I read a talk with Paul Krugman talking to military historian Phillips O’Brien on Krugman’s Substack.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-phillips-obrien

Might not work if you are not subscribed to Krugman’s Substack.

It made several interesting points.

1. Most analysts in the media are doing a terrible job covering the Ukraine war.  The much hyped Russian advances are tiny amounts of territory that will not affect the overall war situation.

2. Trump has never done any actions to restrain Putin and Russia and there is no reason to think that will ever change.

3.  Europe trying to flatter Trump to get him to support Ukraine does not work.

4. Europe needs to look to their own security and should try to help Ukraine without expecting much from the US.  O’Brien thinks that Europeans are so used to leaning on the US that they don’t know how to defend themselves, and that that they badly need to think and act for themselves.

5. Trump wrecking our alliances is a total security disaster.  Strong alliances with strong allies win wars.

6. The Ukraine war is showing that war has changed dramatically.  O’Brien: “I’ve been told that NATO did a maneuver with a Ukrainian drone unit and the Ukrainian drone unit destroyed a full NATO armored brigade in a few hours because they simply had no way to respond to what the Ukrainians were doing. They didn’t have any equipment, didn’t have any hint, it was an intellectual hinterland.”

”I’ve been hearing from Ukrainians that literally the adaptation cycle is about six weeks. Within six weeks, the fundamental lessons of how you’re going to protect your drone and operate it will be different than it was six weeks earlier.”

7. We need to pay more attention to the strategic air war, where both sides are trying to damage the opponent’s economy and logistics.

8. Russia’s terror bombing of civilians won’t work, it did not work in World War II for either side.

I would point out that the EU’s economy is much larger than Russia’s.  They could produce what Ukraine needs to keep fighting without having to go to a war footing as Russia has.  The best way to end this war without a Ukrainian surrender is to show that Russia cannot win.