Description
Western land-warfare doctrine remains rooted in a manoeuverist logic, assuming that even against peer opponents NATO forces can bypass strongpoints and win through rapid operational breakthroughs. This paper challenges that assumption, arguing that the positional character of the Russo-Ukrainian war is not an exception but rather the likely outcome of any protracted modern conflict fought under near-parity conditions, and that Western forces are insufficiently prepared for this possibility. We begin by clarifying what makes positional warfare distinct from other forms of warfare: high-tempo combat along largely stable fronts in which belligerents “lean on” defended lines through repeated, localised attacks that yield limited territorial change. We then derive a theoretical expectation from widely accepted Clausewitzian logic and test this expectation against the post-1945 record of interstate territorial wars. Using the Correlates of War interstate war dataset (through 2010), we show that every long-durée modern territorial war devolved into positional warfare. Our findings carry both operational and political-strategic implications: operationally, that western doctrine, training, and force design should prepare for positional warfare and that failure to do so poses a serious risk to western militaries’ ability to win against a peer opponent. Politically and strategically, our analysis suggests that over-emphasis on a manoeuvre-centric mindset and expectations of a quick win risks fostering miscalculations before a conflict, as well as aggravating civil-military frictions further once war drags on.