As the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, our panel of IAI contributors offer their analysis of the situation. Lawrence Freedman, Hew Strachan, Domitilla Sagramoso and Joseph Nye on what to expect in the short and long run, the role of nuclear weapons, and how to make sense of Putin.

Lawrence Freedman

Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. He was a member of the Iraq Inquiry and was the official historian of the Falklands War.

For those of us who have long wondered why Putin would embark on an aggressive war, the core puzzle has been what he could hope to achieve politically. A limited campaign in Eastern Ukraine made some sense as it would carve out an area that could be sustained and defended over time. The current scale of operations makes less sense because it essentially requires regime change in Kyiv. In Iraq and Afghanistan the US and the UK learned through bitter experience how difficult this can be.

The point about wars (and I have studied many) is that they rarely go according to plan. Chance events or poorly executed operations can require sudden shifts in strategy. The unintended consequences can be as important as the intended. These are the pitfalls surrounding all wars and why they should only be embarked upon with good reason (of which the most compelling is an act of self-defence).