We've burned up Russia's military equipment, we've killed and wounded thousands of Russian soldiers, all ostensibly w/o sending a single USA soldier into combat. The neocons have drained off Russia's conventional firepower and male population for a generation by merely poking the bear repeatedly. The Russians can claim victory but it was a Pyrrhic victory.
Russia is now militarily a hollow shell, except for nukes. They're like North Korea but they eat better (they always did, though). Neither of those nations could engage the USA in a conventional conflict for longer than a half hour. This is sometimes termed "victory" or "success", and I don't think its a bad outcome.
Of course you can imagine fairy tales where the Russians are abjectly defeated and humiliated and such fairy tales would give you more happy Social Media discussions. But such viewpoints also cause multi-generational problems in peoples of Slavic mindsets who view history as a list of wrongs against their ancestors going back centuries.
Russia is now militarily a hollow shell, except for nukes. They're like North Korea but they eat better (they always did, though). Neither of those nations could engage the USA in a conventional conflict for longer than a half hour. This is sometimes termed "victory" or "success", and I don't think its a bad outcome.
Of course you can imagine fairy tales where the Russians are abjectly defeated and humiliated and such fairy tales would give you more happy Social Media discussions. But such viewpoints also cause multi-generational problems in peoples of Slavic mindsets who view history as a list of wrongs against their ancestors going back centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/3-years-later...