If there is a contest for quote of the year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already won it with his response to America’s offer to fly him out of the country (or maybe to Lviv, in far western Ukraine, I’m not sure) after the Russian invasion started. Maybe we thought he would want to leave, like Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani did when we abandoned Afghanistan. But President Zelensky didn’t. Which leads to my first comment:
1. Just like in Afghanistan, our intelligence in Ukraine was really bad. In Afghanistan, we thought the government could last for months after we left. Instead, it collapsed before we were even gone. It was a total intelligence failure.
It was much the same in Ukraine, except in the opposite direction. While we got it right that Russia was going to invade, we were totally wrong about how well the Russian army would do and we were totally wrong about how well the Ukrainian army would defend its country. We saw the Russian army as experienced and well-equipped, and we thought they would roll over the Ukrainians. We saw the Ukrainian army as weak and unprepared, and we thought they wouldn’t be able to stand up to the Russians. Both of these were wrong, and that was important because those intelligence failures may have affected our policy choices.
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