The way to win a war is to destroy your opponent’s will to fight and to substantially degrade its capacity to do so. Shock and awe attacks do both, which is why I assumed Putin would approach Ukraine in the same way we dealt with Iraq. He didn’t, presumably because he was overconfident and thought he could avoid the global fallout with a less impressive opening. Now he’s facing the worst possible option: a continuing escalation focusing on destroying Ukrainian cities and starving their residents. The horrible footage will be on TV every night. The entire Ukrainian population has been mobilized against him. The world is outraged. A long and expensive occupation is now his best case scenario. It will be a nightmare.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.