لنستخرج كنوزا من المعرفة و الإبداع و العلم و الأفكار
Predictions about the future of war follow narratives and intellectual fashions. At the beginning of the millennium, the emergence of high-tech drones—the U.S. military’s all-seeing eyes in Afghanistan—fueled futuristic visions of battles contested by robots and computers. By the mid-2010s, the success of Russian information operations, election interference, and weaponized corruption in Europe and the United States had given rise to the idea that even a major country could be controlled without the use of force. Others thought that mutual dependence on trade and commerce in a globalized age would render a major war unlikely—or keep it locally contained.
The outbreak of the largest and most brutal European war since 1945 has once again reminded us not to project our wishful thinking or extrapolate from the past. So much of what pundits, politicians, and journalists predicted in the early hours of Russia’s three-pronged attack on Ukraine was wrong: that Russia’s military machine would be overwhelming, that Ukraine would quickly collapse, and that the West’s response would be weak. Those were just the first surprises. Who’d have thought trenches and artillery would feature so prominently in a 21st-century war?
Drawing the right lessons from the first 10 months of the Russian invasion, then, not only matters for the survival of Ukraine. It is also vital for deterring and preventing a future conflict—and, if necessary, fighting one. The most obvious potential hot spot and one that involves even greater stakes is, of course, Taiwan. Yet for every parallel between Russia’s designs on Ukraine and China’s on Taiwan, there is a difference. Taiwan is a small island, whereas Ukraine is the second-largest country on the European landmass. China is a large and technologically sophisticated adversary, whereas most of us have been stunned to see how technologically, organizationally, and tactically unsophisticated the Russian military really is. Some of the lessons emerging from Ukraine will therefore be only marginally relevant. Others should be quite useful.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not the only ongoing war in the world today, nor is Taiwan the only potential future one. What marks today’s conflict as generational is its nature as a war of conquest by a nuclear-armed power, its deadliness, and the fact that it has drawn in dozens of countries—if not as combatants, then as supporters. It is vital for humanity far beyond Ukraine that a war of this scale not become a new norm.
With the caveat that these are necessarily snapshots, Foreign Policy asked 12 experts to give us their views on the most important lessons of Russia’s war. Each writer is a prominent specialist in his or her field, and they answer a broad range of questions. Why did prevention and deterrence fail? What have we learned about strategy and technology on the battlefield? How do we deal with the return of nuclear threats? Some of these lessons are general, while others apply specifically to a potential conflict in Asia.
At the same time, the epic failure of Moscow’s war plan in Ukraine may also be a lesson for future aggressors about the many things that can go unpredictably wrong even for a major power with a bristling arsenal. If we’re lucky—and depending on the extent to which Russia realizes any of its aims via negotiation or in battle—this war may have made a future one just a little less likely. If so, that would be a very good lesson indeed.—Stefan Theil, deputy editor
