Clocks of War

Wars invite the establishment of clocks of action, expectations and results.  And here?   By each of  the major players.

The Ukraine War's Three Clocks   in Rand (who we used over the years as consultants)

As the war in Ukraine creeps into its second month, perhaps the most common question is: How will it end? Ultimately, the answer comes down to three internal clocks—Ukraine's, which is counting down in years, Russia's, in months, and the United States and NATO's, which is stalled at the moment but could restart quite quickly.

Ukraine's clock revolves around how long it will continue to fight. Ukraine successfully blunted Russia's ground offensive, which has led Russia to adopt a strategy of punishment, indiscriminately bombarding cities to try to break Ukrainian will. In Mariupol, an estimated 80 percent of the houses have been destroyed. While official civilian casualties still estimate a number in the hundreds, the fluidity of the situation may mean that the true death toll is much higher. Ukraine's military losses are similarly hazy. Officially, the Ukrainian government admits that thousands of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting. This, too, could be an underestimate.

And yet, history suggests that Ukraine's clock could run on for years. Great Britain endured nine months of German area bombing during “the Blitz,” between September 1940 and May 1941, at the cost of 43,500 civilians. North Vietnam lasted through a decade of American bombing despite suffering the killing of tens of thousands of civilians. And most recently, the Syrian civil war claimed over 600,000 lives and yet, the war went on for years. Time and again, populations have shown the willingness to fight on, against the odds, if they believed could win—or at the very least felt they had no other choice but to persevere.   ....'