I think a lot of this has already happened. The Ukraine/Russia war is largely a war of drones, and the cost has shifted from human lives to material costs. Sim

I think a lot of this has already happened. The Ukraine/Russia war is largely a war of drones, and the cost has shifted from human lives to material costs. Similarly Israel has lost a couple hundred soldiers in Gaza vs thousands of Palestinian soldiers. But the costs for Israel to wage war with such munitions as they use is heavy. They have a blank check from the US, but even the US soured on the cost of waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq and ultimately felt that achieving none of their objectives in both regions was better than continuing to sink money into them. Similarly if Russia were able to overwhelm Ukraine, Ukraine could simply wait them out, continue an insurgency, until the costs of owning Ukraine becomes less worth it to Russians than the land itself. This may not exactly map 1-to-1 as Russia is not a democracy, but the point is still there