Op-Ed: What past wars can teach us about how the Ukraine war could end
LA TimesEvery war must eventually end. In the past, the prospect of backlash has dissuaded other nuclear-armed belligerents from using their nuclear weapons even as they failed to achieve their combat aims: the United States in its wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan; France in its colonial war in Algeria; China in its late 1970s and early 1980s conflicts with Vietnam; and the Soviets in their 1980s war in Afghanistan. Putin may not know — or care, even if he does know — that hundreds of thousands of Russian men have fled the country to avoid being drafted, Russian combat soldiers reportedly are fighting in flip-flops and are without enough food, and that advancing Ukrainian troops have high morale. Before the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive, some might have imagined Ukraine allowing Russia to retain some parts of its pre-invasion territory to end the war. As Putin starts to realize that the prospects for Russian victory grow ever slimmer, he may seize on new ways to massacre Ukrainian civilians, including using chemical and biological weapons as Moscow did during its 1980s war in Afghanistan.