Joe McGiffin
In the Lord of the Rings universe, Sauron sought dominion over Middle-earth by using overwhelming military force and superior technology—the one ring to rule them all. Once the ring was taken from him, he was temporarily defeated, but the geopolitical landscape eventually reverted to a lengthy stalemate. In the real world, scholarship is vivisecting the war in Ukraine to identify the one ring—the key to securing victory in the next conflict and achieving objectives in strategic competition. For instance, a recent monograph from the Institute for the Study of War makes a compelling case for the “tactical reconnaissance strike complex,” a synthesis of old-school military platforms integrated with drones to create the pinnacle of dominant battlespace knowledge.
However, this quest for the one ring is likely to end in anticlimax. There is no ring of power that will assure victory in future conflicts and investing time and effort in questing after one will only lead to frustration at best—and mass casualties at worst—in the next conflict. The chief problem with this quest is that it myopically focuses attention on the battlefields and not the greater strategic picture. This explains, in part, why the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive has been so surprising and successful. Winning a war is not about battlefield victories; it is about control.
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