This is how a war is won

When we hear the word “war”, we automatically think that there must be a winner and a loser.

And in our popular imagination, it is natural to assume that a war ends when one party defeats the other militarily.

– But modern war doesn’t work like that, says Sverre Diesen.

He is Norway’s former chief of defense, a retired general and now a researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Institute (FFI).

So how is a war won?

All wars end

Some wars end after just a few days, while others last for decades. But all wars end at some point, even if they often end in different ways:

Overall, we can say that a war ends when one of the parties sees its interests better served by ending the war, even if it is on the opponent’s terms.

But when one of the parties comes to such a conclusion is never certain.

– It is completely dependent on context and thus what makes every war unique, says Norway’s former defense chief.

Historian and researcher Sven Holtsmark at FFI agrees with that.

– We must be careful about creating very large, general pictures about how wars generally unfold, and then agree that it will be like this, he says. Then he adds a big “but”:

If a belligerent cannot produce sufficient defense material or has access to modern technology, they will not be able to win a modern war.

Ukraine war

If we are to imagine how a war might unfold, Holtsmark recommends drawing up several realistic scenarios.

In the Ukraine war, Holtsmark has landed on three potential outcomes:

1. Russia is able to carry out its ordinary goals; they occupy all of Ukraine, and carry out a regime change in Kyiv. This is the most dramatic, pessimistic scenario.
2. Russia’s military forces are being coordinated, carrying out new offensives and occupying new territories in Ukraine. These lands are fortified, and the front line is set in Russia’s favor.
3. The most optimistic scenario: Ukrainian forces push their Russian counterpart eastward, perhaps even all the way back to the Russian border. One can even imagine that Russian forces will be squeezed out of Crimea.

– Scenarios two and three can lead to a “generational war”, it is completely impossible to say for sure how long such a war will last, says Holtsmark.

If President Vladimir Putin renounces the four occupied counties of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, it will cost him the presidency, the researcher speculates:

– But I don’t think so something Russian regime will survive the loss of Crimea.

It is therefore impossible to see an imminent end to the war, he concludes.

The question that is essential now is rather where the front line is set, and about Ukraine gets enough air defenses to start rebuilding the country.

A delicate question

The topic of peace negotiations is a difficult and delicate question, which Russian Pavel Baev has the job of pondering and researching. Baev researches peace at the Institute for Peace Research (PRIO).

– A war can be won in many different ways, but a complete victory is really a rare case, says the peace researcher to TV 2.

Baev helps us understand how results on the battlefield bring pressure on the political leadership in Kyiv and Moscow.

For the Ukrainian authorities, it is the Russian warfare in the country that creates a stressful situation, says Baev, while the pressure on Russian society is due to many factors:

– Everything from the humiliating setbacks on the battlefields to Western sanctions and to the deep internal divisions, which in particular cause massive emigration.

Putin’s recipe

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941, then-President Frank Roosevelt used the opportunity to mobilize the American people. More than 16 million men and women stood up when the “New World” became a party to World War II.

The Germans’ failed invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbossa, June 1941. made the “Iron Man” Josef Stalin managed to gather 34 million combat-ready citizens.

An important point is that both Stalin and Roosevelt led nations that were under attack.

President Vladimir Putin has not followed the same recipe. In fact, he did the exact opposite. After invading Ukraine, the government in Moscow kept the invasion hidden from the public.

Yet the Kremlin insists that the war is not a war. On top of it all, the regime claims that everything is going according to plan.

But when several short-range weapons systems, of the Pantsir-S1 type, were recently deployed in Moscow, it opened the door to speculation.

General Diesen believes it is a “clear sign that the Kremlin is about to realize that the rhetoric of a ‘military special operation’ no longer has credibility”.

– Then they resort to the opposite extreme and call it an existential war in order to mobilize support for the war, says Diesen to TV 2.

Peace researcher Pavel Baev agrees. In his view, Russia is in a very bad position.

– And not just because they have no allies and a weak economic base, but primarily because support for the war in society is lukewarm at best.

The Russian peace researcher believes it leads to resignation, apathy and desperation in society, rather than determination and mobilisation.

– Putin can hardly afford another setback – and it will come, in one form or another. Even a small setback can produce a massive, negative response in Moscow, says Baev.