Discussion and Conclusion: Fight the War You Are In
- john raymond
- Aug 28
- 3 min read
War is never entirely new, and never entirely old. Every conflict carries constants that stretch back through history, and every conflict is shaped by variables—the technologies, regimes, and circumstances that make it unique.
The war now consuming Ukraine and threatening the wider West is no exception. To understand it, we must begin from this duality: it is like prior wars, and it is unlike them.
The constants of war are those that Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and every commander across millennia would recognize: war is political; war is fought under uncertainty; war is shaped by morale, deception, logistics, and alliance cohesion.
These constants remain as present in Ukraine as they were at Cannae or Normandy. Armies still march—or move by rail and truck; deception still shapes surprise; morale still decides battles; alliances still hold or break under strain.
The variables of war are those that evolve: drones that loiter where once cavalry scouted; precision-guided missiles where once artillery raked blindly; OSINT and social media where once only spies whispered; cyber intrusion where once only saboteurs cut telegraph lines.
In this war, those variables have transformed the tempo and transparency of operations, but they have not erased the constants. The alliance that forgets this—the one that fights the war it wishes it had rather than the war it has—invites defeat.
History is crowded with examples: empires that clung to cavalry when armor dominated, states that sought decisive battle when insurgency bled them out, coalitions that assumed reliability in allies that betrayed them.
That is the central lesson: fight the war you find yourself in. For NATO, the EU, and Ukraine’s loyal allies, this means ceasing to pine for a United States that no longer exists as a reliable guardian.
Yes, we would all prefer the U.S. President not be a Russian asset, would all prefer to trust the American hub as in decades past. But to wish does not change the battlefield. To act as though Washington remains a trustworthy keystone is to fight the wrong war.
Instead, the alliance must accept the facts as they are. The United States under Trump is a captured node, a traitor-general sabotaging alliance cohesion. European services are penetrated by enemy spies and cannot claim full operational security.
Only Ukraine, through blood and discipline, has demonstrated true wartime OpSec and true capacity to hurt the enemy at scale: Operation Spiderweb crippling Russian bombers, refinery and logistics strikes cutting deep into Russia’s war economy, intelligence work that has proven both secretive and effective.
Laplace’s rule of succession would tempt us to treat Ukraine, the newest partner, as the least tested. But reality refutes the prior.
In battlefield performance, Ukraine has been tested daily for over three years against one of the world’s most ruthless regimes, and it has succeeded where older, larger allies have faltered.
By the same probabilistic rule, its repeated successes mark it as the most tested and the most reliable executor of clandestine trust within the alliance.
Thus, the discussion resolves into the conclusion: this war is intelligible. It is not chaos. It follows the constants of war, shaped by new variables. It is not unwinnable, but it is losable if fought incorrectly.
To win, NATO, the EU, Ukraine, and loyal democracies must fight the war they are in, not the war they wish for. That means building an intelligence architecture that applies the logics of this war: OSINT first, OpSec always, Ukrainian execution at the core, mirrored by European redundancy, and governance that preempts sabotage.
Victory will not be found in a return to nostalgia...
It will be found in a new world order in which Ukraine’s tested strength becomes the alliance’s linchpin, Europe’s rebuilt services provide resilience, and the axis of autocrats—Russia first—is broken by the one command that never changes: fight the war you face, and fight it to win.
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