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Ukraine Faces A Growing Risk of Outright Military Collapse If No Deal Struck
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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To be fair to them, we haven't seen an attritional war strategy enacted since probably Vietnam, and never an attritional war strategy by near peer adversaries in the 21st century.
But on the other hand, all late game TvT ends up becoming attritional, with the player who is most able to efficiently use resources usually winning. Map painting rarely wins you the game unless you are being precise and strategic in what is being painted and where. I distinctly remember calling this strategy when Russia retreated over the river in the South saying that while it was a political disaster, it was absolutely the best military strategic move if the point was to grind down a weaker opponent. Make them take and hold the strategically useless, but politically important land. I was told I was 'coping'.
Terran v.s. Terran in StarCraft 2. Basically the closest equivalent you can get to what mass simulated battles, where resources are gained and expended rapidly from a commander standpoint, look like. The second closest equivalent would be Squad, but there is no resource extraction backline aspect to the game, it is still too focused on individual combat encounters deciding outcomes.
You could also argue that "Foxhole" is actually the best milsim equivalent, but those games move too slowly to analogize for non-gamers, you might as well be watching an actual war unfold, plus there is a whole 'teching' aspect that doesn't actually apply irl, nor aircraft or drone warfare, which is the most prominent aspect of the Ukraine-Russian conflict.
The point is that there are plenty of modern war gaming examples that explain why near-peer conflicts will inevitably turn towards an attritional strategy, and that taking land simply to take it is a terrible strategy.
Terran vs Terran (StarCraft match-up)
The Vapid Turks
Wasn't the Syrian Civil war several years of attrition before the rebel coalition mostly collapsed (in the first half)?
Yeah, but that was far more asymmetrical, especially from the U.S. side, where we were mostly drone striking non-cooperative entities and funding cooperative entities to undermine the legitimacy of the Syrian government. From the Syrian side it was attritional, and their strategy worked until they ran out of money to maintain the standing army to the degree needed to keep out a fully funded and backed by Turkish-Isreali funded force, and then were completely obliterated by the Israeli Air Force. Which isn't going to happen to Russia, but could possibly happen to Ukraine, but the effects will be different.