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Putin mired in the "paradoxes of strategy"
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Ever month, Frédéric Munier, director of the School of Geopolitics at SKEMA Business School, publishes a column in the magazine "Pour l’Éco". One year after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, he focused on a paradox: the world’s second most powerful military power was expected to quickly dominate its neighbour, but that is not what happened.
In a state of war, a series of victories can lead to defeat if one moves too far away from one’s bases: this was the case with Napoleon’s Grande Armée during the invasion of Russia.
Another paradox is that numerical superiority does not guarantee victory: here we can cite the defeat of the French cavalry at Agincourt or, closer to our time, the American routs in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
This can be attributed to the deeply human nature of conflicts, in which the adversaries constantly adapt to each other.
