Is This Any Way to Run a War?

New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Anna Wieslander has had the temerity to point out that the West has no strategy to end the Ukraine war.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has settled into a grueling, vicious war of attrition with no end in sight. However, there is a growing consensus in NATO capitals that a long war not only favors Russia but has the potential for nasty, unintended consequences. What does not seem to exist is a strategy to do something about it.

Lots of rhetoric: “Ukraine will win” and “we will do what it takes” as well as tactics galore. Send more weapons; impose more sanctions; threaten the Chinese; cheer Zelensky's Churchillian speeches. But define an endgame or a strategy to get there? Missing in action. Which leaves Russia—and, perhaps, its Chinese sponsor—in the driver's seat.

Anna Wieslander has had the temerity to point out that the emperor has no clothes or more to the point, that the West has no strategy. She is a Swedish defense and security expert, Director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council, and Chairman of the board of the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy. Listen as host Alan Stoga discusses with her what it might take to end this war, one way or the other.