Peter Rutland
On September 24, the Center for Strategic and International Studies released a seventy-two-page report, The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study in Analytic Failure. It indicts the U.S. policy community for failing to predict the likely outcome of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The report was written by Elliot Cohen and Phillips O’Brien, with an introduction by Hew Strachan (the authors also discussed the report in a panel that is available on YouTube.) The authors are distinguished military historians. However, they are not Russia specialists and have not written extensively about the Ukraine war. Critics argue that Cohen and O’Brien are not neutral observers but have an ideological axe to grind—that is, a desire to discredit critics of full-scale support for Ukraine’s war effort.
The vast majority of observers were caught by surprise by Putin’s invasion. Even though U.S. intelligence documented the build-up of Russia’s forces in the weeks and months before the invasion, it was just too hard for most analysts (the present author included) to imagine that Putin would unleash a devastating land war on his neighbor.
Nevertheless, Putin did start the war. He must have thought that he could achieve his goals at a cost worth paying. Cohen and O’Brien want to know why most American and European analysts failed to understand Putin’s intentions.
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