My Take | Why the Ukrainian blitzkrieg tanked in latest counteroffensive
- Controversial US political scientist John Mearsheimer argues the much-touted counter-attack against Russia was doomed from the start
Ask a war buff about blitzkrieg, or lightning war, and you won’t be able to shut him up. There are few living souls writing today in the English language who can claim greater authority on the subject than John Mearsheimer, one of the world’s most famous political scientists and when it comes to the war in Ukraine, also among the most controversial.
His views on the Russian invasion are well-known and intensely disputed, if not hated, among the Western intelligentsia and policy circles. That’s because he thinks there can be no good outcomes for those with the highest stakes in the conflict, and that he has long argued, well before the current war, that Nato’s eastward expansion was bound to provoke Russia into a military response.
However, if we take a detour with this latest analysis of what he calls “the ABC’s of blitzkrieg”, you might find his stance on the war, or at least the latest counteroffensive, reasonably objective and neutral.
The conclusion that the Ukrainian army has failed at a decisive breakthrough in the eastern front is becoming less controversial by the day, though some Western pundits and politicians still cling to the possibility of success. Others simply move the goalposts, and claim the counteroffensive was never meant to be a blitzkrieg, but “a marathon”, in other words, a war of attrition.
