Thread by @samagreene

Ukraine's counter-offensive in the northeast – liberating in a day territory that took Russia a month or more to conquer – is breathtaking. Inspiring, even.

But it should also be sobering. Apart from anything else, it reveals just how much we struggle to analyze this war.

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As recently as yesterday, the consensus in Western policy circles – among US, UK & EU experts & officials – was that while Russia was not winning this war, neither was Ukraine. It was hard to find anyone who believed that Ukraine could make significant territorial advances.

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For two months or more, everyone has assumed this to be a war of attrition, rather than of position – and for good reason. The counter-offensive in the south was a slog, and reports were coming in of heavy casualties. Meanwhile, signs of fatigue in the West were mounting.

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As a result, even voices who have steadfastly supported Ukraine had begun looking for the contours of a sustainable ceasefire. Attempts to suggest that the dangers of fatigue might be overcome by investing in a swifter victory fell largely on deaf ears.

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The conversation today, obviously, is quite different: now, no one knows how far Ukrainian forces will be able to push, how much momentum they will be able to generate, and how it will change the nature of the war. But all of a sudden, talk of attrition has evaporated.

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As @LawDavF has written again and again, war is inherently unpredictable. It is not linear, it's not the arithmetic outcome of an equation involving bullets and bombs. It's an emotional thing, and it's highly contingent.

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In war – as in politics – what people believe will happen next can be more important than what has actually occurred, and those beliefs can turn on a dime. What's more, in violent conflict those beliefs are imbued with powerful emotions, which can submerge rational thought.

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The contingent, emotional and fluid nature of war creates daunting analytical challenges. Even if we can get an accurate picture of the war today, we will always struggle to paint a reliable picture of the war tomorrow. And that is as true today as it was yesterday.

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It's tempting to say that yesterday's 'attrition' story was wrong and that this war will now be decided by Russia's ability to resist Ukraine's advances. But the attrition story was not wrong yesterday: it only became wrong today.

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By the same token, the hopeful stories we are hearing today – the story of a reinvigorated Ukrainian military and Russian defensive lines in disarray – is correct today, but may well turn out to be wrong tomorrow.

If it does, it will not be because of disingenuous analysis.

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The lesson, then, is that we need to recognize the difficulty – if not utter futility – of prediction.

At the very least, we need to stop assuming that the future of the war is a linear projection of what we are seeing today – whatever day that may be.

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The reason we need to stop trying to predict the future of the war – apart from the fact that we cannot do so with any accuracy – is that the act of prediction tethers policy to a fiction and leads to bad decisions.

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Predictions made yesterday were shaping policy decisions designed to mitigate the costs of attrition, to reduce fatigue, and to survive an unwinnable war. Predictions made today might focus on pressing Kyiv's advantage. Both are responses to the present, not the future.

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Accepting that we cannot predict the future of the war should free us up to make decisions on the basis of durable objectives, rather than ephemeral assumptions about their achievability.

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Focusing on objectives rather than achievability does not mean that we should ignore reality. Quite the opposite: the reality is that much of what we think we know about achievability is a fiction. Ukrainian troops on the outskirts of Donetsk seemed a fiction just yesterday.

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Focusing on objectives means sticking to what we know, and not pretending that our understanding of the present extends to the future. We can then adjust situationally, but with a focus on strategic goals, rather than drawing up new strategies every time the future changes.

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Recognizing that the "future" can and will change repeatedly over the course of the war should allow for more consistent and coherent policymaking.

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Swings like what we've seen in the past 48 hours, and the ones we will likely see in the future, should shape our responses, but not our objectives.

We cannot, after all, control the future. But we can control how we think about it, and what we do to build it.

/END