One more note in this series: rulers and empires are always looking back into history, and then looking back at the watermarks of their predecessors and thinking: oh I can do it better, and avoid the various mistakes as elucidated in popular readings of history. History can be learned from, in the sense of a long linear line, in which a past failure is coded as a mistake in a learning process that proceeds in a linear direction, and not simply as the expression of a long interconnected and cyclical process.
There is a lot to take apart here of course. Tactics and experience are one thing. Napoleon influenced by Alexander the Great and Hannibal of Carthage for example. But then there is also the interacting thermodynamic decay of empire to be considered as well, in which rulers embedded attempt to transcend their historical position by gleaning lessons from history, a form of applying evolving technique and technology to overcome those thermodynamic limits, such as when Hitler and his generals apprehended Napoleon's failure in Russia and sought to build upon and modify that strategy and succeed where Napoleon had failed, failing in turn.
There is a lot to further elaborate on there, but for now an observation about the Ukraine invasion. Its been observed that Putin and his generals have been taking care to preserve infrastructure such as critical electrical networks, and suffering casualties to avoid excess civilian deaths. And the denazification concept echoes the debaathification efforts in the Iraq war, which in turn echoed denazification in WWII.
It has been pointed out that the US coming in and indiscriminately smashing infrastructure and economic structures in Iraq played a key role in fomenting an insurgency. Iraqis were fed up with not having adequate water and power, and "nothing working," encouraging hostility to the ongoing occupation. It appears to be the case that with the Russian invasion, the Russian have studied that debacle and are attempting to do it better.
Worth studying the ongoing mess, as it this will change things. But change is not success, whatever that means anyway. A hostile invasion - however carefully carried out - is still a hostile invasion and is fundamentally another form of turbulence to add to the growing and accelerating pile. But in the short term, one empire doing it better than another empire can really change things.
