Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Last November, top United States general Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, infuriated Kyiv — as well as some more hawkish officials from President Joe Biden’s administration — by comparing the conflict raging in Ukraine to World War I, and suggesting stalemate had been reached.
Around Christmas of 1914, Milley said, “you’ve got a war that is not winnable anymore, militarily.”
Later, speaking at New York’s Economic Club, he added: “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment.” The following week, he repeated his suggestion that the time had arrived for negotiations — Ukraine’s successful counteroffensives around Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south meant Kyiv could negotiate from a position of strength.
“Russia right now is on its back,” Milley said.
Milley was wrong about WWI — the war was militarily winnable — and was done so by the Western allies, largely thanks to economic factors and their superior level of development, allowing them to throw more resources into the horrendous meat grinder.
“With their large peasant sectors, the Central Powers could not maintain agricultural output as wartime mobilisation redirected resources from farming. The resulting urban famine undermined the supply chain behind the war effort,” noted historian Stephen Broadberry.
Victory, yes — but at an appalling human cost. Before all went quiet on the Western front, the total casualties are estimated to have exceeded 37 million, including soldiers and civilians, making WWI one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. Hardly a European household was left untouched. And the industrial nature of the killing — which saw young men scythed down by machine guns and obliterated by artillery barrages, as well as poisoned by clouds of noxious gases — has haunted European memory, adding yet another stain on our warlike species.
And now, another November is nearly upon us, and soon the autumn rains will come to Ukraine, making military maneuver that much more difficult. Signs are that if Ukraine hasn’t secured a breakthrough on its southern front and breached all three layers of Russia’s formidable Surovikin Line by then — something that has so far eluded the country’s forces in three months of fierce fighting — calls for negotiations will mount as a year of elections in both Europe and the U.S. looms, altering the internal political dynamics of allies.