ISBN: 9781421449845

Pavel K Baev

PRIO

Read more about this book at www.press.jhu.edu

As the Ukraine War approached the two-year mark, a conference was organized in Washington DC by Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where 21 mostly US-based scholars presented 17 chapters, now collected in this densely packed volume. Some of them, like Lawrence Freedman or Ann Applebaum, have invested many years in research of security issues, and some, like Dara Massicot or Michael Kofman, have gained prominence providing updated analyses of this war. One point of general agreement was that the fighting would continue unabated, so Brands didn’t try to draw any conclusions, and merely outlined the main common themes. As the war approaches the three-year mark, most of the risks assessments and impact evaluations in the book ring true. A possible exception is the credibility of the US leadership, which has become compromised by vacillations and confused by the on-going transition to the second Trump administration. The desire to bring the war to a quick end is announced loud and clear, but the parameters of compromise that Trump is going to offer to the war-committed Putin no expert can predict. If there is a shortcoming in the collection of excellent analyses in the book, it is in the lack of attention to Ukraine’s ability to endure the war of attrition. The resilience and courage of the Ukrainians have mastered is beyond any expert’s understanding and form a decisive force in the transformation of the tragic war. The search for peace is necessary, but it is also quite divisive, and the fractures in the world order – one of the main issues in the thoughtful book – may even grow deeper.