Since then, Russia’s problems seem to have gotten worse. Instead of taking Kyiv within weeks, Russian forces experienced major system breakdowns. Russia’s overwhelming power was anything but instead of unleashing modern war on the Ukrainians, Russia relied on antiquated weaponry and command structures. The past year in Ukraine is far more typical of war than Desert Storm was.
Read: How and when the war in Ukraine will end Plans fail, confusion takes hold, and military advances give way to periods of stalemate. No one really knows how armies, technologies, and economic resources will behave when thrown into kinetic competition. In the three decades since, the United States, despite having the world’s largest economy and most powerful armed forces, has generally proved unable to translate its dominance into quick victories, ending up instead in protracted conflicts with, at best, mixed results. When the opportunity to march on Baghdad presented itself, President George H. Even then, a defining feature of the Gulf War was that the U.S. Yet that victory was possible only after a decade-long U.S.-military buildup and with the deployment of the world’s most advanced military technologies. The United States has made war look simple at times, most obviously in 1991, when Operation Desert Storm dislodged Iraqi forces from Kuwait in a month and a half. Yet the first lesson of the past 12 months is that war is rarely easy or straightforward-which is why starting one is almost always the wrong decision for any nation. Its purported strengths seemed so great that when Russian forces were only just crossing the border, some analysts were musing about which pro-Moscow Ukrainian politician might lead a puppet regime in Kyiv. President Vladimir Putin’s military was widely said to have overwhelming airpower and firepower, a fast-moving ground force, and extensive cyberwarfare capacity-all of which supposedly meant that Russia would rapidly conquer its neighbor. When the invasion began, a year ago today, much of the outside commentary focused on Russia’s advantages. Although the consequences of Russia’s terrible war in Ukraine will unfold over decades, three lessons from the conflict are already clear-and, in retrospect, should have been apparent all along.
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