"none expected or prepared for a four-year slog of trench warfare" Yet another parallel with what's happening in Ukraine right now. Both Russia (and some in NA

"none expected or prepared for a four-year slog of trench warfare" Yet another parallel with what's happening in Ukraine right now. Both Russia (and some in NATO) I think expected this to end in days with an ugly military defeat, capture of the capital, and then years of guerilla and political battles. We appear to be at a similar juncture as WWI in geopolitics and military organization/technology, where the relative capabilities of various forces are not well understood. (And similar to WWI this seems to be primarily about imperial economics, within which smaller nations get caught up as battle sites and pawns and the issue of the self-determination of smaller ethnic nation states becomes one of the defining issues. At least that's how Lenin and others analyzed WWI, and it's notable that Putin went out of his way to namecheck and attack Lenin in particular at the start of the conflict...) Coffee brainfarts, sorry. :-)