gesture when they have negotiations.</p><p>What I want to do in this video is to give an update on the ongoing negotiations. It's difficult for most people to keep track of all the different messages, and when you follow the news, it can be very hard to get a clear idea of how close we actually are to peace. So let's talk about it.</p><p>The big picture is quite simple. Despite the fact that Donald Trump has now, for over a year, tried to broker a peace deal, there's been almost no movement. The positions of both Russia and Ukraine are almost unchanged. There have been small movements on both sides, but in the big picture, the two sides don't seem much closer to each other now than they were when Donald Trump came into office.</p><p>The way we can see that is that there is almost no movement when the Russians and the Ukrainians express their positions. They are saying the same things that they've been saying all along. They still express the same requirements for a peace settlement. And we're not seeing signs that, if we follow their messages, that they are particularly preparing the public or the military or the political elites for the necessity to make compromises on some of those demands that they are making.</p><p>The reason it's so confusing to follow the peace negotiations is that when the two sides talk about talks, not about their demands, but how they see the negotiations, then what they will be expressing that things are going great. They say that they have had great discussions and much progress has been made. There is no final deals yet, but the talks themselves are going well. This has been the message from the Russians, from the Ukrainians, and also from the Americans.</p><p>So, if you follow the talk about the talks, you might get the impression that there is a lot of progress and that we could be very close to a breakthrough in the negotiations. But if you follow the conversation about the kinds of concessions that either side is willing to make or that they expect the other side to make, it's pretty clear that there is almost no movement at all.</p><p>It's been said many times that the reason that they do that is because both Russia and Ukraine are eager to give the Americans the impression that they are very willing to engage in peace talks, but that the obstacle to peace is the other side. Because both sides want Donald Trump to get angry at the other side and to do something to punish them so that they will fall into line.</p><p>One interesting development over the last couple of months is that increasingly, the two sides are beginning to give the impression that a deal has actually already been made. So there is a nuance there. It's not just that they are willing to engage in talks, but a deal is actually almost made, and it only needs to be finalized.</p><p>We've seen that from the Ukrainians and the Americans who have been talking a lot about how they are 95% done with a peace deal. There's only one topic that's not entirely decided, where discussions are still ongoing, but that's the only one. And then they are very close. And that one topic is territory. Specifically, it's the territory of the Donbas region, where there is disagreement about where the future border should be. Should it be where the current frontline is? Or does Ukraine need to withdraw and cede some more territory to Russia?</p><p>And then in parallel to this, there has been another discussion about security guarantees. And that deal is also more or less finalized. It's ready to be signed. That's been the message from the Ukrainians. It just needs the Americans and the European countries in the so-called coalition of the willing to sign this paper. And then it's done.</p><p>So there's not actually one agreement anymore. There are two. It's two different agreements, but they are both almost done. They just need to be finalized and signed into action by the relevant parties.</p><p>From the Russian perspective, we've seen similar rhetoric being used, but in a different way. They refer to the understandings that were reached at the Anchorage Summit and how they should be the foundation for any future talks. The Anchorage Summit was the meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska back in August. At the time, it was frankly not clear that they had reached any meaningful understandings about anything. In fact, the summit itself seemed quite a disappointment for Trump. He did not seem impressed with the results he was able to get with Putin. But now the Russians are talking about this meeting as if some kind of protocol was agreed upon between Trump and Putin and how that is the foundation for future talks.</p><p>So it's a fascinating situation where both sides keep referring to agreements that they've allegedly made with the United States in meetings where the other side was not present. And now the other side just has to accept that this is the established fact because it's already been agreed upon with the Americans.</p><p>It's hard to say exactly what has and has not been agreed upon with Americans. But it's interesting that things have moved from the two sides wanting to appear eager for negotiations and open to all the ideas that Trump might have to now increasingly, they seem to be trying to catch the Americans and to tie them down into positions that align with their own. Both sides are trying to spin the narrative so that instead of it being up to them to deliver something to these negotiations, now it's up to the Americans to uphold their part of agreements that were already made.</p><p>If we take the claims one by one, it's clear that they don't holp up. Let's first begin with the Russian claim that Trump and Putin reached some sort of agreement in Alaska. It's obviously a silly claim because Ukraine was not present at that meeting, and so many things have happened since then. The European countries have stepped up to support Ukraine and provided more financial aid so Ukraine can continue the fight, for example.</p><p>It's possible that Trump and Putin reached some kind of agreement about something back in August, but that would then have been the foundation for the 28-point plan that the Americans presented to Ukraine back in November. And this 28-point plan did not gain any traction at all. It was rejected, and it was clearly not a path forward. And therefore, when the Russians insist that discussions with Trump from six months ago need to be the foundation now, despite this already being tried and clearly being an unrealistic path forward, then basically that's the same as rejecting any path forward.</p><p>And on the Ukrainian side, the interesting claim is that there is not single agreement about peace anymore. Instead, it's now been split into two separate agreements. One is about peace with Russia, and the other is about security guarantees. And the latter is an agreement with the Western countries, and it doesn't really influence Russia at all.</p><p>On the one hand, if you have sympathy for Ukraine, you can understand this viewpoint that Russia should not have influence over Ukraine's future alliances or the kinds of security arrangements that Ukraine can make with Western countries. But at the same time, I also think it's rather silly to pretend that you can separate these two issues, because the question about security guarantees is one of the fundamental reasons why Russia is waging the war in Ukraine in the first place. Russia wants political control over all of Ukraine, and that means that Ukraine can't have security guarantees that prevent Russia from having that influence.</p><p>So Ukraine's claim that the only unfinished question is territory, is just not accurate. The Ukrainians have just taken all the other questions that are important to Russia and decided that Russia does not get to have influence on them. And that's how they get down to the claim that there is only one discussion point left. But of course, Russia is not going to accept that.</p><p>About the question of territory, I think there are many misunderstandings, and I want to address that. To suggest that this is merely a final issue that needs solving is a massive understatement. It's a huge issue with immense disagreement. And it's almost impossible to see how either side could compromise on their positions.</p><p>The thing to understand about territory in the Donbas region is that we're not just talking about territory or even the people who live there. We're also talking about military fortifications. What the Russians are demanding is for Ukraine to abandon their best and most fortified defensive positions, to hand them over to the Russians, let the Russians cross those fortifications without a fight, bring their entire army across, and then trust that the Russians will not continue to attack afterwards. It's just not going to happen.</p><p>The reality is that there is much talk about security guarantees for Ukraine right now, but those fortifications in the Donbas are Ukraine's best security guarantee. It will take the Russians half a million more casualties to get through those fortifications. And that is a much more reliable security guarantee than any promises that Donald Trump or the coalition of the willing might make to Ukraine.</p><p>So Ukraine is not going to compromise on this issue. They're not going to hand over their best defensive lines to the Russians without a fight because that would be suicide.</p><p>So overall, I think the negotiations are going very poorly. There is little reason for any kind of optimism about solutions to be found anytime soon. The two sides are trying in different creative ways to reframe their positions to give the impression of progress that is in their favor. But in reality, they haven't really moved at all.</p><p>So I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump's attempts at peace have been a failure so far. The things he's been doing have not substantially moved the conflict closer to an ending. And when you see the political spectacle on the news and there's talk about peace and peace talks again, be aware that this is not a productive process. There is no reason to be particularly optimistic about anything that's coming out of it, even though the representatives of all the different sides will all be saying that the talks are going great. This is part of the tactics of negotiations right now, and the reality is that the talks are not going great.</p><p>So unfortunately, I think we should be prepared for the fact that these talks are going to continue without any meaningful results. And in the meantime, the war will continue until one of the two sides becomes so weak that they have no alternative to give in to the demands of the other side.</p><p>Before I finish, I just want to make a quick announcement. My last video here on the channel was about Trump and Greenland. Since then, the threat of an American invasion of Greenland seems to have somewhat faded. I made a video about it and why it ended as it did. But I did not put it here on YouTube. I placed it on my website, www.logicowar.com. It's not behind a paywall. So if you want to see it, you can click on <a href="https://www.logicofwar.com/why-trump-retreated-on-greenland/" rel="noreferrer">the link</a> that I'm going to put in the video description.</p><p>And with that, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I upload new videos. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.</p>

logicofwar.com

Why Trump retreated on Greenland: When small states deter larger ones

In this video, I discuss the preliminary resolution of the Greenland crisis and why Trump decided to step back from his maximalist demands of owning Greenland. This crisis serves as a good example of how even small states can apply military force to deter great powers from aggression. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Hi. It looks like the Greenland Crisis is over. I've been thinking about how I should cover it, because I made a YouTube video on the Greenland Crisis, and it got quite a lot of attention, and I think many people would be curious to hear my take on how we ended up where we did. But I think my next video on YouTube is going to be about something else. So what I'm going to do that is I'm going to put this video out here on my website, and I'm going to do it without the paywall. That way people can watch it who don't usually subscribe, and maybe people can also get an idea about what it is I'm talking about, when I say that you can get access to bonus videos by subscribing here on logicofwar.com. But I think what happened was quite clearly that Donald Trump gave up. In the case of Greenland, he climbed down the tree and he found a way out of this crisis. There is now a lot of talk about how there are negotiations and Donald Trump got some kind of diplomatic victory by getting some concessions from NATO and from Denmark. I don't really see that. I mean, there is no deal right now, and it's quite unclear exactly what the talks with Rutte actually meant, aside from them agreeing that there will be talks. So, the agreement is essentially that there will be talks about a potential future agreement. What it looks like now is that the agreement between Denmark and the United States from 1951, which gave the United States very, very extensive access to Greenland, might be reopened and there might be room for some adjustments to it. But at the same time, it's also clear that we're not at all at the point where the United States is going to own Greenland or anything like it. And it's quite difficult to see actually how much more they could get than what is already in the existing agreement. So, I think it looks like Donald Trump is doing his best to sell the status quo as a victory. The art of the deal! And how did we end up there? The way I see it, Denmark and the European countries did a couple of things. First, all the time during this, they kept the diplomatic track open. We saw that first with the Danish and the Greenlandic foreign ministers going to Washington, D.C. for negotiations with Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, and them agreeing to set down this high-level working group that would be working to see if they could find solutions to these things. That is actually the working group, which ended up being sort of the final agreement, namely that this working group will continue to work to figure out if there are ways out And also by keeping Mark Rutte in the loop and giving him this position as a kind of broker between Denmark and the United States. It was quite clear that he was supposed to be in Davos and do the talks with Donald Trump on behalf of the Danish government. The Danish government deliberately chose not to be present in Davos in any way, shape, or form to give Rutte room for diplomatic maneuver. So, the diplomatic track was kept open. But at the same time, we also saw the Danes and the European countries, broadly speaking, but especially, of course, Denmark, actually demonstrating how military deterrence works when you are a small state that wants to deter a bigger state from doing something. The way you do that is that you make sure that to achieve the military goals, the great power would have to use more resources or political capital than they are willing to invest in the project. So it's going to be more complicated than the benefit of going through with this military intervention. Donald Trump was threatening military invasion. That was quite clear. He was talking about it, and said "we can't rule it out." It came in the context of what happened in Venezuela. Denmark showed that they would be ready to fight this out. It's afterwards come out that the Danish soldiers in Greenland actually did have orders to use lethal force against an American invasion. That's the level we were at. They had the ammunition and were prepared for any such things. It was not considered likely that this would happen. But if it did, the orders were there about how they should behave. What this did was that it propelled this discussion about a military invasion of Greenland to the top of the agenda in the United States. And since this was a very unpopular idea in the United States, what happened was that this created a political pressure on Donald Trump to take the idea of a military invasion off the table. It seems quite clear that different politicians in the United States, probably spearheaded by J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, pushed on Donald Trump to take this off the table, to say, "we can't do this. The political consequences of going through with an invasion of Greenland will just be too massive." One of the mistakes people often make when they consider powerful figures such as Donald Trump or Putin, for that matter, is they assume that these people are omnipotent. They can do whatever they want without any checks and balances. And that's just not true. It's not true for Donald Trump. It's also not true for Putin. There are many things Putin cannot do because he has to maintain political legitimacy. And if he does certain things that will undermine his legitimacy, and it will be politically dangerous for him. They have a certain amount of political capital that they can invest in things that might be unpopular, and they can sway public opinion or do unpopular things. But they also rely on being seen as the force that actually has the political legitimacy to make decisions. Especially Donald Trump is in a position right now where he is facing elections. There are the midterm elections coming up. He's facing increasing political opposition inside the United States, and he has to think carefully about how he uses the political capital he has to make sure that he can achieve the goals and not to spend that capital on unpopular things that don't really bring him closer to the bigger political goals he has for the United States. It's clear that invading Greenland would just be stupid use of political capital. And that's why we saw him ultimately give up on this idea of a military invasion. I think that's when he came out with tariff threats. At least that's how I interpreted it when I saw him coming out on social media with these ideas about a big tariffs on those countries that had sent soldiers to Greenland. It seemed clear that, OK, we are at a point now where we are probably no longer talking about a military invasion, and that now we are talking about a trade war. Because this is this is a tool that probably still Donald Trump had at his disposal. But the reaction from Europe, when especially the Germans and the French started talking about what they call the economic bazooka, which is basically the European Union's anti-coercion instrument, that opens a toolbox of all kinds of things that the European Union can do in response to economic coercion, and when it became clear that this would be the response, then that triggered a reaction on the stock markets. We saw red numbers everywhere on the stock market. And it just became clear to Donald Trump that also the economic consequences of doing this would be too big and that the European countries are not going to be bullied on this question. And again, the issue of Greenland was just not worth the political and in this case also monetary capital that would have to be spent on a trade war with the entirety of the European Union. So, we saw Trump stepping down, giving up on his threats, just as he has done in other cases with China, with Brazil, and other countries that actually stand up to him and don't submit to the threats, but actually say, okay, we're fine. Let's do a trade war, if that's what you want. In those cases he actually tends to stand down. And that's what he did here as well. He found an off-ramp. That off-ramp was that he said, okay, let's go along with this negotiation where it's very unclear that the United States is going to get anything that they did not already have, but he can sell it to the media as saying that "it's the art of the deal. I'm a genius because now I got the Danes to finally look at these things" or what have you. He's clearly just trying to sell the status quo as a victory. But I think the most interesting thing of all this is that it shows how small states can use military deterrence to deter great powers from military action. I think it's a textbook example of that: That those Danes sent to Greenland actually were enough to trigger the political reaction inside the United States that made it clear that the political consequences of this were just bigger than the advantage of going forward. So those were my thoughts on Greenland. And I really hope that this is going to be the end of this because, as I said, it's a stupid crisis. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is famous for changing his mind sometimes. But I hope that this was it with Greenland and that now something will come out of this working group so we won't have to deal with this again for the rest of his presidency. All right, enough for now. See you next time. Bye.

logicofwar.com

Trump's obsession with Greenland

In this video, I discuss why Donald Trump wants ownership of Greenland, and how Europe should respond to the pressure. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ I've been reluctant to comment on the situation about Greenland for a couple of reasons. The first one is that at one level, this story is just too stupid. It's a ridiculous crisis. So, I felt it was hard to add all that much aside from pointing out that it's stupid. And the second reason is that it's a developing story. There is a lot of coverage of it in the mainstream media. So, it's hard as a YouTuber to comment on these things because whatever you say might get surpassed by current events before you get a chance to release the video. But I think it's come to a point where I have to comment on it because even though it's a stupid situation, it's also both serious and dangerous. And also I've received a lot of requests for comments because I am a Danish analyst and many people thought it would be interesting to hear my perspective. So let's talk about it. The first question we need to address is why Trump wants Greenland in the first place. And here, I think it's important that we can keep more than one thought in our mind at the same time, because as I see it, there are three different explanations that all play into this and are somewhat actually contradictory to each other. But nevertheless, they managed to coexist in this current crisis. The first reason is strategic. It's that Trump wants Greenland because it aligns with his strategic vision for what's best for the United States. It's based on clearly defined strategies, such as the recently released National Security Strategy, which emphasizes how the United States needs to dominate the Western Hemisphere and basically remove all foreign powers from North and South America. So, in line with this strategic vision, it's necessary for the United States to get rid of Denmark, which is an overseas European power from the continent of North America. Therefore, it's necessary for the United States to pull Greenland away from Denmark. And since they don't see Greenland as having a powerful enough population base that makes it sustainable as an independent country that can defend itself and be a strong partner of the United States, they need to take control of Greenland so they can keep Russia and China away. Ownership in that sense is then about ensuring that the United States will control this territory and not some overseas European power, such as Denmark. There are two dimensions to this question of control over Greenland. One is about military security. That's what Trump often mentions when he talks about how the United States needs Greenland for his Golden Dome missile defense project. This argument doesn't make all that much sense as long as the United States is allied with Greenland and Denmark in NATO because the United States can already install all the sensors and air defense missiles and what have you on Greenland. All they have to do is ask and they will be allowed to do whatever they want. So the only way this argument about military security makes sense is if Trump is preparing for a future when the United States is no longer going to be allied with Denmark. It therefore looks like they want Greenland because they're preparing for a post-NATO world order. The other reason why control is strategically important is that it gives access to natural resources and rare earths and those things. Trump is always enthusiastic about the prospect of making money and controlling natural resources. And that's also what we see him focusing on right now in Venezuela, for example, how American companies will be making money from Venezuela's oil. It's essentially the same thing with Greenland. He wants control of Greenland because then he can grant access to those natural resources to people and to companies that he believes deserves it. This requires political control of Greenland because it means that he will need to control the whole process from deciding who is given the rights to extract those natural resources to managing the environmental protection regulations and all kinds of things. This way, he won't face obstacles, for example, from the Greenlandic government that might have different ideas about environmental protection and such things. So that is the strategic idea behind this. This part of Donald Trump's desire to control Greenland is rooted in a clear strategy that is larger than Donald Trump himself. It's a vision of a role for the United States as a great power that has support in at least parts of the MAGA movement and has been formalized as officially stated policy. The second explanation for why Trump wants Greenland is more closely tied to the man, Donald Trump. That is, quite frankly, his narcissism. He wants Greenland because it makes him feel good. He even said that recently in an interview with the New York Times when he mentioned that he needs to own Greenland because it's psychologically important to him. These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, there is strategy. And on the other hand, it's also just because Donald Trump psychologically wants it. These two explanations can coexist. But I think it's important to have a discussion about how Trump's narcissism influences U.S. foreign policy. And we also need a broader discussion about what narcissism is because many people don't know that. We need to have a better idea of how it expresses itself. I'm going to link to a video by Vlad Vexler. I'm going to put it in the video description. He delves more into this question, and I think it's a really good video. But Vlad's essential point is that narcissists tend to group people into two categories. There is one category of people that they idolize and from whom they get narcissistic supply by being seen as part of a group with those people. So, for example, that's how Trump deals with Putin. He idolizes Putin and he gets narcissistic supply from obtaining Putin's approval. And then there is the other group of people that the narcissists consider basically nobodies and the narcissistic supply comes from essentially sadistic behavior towards those people. And the desire to be feared, to be feared by this group of people, and of being seen as strong and dangerous. And this is how Trump views Western European countries. So Trump wants Greenland because he desires it. And he wants Denmark and the Greenlanders to comply because it makes him feel powerful. And I think we should probably expect him also to want to do stupid things like renaming Greenland, for example, so that in the future it will be known as _Donald Trump Land_. I mean, I'm not joking. I honestly think that we should expect him to do things like that with Greenland after taking control. So that's the second explanation. That is Trump's narcissism. The third explanation is incompetence. In demanding Greenland, Trump is asking for something that he can't have. And almost anyone with even the most basic understanding of Danish or Greenlandic or European politics would know that this is not the case. But Donald Trump doesn't know that. And therefore, he has set himself up for inevitable failure. This is a battle he can't win. No amount of threats or bullying will make the Danes or the Greenlanders agree to an American acquisition of Greenland. Right now, he's talking about tariffs. Tariffs will clearly not work. But he could be threatening nuclear weapons against Copenhagen, and it still would not change anything. The answer would still remain the same. So there are many levels in this incompetence regarding this issue. The first is the lack of understanding of how Denmark and Greenland function. Greenland is today not a Danish colony. That was the case a long time ago. But today, Greenland is its own country within the kingdom of Denmark. There are three countries in the Kingdom of Denmark. That's Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. It works more or less the same way as the British Commonwealth. When Trump asks Denmark to sell Greenland, it's kind of the same as if he asked the British to sell Australia. Or Canada for that matter. It's absurd because it's not doable. But that's what he's asking. Another level of incompetence is that he does not understand how Europe works. He does not understand that starting a tariff war against the European Union is probably not going to turn out well for the United States. And putting sanctions on individual European countries is going to lead to a collective response from the entirety of the European Union, because that's what the tariff union is about. And expecting the European Union not to do that in this case is essentially the same as asking the European Union to commit suicide. That would be the consequence of Europe not standing together in questions like that. And it's the same with NATO, of course, because forcing Denmark to cede Greenland would mean the end of NATO. It would not only destroy NATO as we know it, but it would also destroy the idea of other NATO countries continuing to work together to protect Europe against Russia after the United States potentially has withdrawn from the alliance. That is the direction things are going. So when Donald Trump expects European countries to put pressure on Denmark to give him Greenland, he is essentially asking them to sacrifice not only NATO, but also the European Union and the future security of their own continent. That's just not going to happen. So Donald Trump has here picked a fight where there is no room for him to achieve what he wants through any kind of compromise or coercion. There are only two possible outcomes from the current crisis. Either Donald Trump gives up and he stops talking about Greenland, or he goes through with a military invasion, because nothing short of a military invasion will get him what he's asking for. And frankly, I don't think a military invasion is possible. Of course, the United States military could go to Greenland, but I don't think it's possible politically for Donald Trump to proceed with it due to the internal pressures that there would be in the United States. We're increasingly seeing both Democrat and Republican politicians who are openly discussing how they don't approve of this idea. And they want to make it clear to Donald Trump that doing so could actually end his presidency. It could lead to impeachment. So starting a war against a NATO ally seems like a red line that he cannot cross. So this is a fight that Donald Trump cannot win. Unless he can convince American politicians to allow him to proceed with a military invasion, he cannot get what he wants. We all might end up losing a lot of money because of this, because we're going to get this tariff war, but that's another issue. It won't get him what he wants. So that's my basic explanation of what the controversy is about. It's essentially fueled by equal doses of strategic thinking about how the MACA movement views America's role in the world, it's Donald Trump's narcissism, and it's just mind-boggling levels of incompetence. And without any of these three factors, we would not be experiencing a conflict over Greenland right now. I want to finish off with a few thoughts on how Europe needs to proceed if we want to break this vicious cycle that we are caught in with Donald Trump. And the key to understanding how to deal with Trump is his narcissism and understanding how he makes this division of people into two groups. There are those he idolizes and those he desires to humiliate. Right now, the Europeans fall in the latter category. And the whole strategy of how to deal with Trump since he became president, again, has been a resounding failure because it's just cemented that view for him. Macron actually said it quite clearly the other day that one of Europe's problems is that other countries don't fear us. And that's why we don't have influence in the world. I think when it comes to Donald Trump, that is true. We need to understand that the things we are trying to achieve by flattering Donald Trump are only possible to achieve if we do the opposite. If we play tough, he will respect us. But if we humiliate ourselves in front of him, then that will motivate him to continue destroying the things that we are trying to protect because he does not want to be associated with being one of us. So Europe faces the choice now how to deal with Donald Trump's pressure. Should we try to avoid escalation and seek to renegotiate a trade agreement where we might accept some unfair tariffs if they're not totally destructive? Or shall we respond in kind? I will say that I think the best approach is to essentially borrow a term that may be familiar to military enthusiasts from discussions about Russian nuclear doctrine, which is that Europe needs to escalate to de-escalate. Europe needs to respond very forcefully to the challenges that Donald Trump is presenting right now, because that's the only way to break this destructive trajectory that we are on and to restore some normalcy. We need to escalate in order for the situation to de-escalate. So I would say that Europe probably needs to do two things. First, it needs to take a very strong stance in the case of Greenland and roll out the big guns in terms of the tariff war. That's one thing. And the other thing is, I think Europe needs to focus on defeating Putin in Ukraine, because Trump idolizes Putin. If Europe can beat Putin, then that is something that could potentially shake up how he views Europe, and it could give him renewed interest in actually working with the Europeans. Okay, I will end it here. That was my take on Greenland. If you found it helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And if you want to support the channel, you can get access to bonus videos by subscribing to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Can NATO survive a war with Russia? — conversation with Carlo Masala

This week, I met with Carlo Masala for a talk about his book, "If Russia Wins," and the future of European security. Carlo is extremely insightful, and I think it was a really good conversation. I hope you will enjoy it too. This video is, unfortunately, way too long to provide a transcript, so this time it's just the video. Best, Anders

logicofwar.com

Trump’s attack on Venezuela signals a new era of U.S. imperialism

In this video, I talk about the American attack on Venezuela and what it says about the state of the world. Honestly, it’s a pretty depressing picture, where American imperialism seems to be something we need to get used to. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ The United States has attacked Venezuela and removed President Maduro. In this video, I want to share a few high-level thoughts about what it means and what it says about the world. So, let's talk about it. The situation in Venezuela is still developing and we don't know how things are going to unfold. It can go in many different directions, so there is a lot of uncertainty. What I want to do here is to share some initial reactions to what we saw happening and what it means. First, I think it's necessary to acknowledge how well executed this military operation was. It was a very big operation. It involved many aircraft, ships, intelligence on the ground, and it all worked out very well. They went in, they took President Maduro and his wife, and they got out again, and the Americans did not take a single casualty. That is extremely impressive. I think it's questionable whether any other military in the world could have done the same as what the Americans did here. So, on the tactical and operational side, this was very well executed and clearly planned out very well. At the strategic and political side, I think things are more murky. Frankly, it's not quite clear what the plan is from here. Donald Trump says that now the United States is going to be running Venezuela for the coming period of time and that they are going to come in with American oil companies and take more or less control of the Venezuelan economy. But how they're planning on doing that is very unclear, especially because it does not seem that the United States is planning on having a military presence in Venezuela. So apparently, they are going to be running the country without actually being in the country. And that is probably not going to work. So while on the tactical and operational side, it seems that there was a very good and clear planning process and very strong execution of the mission to capture Maduro, then on the strategic level, it's less obvious that there is a plan, and it will be interesting to see how this is going to unfold. If we look at it from a broader perspective, I think we're seeing a continuation of three trends that have been observable for some time. The first is that the United States is withdrawing from the rest of the world, and they are focusing on what they call the Western Hemisphere. This is also defined in the new national security strategy that I made a video about a little while ago. The Trump administration sees North and South America as the important sphere of influence for the United States, and they see that the United States should be the dominating great power there. Trump is already now talking about doing the same in other countries that they did in Venezuela. He's hinting at military operations in Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia. And on social media, high-level MAGA profiles are publishing maps that show Greenland as soon to be part of the United States. So increasingly, it seems clear that the Trump administration has an imperialistic agenda that they are trying to push. They have big plans for both territorial conquest and power projection in what they see as their legitimate sphere of influence. Needless to say, this is a very different direction for US foreign politics from what it used to be. And I think, quite frankly, it's a development that most people had not predicted just a year ago when Trump came into office. At that time, what was more discussed was American isolationism. But now we're actually talking about American imperialism. So that's a very significant change in tone. I think it's questionable whether this is going to work for Trump. First, there is a significant risk of what can be called imperial overstretch, where they just take on too much because they assume that it will be easy and that everything is going to go as smoothly as it did to remove Maduro. But then afterwards, it turns out that things are actually more complicated and the United States can end up in situations that are similar to what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the easy part is removing the previous leader of the country. The hard part is dealing with the turmoil that comes after. So imperial overstretch is one constraint that Trump might run into. Another obstacle is that it's not clear to me whether this imperial project has popular support in the United States. I doubt it. First, there is a very large group of Americans who actually liked the old United States, where they stood for things like freedom, democracy, international law, and human rights. They don't like the direction that their country is going because they feel that it's against the values that America is supposed to stand for. And in addition to that, there is also a very large group of Trump voters who actually voted for him because they believed that what he stood for was American isolationism. They liked the idea that America would not be involved in all kinds of foreign conflicts, but would focus on spending the resources at home and building the American base, and that this is what "America First" meant. They will obviously be disappointed to learn that "America First" apparently means that they will not get out of foreign conflicts, but will instead get involved in a range of new wars in Latin America. So, I think Trump's imperialistic project might run into some domestic opposition in the United States, because this is actually something that can unite large parts of both sides of the political spectrum. Because the United States does not have a history of aggressive imperialism as the national narrative that unites the people. This is the case in Russia, for example, and that's why this kind of project sort of works for Putin. But it will take something special to create that type of public narrative in the United States. It's not just going to come out of nowhere. So that was the first major trend that I think the attack on Venezuela signifies. The second one is what we can call the lawlessness of the American political system. The attack on Venezuela was against international law. That's quite clear. In fact, pretty much everything the United States has been doing in terms of Venezuela over the last half year or so has been illegal. It's been illegal to attack drug boats with missiles. It's been illegal to blockade Venezuela. And this attack and the removal of President Maduro are also against international law. Unfortunately, we live in a time when international law is threatened, but I still think it's worth mentioning. But perhaps even more significant, the attack on Venezuela was against American law. It was against U.S. federal law for Donald Trump to do this without congressional approval. This is not something that the American president can just do. The American president has the authority to do certain things, such as initiate self-defense, for example, without congressional approval, and then he can get that approval afterward. But this was a planned attack that was intended for regime change in a foreign country, which is an act of aggression that the U.S. president is not allowed to do without congressional approval. Yet Donald Trump just did it anyway. So, we're seeing a clear trend where the checks and balances on the US president are falling apart. And increasingly, Donald Trump just does whatever he wants without any checks and balances. And he's committing the US military to war without actually asking anyone for approval. So, the United States is moving in a direction of a more personalistic foreign policy that really depends on the mood of the president. And with Trump, that obviously adds a lot of unpredictability in what we can expect. The last trend I want to emphasize is the fact that perhaps we need to stop talking about great power competition. This has been the kind of mantra in international relations discussions for quite a while that we have great powers in constant competition with each other. However, increasingly, it appears that the three biggest great powers are actually just dividing the world among themselves. The United States is to dominate the Western Hemisphere. China will take East Asia and Russia can dominate Europe. It seems that this is the direction that things are moving: away from constant competition between the great powers and toward an understanding between them about dividing the world into spheres of influence. And if you happen then to live in a country that is in one of these regions and you don't want to be ruled by an imperial great power, then you'd better start thinking about what you're going to do about it. So, those were my initial thoughts about the American attack on Venezuela and the arrest of President Maduro. Even though Maduro was, in every respect, a terrible person and a dictator, and it's good he's gone, I think it's an extremely worrying development. But at the same time, it's also not really something new. It's more an expression of trends that we have been observing for a while in terms of the United States embarking on not American isolationism, but rather actual American imperialism. And also that Trump is increasingly performing foreign policy without any checks and balances or required approval from other institutions in the United States. And that all this points to a future where China, Russia, and the United States seem willing to simply divide the world among them instead of pursuing great power competition as we've been used to thinking about it. Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And if you want to support the channel and get access to bonus videos, you can subscribe to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Is Putin Set for Failure in 2026? — YouTube collaboration

Earlier this week, I met with Jonathan from Silicon Curtain and Georgijs from Ukraine Matters at a café in Copenhagen to talk about the war in Ukraine and our expectations for 2026. Jonathan and Georgijs are great company, and I think our different perspectives made for an interesting conversation. You can listen to it here. Best, Anders

logicofwar.com

The coming years will be even more dangerous than 2025

**_By Alexander With_** The war in Ukraine is escalating. While the front line is mostly static, both sides have ramped up their ability to conduct strategic bombing with drones and missiles. The cost of war is therefore increasing at a time when both sides are already feeling the burden of four years of war. Russian inflation is high, there are fuel shortages, and Russian administrative regions are finding it increasingly difficult to reach their recruitment quotas. Worse yet, the Ukrainian campaign against Russia’s oil and gas industry is taking a hard toll on the Russian economy, and recently Ukraine escalated this effort by also targeting oil tankers in the Black Sea. Russia is also hurt by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. Although EU seems unable to agree to fund Ukraine’s war effort with frozen Russian money, the EU does fund a lot of Ukraine’s war effort, nevertheless. In a somewhat clumsy and inconsistent attempt to end the war, Donald Trump is applying pressure on both sides. This has so far not amounted to many results, but US economic sanctions on countries buying Russia’s oil are hurting Russian exports, which are already under strain from European sanctions and Ukrainian attacks. It is yet too soon to judge whether this effect will be permanent. As with many of Donalds Trumps policies, it can be difficult to judge whether they are in fact policies or just negotiating tactics. Should the sanctions continue however, it is likely to hurt the Russian economy. For his part, Vladimir Putin is not a man likely to sit back and watch the West help Ukraine win the war. Russia has increased both the number and the severity of its hybrid attacks. This is a dangerous escalation that is bound to cause damage at some point—damage that its victims can no longer tolerate. Russian hybrid warfare is also likely to intensify if the EU goes ahead and transfers frozen Russian assets. Perhaps more worrying, Russia has shifted its entire society to a war footing. Nuclear sabre-rattling is now a common phenomenon from the Kremlin, and propaganda portraying the West as decadent, weak, and hostile is everywhere. The Russian state and economy now have one purpose above all others: war. The official Russian war goals are maximalist and unlikely to be accepted by either Ukraine or the EU. The problem is that Putin cannot accept a peace deal that does not portray him as the victor. His entire prestige and legitimacy are bound to a peace in which Russia can dominate Ukraine and keep it without Western security guarantees. Thus, the war in Ukraine is escalating, and Europe is becoming increasingly involved due to the Russian hybrid campaign, the struggling Russian economy, and the prospect of more sanctions. This mutual escalation cannot continue indefinitely. Something will happen. Should a peace be made—or merely a lull in the fighting—Russia would be left with a booming war industry that would be difficult to revert to normal economic activity. Peace might be as hard on the Russian economy as the war has been, especially if sanctions are not lifted. This would naturally create an incentive to use the surplus combat power being produced in Russian factories: to maintain a war footing in pursuit of other goals, such as humbling the West, lifting sanctions, and creating a new European order shaped by Putin. Whether the Russians would be inclined to act on this incentive depends on several factors. Would NATO appear strong and united? How far would European rearmament have progressed? Would the Russian economy be able to sustain such an effort, or would it collapse after years of strain? And what would China do? China has the means to fund the Russian war machine almost indefinitely but has so far kept a balancing act between supporting Russia diplomatically and with trade but not alienating the EU by supporting Russia too directly. Unfortunately, it does seem like China has quietly shifted the balance towards Russia during the course of the war. As a Chinese diplomat told the EU; China cannot afford Russia to lose the war, as this would allow the US to turn its whole attention towards China. A particularly worrying prospect is that time is not on Europe’s side. The US has stated that European states should be able to do most of the heavy lifting in Europe’s defence by 2027—something that is not realistic within such a short time frame. While Europe has made a dramatic increase in defence budgets, it will take years before this translates into combat power, as the weapons will first have to be produced and the soldiers recruited and trained. The US, however, is under pressure from another direction. 2027 is also the year when China according to some US officials could win a war over Taiwan, and the year which Taiwan itself simulates fighting to repel a Chinese invasion. It is not clear whether China also operates according to this timeline, but it is true that China is preparing for such a war and will probably be capable of initiating it at some point. Being capable does not mean intending to act, but America will nevertheless have to take the possibility seriously—especially since the Pentagon itself is already questioning whether the US could defeat China in a war. Even if America were willing to help Europe, it might not be able to do so if tied down in the Pacific. Europe could quickly find itself standing alone against a dangerous, risk-willing, and economically desperate Russia. ### About the author: Alexander With is commander (OF-3) in the Royal Danish Navy and military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College. His website is https://www.alexanderwith.dk

logicofwar.com

Europe's great power move: EU secures Ukraine funding

In this video, I discuss the EU's decision to allocate 90 billion euros for Ukraine to fund the war over the coming two years. It's one of the most important strategic decisions made over the last year. This is incredibly bad news for Russia, and it shows how Europe is beginning to act with strategic autonomy. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ The EU countries have agreed on a model for how they are going to finance Ukraine's war in the coming two years. This is incredibly important, and it's incredibly bad news for Russia. And not least, it provides a hint of how Europe will function as a strategic actor in the absence of American leadership. So let's talk about it. The EU countries have agreed on a model where they will provide a loan to Ukraine that is worth 90 billion euros to cover the war in 2026 and 2027. I think a lot of the media coverage of this has been somewhat off. I don't think there's been enough coverage, that's the first thing. Other stories, at least here in Denmark, have dominated the news. But also, I've seen a lot of rather sort of strange takes, honestly, where it's portrayed as if this is somehow a bad result or an embarrassment for Europe, when in fact, I think it's quite the opposite. I've been saying for a long time that if you want to follow a set of negotiations here in December, then don't follow the peace talks. That is just political theater. Instead, follow the negotiations in the EU about securing finances for Ukraine in the coming years. This is where the actually important things happen. This is where things can have an impact and where the war can be decided. Since Donald Trump came into office and stopped providing aid to Ukraine, it's been up to the European countries to finance Ukraine's war and to ensure that the country maintains a robust war economy so that they can continue the fight against Russia. Ukraine is facing enormous problems with balancing its budget for 2026. And without a strong commitment from the European countries, it is questionable whether things could have continued. And by continued, I mean ultimately, Ukraine could potentially have lost the war in 2026. They were at a point where without securing more external funding, it's questionable whether they would have enough money for salaries for the soldiers and to cover all kinds of fundamental and basic expenses. But now that the EU countries have agreed on how to support Ukraine in the coming two years, things look much better, much more stable for Ukraine, and they can start planning ahead. Many people in the press have been commenting that it is somehow a failure for Europe, or or at least for some European countries, such as Germany, because the model did not actually mean that the frozen Russian assets in Europe are immediately given to Ukraine. But for Ukraine, it does not matter where this money comes from. This is an internal discussion that we can have in Western Europe about how we want to find the money for this. But now, just a different model was found. And for Ukraine, that is just as good. The important thing is just that they get the money. And frankly, to me, it's a little difficult to see the difference between the model where we gave the Russian frozen assets and then what came here. Because the way this is constructed is that the money is currently being given as a loan from the EU to Ukraine, but when this loan is eventually to be paid back, it will be paid back with the frozen Russian money. So it's not confiscated now. The Russian money is still there, but it is earmarked to paying back this loan for Ukraine in the future, which to me looks like we're going to end up more or less in the same place. A question I have been asked quite a bit today by journalists is what extra things is Ukraine going to be able to buy with these 90 billion euros and how is this going to change the war? I think that's the wrong perspective because fundamentally what this funding will do is that it will allow Ukraine to continue the war, as they have been doing for the last four years, so that now they can also fight in year five and year six. What was at stake was essentially that Ukraine was facing a catastrophe if this funding had not come. But now that it's there, the war effort can continue and the catastrophe will not happen. So we're not going to see some dramatic increase in Ukraine's fighting power as a result of this 90 billion euro package. What we're going to see is that there won't be a decline. But that's also incredibly important because this is a war of attrition. And in a war of attrition, the side that wins is the one that can continue fighting the longest. It's essentially a war on war economies and it's the economy that will decide who wins in the end. The Russian economy right now is under a lot of pressure. But until the EU made this decision, there was a lot of optimism, actually, in Russia that even though their economy is struggling, they would be able to last longer than Ukraine. Ukraine was facing disaster in 2026, and the Russian war economy, as bad as it is, can probably make it until that. But now, with this financing that the Europeans came up with, suddenly the Russians are facing a totally different situation where they won't just have to last maybe six months more, but they will have to last several years more because Ukraine's war economy has been secured. From Moscow's point of view, this totally changes the strategic calculus. It's quite frankly a disaster because it raises serious questions about whether the demands that Russia is making are realistic and make sense, or if they will have to lower their expectations of what they can get out of a peace settlement. Does this mean that they will have to engage in negotiations with a different mindset where they will be more willing to make compromises? These are the questions this would raise in Moscow. I would probably not expect a rapid change in the Russian approach to negotiations because Putin still thinks he's going to win this war regardless. He sees that as kind of inevitable. But he is visibly annoyed that the Europeans keep supporting Ukraine in a way that makes it really hard for him to win. This means that things will take much longer than they ought to, and he will have to spend many more resources than he believes should have been necessary. Increasingly, we're seeing this frustration among the Russians with Europe. They're talking about how it's the warmongers in Europe who keep the war going, and that Europe is the obstacle to peace, and Putin is talking about war with Europe, and how the Europeans apparently want war with Russia, and he's ready. The other day, he talked about the European leaders being little swines that will need to be replaced. So increasingly, we are seeing visible signs of frustration in Moscow with the Europeans. And that leads me to something that I think is perhaps the bigger takeaway from all this, and that is a discussion of what European leadership in the world actually looks like. There's been a lot of talk about how it's necessary for Europe to start emerging from the shadows of the United States and taking on the role of an entity with agency in the world. So, Europe has to demonstrate that they are capable of acting strategically in an era where they can't rely on the United States anymore. There's been a lot of discussion about strategic autonomy, as the French like to call it. For a long time, there's been a lot of criticism of the European leaders for not taking responsibility and showing leadership and demonstrating that Europe is powerful. The Europeans will be talking a lot, but they will do little. And in the end, they will always just follow in the footsteps of the United States because that's what they've always done. So I think it's appropriate to have a discussion about what European leadership and strategic autonomy would actually look like. How would we recognize on the world stage that this is happening? And there is perhaps a tendency to overestimate how spectacular it would be and to underestimate the extent to which strategic autonomy will in practice just play out as growing frustration in other countries about how the Europeans are an annoying obstacle to things that they want to do but that are not necessarily in Europe's interest. So the kind of frustration that we are now seeing in Moscow is exactly what we should expect when Europe starts acting more like a great power player, as someone who sets an agenda that the great powers will have to adapt to. And it's not only in Moscow that we're seeing this, we're seeing the same in Washington. Donald Trump is also increasingly portraying the Europeans as the problem and the reason why there can't be peace in Europe, because the Europeans are an obstacle to him imposing a bad peace deal on Ukraine. There's been a lot of talk about how Russia and the United States are having negotiations. We're seeing these great power negotiations about European security, but without the Europeans being present at the table. And there's been a lot of discussion about how the Europeans could do something to ensure that they will get a seat at that table when the decisions are being made. But that is exactly what Europe is doing now. With this move to ensure funding for Ukraine for the next two or three years, it's really difficult not to give Europe a seat at the table because it's the Europeans that make the decisions that actually matter. This is something that neither the Americans nor the Russians want. But Europe is taking concrete steps that others will just have to adapt to and to accept. Europe is behaving like a great power with this move. I think that has been underestimated in the media coverage that we've seen so far about the deal that was made in Brussels. Does this mean that everything is now great in European politics and that we will never more see infighting and European countries being incapable of making decisions and things like that? Of course not. But I think it's important to recognize when Europe actually is beginning to do some of these things that we have been talking about so much. And what we're seeing is actually what we would expect to see in terms of frustration in the other great powers when Europe starts to do things that will restrain their ability to do what they want. Europe acting like a great power, it would never play out in the way that Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin would stand up and acknowledge that by saying, "wow, Europe, that's really impressive, what a great power move." That's not what it would look like. Rather, what they would do is that they would express that whatever the Europeans are doing is incredibly annoying and super frustrating, and they would be calling the European leaders all kinds of bad names. That is what Europe acting as a great power would look like, and that's exactly what we're seeing. Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I upload new videos. If you want to support the channel and get access to bonus videos, you can subscribe to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Book announcement: "The Logic of War" in English

My book, _The Logic of War_ , is finally out in English. In this short video, I explain what the book is about and how to get it if you're interested. The short version is that you can get it from a bookstore here. Or if you want a signed copy, you can send me an email at books@logicofwar.com. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ This is not a normal video for me, it's just a quick announcement that my book, The Logic of War, is finally out in English. Here it is. It has been available in Danish for a while, but now it's finally here in English as well. Many people have been asking when and how they could get it, and I thought the easiest way to address this was to just make a quick video about it. So to just briefly explain what the book is about, it's an introduction to modern warfare, and it's explained in a language that everyone can understand. You don't need to know anything about warfare or the military beforehand. In fact, it's a book that I made because following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it was clear that there was a big need in society for easily accessible knowledge about these things. Both ordinary people and politicians need to have a better understanding of military matters, especially after many years when this has not really been a priority in the West. So I wanted to fill that gap. However, I don't think it's only for people who don't have prior knowledge of the military. It would also be useful for people who serve in the armed forces, but want a broader understanding of what's happening in the other branches, maybe, or just to understand the bigger context that they're a part of. But I do think it's important to understand that it's a popular book, so it's for ordinary people, and it's not an academic book. It does not contain a ton of footnotes and things like that. The book takes the reader through the basics that one needs to know about the military, military operations, and how it works. It starts out with basic concepts of war, and then it moves through different questions of how the military is structured, the role of international humanitarian law, the different branches, air warfare, land warfare, counterinsurgency warfare, maritime warfare, these kinds of things. And then it finishes up with questions about hybrid warfare and weapons of mass destruction. So it's an overall introduction to many different topics. The way it does that is by taking examples from military history and then use those to illustrate the different points. This is not really a book about what's happening in the world today. I wrote another book called The Politics of War. It's the green one there on the shelf. It just came out in Danish. And I hope that it will be available in English maybe during the first half of 2026. In that book, I delve into the reasons for the current geopolitical conflicts and where it all might lead and why everything just seems to be getting worse and worse, no matter where in the world we look. But this book focuses more on how warfare works from a technical point of view and how military forces operate and what's important to consider when trying to build force and deterrence and those things. If you're interested in getting a copy of this book, then there are a couple of different ways that you can do it. Currently, it's not available in international retailers. The publisher is working on getting it on Amazon and those kinds of platforms. But for now, it's only available in Danish bookstores, but they do ship worldwide. I will include a link in the description of the video if you want it. The book officially comes out on December 17th, 2025, but you can order it now if you want to. I think the challenge for many people is probably going to be shipping costs because they might be quite steep depending on where you live. But if you want to avoid shipping costs, you can, of course, buy the e-book, which also comes out on December 17th. I don't think you can pre-order that, but it will be out. That will, of course, save you some money because shipping is free. If you want a signed copy from me, I will also be happy to send you one. But be aware that it is going to be a little cheaper to buy it from the bookstore because they can get some discounts and stuff like that. But if you want a signed copy, just send me an email. I've set up a special email just for this, so you can send it to books@logicofwar.com. I will also include that in the video description. So that's all for now, all I wanted to say. I hope that you will like this book so that the publisher will see the need to prioritize the translation of the next one as well. I will see you again soon in a more regular video.

logicofwar.com

New U.S. security strategy calls for regime change in Europe

In this video, I discuss the new U.S. national security strategy, which, to put it mildly, is concerning for Europe. It's largely a document about how the Trump administration sees it as a requirement for continued transatlantic cooperation that MAGA movements come to power in European countries. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Last week, the Trump administration released the new U.S. National Security Strategy. This is a document that typically every new American administration will issue to outline how they see the world and the challenges for the United States. However, the message in this one was different and very dramatic. It outlines a new U.S. foreign policy that shakes the foundations of NATO. So let's talk about it. This national security strategy is special for several reasons. First, there is the form. It's quite short, and it's also very straightforward. It's written in a clear and easy to understand way, but it's also partisan in a way that is unusual for such documents in the United States. It's full of MAGA talking points and statements about how Donald Trump is awesome. It also includes a lot of criticism of the Biden administration. This is unusual because typically a national security strategy is crafted in a way that gives the impression of having the nation at the center and not the current president. But secondly, there is the message. Quite frankly, it represents a revolution in the way the US government views the role of the United States in the world and its strategic priorities. It breaks with basic principles that have guided American foreign policy since at least the Second World War. In many ways, it's a very honest document. It outlines how MAGA sees national security and the role of the United States in the world. And it does so without sugarcoating anything. If you've followed American politics over the last year, many of these things might not be totally surprising. When you've seen how Donald Trump has acted on the world stage, you could infer some of these things. But now it's clearly documented. And that's interesting. In a sense, it's liberating because, for example, in Europe, there are many people who have been eager to cling to the idea of the United States as it used to be, as the ally that we could always trust. That even though there might be disagreements among us, we can still trust the United States. But now, with this clearly outlined national security strategy, it's really hard for European countries to keep making excuses on behalf of Donald Trump. It's written clearly that he does not see Europe as allies or trusted partners, but rather as perhaps the biggest enemy of the United States on the world stage, and that it is official U.S. policy to work toward regime change in European countries and to weaken or even destroy the European Union. That is the kind of level we are on in this document. So what does MAGA security politics actually look like? They outline several priorities. The first is that, according to them, the era of mass migration is over. So there is something about migration there. And therefore, we need to close the borders and to limit the flows of people. Another priority is the issue of free speech, which they regard as very important. The way to understand this, I think, is that it's mostly a question about moderation on social media and that they don't like that. They see that as something that limits free speech. Another priority is the issue of burden sharing with allies. They are frustrated with allies that they feel are free-riding and taking advantage of the United States by not paying enough for defense. It's also a priority to gain control of supply chains and manufacturing for all the things that are necessary for the United States so that they're not depending on foreign powers. And they see tariffs as a way to ensure that they can rebuild an industrial base at home by incentivizing companies to establish production lines in the United States. So those are some of the principles that they outline. And then they go through different regions, and they explain how they view those regions and the interests of the United States in those regions. The biggest geographical priority is given to what they call the Western Hemisphere. I think we should, in broad terms, understand that as meaning North and South America, including Greenland. Here they want to return to what's called the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially states that North and South America are what we can call a sphere of influence of the United States, where they have a privileged position. All overseas powers, so that's powers not from North or South America, need to be kept away. They have nothing to do there. And they want to use a variety of tools, including both cooperation and coercion, towards other countries in the Western Hemisphere to ensure that they can achieve their goals. There will also be a significant change in the force posture of the United States, so the military will focus more on North and South America instead of other regions in the world. Asia and China are described mostly as economic challenges, with the biggest problem being how to achieve a more balanced trade relationship and limit the deficit. It's about developing economic ties with countries in East Asia. There's actually very little discussion about hardcore security politics and the military when it comes to Asia. They do mention Taiwan and the South China Sea. But the most significant development in terms of East Asia and security politics is actually that there seems to be a greater focus on burden sharing and the fact that they are dissatisfied with Japan and South Korea. There are also some passages about the Middle East and Africa. The most interesting point about that is perhaps what it says about what America will not do, which is to promote democracy and liberal values. This is seen as an internal issue for those countries, and it's not something that the United States should engage in. On the contrary, the United States is happy to do business and develop trade relations with these countries as they are. You might be wondering what the strategy says about Russia as a threat or a strategic competitor to the United States. It doesn't say anything. Russia is not mentioned in that context at all. It is mentioned a bit in the discussion about Europe and the U.S. role in brokering a peace deal in Ukraine, but nothing is said about Russia as a challenge or a potential enemy of the United States. So if we look at this document in terms of great power competition, then Russia is not described as a challenge at all. And China is primarily discussed as an challenge and in terms of trade politics. And that leads us to Europe, which is where we find America's true foreign policy challenge and potential enemy. The part about Europe is titled _Promoting European Greatness_. It describes how the Trump administration sees it as its task to correct the course in Europe and bring the continent back onto a path that can restore past greatness. The strategy describes how the real problem with Europe is not just insufficient military spending or economic stagnation, but also the prospect of civilizational erasure. The issues Europe faces are largely caused by activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine the liberty and the sovereignty of countries. They also point to things such as migration policies, democratic problems in Europe, censorship of free speech, and the suppression of political opposition. All these are issues that are really troublesome for Europe. And it leads to the loss of national identities in European countries and the lack of self-confidence. If Europe does not change course, then according to the U.S. government, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or maybe even less. This means that many European countries may not have the economy and the military that they need to remain reliable allies of the United States. The strategy expresses the view that Europe is important to the United States, but also a deep concern of the direction of Europe. So there is this kind of burning platform message in this that makes it necessary for the United States to do something to avoid the civilizational and democratic disaster that is unfolding in Europe. Interestingly, it's not actually a document that says what I think most people had expected, that if Europe does not contribute more to collective defense, then the United States is just going to leave and not be engaged in Europe anymore. Quite on the contrary, it's a document that expresses deep concern and a feeling of responsibility for Europe that requires the United States to engage actively in correcting the course in these European countries. The document then continues to talk about the war in Ukraine. And this is actually the only context in the whole document where Russia is really mentioned. The message is that many European countries today have a kind of hysterical relationship with Russia. There is this unfounded fear of Russian aggression, because overall, Europe has the military power to stand up to Russia if they only want to. So there's really nothing to be concerned about. But because of the lack of self-confidence in many European countries, there is this irrational fear of Russia. It is also described how many European officials have unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved in the war in Ukraine. This leads them to pursue a strategy of war rather than a strategy of peace. Basically, the viewpoint expressed here is that the obstacle to peace in Ukraine is actually the European countries that continue to support Ukraine, because if only the Europeans would stop doing that, then Ukraine would have to agree to a peace plan that the Americans have crafted together with the Russians. The national security strategy then describes how a large majority of the European populations actually want peace. But the politicians in power prevent this from being translated into policy because these governments suppress basic democratic processes. This is actually wrong. There is very strong popular support in Europe for continuing to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion. But the Trump administration seems keen on conveying the message that there is a small elite of European politicians in power who suppress the true will of the majority of the people. The strategy outlines how the Trump administration views its role in standing up for genuine democracy and freedom of expression so they can correct these wrongs. I think this should be understood to mean that basically there can be no rules or laws about moderation on social media. And essentially that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg should just have free reign to do whatever they want. Then the strategy goes on to say that they see that their role is to cultivate resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations. This means, in essence, that the Trump administration is going to use the levers they have to support far-right movements in Europe. In other words, the United States sees it as a strategic priority in order to save the transatlantic relationship that MAGA movements come to power in Europe. And they intend to use the means they have to support such movements in the fight against the current centrist governments. So these are some very dramatic statements that have raised deep questions about whether there is any foundation for NATO to function going forward. If the United States sees it as a strategic priority to undermine the governments of other NATO countries and European institutions, such as the EU, then it's really hard to see how there can be an alliance anymore. The reality is that the views expressed in this US national security strategy are in many ways identical to the Russian viewpoints on Europe and the Russian goals of regime change in European countries. So to sum up, I think this national security strategy is interesting for several reasons. It moves away from the idea of a pivot to Asia that has been guiding American security politics for more than a decade. The idea was that Europe needed to take greater responsibility for European defense so that could free up resources that the United States could use in strategic competition with China. This does not seem to be the case anymore. If anything, there is now a pivot to America with a greater focus on North and South America. But the second biggest concern seems to be Europe rather than China. And secondly, I think it's hard not to see parallels to how Putin has ideas about great powers having spheres of influence over smaller states that they consider to be within their orbit. In Russia's case, that is a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. But it appears that the Trump administration has sort of similar ideas about an American sphere of influence in Western Europe, where they believe it's their role to oversee European politics and to correct the course if the Europeans get out of line. So there is no decline in interest from the United States in Europe. Quite the contrary. It's an issue that they clearly are passionate about. Europe means a lot to them. This is very different from the idea that most Europeans had, which was that the United States was becoming uninterested and would leave Europe alone. Quite the contrary. The national security strategy outlines how the United States is going to become more engaged in European politics to the extent that we're discussing regime change in Western European capitals so that they will become ideologically aligned with the MAGA government in Washington. And it seems clear that this ideological alignment from the Trump administration's point of view is seen as a requirement for saving and continuing the transatlantic corporation and for being an ally of the United States in the future. I will end it here. If you want to follow me on social media, I recommend Bluesky. That is my social media of choice. It's not perfect, but I think if you're European, then it is a national security priority to stop using X. If you want to support this channel, you can also get access to some bonus videos if you subscribe to my newsletter at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Ukraine launches new tanker war

In this video, I discuss the Ukrainian attacks on Russian shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ It has been a while since there have been dramatic developments in the maritime war in Ukraine, but over the last few days, something spectacular has indeed happened. Ukraine has started targeting Russian oil tankers with maritime drones, and this is something that could potentially have very big consequences. So let's talk about it. What happened was that Ukraine initially struck two oil tankers belonging to the Russian Shadow Fleet that were heading towards Russian ports in the Black Sea. They carried out this attack with maritime drones, they documented it well, they took responsibility for it, and they published impressive videos that showed how this was done. So it's pretty clear what happened in these cases. It occurred in what's called the Turkish exclusive economic zone. And it's very important not to confuse that with the idea of Turkish territorial waters. A country's exclusive economic zone means that this is international waters. It's just part of the international waters where this country has the rights to extract resources like fishing or oil drilling or those sorts of things. So, this happened in international waters. These ships were heading towards Russia, so they were empty of cargo, and then they were going to be filled up in Russian ports to export that oil to countries that still buy Russian oil. And the ships were heavily damaged. It seems quite clear that they will not be transporting oil again anytime soon, at least not until they have undergone some very extensive repairs. Then a couple of days later, another incident happened off the coast of Senegal, where another tanker was hit. It came straight from a Russian port, and then somewhat mysteriously, it exploded off the coast of Senegal. I've seen some speculation that it was also a drone attack, but I've not seen evidence of it. To me, it seems more likely that this was something else, like maybe limpet mines. In either case, it looks like Ukraine has struck three oil tankers linked to the export of oil from Russia within the last few days. All this follows a period during which Ukraine has also increasingly targeted port facilities related to oil exports from Russia. There have been several strikes on important Russian oil terminals, and they have also struck oil tankers that were moored in those hobbos. So there's been a shift where, until recently, Ukraine mainly targeted Russian oil production facilities like refineries. This hampered Russian ability to refine oil products into diesel and gasoline and jet fuel and those kinds of things. But now they're also increasingly targeting Russia's ability to export crude oil to other countries. All this targets Russia's revenues from selling oil. When Russia is unable to refine oil products themselves, they have more surplus crude oil that they need to sell off on the world market. And this means that they will have to offer a bigger discount to get rid of this surplus oil. And now Ukraine is introducing more uncertainty into that flow of oil by targeting the ships that are supposed to bring this oil to the buyers in India and China and other countries. So this all means that buyers now have greater uncertainty about Russia's ability to actually deliver what they promise. So all in all, this means that Russia has to sell Urals oil with a bigger and bigger discount. It might even at some point get to the point where they have to sell it at a loss because they can't just stop producing oil. It's complicated to stop drills that are already working. So it's something that potentially could hurt Russia's budget quite a lot. But there are some other effects here that I think it's also important to talk about. It's not only hurting Russia's economy. It's also a huge embarrassment for Russia. We are already now seeing Russian military bloggers that start asking perfectly relevant questions like, where is the Black Sea Fleet in all this? Why are they not protecting these vessels heading for Russian ports? Why are they not protecting the maritime sea routes? The answer is obviously that they are not doing that because they can't. It's too dangerous for them. If they attempted to do it, then they would just be targeted by the Ukrainian drones instead of the tankers. But that is, of course, hugely a very embarrassing answer for Russia, let's put it that way. This really exposes that Russia does not have the maritime power to actually control what's going on in the Black Sea. Another important point is that this is something that could affect the world market. It can have real consequences in other countries beyond just Russia and Ukraine. It can, of course, mean higher oil prices if Russia is unable to export oil to the world. But it can also have consequences for shipping. Shipping is a very international business, so many countries can't be affected by that. But perhaps most importantly, this can have huge consequences if Russia decides to retaliate against ships coming from Ukrainian ports, because these ships will mostly be transporting grain to the world market. This could potentially lead to a shortage of food in some areas of the world and higher food prices globally if Russia retaliates against ships to and from Ukrainian ports. And they might do that, because what else are they going to do? As I said, the Russians are not really able to protect their own shipping routes. So what they can do instead is they can retaliate in kind against the Ukrainians. This is something that would, of course, hurt the Ukrainian economy if they are unable to export grain. But frankly, I'm not sure Ukraine would necessarily mind all that much because it would propel this conflict back onto the top of the global agenda at a time when it seems that many countries are beginning to act as if the war in Ukraine is a contained issue. There's growing pressure on Ukraine, and increasingly, Ukraine is struggling to find countries that are willing to support the war because people are beginning to say that, "well, maybe it's too expensive. We can't afford to do this in the long run." So it might not be all that bad for Ukraine if some of these countries get a reminder that Ukraine is actually quite important for their domestic economy and for the prices that consumers all over the world pay in the grocery stores. It's something that could regenerate some of that global attention on making negotiations that maybe would be more beneficial than what's currently happening in Washington. The Americans keep coming out with one big peace plan after another, and they all seem very unfavorable to Ukraine. But if Russia starts going after the grain transports, then maybe some of that attention could be transformed into discussions about smaller deals, like a new grain deal. That could be beneficial for Ukraine, because obviously, it would also mean that Ukraine would need to get something out of stopping those attacks on Russian shipping. They're not just going to do it without getting something in return. So overall, I think there are some quite significant perspectives in what just happened in the Black Sea, and that this outcome could potentially be quite big now that Ukraine has started to target Russian shadow fleet vessels with naval drones. In the short term, it can obviously put a lot of pressure on the Russian economy. But if Russia retaliates by targeting Ukrainian shipping, then it could reinvigorate the international attention on the war in a way that favors Ukraine as the world community would mostly be angry at Russia for jeopardizing food security. OK, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon, then you will get notifications when I upload new videos. And if you want to support the channel and you can also get access to some bonus videos, you can subscribe to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Trump's ultimatum and the limits of US leverage over Ukraine

In this video, I discuss the American peace plan and ultimatum to Ukraine. Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ Donald Trump has issued a strong ultimatum to Ukraine, which must agree to a framework for a peace deal before Thanksgiving, which is on Thursday. This is dramatic, so let's talk about it. The Trump administration, together with the Russians, has developed a 28-point peace plan, which they have presented to Ukraine. They have stated that Ukraine must agree to this before Thursday, or there will be severe consequences. So this is a strong ultimatum. I think this is perhaps a good place to start by discussing the leverage that the United States actually has to force Ukraine into signing this agreement. There are two things that are typically mentioned. One is intelligence sharing and the other is weapons deliveries. The intelligence sharing means that the United States has information from various sources, most importantly spy satellites, but also other means such as spy planes and other methods that provide intelligence which Ukraine benefits from. However, I think the significance of this intelligence sharing is often overrated. The reason for this is that the Ukrainians have, in the last six months, been eager to emphasize the importance of the intelligence sharing that is happening because they want to present the United States as a stronger partner than it really is for political reasons. So they have exaggerated the significance of this. What the Ukrainians actually get from the intelligence sharing includes things like early warnings about Russian air raids. They receive a heads up when Russian long-range bombers take off from airfields inside of Russia. This way, Ukraine can prepare for a large airstrike that will be happening in a few hours. And this allows them to have the air defenses ready and to issue air raid warnings to the population. Another benefit is that they will receive more precise information about the location of Russian air defense units. This allows Ukraine to plan offensive airstrikes more effectively. Most importantly, this is significant when they aim to take out the air defense battery itself. It might be, I think, less significant for the long range strikes that Ukraine is conducting on oil refineries and other things deep inside of Russia. But it's crucial when they want to target a specific Russian air defense system. Having updated information on the location and condition of that system is very important. So those are significant benefits that Ukraine gets from this intelligence sharing. However, it's not crucial to the extent that it would jeopardize Ukraine's war efforts if they don't receive the support. Ukraine can continue fighting without U.S. intelligence sharing. The weapons deliveries are a bigger problem. I'm always careful not to refer to the United States as a supporter of Ukraine because since Trump came to office, the United States is no longer donating weapons or cash to Ukraine's war effort. They're selling weapons at a profit. And I think it's misleading to talk about supporters as someone who sells things at a profit. But leaving that terminology aside, the United States is still an important partner for Ukraine in the sense that it's an arms dealer that provides assets that Ukraine needs. And the way this works today is through what's called the PURL initiative, which stands for Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List. This is essentially a wish list of weapons produced in the United States that Ukraine can prioritize and request. And then European countries can contribute by donating those weapons in which Ukraine has expressed interest. This mechanism was created back in the summer. And from a European perspective, it's been seen as a win-win-win arrangement. Ukraine still has access to American weapons. The United States will receive a substantial sum of money, and the European NATO countries believed that this was a way to keep the transatlantic alliance together because it creates incentives for the Americans to stay engaged in European security. So when there is talk about stopping weapons deliveries to Ukraine, what we're really talking about is the United States withdrawing from the PURL Initiative. And this is something that Donald Trump could obviously do. But I think it's important to be aware that there are also significant downsides for the United States in doing so. It essentially means leaving money on the table in order to help Russia win the war and undermine NATO coherence. And this is something that Donald Trump might be willing to do. But I think it's also fair to assume that it's probably not a priority that most Americans would share. So, it might create some domestic political backlash in the United States. And importantly, today, Ukraine is also producing most of the weapons themselves in their own domestic defense industry. So, we are at a level now where American weapons are still significant, but they are a smaller part of the overall arsenal that Ukraine has. This obviously also means that you don't have as much leverage as you would have if you delivered most of the weapons that Ukraine was using. So overall, the leverage that the United States has in Ukraine is smaller than many people think. The intelligence sharing is not as important as it is sometimes made out to be. And the question of weapons deliveries is going to be domestically difficult for Donald Trump. It's just going to be hard to explain to the American people why it's necessary to leave money on the table to help Putin win the war. And in either case, losing American support might have consequences for Ukraine's ability to fight the war in the long term, but it's not going to lead to a short-term collapse. I want to turn to the question of how Russia would view this 28-point plan. Many people have pointed out that this plan is not actually that great for Russia either. If you look into it, even though overall the plan requires significantly more concessions from Ukraine than from Russia, there are still some aspects that are quite unfavorable for Russia too. In reality, this plan would mean that Putin would not achieve all the goals he has set out for what he calls the special military operation. For example, Putin has justified the war with a need to demilitarize Ukraine. Now, according to this plan, Ukraine's military will be capped at a size that is two and a half times bigger than before the demilitarization began. So it's not much demilitarization going on there. Ukraine will also receive something that, at least on paper, sounds like Article 5 level security guarantees from the United States. And Russia will not actually gain control of all the regions that they have annexed because there are some areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia that Russia will not be getting. So, some people will say that because of these things, it's quite possible that for Putin to actually agree to this plan, it's not only going to be Ukraine that will be demanding changes. But I think he looks at it differently. I don't think he expects this plan to realistically materialize, but he assumes that it will be more damaging for Ukraine to agree to this text than for him, and therefore, relatively speaking, it will benefit him. Because sure, inside of Russia, there would be dissatisfaction if this is actually the outcome they get after four years of war, but it's nothing compared to the resistance that Zelensky would face. And this means that for Putin, it's actually a win-win situation. Either Zelensky goes along with this, and that will throw Ukraine into a deep domestic political crisis. Or Zelensky does not agree to this, and that can fracture the relationship between Ukraine and the United States, and Ukraine can lose its most important external source of weapons. So even though there are some things in this 28-point plan that are pretty bad for Russia, I actually think Putin is okay with it. And that is also supported by the fact that many people have pointed out how the text in these 28 points in many instances sound like a translation from an original Russian text into English because it sounds quirky in English, but it's much more natural in Russian. And as someone who speaks Russian, I can confirm that that is indeed the case. I will not go through all the 28 points in this video and explain exactly why this is bad for Ukraine. Lawrence Friedman has made a really nice annotated version of the plan on Substack, and I will leave a link to it in the video description if you want to read it. But what I want to say is that it's really bad. It will mean that Ukraine loses a lot of territory, it loses sovereignty, it loses security. It also throws Ukraine into a deep political crisis because it demands concessions that a majority of Ukrainians don't support, and it requires Ukraine to give up any ideas of things like justice for war crimes, for example. And most importantly, it does not provide Ukraine with any sense of security from future Russian attacks. So, frankly, in Ukraine, this plan will be interpreted as Russia just getting a break for a year or two, and then they can rearm and restart the war. Everything that Russia would essentially have to do is to stage some kind of false flag attack on themselves and then claim that Ukraine did it. And this action would effectively nullify any security guarantees that Ukraine might receive from this 28-point plan, at least if Donald Trump agrees to this interpretation of this false flag attack. So, it's a really bad plan for Ukraine. There isn't public support for these things in Ukraine. And it's also beyond Zelensky's powers to make decisions of this caliber on his own. I also think it's really important to remember that militarily, there is no justification for demanding such sweeping concessions from Ukraine compared to Russia. Russia is not currently winning the war. Ukraine is not exactly winning either. But when you have a situation where militarily it's very equal, then it does not make sense to demand so many more concessions from one side than the other. Zelensky made a powerful speech in which he said that Ukraine faces difficult choices and might have to choose between losing their dignity or losing a valuable partner. I think it's important to understand that this doesn't actually imply that Zelensky is saying that there is an actual choice, because there isn't. It's not really an option for him to go along with Trump's plan and save the relationship with the United States at the expense of dignity. So, what this powerful statement was about is mobilizing public support, both domestically in Ukraine and abroad, especially in Europe and the United States. He's laying the groundwork to explain why he's going to reject this plan, even if it means Ukraine will suffer more and there will be higher casualties in the months to come. Because Ukraine will be even shorter on things like air defense systems, for example, if they don't get American weapons. It might also be necessary to make other difficult choices, such as increasing mobilization in Ukraine. But this 28-point plan is essentially a demand for Ukraine's capitulation. And they're not going to do that because, as I explained before, the United States does not actually have the leverage to make them do so. And in reality, Zelensky's only option is to try to soften the blow and persuade the Americans to change their mind. It's not an option for him to go along with the plan as it stands now. The last thing I want to say is that I think this whole situation shows that the European strategy for working with Donald Trump has failed. Essentially, the game that's been going on since Trump came into office has been that both the Ukrainian and European side and the Russian side have tried to convince him that the obstacle to peace is the other side. And therefore, the solution would be to put pressure on the others. This has been happening in many iterations, but all the while, there's been this assumption in Europe that it would be possible to convince Donald Trump in the end that the way forward is to put pressure on Russia. And so, there was this feeling in Europe that with the PURL Initiative and the latest American sanctions on Russia that they kind of made it. That all seems lost now. Just last week, I made a Q&A video where I mentioned that Ukraine's biggest achievement in 2025 perhaps might have been how they managed on the political stage to establish some new ground rules for working with the Americans. This allowed them to once again rely on weapons deliveries thanks to the PURL Initiative, which provides some certainty about future deliveries, some predictability. And then perhaps in 2026, they could focus more on how to handle the enemy instead of how to deal with Donald Trump. But now it looks like we might be back to step zero. And it turns out that once again, Donald Trump does not understand it. That you can't make a deal with Donald Trump because he's just going to change his mind the next day. So I think overall, this strategy of always pretending to be very willing to negotiate when really you don't think that negotiations are possible, but you just want the other side to appear as the obstacles to negotiations, I think this strategy has failed. And they, meaning Ukraine and the Europeans, will need to take a different approach and adopt a more assertive posture if they want to be taken seriously. Because right now, Europe and Ukraine are losing the diplomatic game. Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. Also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I upload new videos. And if you want more videos and you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my website at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

You cannot win a hybrid war without taking risks

_By Alexander With_ Despite a long series of hybrid attacks against Europe, European governments have been remarkably cautious in their response. Not all incidents with clear Russian fingerprints have been officially attributed to Moscow. Others have been attributed, but even then, retaliation has rarely gone beyond words. Russia, never easily deterred by rhetoric alone, has continued its hybrid campaign unabated. Europe and NATO have, so far, failed to deter hybrid aggression—or at least, failed to deter it at its current intensity. Russia still possesses far greater capacity for hybrid operations than it has yet employed. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. In that sense, it could be argued that while Russia has not been deterred from carrying out hybrid attacks, it has been restrained from launching large-scale, deadly assaults that might trigger NATO’s Article 5. This raises an obvious question: how can Europe and NATO defend themselves against a constant stream of hybrid attacks which, though troublesome and unsettling, are unlikely to cross the Article 5 threshold? If deterrence has faltered at the strategic level, then defence has failed at the tactical one. Russian drones, aircraft and ships have repeatedly violated NATO airspace and territorial waters with little reaction. Only in Poland have intruding drones actually been shot down—and even that ended in embarrassment. Out of some twenty something drones, only four were destroyed. Multi-million-dollar F-35s were used to down cheap, mass-produced drones, and one missile intended for a drone hit a Polish house instead. In Copenhagen, matters were worse still. Authorities warned of drones over the airport but appeared unable to respond effectively. In the following hours and days, drone sightings disrupted Danish infrastructure in several instances. Similarly, drones recently disrupted airports in Belgium, again apparently without the authorities being able to counter them. The German defence minister Boris Pistorious linked the drones to Russia and the ongoing debate whether to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. The deterrence and defence posture of NATO countries under attack resembles that of a boxer who does nothing but parry blows, never striking back. It may feel safe and de-escalatory in the short term, but it carries serious risks over time. An aggressor emboldened by his opponent’s restraint is more likely to escalate. Indeed, it could be argued that this is precisely how Russia has behaved—emboldened and escalatory. Europe’s current strategy seems to accept low-level hybrid attacks, hope they do not spiral, and simply buy time while supporting Ukraine. But what could be done differently? At the tactical level, perpetrators must be identified and apprehended. This demands not only sound intelligence but also a willingness to take risks. Finland’s seizure of a ship suspected of cutting underwater cables may provide a useful precedent. In another instance, German authorities detained a Russian vessel near Kiel, suspected of launching drones over critical infrastructure. Another challenge lies in the drones themselves. Shooting them down can be hazardous: the drone may crash unpredictably, and the munitions used could cause collateral damage. It is understandable that officials hesitate to “pull the trigger”. Yet if they never do, there is no tactical deterrence or defence—and Europe would, in effect, concede the initiative to the attacker. And one day, those drones may do more than merely observe. Neutralising drones safely remains technologically difficult. Even when the necessary capabilities exist, attackers can simply strike where they do not located. Suppose Denmark deployed counter-drone systems at Copenhagen Airport; the attacker could simply target another airport. The hybrid aggressor will always enjoy an element of advantage, as no defender can protect everything, against every hybrid threat, all of the time. Additionally, while defensive measures and resilience might minimise the physical damage from the hybrid attack, the attack could still be successful in causing fear and disruption. The most effective deterrence, therefore, lies not at the tactical level but at the strategic one. If Europe wishes to deter future attacks, it must respond with more than words. That does not mean responding in kind. Drones over Poland need not prompt Europe to send drones into Russia. Rather, Europe should act asymmetrically, where it truly hurts. For instance, if every hybrid attack automatically triggered a five-percent increase in aid to Ukraine, Russia would quickly acquire a strong incentive to stop its hybrid war. Europe could also transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine or tighten economic sanctions further. Even now, some European firms continue to operate in Russia, indirectly supporting the Kremlin’s war effort. The most effective sanctions would probably be to sanction countries trading with Russia, akin to the recent sanctions made by the Trump administration. Such sanctions would risk reprisals and trade wars, but as seen with the recent Indian import stop of Russian oil, it could also be effective. Europe has yet to exhaust its economic arsenal. Finally, Europe could prohibit the hundreds of thousands of Russians travelling visiting the union each year. The central point is this: for deterrence to work, there must be retaliation. And that, in turn, requires the willingness to take risks, both tactical and strategic. Without it, Europe can do little more than hope the situation does not escalate. And hope, as any strategist knows, is not a strategy. * * * ### About the author: Alexander With is commander (OF-3) in the Royal Danish Navy and military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College. His website is https://www.alexanderwith.dk

logicofwar.com

Q&A: Missiles, strategy, shadow fleet, Russia's economy

In this video, I answer your questions. Unfortunately, I was not able to answer all of them, because there were just too many. But I tried to cover as much ground as possible. There is a transcript below, but in this case I recommend listening to the video instead. The transcript is just so long for me to go through it manually. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ _Note: Usually, I verify the manuscripts manually, but with this one that has not been possible because it's just too long. So take it for what it is._ Hi, it has been a while since I last made a video and the reason has quite simply been that I've been very busy, just very many things to do. One of those things that I've had to do is that I launched a book. I launched this one, so it's The Politics of War is my second book and it's out now. And when there is a book launch, you have to do all kinds of PR things to sort of make people aware that the book is there and it's taken a lot of time. It's in Danish only so far, but the good news is that my first book, this one, The Logic of War, is coming out in English finally. It's going to come out in December, and now that we have a procedure for translating the books and getting them out, I sincerely hope that it's going to be a lot quicker with the new one, The Politics of War as well, so that will be out in English as well. And then I thought, how can I do something to kind of catch up on things? Because so many things have happened since I last made a video. So I decided that for this one, what I wanted to do is a Q&A kind of video. So I asked on my Logic Award website, the subscribers there, if they had any questions that they would like me to answer. And somewhat naively, I thought I would get an amount of questions, a number of questions that I could actually answer, but then it turned out that I just was overwhelmed by the number of questions. So I'm sorry, it's not going to be possible for me to answer all of those questions, but I picked out some of them. I grouped them together and I picked out some of them that I thought would cover most of what people were asking about and that would allow me to talk about some interesting stuff. So I hope to be able to do this in hopefully not too long a video, but there is a lot of things to get through. So let's just jump into it. And a lot of the questions really centered around the questions of missiles, different types of missiles, flamingo missiles, Taurus missiles, tomahawk missiles, all kinds of missiles. So let's just start there. The first question is, what happened to the flamingo? Are the flamingos a reality or just propaganda? So the flamingo missile is the Ukrainian missile that was announced in August, and it got a lot of attention because it has some very interesting features. It has a very long range, up to 3,000 kilometers, and a warhead of about 1,000 kilograms. So it's a very large and powerful missile with a very long range. So if Ukraine can get these into serial production and start producing the numbers that they are talking about, which is about seven per day by the end of the year, that was the plan to increase production to about seven per day by the end of 2025. And that's several hundred per month. And that's really something that would create a lot of problems for Russia. But so far, we have not seen that much of it. So on paper, Ukraine should have by now already produced quite a few of these, but it's been very limited of what we have seen. And the question here is fair. Does this missile actually exist? Are there some kind of problems or is it just propaganda? I think it's fair to say that this missile does exist. We have seen it. It's been showcased. There have been launches of it. And we have actually also seen attacks with it. Just last week, there was an attack on a Russian Black Sea port that very, very much looks like it was the Flamingo missile. So there have been cases like this. And Zelensky was also out stating a week ago or so that they have been used, I think he said like nine times or something like that. So there have been instances where the Flamingo missile has been used. It's just not being said explicitly that's what it is. I also want to say that I do think it does indicate that perhaps there are some things they are still working on, especially in terms of the guidance systems. At least the cases where we have seen it being used and it's been documented, it does look like the Flamingo actually missed its target and hit somewhere next to the target, which is of course not ideal. And then obviously we don't know if there are other cases where the missile actually hit, then these are just the ones that we get to see afterwards. And that actually the other flamingo missiles that were used in the same attack, they did strike the right target. We don't know that. But I do think that it does look like they are perhaps still working on the navigation systems and increasing the precision of these missiles. And maybe that is why we haven't seen them more widely used. It's also possible that they have been unable to scale production quite as quickly as they wanted to, so that we're not quite on track to seven per day by the end of the month or by the end of the year. Another thing is it's possible that Ukraine is saving these for the winter, because we're We're not quite in wintertime yet, and there has been a lot of talk about this fight about electricity and targeting Russia's electricity grid, and is this something that the Flamingo missile would be good for? If Ukraine wants to do something like that, then maybe it's better to wait until they have more in stock and also until the weather is a little more severe. the consequences would be bigger. So those are some of the possible explanations for why we haven't seen it more. But it does look like the missile is there and they're working on it and eventually they will get it fixed even if it's delayed and the production is not scaling as quickly as they would have hoped. I think it's fair to assume that they're going to get there, just to iron out whatever technical issues there are. The next question is about Taurus missiles. What happened to the Taurus missile and how important would it be? So the Taurus missile is the German, a cruise missile, a very sort of powerful missile with a range of about 500 kilometers, some very good, very precise missile, has some very good bunker busting capabilities, so it would be very good at hitting hardened targets. That's been a very political issue about these Taurus missiles and the previous German Chancellor Schultz was not willing to provide them. Then Merz, who is there now, talked about doing it, but it hasn't actually materialized. There is disagreement inside Germany about that. Now we are at a point where it looks more and more unlikely that Ukraine is actually going to get those. But what I will say is also, I think it's important to note that Germany has invested heavily in other types of long range missiles. And I think a good guess is that we're talking about the Flamingo missile. So Germany has invested a lot of money in developing Ukraine's own production of long range missiles. And the problem about the Taurus is anyways, the number of missiles that Ukraine could get would be rather limited. So it might be possible to give Ukraine some number of those, and that would have some effect. But it would not be possible to actually deliver anything near the kinds of numbers that Ukraine can get if they can really get the Flamingo missiles up and working and into mass production. So I don't think the Taurus missiles are going to come. I don't think it would be a game changer. If it happens, it would be nice for Ukraine to have those for certain types of hardened targets. But I don't think Ukraine would, in any case, get a number that would substantially change the direction of the war, which something like mass production of the Flamingo missile might actually do. So, all right. Next one, what's going on with the Tomahawk missile? The Tomahawk missile is the American long-range cruise missile originally ship launched, so you launched from a ship, but you can just place that launcher on land and there are different launchers that you can use on land as well to launch the Tomahawk missile and it would work perfectly well for that. There was a lot of talk about how Donald Trump was going to provide those and then it turned out it wasn't. I don't think it's going to happen. I think it's something that Donald Trump is going to keep talking about because it would be a kind of way to pressure Russia into negotiations, but I don't think it's actually going to materialize. I also must say I don't really think Tomahawk would be a super game changer either. It might be nice for Ukraine to have it now as a sort of gap filler until the Flamingo missile is really online and working. But if Ukraine will not get the Tomahawk missile until they actually fix the problems that they have with the Flamingo missile, then I think it's limited what difference it would make. And again, I think it's a numbers question. I think in any case, it would be a very limited number that the United States would be able and willing to give Ukraine. So let's not put too much into this Tomahawk discussion. All right, another question here. Now that the US is no longer restraining Ukraine's attacks on Russia, why isn't Ukraine more actively targeting the Moscow area with airstrikes? Well, two things in this. First, Ukraine is striking Moscow. So we are seeing that more and more long-range drones coming to Moscow, disrupting air traffic in Moscow, for example, hitting targets there. Another thing I will say is that I don't think really that this has anything to do with the United States and what they are permitting Ukraine to do, because these are Ukraine's own weapons. So Ukraine does not need permission from the United States to do that. There have been instances where the United States could ask politely, like, would you please not target those things? And that did happen. It did seem to happen with the oil refineries, for example, in 2024, that the Biden administration actually did ask Ukraine not to target Russia's oil production facilities too much because they were afraid that this would push up oil prices, which would be bad for the election, the presidential election. And Ukraine then did that. But aside from that, as long as it's Ukraine's own weapons, the United States doesn't really get a say in it. And so I think this discussion about what they are permitting Ukraine to do, that's only relevant when we're talking about American produced missiles or missiles produced in other countries, but with American components, such as the storm shadow missile, for example, where it actually does require an American permission, even though it's a British and French missile. All right. So, but Ukraine is doing that. Then there is a question here, which is about the disadvantages of Russia's strategic death. The fact that Russia is so big, it's really difficult that used to give protection, that Russia was so big that when we had weapons with shorter ranges, then just being a bit away from the front line actually gave protection. But in today's military environment, where you have these long-range capabilities, then is not really protecting like that. So how should we understand that? And what would it mean for European strategy in a war with Russia? So actually, Russia's strategic depth has in an age where the missiles have the kind of range that they have now of a couple of thousand kilometers, then the strategic depth is actually a problem that Russia has because it also just means that the area that is within range of missiles or drones is so big that it becomes really difficult to protect everything with air defenses. So in many ways, it has created a situation where Russia is very vulnerable. If you take a country such as Israel, for example, it's very different, right? because Israel is super small and you can concentrate air defenses everywhere around that. So you can really build like the super robust air defense system that covers everything. But a country such as Russia, that's just not possible. The number of potential targets is so big that there is no way Russia can cover everything and they have to prioritize where to use their assets. And that obviously means that a country such as Ukraine has possibilities if Russia decides to really protect their refining facilities, for example, then Ukraine can go after production facilities or weapons factories or military installations. And then if Russia then protects the military installations, they can go after the refining capabilities. So it really challenges Russia and will mean that Russia will have to use massive resources on this. And that obviously is also something that Europe would need to look into in how can we leverage our advantages against Russia in a potential future war. The problem that Europe has is that we don't actually have a lot of long-range capabilities that can strike these things inside of Russia. So I think we're quite behind right now in the sense that we can't actually take advantage of this disadvantage that Russia has because we just don't have the production facilities for a very large number of drones, for example, or long-range missiles. Ukraine has that, so they can start really pushing Russia on this right now. But in Western Europe, we don't really have that yet. So that is something we would need to create in order to take advantage of this problem that Russia has. All right. There is a question here about Russia's nuclear weapons. What state is Russia's nuclear arsenal in and what capabilities can we expect them to have on the one hand, the internet jokes about poor maintenance and corruption and on the other hand we hear about nuclear torpedoes. There is a lot of theatrics about this and the nuclear torpedo is one, the Burevestnik missile, this nuclear powered missile is another one. Two capabilities that I will say are close to useless from a military point of view, They serve basically no purpose, but it's something that Putin really likes to utilize to create this fear in the West in the sense that Russia has these super weapons or something. But that said, I think it's also important that we do acknowledge that Russia is the greatest nuclear power in the world. They have the biggest nuclear arsenal. They have enough nuclear missiles to destroy the earth many times over and a large number of those missiles actually do work. So it's really important that we don't fall into the trap of thinking that Russia does not really have this capability that they're talking about because they do. These things do work and once you get into the problem about getting into this idea that maybe it doesn't work is that you can get into ideas about how you could get away with a first strike, for example, or how Russia would not be able to respond. And I think definitely we should assume that Russia's nuclear weapons do work. And many of the missiles that they are hitting Ukraine with every day are nuclear capable. So they could just as well have a nuclear warhead and they are creating huge problems for Ukraine's air defenses. They regularly beat something like the Patriot air defense systems. So we need to take it seriously. We need to respect that Russia is a nuclear power and that they do have this capability and also not get super scared when they come out with these big threats and big talk about silly nuclear weapons that don't really serve any purpose. That's their way of trying to threaten with nuclear capabilities and trying to remind us of the existence of this and the danger of nuclear war. And we should of course not be intimidated by that and we should not overreact to these things. It seemed that Donald Trump actually did overreact to this news about the Burevestnik missile, for example, because he did suddenly start talking about how the United States would but also do nuclear testing and all those things, which was not what Russia had done. Actually, all they had done was to test this missile that doesn't really bring anything new at all. But yeah, we should expect Russia to have a working nuclear arsenal. Then there is a question about the significance of Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine that there is so much fighting over. The tactical significance of Western Donbass is frequently said that it is a very good natural defense line. Is this view actually overhyped? And assuming not, is there another similarly strong line that Ukraine could fall back to between the Donbass and the Dnipro? So it is true that Ukraine's strongest defensive lines are in the Donbass. This is actually the area that Russia keeps saying that in order for any negotiations to take place, Ukraine would have to hand over these areas, just as a precondition for negotiations. And obviously Ukraine is never going to hand over their best fortifications to Russia. Ukraine has obviously prepared something on the other side of the Donbas. But Donbass is special in terms of Ukrainian geography in the sense that Donbass consists of many smaller cities, such as Pokrovsk, for example, that there is so much fighting over right now, but there are other Slovians, Kramatorsk, et cetera. So really many of these types of smaller kind of cities, 50,000 to 100,000 people kind of range. This is special in Ukrainian geography where other places it would be much more tend to be empty spaces and then larger cities. And that means that on today's battlefield, it is very often actually the cities that are the defensive line and are the fortifications, which the Battle of Pokrovsk that is taking place right now has demonstrated. It's taken a year and a half for Russia to get inside of the city. And the same would be true of the other cities, which are even bigger than Pukrovsk. So Donbass is special in that sense, that it gives better opportunities for creating these city fortifications. And you can't really replicate the same in the open fields of the area which is further to the west. So I do think it is true in that sense that Donbass is special and that it serves a specific military purpose just because of the way the geography there is with the cities and so forth. Ukrainian high command. What is your view on the Ukrainian high command? I see conflicting information about the way they operate." So this is a tricky question in the sense that if you go to Ukraine, you will hear a lot of criticism about higher command and how the generals are out of touch with reality, how they are making ill-informed decisions because information is not coming to them, not available, people in the system will lie about performance, will lie about mistakes or defeats or setbacks, and therefore the generals will make silly decisions. Or you have people there who are more busy caring about their own career than about actually winning the war against Russia. So you will hear a lot of criticism like that in Ukraine. But at the same time, you will also hear a lot of people praising the way the Ukrainians how it's really smart, how they are getting the best out of the situation, how they are leveraging technology to create good results against a larger army. So I'm a little conflicted on that. I think there is some truth to the criticism. I also think it's just necessary to understand that any large military organization, any general command in any country is also a bureaucracy of people. And there are sort of palace politics and people pursuing their own careers and other people eager to say what the boss is interested in hearing. It's something we also have in Denmark. We have the same discussions here. We have the same discussions in all these institutions. And that is just also necessary to acknowledge that this is also a reality. And it's something that when you are in a ward, you will probably, these things will be more visible. You will need to deal with it in a different way because mistakes have consequences in other ways. And also just in any bureaucracy consisting of hundreds of thousands of people and sort of mid-level managers, a certain number of those are not going to be super competent. And that is obviously also something that you would expect to see in Ukraine. So when you have these instances where suddenly some commander decides to have an award ceremony or something like that, hand out medals, and the ceremony is hit with Russian missiles because they violated the procedures for these things. Well, that's super stupid, right? But unfortunately, I think that kind of stupidity is also to be expected in pretty much any large organization like that. And of course, you have to work with it. You have to try to get rid of it. You have to make sure that the right people actually rise to command and that you reward the right kinds of results and behavior and those things. But it's a constant struggle because there are just things inside any bureaucracy that pull in the different direction, right? So on the one hand, I do think much of the criticism of the Ukrainian general staff would be fair and it's important to bring to light and to focus on how can we improve these things and make sure mistakes don't repeat themselves. But at the same time, I also think in the big picture, I actually think the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian general command is doing pretty okay in dealing with these things. And I do think that is reflected in the results that the Ukrainian army are demonstrating on the front line in holding the Russians back and actually fighting a very competent defensive fight against the constant attacks that they've been under since at least 2023. So, all right. That was my thoughts on Ukrainian high command. And there is a very interesting question here about closing the Danish Straits. Is it possible for Denmark to close the straits to Russian ships? I think there are actually two dimensions to this. There is the one, is it possible that we could close the straits for Russian warships if there is a war? I think the answer to that question is probably yes. I would tend to say that whenever we talk about naval warfare in the Baltic, I actually tend to see it not so much as a maritime issue, but more as an air power issue. I think we should expect the Russian Baltic fleet to more or less disappear within the first 48 hours of any large scale war. So I don't think it would be that big of an issue to close the straits for them. I also think the Russians would expect their Baltic fleet to disappear within the first couple of days because it's just almost impossible to defend it against the air power that is surrounding the entire Baltic Sea. The other question here that I think is really interesting to address is the question of can we close the Danish Straits for the shadow fleet, the Russian shadow fleet, the tankers that are exporting Russian oil from the St. Petersburg area and out into the world market. And there's been a lot of pressure put on Denmark to do that. I just heard Jack Watling, who's a RUSI military analyst, talking about how this would definitely be possible. We just need to do it. What needs to happen is just we need to get beyond the words. We need to actually start taking some action and we just need to change the legal basis for how the straits are regulated that the old treaty that is regulating them now, we just need to replace that with a new one and then we can actually start doing something. I think maybe this is something I should make a dedicated video about actually going through why this is so problematic. But the short version of it is that there are basically two types of straits in the world when you look at it from a maritime law kind of perspective. The first one is you can have all straits that are regulated by all treaties, and these are called historic straits. And the Danish Straits, for example, is one example of those because there's the Copenhagen Treaty from some 150 years ago. And then another example would be the Turkish Straits leading into the Black Sea, for example, where there is the Montreux Convention. Other straits are regulated by UNCLOS, the Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is from the 80s. And the system basically is that UNCLOS is regulating any strait that was not regulated by another treaty or convention that existed at that time when it was introduced. And that means that today the situation is that if any of these old treaties that would govern the Danish Straits, for example, the Copenhagen Treaty, if that fell away, then what would replace that would not be a new treaty that we could make. It would be UNCLOS. But UNCLOS also would allow Russian ships to pass more or less unhindered and not allow Denmark to stop the shadow fleet. And what's more problematic from a Danish perspective is that UNCLOS gives more rights to Russia than the current Copenhagen Treaty in that it would also allow Russian aircraft to pass through the Danish Straits, which is not actually allowed today from the Copenhagen treaty. So that's one of the reasons why Denmark is so careful about challenging these things, because we might end up in a worse place where actually the outcome would be that Russia, we don't get anything of what we wanted. And instead, Russia would actually end up with more rights. And also we are super concerned about sending the president here of violating the maritime law because that would basically give other countries the possibility of doing the same to our ships, other places in the world, right? So these are some of the complications in this. And so from that perspective, I think, no, I don't actually think it is super possible to close the Danish Straits within the confines of international maritime law, and then we would need to move outside of that to do it, and I'm not sure that's necessarily in our interest either. So at least it's a lot more problematic than many people say who just point to Denmark and say, why don't you just close that? It should be easy. All right. A question here about Russia's imperial ambitions. I understand that Russia has the interest to invade Baltic states, but do you really think that Russia is interested in invading Poland or even Germany if it has the opportunity. For me, it seems not realistic that someone would be ready to try something like this. What do you think? I think Russia's ambition is that the international organizations that we have in Europe, so that would be the European Union, it would be NATO, these kinds of bodies, that they would fall And then Europe would just consist of a bunch of individual states that act on their own and that would, in relations to Russia, need to negotiate on their own bilaterally, right? So in that relationship, Russia would always be the great power and they would be in a position to enforce whatever they think is right. So I think that is the condition they would rather see than necessarily where would the borders go of Russia. It would be about creating the conditions where Russia can exercise their power as a great power in Eastern Europe, the dominant great power in Eastern Europe. And for some countries, that might mean that they would be absorbed by the Russian Federation. So that could be the result that the Baltic states could go that way. That is what is happening right now to a part of Eastern Ukraine, right? But I don't think it's necessarily that important to Putin to absorb all of this territory into Russia itself. As long as these countries are willing to just submit themselves to Russian power and accept this great power status that Russia has and that they are the small power, then I think essentially Putin would be satisfied about that. What do I think that means for Poland and Germany, for example? I think for Poland, Putin absolutely sees that as being within Russia's sphere of influence. I think basically we should look at the map from the 1980s and see where was the Warsaw Pact and that's in round numbers, that is the area that he sees as Russia's sphere of influence. So I think for Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, et cetera, he absolutely believes that this is Russia's sphere of influence and these are the countries that should submit to Russia being the dominant great power. Germany, I would say that probably he would tend to see that as legitimate American sort of area, right? Where that is America's sphere of influence. So I don't think he would expect Berlin to submit in that sense to Russia in the same way he would expect Warsaw to do it. But basically that is the condition that he would bring about. And that would of course be a totally different Europe from what we're seeing today. It's a kind of Europe without the European Union, without NATO, without the cooperation between the many small states that we have now in Europe. And it's an idea of a future Europe that is totally incompatible with the idea that we have who actually live here today and who are very satisfied about how our life is unfolding inside the European Union, right? So we need to be aware of how much is at stake. It's not so much about conquering Poland or Germany, but it would be much more about bringing about an end to NATO and to the European Union. I think it's more along those lines we should understand Russia's imperial ambitions. Russia's economy. What is the current state of Russia's economy today and for the next year on money, finances, oil infrastructure and those things, and will this have any impact on the length of the war? The Russian economy is super bad. It worked pretty well for about three years after the full-scale invasion. That is not unusual that there will be an economic uptick after a full-scale... After a transition to a war economy when you start pumping money into society. But right now, those happy days are over and the Russian economy is really struggling. What we're seeing is that there is recession by now, still at a point when the central bank insists that technically speaking, it's not really recession yet. But I mean, there is negative growth. So let's just start from that and say this is recession. We are seeing signs of a slowdown. Businesses are struggling to pay the bills. We are seeing layoffs. We are seeing companies scaling back, going to a four-day work week, for example, something they are marketing as a kind of benefit for the employees, et cetera. But it's clearly because they are struggling to actually finance what's going on. There's super high interest rate and businesses really can't pay those interests. And we are still seeing super high inflation. So Russia is really being hit by all things bad when it comes to the economy. But it's going to take a while before this translates into something that actually hits the military production. Because what's happening is obviously that the government is trying to spare the military sector. So they are trying to let other sectors in society suffer while they keep military production high. We are seeing the first signs that also companies engaged in military production are struggling, But it's going to take a while until this really translates into something that is a problem on the front line. I think it's going to turn into problems in several ways. Over time, it will turn into problems in terms of logistics, in terms of providing the things the soldiers need, in terms of keeping the pressure there. So that's one thing. And then another one is that it's also going to increasingly put pressure on Russia's manning model, which is very much based on giving high bonuses to people to have them sign up voluntarily to fight. It's a very expensive way of recruiting soldiers, and Russia might run out of money and not be able to do that to sustain that model anymore. And another thing is that the more the economic crisis begins to bite in society, the less the value is actually of getting those bonuses and being paid whatever you're paid to be in the Russian military. So if you're mostly fighting because you earn a lot of money and then inflation is eating away that money, then obviously that is something that might eventually be bad for morale. So I think it's going to challenge Russia's manning model and over time it might force Putin into going in a different direction and maybe look more into actual forced mobilization. All right. Now that China is set to fund the war more directly via Yuan-denominated bonds, what do you foresee Russia? Do you foresee Russia becoming a battle state of China, similar to the Warsaw Pact countries in relation to the Soviet Union during the Cold War? And do you also think that this cash injection will affect the outcome of the war or is Russia's fate already sealed? So I think what's happening here, and I think this is an important nuance, is that Russia is now, there are now bonds, Russian sort of state bonds that are in yuan. sell Chinese money. But the important thing is that these are not actually for the Chinese market. They are for the Russian market. So what they are trying to do here is to leverage the fact that a lot of Russian businesses have ended up with a large number of yuan because they are selling things to China. But they have the problem that they can't really get rid of this money. They have nowhere to put it. So the Russian state is trying to collect that by having these businesses buy bonds instead. So it's not actually Chinese investors now investing in Russia's war economy. It's more for the Russian market and to trying to sort of scrape up the yuan that people have in Russia. I do think in the bigger perspective, I mean, the other thing might come. I mean, it's not that I rule that out. But I just don't think that's what we're seeing quite yet. In the bigger perspective, Russia is definitely becoming more and more dependent on China in all this. And it's one of the downsides that Putin clearly doesn't seem to be super aware of or take as seriously as I think most observers would say he should. But for Putin, and that's really important, the biggest struggle that overshadows everything is the fight against the West. It's the constant conflict against us that is the most important one. And things like problems with China, that is something that can be dealt with later, let's postpone that, let's deal with that at a later point once we're done stopping NATO expansion and restoring the greatness of Russia in Europe, and then we can deal with China afterwards. That seems to be Putin's line of thinking here, and I don't think it's super smart. I think he underestimates the long-term consequences of Russia becoming this little brother to China. But anyway, that is the way he's going with this. It's just simply that in his mind, there are other things that are more important. Yeah. Do I think this cash injection will affect the outcome of the war or is Russia's fate already sealed? I will say in a broader perspective, I think it's important to say that I don't see China's interests in the outcome of the war in Ukraine as being as great as Europe's interests. And ultimately, I think that is going to be decisive here. China is primarily, as I see it, interested in making sure that Russia does not lose the war too much. That's how I would put it, right? They don't care who gets to control what cities in Donbass or like Russia's project in Europe. That's not super important to China. What is important to China is that Russia continues to exist as this power, this ally they have on the world stage. So I think China is willing to sustain Russia's economy to make sure that it doesn't collapse entirely and that Putin suddenly disappears from the world stage because Russia collapses. So I think it's more in these terms we need to understand China's engagement. What has been... Okay, so this is different. Here's more about predictions for next year and a bit about evaluation of this year. What has been the biggest successes and fiascos of the war on both sides in 2025? And what will you follow closely the rest of the year and in 2026? I think in terms of the war itself, the frontline, those things, it's actually not moved all that much in 2025. I think the most significant thing is that the Russians were able to throw the Ukrainians out of the Kursk region where they were until in the beginning of the year and Russia pushed them out. I think that's actually been the most significant Russian achievement. I think that's one of the reasons why they are pushing really hard on Pokorovsk right now, because it's really hard at the end of the year to sell to the Russian people that our biggest success this year was that we were able to liberate the Kursk region where Ukraine was not supposed to be in the first place, right? So I think from a Russian perspective, it's actually been a difficult year in terms of showing off successes. But, you know, they might still be able to take Bukhovsk. That's likely possible that they can do that before New Year's. I think for Ukraine, I think the biggest success or the biggest challenge has been about dealing with the Trump administration. It's been about fighting the defensive fight and just playing for time while they got things sorted with the new Trump administration and trying to get the supply lines organized and figuring out what are we going to get from America going forward? What are we not going to get? What is realistic here? So that you can use that as a basis for actually making a strategy for how you can continue the fight. I think that's been the biggest challenge for Ukraine. And I think it has kind of... It looks like it's been kind of successful by now. They're not getting that much from the United States anymore. Actually, the United States is not giving anything, but the United States is willing to sell weapons to European partners who can then hand it on to Ukraine. That means Ukraine is now in a position where they can start making predictions about what are we going to get from whom, what types of weapons are we going to get from American factories, et cetera. And that means that they can start planning ahead. I think that's actually been the biggest challenge of 2025. And now we are at a place where maybe for 2026, there's going to be a bit more predictability about it and we can see Ukraine starting to maybe spend a little less of their time dealing with their allies and a bit more of the time dealing with actually pursuing a strategy of how to end the war. All right. Predictions for 2026 or what will I be following? I think the most important thing is actually going to be the long range war. I think the pressure on the front line, whatever is going on there, that is going to continue. The pattern is more or less set. I think there's going to be a continuation of things like the small attacks, the micro advances that Russia is making while taking very big losses. I think that's going to continue. Ukraine is going to continue focusing on a defensive fight. It's going to be really difficult, very static situation, mostly due to the drones and all those things that are really making things difficult for anyone who's trying to make offensive operations. So I think that is going to continue. But where the development might really be is in the long-range war because we are seeing both sides really increasing the output of long-range capabilities, drones, missiles. And we are seeing this intensify. We're seeing constant escalation. We're now seeing them targeting each other's energy grid. We're going to see Ukraine continue targeting Russia's oil production, like these kinds of things. And I really think that, as boring as it sounds, that the most decisive thing in 2026 will be following the war economy and to see if both sides will be able to sustain the current level of intensity. And especially the Russian war economy, I think, is going to be interesting to follow that. I think Ukraine's war economy is mostly dependent on European support. And while that is a big debate that is also interesting to follow that's happening in Brussels, I think in the end, I'm quite confident that the European countries are going to find a way to keep financing Ukraine here. So the biggest question is, will Russia be able to find ways to keep financing their side or their war? So that's what I will be looking for in the coming months and into 2026. But how is the war in Ukraine likely to end? Well, that's a big question. I think there are basically two types of scenarios here. One scenario is that it's going to end up as a kind of frozen conflict where the insensity is just going to kind of fade out. And we are going to find a kind of scenario where the fighting is going to continue. but on a more sustainable level, fewer casualties, less intensity. I think that's one possible outcome and I would say actually if I were an advisor to Putin, then I might actually tell him that I think this is a good... That is something he might be interested in pursuing because it might be one of the ways that he could actually best preserve his own position inside of Russia and without jeopardizing too much that the war just never really ends and that he just kind of keeps going and going and going. But what I will say is that I'm not quite sure how this would actually play out. I think there are challenges. We sometimes have these discussions about how about a Korea scenario where it's this kind of longstanding thing and it just never really ends. I think one of the big challenges about that is that the weapons technology is just very different from what it was in Korea in the 1950s. At that time, you could just make a zone of about maybe 15 kilometers and say that that's like a demilitarized zone and then nobody could shoot at each other. But how would a frozen conflict look in an age of long-range drones that can reach thousands of kilometers? I'm not quite sure that the weapons technology actually permits these things such as a frozen conflict. But it's possible that it could end there in one way or another and then that the two sides would just accept not hitting each other. But another way that I see this ending is actually with a kind of quite dramatic escalation as a result of Russia facing defeat. I think we, I feel pretty confident that Europe is going to keep supporting Ukraine to make sure that Ukraine does not suffer catastrophic defeat. But I don't think the Russian war economy can sustain this level of intensity for the coming years. And that means that we are going to see Russia's intensity decline, the intensity of the attacks decline. And then if Ukraine does not actually agree to stopping attacking Russia and then following that decline in intensity, then what that would translate into is Russia suddenly starting to lose ground instead of gaining ground. and Putin looking into something that really shatters his ideas of reinstating Russia as the great power in Eastern Europe and those things. If he can't beat Ukraine, then that is basically the end of the dream of the empire. And unfortunately, I think Putin would be very willing to take high risk to make sure that that does not happen and that if he suddenly faces this prospect of losing the war, that he would be willing to escalate in order to see if he can turn things around. And by escalation, I mean primarily against Western Europe because we are what is standing between him and the victory in Ukraine. If we stop supporting Ukraine, then Ukraine will pretty quickly run out of money and then Russia can win. So I think there is a high risk that Putin will be willing to put a lot of pressure on Western Europe to make us stop supporting Ukraine. And as I just said, I don't really think that there is anything that this is a realistic path that Europe could go down. So we might be heading into something that is a bigger confrontation between NATO and Russia in the coming years, as Putin will find himself in a more and more desperate position. Then there is a final question that I want to address. And that is, how do you keep hope up? Every time I look at the situation for Europe, I get strangled by despair. And yes, I can totally understand that. And especially based on my just last answer here, that we might be heading into a large confrontation between NATO and Russia, right? What would that look like? What I'm talking about is actually not just hybrid warfare here. I think way too many people are dismissive of the potential of an actual armed conflict between NATO and Russia that could happen within the next few years, right? Russia does not have currently what it takes to fight a great war against NATO, right? If we, they can't suddenly, while the war is going on in Ukraine, they can't suddenly march on Berlin, right? That's not going to happen. But what could happen is that Russia can absolutely find the resources to challenge NATO in a smaller way and challenge the cohesion in NATO. Right now, there are different reports about how many soldiers Russia has actually engaged in Pokrovsk, but it's somewhere in the ballpark between 100,000, 150,000, some reports say 170,000 people Russia have engaged in taking the city of Pokrovsk. This is something, this is a true buildup that Russia has been able to do while this war has been going on. They can do things like that. And they could also absolutely do the same thing on the border to one of the Baltic states. And if we look at the prospect, what would that do to NATO if Russia suddenly crosses the border to Latvia with 100,000 troops? Would that put us under serious pressure? Yes, absolutely. Would it be the great war? I don't know. define great war, but it would definitely be a huge crisis, right? And it's something like that, that I think Putin might be willing to do in order to force us to divert resources instead of supporting Ukraine. Instead, use those resources to defend ourselves, to defend NATO. And that is dramatic, right? I'm talking about these kinds of things being something that could potentially happen within the coming year or two, right? And this is, of course, something that could make you depressed, right? And I find myself more and more, you know, when I do public speaking and things like that, I really want to say something that will comfort people and give people some, you know, a feeling that it's not that bad, but it is actually pretty bad, right? So I fully understand that question. But that said, I think it's also important to be aware that there are many ways that this could not happen. It's absolutely possible that we will find ways out of this. We can make deterrence work. I think actually the fact that Ukraine, as I said, over the last year have managed to kind of normalize or get a working relationship going again with the United States. and that there is this cooperation between the United States and Europe about supplying weapons to Ukraine. The fact that the Trump administration has now put some sanctions on Russia, has shown some willingness to actually act in some way. I mean, all these are things that would make Putin concerned about what would the consequences be if I take the steps here of actually attacking a NATO country, for example? And am I sure that this is what I really want to do? Or, you know, we can be concerned about the willingness of Western countries to stand together. But from the Russian perspective, Putin would have to be concerned the other way, right? And say, well, we can't rule out the possibility that they might actually fight for each other and the Americans might engage in this. And I think if we can get more of that where we try to rebuild some of that relationship and try to get the Americans a little bit back into expressing more clear support for the NATO project, then there is a good likelihood that we're not going to end up in that worst case scenario that I talked about. And that is something that would allow us to get through the next year or two of uncertainty and into something where there can be a more stable deterrence in Europe. We can see a new kind of frontline, a new... We're not going to be friends with Russia for the foreseeable future, right? But we can get into a more stable situation where there is a defined kind of frontline and deterrence is in place and the rules of the game. You could see how these things could be created so that we can still maintain the Europe that like and that has been very good for us. And so I do think overall what gives me hope is that I do see how this could land in a positive way. I do think that's how... I do think we are... We're going to get there one way or another. But obviously I am concerned about these things, right? And when I say there is a possibility of this kind of war-armed confrontation between NATO and Russia, I think it's important to be aware that I still think that... I don't want to put percentages on this, but I still think there is a greater likelihood that it's not going to happen than that it is. So that gives me a bit of hope. All right. I am going to wrap this up. It's been like, I honestly, when I asked for questions that I could use in this video, I thought this was going to be like a 30 minute Q&A kind of thing. Now we're at least twice that. And I did not get through even half the questions. There are many, many more. I'm sorry to all those that I did not address here. But this was kind of my way of getting back into making YouTube videos and trying to catch up on the things that happened while I was away. And hopefully from now on I will get back into the routine of releasing more regular videos. That's the plan. Anyway, so, um, thanks for watching and if you made it this far, uh, well, thank you very much. I hope, I hope it was useful. See you next time.

logicofwar.com

Russia at war — free ebook

Earlier this year, Alexander With and I wrote a chapter in an anthology about the Russian military following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We focused on the maritime aspect, while colleagues from the Royal Danish Defence College and other Danish academic institutions contributed chapters on other topics. The book was released in Danish in the spring, and now it's available in English as well. The good news is that the English version is an ebook and completely free (unlike the Danish edition, which is in print and quite expensive). So if you're interested in reading it, you can download it right here. Best, Anders Russia at warEbook about the Russian military after the invasion of UkraineRussia at war.pdf16 MBdownload-circle

logicofwar.com

What is Ukraine saving its missiles for?

In this video, I discuss President Zelensky's announcement that attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure this winter will be met with similar attacks on the Russian power grid. This is interesting because it means that Ukraine is venturing into the area of military deterrence rather than just ongoing warfighting, and it indicates that the power balance may be shifting in Ukraine's favor. It may also explain why we haven't seen Ukraine's powerful Flamingo missiles in more extensive use since they were originally announced back in August. Watch the video here or read the transcript below. Best, Anders * * * ### _Transcript:_ For a while, there's been a focus on Ukraine's long-range strike capabilities, including their drones and long-range missiles, and how they've been using these to target Russia's war economy, particularly the oil production facilities. Recently, however, we've seen Ukraine start to leverage this capability in a different and in an interesting way that actually resembles what in military terms would be called deterrence by punishment. This is fascinating, not only in terms of what Ukraine is trying to achieve, but also in what it says about how Ukraine perceives its own strength and that they feel confident in the power that they now have. So let's talk about it. The development of Ukraine's long-range strike capabilities is one of the most fascinating advancements throughout the war, particularly in terms of military production and how it changes the dynamics of the conflict. This is not a type of capability that Ukraine had when the full-scale invasion began in 2022. Russia's had this ability to strike wherever they wanted on Ukrainian territory throughout the entire war. But Ukraine has only achieved that within the last year or two. And it's something that they've achieved because they recognized early on that this would be crucial for their long-term ability to end the war on favorable terms. They knew that this would be necessary to bring Russia to the negotiating table with a realistic mindset. So, they put in the necessary resources to make it happen. Over the summer here of 2025, it's really become clear that Ukraine now possesses this capability and that they have it in sufficient quantity to also really start putting pressure on Russia. So, we've seen Ukraine start to more systematically target Russia's war economy, especially by going after the fuel production facilities in Russia. So we've seen many repeated attacks on oil refineries in particular. But over the last couple of weeks, we've also seen another use of these long-range missiles that I think is interesting. It's especially tied to the development of the Flamingo missile, which was officially announced initially back in August, and it's attracted a lot of attention in the media. The Flamingo missile is a large cruise missile and it has a range of about 3,000 kilometers and it carries a warhead that is weighing about 1,000 kilograms. So it's a very big and powerful missile. In many ways, it could actually be compared to the American Tomahawk missile, which many people are probably familiar with. It has many similar characteristics. The Flamingo missile has been used in real life. We've seen a single strike with it that we know for sure involved the Flamingo missile, but there might also be others where it's been used where we're not quite sure that that's it. But in any case, it's safe to say that when it comes to actual combat use, the use of this missile has been limited. And that is interesting because at the same time, Ukraine claims that they are producing about 50 of these missiles per month and that they are ramping up production so that by January, they expect to reach about 200 Flamingo missiles every month. Now, it's been about two months since August. So, what are they actually doing with all these missiles? Where are they? With the very limited number of strikes we've seen, it's easy to get the idea that perhaps Ukraine is saving them for something. And then, last week, President Zelensky made an interesting announcement. He said that now that we are approaching winter, if Russia again, this winter, as they've done the last three winters, tries to target Ukraine's critical infrastructure, then Ukraine is going to do the same to Russia. So if Russia forces the lights in Kyiv to go out, then Ukraine is going to turn off the lights in Moscow. So he's indicating that there's going to be sort of an eye-for-an-eye approach when it comes to attacks on energy infrastructure this winter. Then, more or less the next day, Russia actually launched an attack on a Ukrainian power plant, and Ukraine responded immediately with an attack on a Russian power plant in the city of Belgorod. So, that disrupted the electricity for, I think, about 100,000 people. I'm not here going to go deep into the legal questions of what it means to target energy infrastructure. That's not actually something you're allowed to do. So, when Ukraine does it, that is against the conventions. But I think at the same time, it's really hard to judge the Ukrainians on this issue when you consider that they're up against an enemy that's been doing this for the last three years. And now it looks like they're going to do it for the fourth year in a row. So there just comes a point when enough is enough and you do what you can to try to make it stop. And then again, it also ties into the question of what is it actually that Ukraine is trying to achieve with this. Ukraine is not doing this because they want ordinary Russians to be without power or fresh water or sanitation or all the other things that you miss when you don't have electricity in a city. That's not the goal. It's not actually the goal to make ordinary Russians suffer. What Ukraine seems to be doing is to ensure that Russia does not target their energy infrastructure. And that means that we are now actually in the realm of deterrence rather than actual warfighting. What Ukraine is trying to create here is a deterrent effect, that the Russians will look at this and know that if they target specific things in Ukraine, then they will be hit with something else that they would rather avoid. And therefore, they're not going to do it. That's the idea. And this is, I think, fascinating. It's actually quite a power move from the Ukrainians to make this statement because it shows that they now feel that they have the power not only to be fighting Russia, but to also deter Russia from certain actions. They have the means necessary to inflict such significant pain on Russian society that they can start playing the deterrence game. Now, I don't think it's necessarily going to work, at least not in the short term. Putin is not really the kind of guy to be deterred by Ukraine. And the problem is also that this is a very important part of the Russian strategy for how they think they're going to win the war or how they can apply pressure on Ukrainian society over time so that the Ukrainians lose the determination to continue fighting. So, I think we're going to see Russia try to take out Ukraine's energy infrastructure also this year. And in fact, since those first attacks, we have seen Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. And it will be interesting to see how the Ukrainians react to this, whether they will actually put actions behind their words, and if they will start a significant campaign against Russian energy infrastructure as a kind of retaliation for the attacks that the Russians are doing on them. But I will say that I do think it looks like Ukraine is building up stockpiles of their most powerful long-range missiles for a campaign over the winter. It's quite possible that this is exactly what they have in mind, that these new flamingo missiles are not, in fact, at this point, intended for the ongoing campaign to target the Russian war economy and their oil refineries, but rather that this is intended for this task of deterrence by punishment over the winter. Recently, there's been some talk about whether Donald Trump would be willing to sell Ukraine some Tomahawk missiles. I think that's probably not going to happen. It doesn't look likely. But this is also a type of missile that would fit neatly into this deterrence by punishment task. Ukraine's problem is that they might not have the necessary quantity of missiles at this point to actually follow through on the threats that they're making, or at least not to do it sufficiently forcefully to actually influence Russian thinking. If we say that they have made 50 missiles per month since August, then at most they would have a couple of hundred by now. And that is perhaps not enough to sufficiently deter Russia from attempting a campaign against Ukrainian power plants and other energy infrastructure. I think Ukraine would like to supplement their own supplies with some Tomahawk missiles just to make sure they have enough. But in either case, it looks like Ukraine has some quite ambitious plans with the long-range capabilities that they have now and how they're going to use that, not just for targeting significant things in the Russian war economy, but also for military coercion. Ukraine is trying to force Russia to follow their demands from a position of military strength. So, I don't know if this is going to work or if it's actually going to prevent the Russians from attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure. I'm also unsure if Ukraine has the necessary capability to respond in this eye-for-an-eye principle. However, I do think it's interesting that Ukraine is now in a position where they are starting to act more confidently and to rely on their military strength, not just to respond to Russian aggression, but to actually start setting the agenda. So, it raises some questions about the power relationship at this point and how the war is going to develop in the future. We're now about three and a half years into the war. What's it going to look like in a year's time? Are these the early signs that the balance is tipping more permanently? These are some of the interesting questions that I think arise when we see Zelensky making statements like that. And when we observe the kinds of capabilities, such as the Flamingo missile that Ukraine is now apparently stockpiling, it puts Ukraine in a position where they can leverage other tools in the military toolbox, such as military coercion and deterrent strategies. And finally, before I finish, I also just want to raise a question or briefly discuss that there is the question about how is the Russian civilian population going to react if Ukraine actually starts responding in kind to these attacks on civilian energy infrastructure. Russian attacks on Ukraine's power grid haven't really worked in the sense that they have not significantly weakened Ukrainian morale or determination to keep fighting. But would it work the other way around? I think a good argument could actually be made that the Russian population is probably less prepared for such attacks on their energy infrastructure and that they would be less resilient. So, it could potentially weaken popular support for the war inside of Russia. And that's probably a topic for a different video. I will definitely make that video if there is a big Ukrainian campaign against Russian power plants and it actually materializes. But at this point, I will just say that I think there would be a certain irony to it if it turns out that Russia's strategy of targeting energy infrastructure didn't have the desired effect of weakening morale in Ukraine, but that it actually did work the other way around in Russia when Ukraine responded. Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and you can click the bell icon, then you will get some notifications when I publish new videos. And if you want to support the channel, you can gain access to some bonus videos if you subscribe to my newsletter on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.

logicofwar.com

Hybrid war and drones over Denmark

Creator site for Anders Puck Nielsen

logicofwar.com