A couple weeks ago I published a four-part series examining the good, the bad, and the ugly of Russia’s military performance over the first year and a half of war. It was crucial, I argued, to form an accurate picture of what Russia had done and could do in order for Washington to form a policy that had a solid chance of success. Highlighting Russia’s many and legitimate weaknesses and failures while ignoring their successes and future capacity risked the formation of an inaccurate picture of Russian capacity and thus setting unachievable policy goals.

Conversely, the U.S. and West in general has had the opposite propensity regarding Ukraine: to highlight their many and legitimate strengths while ignoring their failures and limited future potential. Doing so similarly increases the risk that American policymakers form plans based on an inaccurate picture of Ukrainian capacity. What is necessary to the formation of effective policy is an accurate and sober assessment of both Russian and Ukrainian capacities.

We do Kyiv no favors by emphasizing Russian weaknesses and Ukrainian strengths as a basis for setting national policy, as that produces a skewed understanding of ground-truth reality and will almost certainly result in policy failure. Aspiring to see Kyiv win and Moscow lose is entirely understandable.

The question for Washington, however, should be to determine how likely that outcome is and what it would cost to achieve it. What this short series will reveal, unfortunately, is that Ukrainian victory is not achievable at an acceptable cost and therefore a change of strategy for the United States and NATO is necessary.

[This will be a multi-part series, and it will be worth reading. But the question here isn’t just whether Ukraine can defeat Russia’s military in the field — it’s also whether they can outlast Vladimir Putin politically, too. The near-coup earlier this summer suggests they might. And it’s still a little early for definitive nay-saying; a lot of experts thought Ukraine couldn’t stop the invasion, too — Ed]