Clausewitz And The Culmination Point

The Institute for the Study of War site, which appears to be the most prestigious commentator on the Russo-Ukraine war, has made what strikes me as a meaningless pronouncement:

Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated.

I've noted on YouTube for the past week or two references to Clausewitzian "culmination" as a point where an attack exhausts itself. But that can take place either before it achieves its objective, in which case it's a victory for the defender, or after, in which case it's a victory for the attacker. But in either case, it leaves open the question of what happens next. Clausewitz himself seems to have recognized the problem:

The success of the attack is the result of a present superiority of force, it being understood that the moral as well as physical forces are included. In the preceding chapter we have shown that the power of the attack gradually exhausts itself; possibly at the same time the superiority may increase, but in most cases it diminishes. . . . There are strategic attacks which have led to an immediate peace but such instances are rare; the majority, on the contrary, lead only to a point at which the forces remaining are just sufficient to maintain a defensive, and to wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns, there is a reaction; the violence of such a reaction is commonly much greater than the force of the blow. This we call the culminating point of the attack. . . . If we reflect upon the number of the elements of which an equation of the forces in action is composed, we may conceive how difficult it is in many cases to determine which of two opponents has the superiority on his side. Often all hangs on the silken thread of imagination.

So basically, Clausewitz is saying you can look at a situation and think there may have been a culmination point, but that depends on how you see it, and you can't reliably say what will happen afterward anyhow. I had to read many such papers in graduate school. Why did the Institute for the Study of War even bother? Was it all the retired general talking heads mentioning Clausewitz and sounding smart? The Institute goes on:

The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time.

But Clausewitz himself says it's hard to know when the culmination has been reached, and it's just as hard to know what it means. Clausewitzian culmination is thus a sorta-kinda tautology. Why is the Institute so definite, and why is it so certain of the outcome when Clausewitz himself is neither?

My own instinctive view is that Ukrainian artillery appears to be awfully good, and Russians dug into fixed positions have supply issues. I would expect more cases like the Kherson airfield, a fixed position repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian artilery. But what do I know? They threw me out of ROTC.

In another theater of the Plebe War, Biden’s Handlers Are Preparing to Eject Him (and Kamala):

[T]he people who put Joe Biden in power—I cannot name them, but I know they are the same people who keep him in power—do not care about inflation, rising gas and food prices, COVID lockdowns or mask mandates, the porousness of our Southern border, the threat of war with Russia, or the myriad other issues that worry ordinary voters. . . . Joe Biden is an errand boy, a figurehead, in the metabolism of this great (not to say Great Society) act of political legerdemain.

. . . Why do you suppose that the New York Times has decided, finally, at this late date, to acknowledge that the story that the New York Post broke about Hunter’s laptop was true?

. . . I suspect that Joe Biden is being prepped for ejection. Exactly how it will happen I do not yet know. But he is on the threshold, or possibly has even passed the threshold, where he could appear to govern. His minders understand this. They must be the ones to replace him, otherwise they themselves risk being replaced, which would be intolerable. As I say, it’s not entirely clear yet how the defenestration will take place. Obviously, Kamala will have to be dealt with first, and she will be. Look for some ground softening stories such as the Times just served up about the laptop. They won’t be long in coming.

Seems like there's maybe a culmination taking place, not just in Ukraine, but in the whole Plebe War. But as Clausewtiz himself would tell us, "Often all hangs on the silken thread of imagination."

If anyone asks, here's my theory of how this could play out. It doesn't really matter whether Kamala or Joe goes first; there must be an overabundance of undeclared baksheesh in either case, or in Joe's, no shortage of gropes, grabs, and Zucker-like behavior. Under the 25th Amendment, no matter if Kamala or Joe goes first, whichever survives must nominate a new vice president, who must be confirmed by both houses of congress. That's likely to take a while, given the pivotal role of Sen Manchin in the evenly divided Senate (indeed as well, with no sitting vice president in such a case to break a Senate tie).

In fact, if either Kamala or Joe leaves before the November election, the issue probably won't be resolved until afterward, with likely Republican majorities in both houses. Thus any nominee for vice president after the election from either Democrat survivor in the presidency would have an even harder time geting approved.

But if there's a Republican House in January 2023, Kevin McCarthy would likely be speaker. The speaker is third in line, but with no vice president approved under the 25th Amendment, he'd be number two. But with either Kamala or Joe as an unsatisfactory/intolerable president, even for the lizard people, they'd force the removal of either, with McCarthy then moving into the Oval Office. Given this scenario, I will grant Roger Kimball's implied postulate that this would be easy and quick, but only under a Kimball-like scenario.

You heard it here first.