All opinions expressed in this article are solely the opinions of the contributors.
Everyone wants to know the answer to a question literally no one is capable of answering: When will the war in Ukraine end? For starters, experts say, it depends on how you define the end of the war. Some believe it will only end when Ukraine or Russia, or both, collapse, since it’s a matter of life or death for both sides and neither will give up. Others worry the more that finite resources are depleted, the more that parties will be willing to gamble and potentially go nuclear.
Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan thinks there are three scenarios, and each one is worse than the next.
Excerpted from Peter’s May 22 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
We’re wrapping up our Ukraine War Q&A series with the most depressing question yet…how long can this war last?
There’s the dark, really dark, and truly dark.
The dark answer is that Russia’s current problems can be attributed to mobilization issues and ammo. Russia still has a deep reserve of armored vehicles and supplies they can tap into…Ukraine doesn’t…and the Western logistical chain is not as good as we would hope. Yes, the US has a significant backlog of equipment, but most other countries do not (and in many cases, they are competing with Ukraine to ramp up their own production).
The really dark answer is that Russian wars are rarely quick. If neither side of this conflict can maintain current industrial output levels, this could likely become the status quo of living on the Russian borderlands.
The truly dark answer is that the demographic situation in Ukraine before this war was already terrible and is now likely terminal. No matter how this war shakes out, we could very well be in the final generation of Ukraine.
If Russia continues down this path of denuding its occupied territories of children, in ten years, there won’t be anyone left to fight, let alone reconstruct the country.
