“He did not see in the outcome of that war the least proof of the incorrectness of his theory. On the contrary, to his mind, the departures from his theory were the only cause of the whole failure…Pfuel was one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory—its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it. He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory.”
- Leo Tolstoy [War and Peace, III.1.X]
Since the Russia-Ukraine war began, I’ve broadly considered the situation to be that NATO had used Ukraine as a sacrificial pawn on the imperial chessboard. However, after reading the following incredible Twitter thread, I am left wondering if they genuinely believed this all would work and Ukraine would achieve an assured and decisive victory, of course, greatly harming Russia in the process.
