Actually, Forever Wars Are Bad
America just isn't the country that's fighting them.
“No more Forever Wars” is a popular refrain in certain corners of the American political scene. Fair enough—the decades-long US quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan have made military action, even when necessary, synonymous with waste and elite indifference. Yet the very fact that Americans can recognize (if, too often, belatedly) when a campaign has gone south suggests that even a conflict that drags on too long is not really a Forever War. Contrast this with the situation in Russia, where war in Ukraine is necessary for regime, and perhaps national, survival. That means Russia is not only fighting a Forever War, it has become a Forever War state.
Russia will remain at war in Ukraine in one form or another so long as Vladimir Putin remains in power. The scale may vary but the Russian economy is on a war footing. Maintaining that bellicose posture is Russia’s top economic priority, according to the country’s minister of finance. The propaganda machine is thoroughly militarized. War has become the raison d’etre for Putinist Russia, seeping into every pore of Russian society, from school children to babushki. Convicts-turned-Wagner mercenaries are trotted out as patriotic role models in front of impressionable students. Elderly Russian pensioners, nostalgic for the Soviet glory days, can be especially trusting of the Putinist party line. Indeed, in Russia, brainwashing is an intergenerational, whole-of-society affair.
If Russia is defeated in Ukraine after years of bloody losses, it would probably bring down Putin’s regime. I always say that a free Russia will require a victorious Ukraine. And Russia’s KGB-trained strongman came to power riding the tide of one war, in Chechnya. His popularity ballooned with new wars in Georgia and Syria and invasions of Crimea and the Donbas. Now, Putin could fall with defeat in yet another war in Ukraine.
But let’s imagine for a moment that the war does end. Then, a bigger question arises—one that goes beyond the fate of one cowardly little man in the Kremlin: Where will the armed forces go? What to do with millions of men who have spent the past several years murdering, torturing, raping, and pillaging without normal socialization. Demobilization is a serious undertaking even in the best of circumstances. Even the United States experienced difficulties after the conclusion of World War II. Even though the Allies beat the Axis, the US still needed to carry out massive initiatives like the G.I. Bill in order to reorient the war economy and reintegrate returning veterans. And that was in a consolidated democracy, which Russia is not.
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Those of us from Russia remember the 1990s: The high levels of crime, the reign of the so-called Afghan Brotherhood—gangs composed of veterans of the USSR’s ten-year misadventure in Central Asia. Within months of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, nearly 4,000 veterans who ran afoul of the law were already behind bars. Over the coming years, Afghanistan veterans like Anton Malevsky and Igor Sosnovsky would make names for themselves as brutal criminals (the latter was at large until the end of the 2010s).
Yet those are mere drops in the ocean compared with what’s happening in Russia today. The degree of criminality and moral decay is something else entirely. In the 1990s, Russian society still retained some norms. Those are all gone now.
What we are talking about now is the return of one-and-a-half million soldiers. Conservatively, we can say a third of them have suffered traumatic injuries—of body, mind, or both. This sudden influx of men under arms would unleash an uncontrollable social-political situation across the entire country. It will make the Freikorps-driven chaos on the streets of interwar Germany look like a schoolyard tussle. Thus, a realistic off ramp from war does not exist in Russia. Not just for the dictator: Putin will continue the war, but it will be the Russian people who enable him.
This is what a real Forever War looks like. The longer it is allowed to go on, the worse the fallout will be. The best time to support Ukraine and end this madness once and for all was yesterday. The second best time is right now.
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Netanyahu is prepared to fight a forever war for as long as it takes for him to stay out of prison. And this was long before the Oct 7 massacre.
I was there in 1986. It was stunningly beautiful despite the circumstances at the time. I will never forget the architecture, art, dance and food. There were so many wonderful people around even as I was followed into the “outer” parts of central cities. This makes me sad to read. Sad to know. Because we are going to have some serious reckoning after the shit going down here too. As will Ukraine and every other place where bombs have been dropped indiscriminately. Thank you for the unique insight.