Death by a thousand cuts: where is the west's Ukraine strategy?

This is an article by Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, shared today on Facebook by a friend who is a lawyer and now travels extensively since retirement. Sounds like one of those posts from the Russia, Brazil, India, consortium website . . .

Seems to describe, imho, large scale collusive Byzantine type guerilla terrorism like before the world of nations agreed to be more civilized - and abide by the Geneva Conventions. It is something Russia has excelled at for a very long time at least during modern times.

I am grateful to Biden's administration for not getting us official involved on the ground in the mess.

It is a rather lengthy article . . . here are the first few paragraphs.

"Wars are not won with tactics and narratives - they require a Grand Strategy. Russia has a master plan behind its Ukraine military operations, but does the west have one?

While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov. [. . .]"