Key Points and Summary – The biggest threat to Ukraine may not be on the battlefield, but in the flawed commentary of Western military analysts.
-This “fraternity of failure,” as one historian calls it, wrongly predicted Kyiv would fall in three days and continues to misread the conflict by consistently overestimating Russian strengths while underestimating Ukrainian resilience.
-By obsessing over minor Russian territorial gains and ignoring the staggering Russian casualties required to achieve them, these experts paint a skewed and dangerously pessimistic picture of the war, born from a fundamental misunderstanding of both nations.
The Experts’ Ukraine War Mistakes
Does Ukraine need to be “saved”? Yes, but not quite how you may think.
It’s become the conventional wisdom in some circles that Ukraine can’t defeat Russia, even as many reasonable observers concur that Russia lacks the capacity to win and, as much as Vladimir Putin may want to, destroy Ukraine.
We don’t know how and when the war will end. The only thing we can state with certainty is that, as the Ukrainian national anthem puts it, “Ukraine still lives.” And will continue living as long as Putin mismanages Russia and magnifies its weaknesses.
What Ukraine really needs to be saved from is bad Western analysis. (Russian analysis, or more precisely Putin’s analysis, which brought about this unnecessary bloodletting, is by definition bad.)
A recent conversation between the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and the military historian Phillips O’Brien focuses on this failing in great detail.
Says Krugman: “You recently wrote that we have the worst military analysis community in the history of military analysis communities.”
To which O’Brien replies: “They just don’t know how to judge war. Never have. This is the same group of analysts that said Kiev would fall in three days and Russia is a great power and the war would be quick and fast. And now they seem to be watching and obsessing about every little—not even village—almost every little farm field in the Donbas, and impregnating all of these tiny little Russian advances or failures to advance as some part of the indication of an impending Ukrainian collapse or anything in the like. They just don’t understand, I think, how to judge a war and what really matters.”
A little later, Krugman remarks, “So it’s not just that you keep on having the same analytical error about the nature of the war, but it’s the same people who get quoted again and again…. Why does it work that way?”
And here’s O’Brien’s scathing response: “Because it’s a fraternity of failure. So many people were so wrong that it’s much easier for them to defend each other and keep hiring each other and keep referring to each other than admit that they all screwed up and don’t know what they’re talking about. So it was a community that failed, not just a few people, a whole community failed…. Everyone got it wrong. And that somehow makes it okay. We all got it wrong. And all that means is that the same people who got it wrong to begin with are getting it wrong now, but they’re being treated as if they have any idea of what they’re talking about when they don’t.”
Ouch.
Here’s my guess as to why “they” got it wrong. Their first mistake was to believe Putin’s claims about Russia’s greatness and misunderstand the nature of his ideologically-driven fascist regime. Their second mistake was to believe Russian propaganda about Ukraine—that it’s a hopelessly corrupt failed state that can be toppled in a few days—and to misunderstand the nature of Ukraine’s democratically-driven civil society and identity.
As a result, analysts saw Ukraine’s weaknesses and Russian strengths, while ignoring Ukraine’s strengths and Russia’s weaknesses.
A good example of this kind of skewed analysis is provided by Harvard University’s Russia Matters website. It always starts its reporting with estimates of Russian territorial advances. Fair enough, but what’s missing from this picture of inexorable and unstoppable Russian gains? For one thing, context: those inexorable advances amount to less than one percent of Ukraine. For another, cost: Russia Matters fails to provide estimates of Russian casualties, which amount to about 1,000 dead and wounded daily.
But the prize for bad analysis surely has to go to Josh Hammer, a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times. Hammer may or may not be right in his optimistic assessment of President Trump’s ability to reach a peace. I for one wish he is, but I’d have more confidence in his analysis if it weren’t for the following throw-away line: “The borders of the Donbas region — full of ethnically/linguistically divided Russian/Ukrainian towns — must be redrawn too. The granular cartographic details are beyond our scope, but the general guiding principle should be self-determination and peace over permanent strife and proxy war.”
Now, as anyone with an inkling of today’s Russian politics knows, those “granular cartographic details”—i.e. Ukraine—are why Putin launched the war and annexed all of the Donbas and why he will not let “self-determination and peace” be a “guiding principle.” To state that these details are “beyond our scope” is effectively to admit to impotence and ignorance.
And to advise Ukraine to let itself be saved by Western impotence and ignorance.
About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University
Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”
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Swamplaw Yankee
August 24, 2025 at 8:30 pm
The op-ed above is very rare input from a genuine Ukrainian-American in diaspora. It is welcome to this open forum.
The Academic Motyl has a basic fact very wrong. There is NO war. Zip. Secondarily, there is ” conflict”, the Muscovite turn of the phrase.
First, Prime, there is the vicious re-start of the ancient genetic need of the ethnic russkie peasant to Genocide Ukrainians. This ancient 1000 year old tribal barbarism of the monghol muscovite ancestors, Genocide of Ukrainians, was re-started in 2014.
Motyl may be too polite to mention it out loud in the cafeteria and hallways of his “Fraternity of Failures” work place University. But, in 2014 the POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal unilaterally greenlighted Putin to re-start the ruskkie genocide of Ukrainians. Startled at this Obama compliance, Putin’s “little green groomer” military immediately started filtering out Ukrainian children in Crimea for the ancient russkie tradition of Mass Abduction for the orc sex trade.
So, the expectation of the very suppressed russkie sex traders was that the 2014 POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal also unilaterally greenlighted the loss to NATO + the WEST of the geopolitical advantage of the Ukraine’s Crimean soil, families and Black/Azov Sea jurisdiction zones to NATO’s long time prime vile cold war enemy, tsarling Putin.
This USA deep state endorsed, marxist Obama betrayal of the allies and the whole concept of the WEST seems to make 100% of Yankee op-ed enter a state of MCI. (minute long cognitive interruption).
The above op-ed writer and the whole Cabal will poop their pants rather than discuss exactly how great in scale of a Benedict Arnold, the 2014 Obama is in international history. Yes, there also is a useful, well understood, word for that action, but, why should I be the first to apply the appropriate word to this malfeasance.
So, there is a huge army of Josh Hammer style agit-prop in the op-ed world. The reality is that the Josh Hammer agit-prop is just another panel in the Potemkin Village delusions that the Yankee mind generates. The USA empire is in eternal conflict with other empires. That the US Yankee MSM and deep state refuses to perceive a 1000 year old history of ruskkie Genocide of Ukrainians is just another Yankee reality. There are millions of op-ed articles that are ignorant of the facts of history that Motyl has in his cognitive command. Read some of his books and past op-ed.
Remember the garbage op-ed that came out as the Yankee attempted to emotionally grasp the 1986 con’s that the Soviet commies fed out thru the serbia apparatus. Few Yankee’s care to recall that miasma.
The fact that 11 years later, the Putin business in the sex trade is successful. Putin has computerized the industry of cultural genocide and any very needy russkie table top dancing teacher can order a “bacha bazi” or “Lolita” air shipped to moscow for free. The deviant russkie loves and truly adores Putin’s “conflict” in ways the DNI, et al, just refuses to consider, track and graph for the MAGA POTUS Trump.
Ad rem: Motyl must be contrite and so very softly ask his MAGA POTUS Trump to demand in public that Putin immediately prepay a $10,000,000 US gold bullion deposit for each and every Ukrainian victim as compensation and reparation for up to 11 years of physical and cultural genocide abuse!
The cash must be deposited now. Putin has the gold bullion for all the mass abduction victims, as the Han PRC CCP XI regime has the cash to make good on any trillions of rubles that is necessary to buy the gold bullion to make minimum compensation/ reparation to the children.
Only then, after the deposit is phyically received, should the other points Motyl and others make, start to be considered by those not in moral turpitude. -30-
Off-CNN
August 24, 2025 at 8:59 pm
Author is WRONG.
Fascist ukraine can’t be saved.
Why.
The conflict will end in defeat for nazis after a nuke exchange.
The west, especially the US-EU-NATO, have long been preparing for this showdown, with aim to kaput russia.
But russia has survived, and now trump (bothered by the ep saga) is making all kinds of threats against moscow, to ingratiate his big white house with the big large mass media wolves.
So, What’s the IMPENDING outcome.
Outcome is russia on the ropes, and eventually, THE boom-booom, the lovely lovely nukey sound that will finally save russia’s backside.
No need for trump’s famous flip-flops. End for zelenskyy and his nazi dream of a power-powerful fascist ukraine.
Bankotsu
August 25, 2025 at 3:18 am
I seem to remember this writer saying that Russia would collapse any day now back in early days of the war.
He got it TOTALLY WRONG.
Bankotsu
August 25, 2025 at 3:23 am
“Why the Experts Keep Getting the Ukraine War Wrong”
This clown Alexander Moty is talking about himself, he has been talking non stop about coming Russian disintegration and collapse of Putin regime since 2022.
What a ludicrous clown.
Swamplaw Yankee
August 25, 2025 at 6:42 pm
Oh boy: the shills of ethnic russkie, Puti the Paedo, are right in the groove of their ancient 1000 year old genetic need to genocide Ukrainians.
The op-ed of Motyl has a great gem for the peer reader. The automatic reference to the substack transcript is in Motyl’s op-ed.
Go to it, open up and read away.
Phillip O’Brien and Paul Krugman have a wide array of topics related to the USA/ Ukraine, educational topics that just do not appeal to the stable of op-ed contributors that the peer readers are used to.
O’Brien is out of Scotland, so has a skewed analysis ( that’s good I speculate) not typical of the inner beltway green glassed aquarium.
Also: Motyl has great op-ed material ( in my opinion) going back more than a decade. Go back in time + just scan his vast data base of opinion. Gems of op-ed concepts, cognition, that are not heard today. Or, just read some of his published books.
Read a few of Motyl’s books and the shill scam appearing on these op-eds is glaringly evident at a glance. Tragically, the MAGA POTUS Trump is now seen ( August 2025) as not at all versed, even basically, to be so cock sure that he is even rudimentarily functional to assume the adjudicators role of the WEST, let alone in ancient ethnic genocide traditions.
Comparitor: The Yankee failed in the complex Balkan War miasma of fact/ semi truth/ fiction.
Trump is NOT the Leader of the WEST! Trump on his own, self-abdicated that critical, yet intangible role, when he displayed to the leading enemies of the Yankee empire that MAGA POTUS Trump could hardly play checkers, let alone have any basic mastery of international chess strategy.
Selling US real estate, even well, rings few bells in the other empires!
The ability of Puti the Pedao’s Muscovite Cabal to outwit the POTUS, the Trump White House, is evident to all empires and quickly so legendary, even (now) inside the MAGA rant and file. The ability of the PRC CCP Xi regime is equivalent in international chess play, at the least, and higher in so many spheres.
-30-