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FA What Ukraine Needs from NATO Advanced Weapons—and Clarity on What Membership Will Require Ivo Daalder and Karen Donfried This article is paywall-free A Kataib Hezbollah militia member inspects the site of a U.S. airstrike, Hilla, Iraq December 2023 Why America Is Still Failing in Iraq U.S. Military Force and Sanctions Can’t Fix the Country’s Broken Politics Renad Mansour This article is paywall-free Ukrainian soldiers monitoring the sky near Bakhmut, March 2024 The Tyranny of Expectations Winning the Battle but Losing the War, From Ukraine to Israel Dominic Tierney This article is paywall-free Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking at his campaign headquarters, Moscow, March 2024 Putin’s Hidden Weakness New Evidence Shows Many Russians Support Him—but Not the War Timothy Frye, Henry Hale, Ora John Reuter, and Bryn Rosenfeld This article is paywall-free MOST-READ ARTICLES Give War a Chance Edward N. 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The U.S. House of Representatives must vote now to pass the emergency spending package that the Senate overwhelmingly approved last month. The most urgent priority is to appropriate funds to resupply Kyiv with artillery shells, air defense missiles, deep-strike rockets, and other critical military needs. But even once Ukraine receives this much-needed support, a fundamental question remains: how to help Ukraine secure its future. That is a question NATO leaders will need to answer when they meet this July in Washington for their 75th anniversary summit. Russia’s war on Ukraine is about more than just territory: it is about Ukraine’s political future. The Kremlin seeks to make sure that Ukraine’s future is decided in Moscow, not Kyiv. Ukraine is fighting for the freedom to chart its own future—and a vast majority of Ukrainians want their country to become a member of NATO and the European Union. Last year, the EU opened accession talks with Kyiv. But that process will take years to complete. Meanwhile, Ukraine seeks an invitation to join NATO. But NATO countries are divided over when Kyiv should join. Some members, led by the Baltics, Poland, and France, want the alliance to issue a formal invitation at this July’s Washington summit. They believe that the persistence of security vacuums in Europe entices Moscow to fill those gray areas militarily—as it has in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Other members, including the United States and Germany, are not prepared to move that fast. The outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who may well be NATO’s next secretary-general, captured this perspective at the Munich Security Conference last month: “As long as the war is raging, Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO.” Former officials have proposed various ideas to bridge this chasm. One is to issue an invitation to Ukraine but not act on it until some later, unspecified time. This would be an empty gesture, as no treaty provisions would apply until all 32 members ratify Ukraine’s accession. Another idea is to invite Ukraine to begin accession talks, a model borrowed from the EU enlargement process. But EU candidate countries follow a well-trodden path, adopting and implementing the EU’s body of law over years. NATO’s equivalent is the Membership Action Plan, but in Vilnius last year, NATO members agreed that Kyiv “had moved beyond the need” for that process. Unless the goal and timing of the accession talks are clearly defined, an invitation to begin talks would leave Ukraine in the same netherworld where it has been since 2008, when NATO agreed that Ukraine “will become” a NATO member. The Washington summit provides an opportunity to bridge this chasm and build consensus on Ukraine within the alliance. The first step is to clarify the reforms Ukraine must complete and the conditions that need to prevail on the ground before it can join the alliance. Second, NATO needs to take over the coordination of military assistance provided by the 50-plus-nation coalition and help Ukraine build a modern, interoperable military. Finally, NATO leaders need to step up their support for Ukraine’s defense by supplying advanced weapons, such as long-range missiles, that some NATO members have been reluctant to provide. CLARITY DISPARITY At the Vilnius summit, rather than agreeing to give Ukraine the invitation it desired, NATO leaders promised that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” while noting that they would extend an invitation only “when Allies agree and conditions are met,” kicking the issue down the road. While it’s clear that Ukraine will not get an invitation at the Washington summit, the Vilnius language suggests a way forward: NATO must clarify what “conditions” must be met, then invite Kyiv to engage in direct talks in the NATO-Ukraine Council about when and how that can be done. To create consensus among allies, NATO leaders should agree on two conditions that must be met before they formally invite Ukraine to join the alliance. First, Ukraine should complete the democratic, anticorruption, and security sector reforms outlined in Ukraine’s Annual National Program, the formal structure that prepares Ukraine for membership. At the Washington summit, NATO leaders should commit to working together to help Kyiv finalize these reforms within a year. Second, the fighting in Ukraine must end. As long as there is an active military conflict in Ukraine, Ukraine’s membership in the alliance could lead to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia—a gamble most NATO members are not prepared to take. Before the second condition can be met, NATO must stipulate what it would consider a satisfactory end to the fighting. It cannot be an end to the war, for that presupposes a peace agreement, which would be exceedingly difficult to accomplish any time soon. The common belief that all wars end through negotiations is wrong. Most wars end through mutual exhaustion or one-sided victory; very few end with a negotiated peace. For the foreseeable future, the most that can be hoped for is a frozen conflict—a cessation of hostilities without a political solution. NATO must clarify what “conditions” must be met before they formally invite Ukraine to join the alliance. At the Washington summit, NATO leaders should agree to invite Ukraine when the fighting has effectively ended, either through an unlikely Ukrainian victory or through a durable cease-fire or armistice. At the conclusion of active conflict, Kyiv need not accept any loss of territory to Russia as permanent, only that any change to the status quo would need to be achieved politically, not militarily. After Ukraine joins NATO, the alliance’s collective defense commitment under Article 5 would apply only to the territories under Kyiv’s control. This condition would be painful for Kyiv to accept, as Ukrainians will fear a lasting division of the country. But the reality of a frozen conflict may lead Kyiv to decide to consolidate the territory it controls and lock in NATO membership. Alliance leaders may want to make clear that if fighting were to resume because of military actions taken by Ukraine, Article 5 would not apply. There are precedents for extending a security guarantee to a country with contested borders. The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, signed in 1960, commits the United States to defend only “the territories under the administration of Japan,” not in the Northern Territories seized by the Soviet Union at the conclusion of World War II (and occupied by Russia to this day). Similarly, the Federal Republic of Germany’s accession to NATO in 1955 extended Article 5 only to West Germany; communist East Germany, including the democratic enclave of West Berlin, was excluded until the country’s peaceful reunification in 1990. Before being granted membership, West Germany had to agree “never to have recourse to force to achieve the reunification of Germany or the modification of the present boundaries of the Federal Republic of Germany.” At last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Ukrainian officials were understandably concerned that “conditions” was code for ever-moving goalposts. If NATO never defined the conditions, it could always add hurdles for Ukraine to clear. Ukraine deserves clarity, and NATO needs to define the term for its own internal unity and cohesion. At this year’s summit, all 32 members must coalesce around a shared understanding of Ukraine’s path to NATO membership. NATO AT THE HELM To be sure, making an end to armed conflict a condition for Ukraine’s accession to NATO gives Moscow an incentive to prolong the war. For as long as Russia continues fighting, NATO will not accept Ukraine as a new member. That is why Kyiv and its allies must demonstrate their resolve; they must convince Moscow that it is fighting an unwinnable war. To that end, NATO leaders should agree on three additional measures, all aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s defense and helping it build a modern military. First, NATO must take over from the United States in leading the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a roughly 50-country coalition that meets regularly to discuss Ukraine’s military needs and decides which country will provide the required equipment. Expanding NATO’s role would institutionalize the alliance’s support of Ukraine, ensuring continuity at a time when the United States’ commitment to Ukraine is in question. Second, NATO must work with Ukraine to articulate a long-term vision for the country’s military. Currently, multiple coalitions are focused on its various components: demining, F-16 capabilities, information technology infrastructure, armor and artillery, and long-range strike capacity. NATO can and should coordinate these efforts, which would help the Ukrainian military develop into a fully integrated and interoperable force. Third, NATO should establish a Ukraine training mission, taking over the coordination of training Ukrainian forces from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other individual countries. Training is critical for Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield today, as well as for the interoperability of Ukraine’s future force. The shared aim of these three measures is not to diminish the engagement of individual countries but to enhance the efficiency of existing efforts in support of Ukraine by bringing them under NATO’s purview. Institutionalizing these functions within NATO will signal to the Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will not outlast Western support for Ukraine. PUTIN’S ULTIMATE STRATEGIC DEFEAT No longer-term efforts will matter, however, if Ukraine loses the war. That is why NATO must fortify Ukraine’s defenses and consider supplying Kyiv with weapons that are currently off the table, such as U.S. ATACMS and German Taurus long-range missiles. At the outset of the war, NATO members sought to balance support for Ukraine with the need to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia. NATO countries restricted the kinds of weapons they would send and limited the ways in which Ukrainian forces would be permitted to use them (for example, no attacks on Russian soil). This initial hesitation may have been understandable, given the uncertainty over how Ukraine would fare. But some countries have been too cautious for too long. A number of NATO members, such as Germany and the United States, had expressed concerns about sending everything from tanks to F-16 fighter jets. But the situation has changed. Having finally secured U.S. approval last year, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway will soon send F-16s, which will help Kyiv counter Russian airstrikes and hit deeper behind enemy lines. The United Kingdom and France were the first to send long-range missiles last year, allowing Ukraine to hit targets in Crimea. There is a bright line between confronting Russian forces directly and providing Ukraine with the means to defend itself. NATO combat troops would fall on the wrong side. But supplying Ukraine with training, intelligence, surveillance, jamming, and military equipment falls on the right side. NATO members have wrestled with finding the right balance between fear of escalation and faith in deterrence. Although NATO countries should remain vigilant in avoiding escalation, they can do more to ensure that Russia does not win. Putin denies Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation; he sees Ukraine as an integral part of what he calls “the Russian world” (Russkiy mir). Yet if his goal in invading the country was to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, he achieved exactly the opposite. The war ignited a fierce Ukrainian nationalism that hadn’t existed before. And Ukraine is never going back. What’s more, NATO’s eastern enlargement, which was one of the reasons Putin gave for invading Ukraine, has only continued. His actions have made the country’s membership in NATO more likely, not less. And when Finland joined NATO last April, as a direct result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s land border with Russia more than doubled. Sweden’s accession earlier this month turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. For all these reasons, the war has been a strategic failure for Russia. The day Ukraine formally joins NATO will be Russia’s ultimate strategic defeat—and Ukraine and all of Europe will be the safer for it. IVO DAALDER is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. KAREN DONFRIED is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. MORE BY IVO DAALDER MORE BY KAREN DONFRIED More: Ukraine Russian Federation International Institutions NATO Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Most-Read Articles Give War a Chance By Edward N. Luttwak July/August 1999 Published on July 1, 1999 U.S. soldiers at a NATO base near Brcko, Bosnia, March 1998 Juergen Schwarz / Reuters PREMATURE PEACEMAKING An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for accommodation to become more attractive than further combat. Since the establishment of the United Nations and the enshrinement of great-power politics in its Security Israel Needs a New Strategy Total Victory Is Not Possible—but Demilitarizing Hamas and Stabilizing Gaza Still Are By Dennis Ross March 13, 2024 Why America Is Still Failing in Iraq U.S. Military Force and Sanctions Can’t Fix the Country’s Broken Politics By Renad Mansour March 26, 2024 A Kataib Hezbollah militia member inspects the site of a U.S. airstrike, Hilla, Iraq December 2023 Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip began a fresh eruption of violence across the Middle East. Peace in the region, which has long been Washington’s stated aim, has proved illusory once again. No matter how many times the United States has tried to pivot away from the Middle East, violence always seems to pull it back in. In this latest cycle, the Biden administration’s hasty withdrawal from the region was based on its claim that it was the most stable it had been for decades. And yet, in Iraq, U.S. bases are once again under attack from armed groups, endangering the temporary ceasefire which had allowed Baghdad and Washington to sign the Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue in August 2023 and to begin wider negotiations, including on the removal of U.S. troops from the country. Regional violence after October 7 has complicated this process. So has the rise of an “axis of resistance,” a network of Iran-allied armed groups that includes Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada in Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. These groups are politically, economically, militarily, and ideologically entrenched in their states, and are united by their shared opposition to foreign occupation. U.S. forces have attacked these groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, killing their senior leaders and destroying their trading hubs and weapons depots. Washington has also sanctioned their banks and businesses. But these strikes and punitive measures—described by a senior U.S. official as “whack-a-mole”—have not been successful in securing peace or stability. The groups that Washington targeted have not gone away. Instead, they have flourished, becoming even more powerful within their countries and the wider region. Washington has proved itself unable to tackle the true sources of these groups’ power, which lie not in military infrastructure alone but in the social and political structures of the Middle East. Armed groups thrive under fragile governments, and their networks include cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, judges, senior bureaucrats, and civil society organizers. This influence allows these groups, along with the wider political establishment in these countries, to profit from state coffers and enjoy impunity from any prosecution—all while performing key state functions at the national and local level. Washington’s use of violence and of sanctions has done little to dampen the strength of these groups or to diminish their power. This is because bombs and sanctions do not produce political reform. A more coherent and comprehensive U.S. response is needed to encourage Middle Eastern governments’ accountability and to check the elite power and impunity that are rife in in the region. This is the only way to move beyond the cycle of quick-wins and temporary ceasefires, which never hold. FORCE FAILS Armed groups in Iraq and Syria became powerful during the fight against the Islamic State, which in 2014 conquered a third of Iraq and almost half of Syria. When the U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded Iraqi military crumbled overnight, these groups joined the newly formed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which was the first group to respond and resist further ISIS advances. The PMF includes dozens of armed groups across the ethnosectarian—though predominantly Shia—spectrum, with varying ideologies. Some are domestically minded, focusing on the Iraqi state, whereas others see themselves as part of a wider transnational and pan-Shia vanguard struggle, in partnership with Iran, to support allies including the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. For several years, these groups fought on the same side as Washington to drive ISIS from Iraq and Syria. However, following victory over their common enemy, U.S. and PMF forces turned on each other and began to fight. Washington, particularly during the Trump administration, sought to target Iran by attacking its allies in the region, principally PMF groups in Iraq and Syria. To that end, in January 2020, U.S. forces killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani and PMF leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. A senior U.S. official told me in 2019 that groups including Kataib Hezbollah are like a “cancerous tumor that need to be surgically removed.” These groups’ supposed malignancy means that Washington’s preferred method for dealing with them is invariably violent. This was seen most recently when Kataib Hezbollah killed three U.S. servicemembers in Jordan on January 28, and the Biden administration responded on February 2 by launching airstrikes across 85 targets in seven locations in Iraq and Syria. Bases and arms depots were hit, with further strikes on two Kataib Hezbollah leaders in downtown Baghdad following days later. Many U.S. officials and analysts supported this response, although some, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Turner complained that the response was not enough and should have come quicker and with more force. They argued that the delay gave Iran and its allies too much time to prepare and move away from potential U.S. targets. Nonetheless, the attacks led to a cessation of hostilities, with Kataib Hezbollah immediately declaring a cease-fire, and the other groups following suit. This has happened before: strikes produce periodic cease-fires without reducing the influence of these networks or leading to a more stable region. The cease-fires never last long. BEYOND THE BOMBINGS The United States has used other weapons to weaken these groups’ influence, including sanctions. The U.S. State Department has designated several PMF groups and leaders as terrorist organizations or individuals, and in the most recent round, announced in January, Washington added dozens of banks and individuals to the list. This included the Iraqi airline company Fly Baghdad, which has apparently been transporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ assets. For groups deemed more acceptable—including the Atabat groups that remain loyal to Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, or even the Badr Organization, which is one of the larger PMF groups and more integrated into the Iraqi government—the United States has tried cooption. Washington has proved itself willing to work with those PMF groups it deems to be less aligned to Iran or the axis of resistance and more focused on the Iraqi state. To that end, the United States has attempted to induce PMF leaders, including its commission’s chair, Falih al-Fayadh, and the Badr Organization head, Hadi al-Ameri, to integrate into the governments and political settlements of their countries. Washington has sought to incentivize these groups by promising them political backing. One senior U.S. official told me in 2021 that some of the groups linked to the PMF in Baghdad were better off being part of the Iraqi government because it would make them more answerable to the state and, therefore, the public. Time and again, however, Washington has proved itself unable to pursue a coherent strategy and navigate the networks that make up the Iraqi state. Isolating the good and targeting the bad has not always proved easy. For example, assassinating Soleimani, Muhandis, and other military leaders has made it more difficult for the co-optable individuals from these networks to keep their agreements with the United States. This is partly because the value of U.S. backing—a key incentive in post-2003 Iraq—wanes with every American attack or foreign policy blunder. More critically, simply integrating militias into the government and hoping that they become more accountable has not worked. In the years following the U.S. invasion, the Badr Organization, the Sadrists, and others were integrated into government departments, including the ministries of interior and defense, as well as the national security agency. The lack of accountability in these institutions meant that these fighters served the interests of their ruling elites, not their government superiors or the institutions themselves. WASHINGTON’S CHOICE Not only are U.S. policies ineffective in reducing the influence of these armed groups but they have come at a cost. Killing senior leaders has at times disrupted the chain of command, leading to an increase in freewheeling, undisciplined groups willing to strike without the consent of the PMF leadership or its Iranian allies. The death of Iraqi researcher Hisham al-Hashimi in July 2020, for instance, was a consequence of the chaos that ensued after the killing of Muhandis, who in the past could better control these militias. Indeed, U.S. strikes can make the command structures only more incoherent, as was seen by Kataib Hezbollah’s killing of three servicepeople in Jordan. The strike went against the interests of the domestically focused PMF groups, such as Badr or Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which benefit from the status quo in Baghdad and want to minimize any regional escalation that could jeopardize their domestic power. At the heart of the United States’ failure to find a way to deal with these groups is a fundamental misreading of their nature, their interrelationships, and their connections to the region’s governments. These armed groups are not exclusively military organizations that can be isolated from wider political, economic, social or ideological networks that cross state and nonstate lines. Rather, many of them have their own political parties that are active both locally and nationally. Moreover, these groups have allies in the civil service, the judiciary, and the military. They often fight side by side with government forces to defend the state against insurgent groups, including ISIS, or against protest movements, as was seen in Iraq in 2019. The ties between these armed groups and political and social institutions mean that any direct military attempt to isolate and remove them will not affect their power or the influence of their wider networks. A different approach is needed. It must begin with a recognition that these groups are not independent anomalies but are indivisible from the networks of power that govern Middle Eastern countries, in which ruling elites rely on their own militias to maintain power. In the short term, the Biden administration and the government in Baghdad, which includes the domestically focused PMF leaders, are on the same page. They want to maintain the cease-fire with the “axis of resistance” and push forward with the Higher Military Commission (HMC) to renegotiate the bilateral relationship between the two countries, including the withdrawal of current U.S. forces. This will, though, require pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza, as Israel’s actions have had consequences across the region. In the longer term a more sustainable approach to these armed groups is required. Washington should shift its approach away from focusing only on armed groups and instead examine the features of the political settlements that allow these groups to proliferate. The key to ensuring that cease-fires last, and do not unravel and draw the United States back in, is promoting accountability. Washington and its like-minded allies should, then, focus on reforming the states whose leaders harm their publics on a daily basis. Corruption in these countries is rife and offers both financial rewards and impunity for those leaders and armed groups who have captured government bureaucracies. The only challenge to this system and its elites remains the public, who protest and call for a better life. The key, then, for the United States and its allies is ensuring that their strategy supports these civil society movements and finds a way to reduce everyday conflict. That, not military strikes, is the way to peace. RENAD MANSOUR is a Senior Research Fellow and Project Director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House. MORE BY RENAD MANSOUR More: Iraq Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Post-Conflict Reconstruction Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration Iraq War Most-Read Articles Give War a Chance Edward N. 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In a speech from Warsaw, U.S. President Joe Biden proclaimed that Russian forces “met their match with brave and stiff Ukrainian resistance.” Two years later, Ukrainian soldiers are again resisting massive Russian military assaults, this time in Donetsk, Luhansk, and elsewhere. But now there are far fewer cheers. Instead of celebrating Ukrainian valor, many observers are chiding the country for not turning the tide and going on the offensive. Last November, for example, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made revealing comments to two Russians (who were pretending to be African Union officials): “There is a lot of fatigue, I have to say the truth, from all the sides. We are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out.” Ukraine may again be holding off a more powerful aggressor. Yet this outcome now seems like a stalemate, if not a defeat. The global shift in perceptions is an example of the tyranny of expectations—or how assumptions about who will win a war can skew judgments about who prevails. Outside observers, both experts and laypeople alike, do not evaluate military results by simply tallying up the battlefield gains and losses. Instead, they compare these results to their expectations. As a result, states can lose territory and still be deemed winners if they overperform. States can take land and be labeled losers if they underdeliver. The resulting conclusions about the winners and losers, however skewed, can even rebound and shape the battlefield. Ukraine, for example, lost territory during the initial weeks of Russia’s invasion. But Kyiv’s unexpectedly resolute defense earned it widespread Western assistance, which helped it liberate numerous cities in the following months. The tyranny of expectations is also at work in another major war: the Israeli campaign in Gaza. When this conflict began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a grandiose promise that his country would “crush and destroy” Hamas. Declaring that he would eradicate the group completely was a mistake. Hamas is amorphous, dispersed, and heavily armed, which means it is almost impossible for Israel to abolish. Netanyahu’s pledge makes it extremely difficult for Israel to be seen as the clear-cut winner of the war. When expectations and reality clash, crisis often follows. Israeli disillusionment with Netanyahu’s war could cause a seismic shock in Israeli politics. PERCEPTION AND REALITY At first, it might seem that the key to success in war is to exude great confidence about victory. In wartime, after all, optimism can be a force multiplier, whereas defeatism can be contagious. If everyone thinks one side will win a battle, it really might prevail, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. In War and Peace, for instance, Leo Tolstoy argued that Russian troops fled from the French in the 1805 battle of Austerlitz, despite suffering from similar casualties, because the Russian troops had a crisis of confidence. “We said to ourselves that we were losing the battle,” Tolstoy wrote, “and we did lose it.” But an image of sure success can also be dangerous. Judging who wins and loses in war is incredibly murky, and people may make their determinations by comparing the battlefield result with a (somewhat arbitrary) reference point—their expectations. As a result, a conflict’s perceived winner may have little to do with the outcome on the ground. Consider what happened in 1975 when forces from the Khmer Rouge, the Communist group in Cambodia, captured the merchant vessel Mayaguez and its 39 American crewmembers. In response, Washington launched a rescue mission that turned into a debacle. Forty-one U.S. service members died, over 50 were wounded, and three U.S. Marines were accidentally left behind in Cambodia, where they were captured and executed. The crew of the Mayaguez was set free, but not thanks to the rescue mission. It turned out that a local Khmer Rouge commander had mistakenly taken the Americans prisoner, and senior Cambodian officials ordered their release before the U.S. raid even started. The raid, then, produced nothing except casualties. But back home, Americans saw the raid as a huge success. In one poll, 79 percent of people judged U.S. President Gerald Ford’s handling of the crisis as “excellent” or “good,” versus 18 percent who rated it “only fair” or “poor.” Ford’s overall approval ratings surged. One of the main reasons for this upswing was Americans’ low expectations about their military’s capabilities. South Vietnam had just fallen to Communist troops, and so U.S. confidence was at a low ebb. Americans were, therefore, delighted to see Washington put on a seemingly muscular performance. In one poll, 76 percent of Americans agreed that “after losing Vietnam and Cambodia, the United States had no choice but to take decisive action, even risking a bigger war, to get back the ship and crew.” Great expectations, by contrast, can spur great disappointment. In 1967, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson began a “Progress Campaign” to show that the United States was winning in Vietnam. The administration published reams of statistics to demonstrate that the Communists were on the run, bolstering Americans’ confidence. Public support duly ticked upward. But then, in January 1968, Communist forces launched the Tet Offensive and attacked almost every major city in South Vietnam. Tactically speaking, Tet was a disaster for the Communists, as U.S. and South Vietnamese forces inflicted massive casualties. But Americans—having been told that their opponents were running out of steam—saw the offensive as a defeat. U.S. public confidence in the war declined. For the Communists, a battlefield loss became a strategic win, since it put the United States on the long path to withdrawal. DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH For Ukraine, the tyranny of expectations initially worked to its advantage. After the invasion, Kyiv was the underdog, with U.S. government officials estimating that Russia might overrun most of the country in just a few days. When Russia failed to seize the capital, Western countries were impressed by Ukraine’s performance, which encouraged them to provide more material aid. In turn, Ukraine launched a series of successful counteroffensives that liberated roughly half the territory Moscow had taken. But in the process, Kyiv was saddled with great expectations. Western observers began suggesting that Ukraine might somehow drive a bedraggled Russia out of all the territory it took in 2022—and perhaps even the land that Moscow seized in 2014. Some analysts, such as Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University professor and former State Department official, argued that Ukraine’s offensives could cause the Russian military to collapse. The Ukrainian government, for its part, encouraged such thinking. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged that Ukraine would liberate all its territory and fight “until the end” without “any concession or compromise.” Top Ukrainian officials openly suggested that a cascade of Russian defeats might force Russian President Vladimir Putin from power. These expectations, however, were completely unrealistic. Russia incurred tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of casualties, but the country was still much stronger than Ukraine. Its GDP was nine times the size of its neighbor’s, and its population was over three times as large. After suffering setbacks, Moscow mobilized more forces, spent months laying mines and preparing other defenses, and learned to use drones more effectively. As a result, when Ukraine launched a highly anticipated offensive in June 2023, it faced fierce resistance. Its efforts quickly stalled out. For Ukraine, growing skepticism comes with a silver lining. In the West, overblown expectations of Kyiv’s imminent success led to widespread disappointment with the Ukrainian counteroffensive, as well as grim prognoses for the war’s future. “I know everyone wants Ukraine to win,” said Republican Senator Ron Johnson in December. “I just don’t see it in the cards.” One poll of Europeans in early 2024 found that only ten percent predicted a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, whereas 20 percent foresaw a Russian victory and 37 percent expected a compromise deal. U.S. and European officials—concerned that the campaign had reached a stalemate and that Kyiv was running short of men and materiel—have even talked with Ukraine about peace negotiations. The darkened mood has translated into growing skepticism about providing assistance to Ukraine. In October, for example, Republican Senator Mike Lee called the conflict “America’s new forever war.” In December, House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win, and with none of the answers that I think the American people are owed.” In January, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that the only way to end the conflict was for Ukraine to give up territory. For Ukraine, growing skepticism is, of course, bad news. But the pessimistic turn comes with a silver lining: it may, once again, make Kyiv look like David fighting Goliath and lower expectations for the future. If so, analysts may celebrate Ukraine’s defiance and criticize the slow pace of Russian advances. After all, despite its greater power, Russia is still struggling to capture Ukrainian territory, and Kyiv has enjoyed clear wins in some arenas of the war—such as targeting the Russian navy in the Black Sea. Fighting Russia to a near-standstill remains a massive achievement for Ukraine. Here, Kyiv can better manage expectations by combining confidence in its long-term success with a realistic appraisal of its short-term difficulties. Ukraine, for example, should make clear to policymakers and its global audience that it is a massive underdog battling a brutal dictator and perhaps the third-greatest military in the world, and yet will ultimately prevail in its fight for independence. This story might help unlock more Western aid. OVERPROMISE, UNDERDELIVER Unlike Ukraine, Israel has decades of experience with the tyranny of expectations, beginning with the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. During that conflict, Israel clearly defeated the Egyptian and Syrian militaries, but Israelis nevertheless saw the campaign as a costly debacle. After the fighting ended, the country created a commission to determine what went wrong, and top Israel Defense Force officials stepped down. So did Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Israelis were gloomy in part because the Yom Kippur War was an intelligence failure for the government. But a deeper reason is that Israelis had sky-high expectations for their military, rooted in past experience. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel rapidly defeated a coalition of Arab states, leading Israelis to believe their military was, in effect, invincible. Seen through that lens, the tougher fight in 1973 looked like a defeat. (Israeli overconfidence in 1973 also helped cause the intelligence failure, because Israelis assumed the Arab states would never dare attack.) In Egypt, meanwhile, the catastrophe in 1967 dramatically lowered the bar for success in 1973. Egyptians still celebrate the October War as a victory, even though they lost on the battlefield. This pattern recurred in 2006, when Israel fought Hezbollah—an Iranian-backed militant group—in Lebanese territory. Israel killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters during the war, and afterward, the Israeli-Lebanese border became calmer as Hezbollah troops were replaced by the Lebanese Army and UN forces. But Israelis still saw the war as a defeat. They assumed that a few thousand Hezbollah fighters would be no match for the mighty Israel Defense Forces and that the militant group would be destroyed. Israelis, therefore, were furious when Hezbollah survived and continued to fire rockets at their territory. One former defense minister, Moshe Arens, said that Israel handed “Hezbollah a victory in Lebanon.” Polls suggested that most Israelis wanted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign (although he held on to power for another few years). In a similar vein to the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government created an official commission to investigate what went wrong. For Israel, it is probably too late to reset expectations. Today, the tyranny of expectations may encourage Israelis to see their war in Gaza as a failure. Hamas, like Hezbollah, is much weaker than Israel in material terms, boosting Israeli confidence that the Israel Defense Forces should win easily. Israeli officials have strengthened these expectations by making expansive promises, such as Netanyahu’s declaration that the war in Gaza will end with an Israeli win akin to the Allied victory in World War II. “There is no other solution” for Israel, he declared in February, “but a complete and final victory.” It is tempting for Netanyahu to use such rhetoric to rally support, signal resolve, and justify the investment of lives. But maximalist war aims and promises of triumph set Israelis up for disappointment by suggesting that the only acceptable outcome is an outright triumph. Victory would require either removing Hamas entirely from Gaza or forcing the organization’s surrender. Neither is likely. It is increasingly clear that defeating Hamas is no simple feat. Hamas is a deep-rooted organization that operates through family and clan networks. It is part of the “axis of resistance”: the network of state and nonstate actors that includes Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and various militias in Iraq and Syria, all of which can provide Hamas fighters with diplomatic and material support. Hamas had months to prepare tunnels and other defenses in Gaza. As a result, although Hamas has suffered losses, it is not close to being destroyed. Israel claims to have killed 13,000 Hamas operatives, but the group may have 30,000 or more fighters in total. Support for Hamas among Palestinians in the West Bank has risen. And Israel may be running out of time to deal more damage. It is under pressure from Arab states to end the conflict, and the United States has increasingly criticized the number of Palestinian casualties. U.S. President Joe Biden has warned Netanyahu, for example, not to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which Netanyahu has said is needed to eliminate Hamas. Even some top Israeli officials are worried about endless fighting—and aware that a total victory is impossible to achieve. In January, Gadi Eisenkot, a senior member of Israel’s wartime cabinet, said of the campaign against Hamas: “Whoever speaks of absolute defeat is not speaking the truth.” Hamas, by contrast, benefits from the tyranny of expectations. As the weaker party to the conflict, observers may see its very survival as a kind of victory, just as with Hezbollah in 2006. In the long-term, then, Israel’s campaign may inadvertently strengthen its adversary or create a new and even more dangerous successor organization. For Israel, it is probably too late to reset expectations, especially given that it was never the underdog (unlike Ukraine). Israelis are likely to look back on the war as a costly campaign and a missed opportunity—and perhaps as a major defeat. Polls in Israel suggest that confidence in the country’s security is waning. Perceptions of failure could have profound consequences for Israeli politics and society. Inside the country, the result could be a siege mindset, a hardening of Israeli politics, and a search for scapegoats. But recollections of loss could also spur a greater willingness to make concessions to the Palestinians, much as the perceived defeat in 1973 made Israelis more willing to trade land for peace with Egypt. The tyranny of expectations is a tough problem for powerful countries. But sometimes, self-criticism is necessary to make peace. DOMINIC TIERNEY is the Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the author of The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts. MORE BY DOMINIC TIERNEY More: Ukraine Russian Federation Israel Palestinian Territories Geopolitics Public Opinion Security Defense & Military Post-Conflict Reconstruction Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Hamas Most-Read Articles Give War a Chance Edward N. Luttwak Trump’s Threat to Europe His First Term Tested the Transatlantic Relationship—but His Second Would Break It Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage Israel Needs a New Strategy Total Victory Is Not Possible—but Demilitarizing Hamas and Stabilizing Gaza Still Are Dennis Ross A Revolution in American Foreign Policy Replacing Greed, Militarism, and Hypocrisy With Solidarity, Diplomacy, and Human Rights Bernie Sanders Recommended Articles A Ukrainian soldier near the town of Kreminna, Ukraine, March 2024 Time Is Running Out in Ukraine Kyiv Cannot Capitalize on Russian Military Weakness Without U.S. Aid Dara Massicot U.S. soldiers participating in a NATO exercise in Korzeniewo, Poland, March 2024 A More European NATO Defense Spending Alone Cannot Fix the Alliance’s Overdependence on the United States Max Bergmann Putin’s Hidden Weakness New Evidence Shows Many Russians Support Him—but Not the War By Timothy Frye, Henry Hale, Ora John Reuter, and Bryn Rosenfeld March 25, 2024 Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking at his campaign headquarters, Moscow, March 2024 In Russia’s presidential election in mid-March, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially won his fifth term with 87 percent of the vote and the highest reported turnout in the country’s post-Soviet history. Indeed, by most measures, Putin remains popular. Opinion surveys just before the election pegged his approval rating above 80 percent. Some voters are likely afraid to tell pollsters otherwise, of course, but for an autocrat, that kind of fear is almost as good as real support. Either way, Russians are generally avoiding open protest. This helps the Kremlin get away with touting Putin’s sweeping election victory as an endorsement of both the president and his signature policy, the war in Ukraine. At the same time, these numbers are far from a reliable indicator of popular support for the war. Many Russians, including Putin voters, are skeptical of the Kremlin’s determination to continue the two-year-old conflict. Although Putin’s approval ratings are impressive, survey data from the Russian Election Study (RES), which we lead, indicate that only a slim majority of his supporters now favor staying the course in Ukraine. In fact, despite the Kremlin’s massive effort to drum up support, nearly one in four Putin backers opposes continuing the war, and roughly the same number say they are unsure whether they support the war (19 percent) or decline to answer the question (four percent). This means that only slightly more than half of Putin supporters—54 percent—think Russia should continue the war that Putin has championed since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Among all Russian voters, support for Putin’s war is even softer. In October 2023, just 43 percent of Russians said they backed continuing what the Kremlin refers to as its “special military operation.” When asked to identify their position on the war, a third of those surveyed chose the response, “No, I do not support the continuation of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine,” and nearly a quarter declined to state an opinion. These figures are surely known to the Kremlin, which conducts its own polls and allows independent surveys to operate as well. Because it is easier to govern as a popular autocrat than an unpopular one, Putin closely tracks public opinion. The Kremlin works tirelessly to shape these opinions, but its efforts to drive up support for Putin himself have been more successful than its attempts to boost support for the war. These findings are both good and bad news for Ukraine and its allies. Waning support for the war among Russian citizens will not, in itself, compel Putin to end his assault on the country. Given the Kremlin’s extensive suppression of civil society and public dissent, he can continue to wage war without strong popular backing for it. The lack of popular enthusiasm, however, could complicate this effort. Putin will need to rely more heavily on repression to forestall opposition. Lack of popular enthusiasm for the war’s continuation also makes it harder to recruit soldiers and maintain morale and raises the cost of buying public support. In a televised address following the March 22 terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, Putin made a call for unity, while alleging Ukrainian involvement in the attack. His remarks suggest that the Kremlin will seek to use the attack to bolster support for aggression against Ukraine or for tougher terrorism laws that would further stifle domestic dissent. Winning the election was easy; stiffer challenges lie ahead. BUSINESS AS USUAL? In some respects, the RES’s most recent survey provides a sobering view of public support for the Putin regime. Contrary to some observers’ hopes that declining support for the war might trigger the collapse of Putin’s rule, the findings suggest it is not so simple. Led by a team of scholars supported by the National Science Foundation, the RES has contributed to understanding the evolution of Russian public opinion and voting behavior for nearly three decades. In national surveys conducted around each Russian presidential election in which Putin has featured as a candidate, the team has found that his support is multidimensional. This month’s election supports that pattern. The Russian leader continues to draw on a broad base among ordinary Russians—support built over nearly a quarter century that can prop him up even if many of these backers sour on the war itself. Putin’s appeal also continues to rest on his management of the country’s economy, his hypermasculine image, and—increasingly—his association with conservative values that resonate with many Russian citizens. Manipulating these other sources of support has been part of Putin’s strategy all along, a tactic often overlooked in Western analyses of Russia’s war strategy. Since the start of the invasion, for example, he has frequently downplayed the so-called special military operation, suggesting that the armed forces will take care of it, leaving most ordinary Russians to go about their lives as usual. He has also stressed the message that Russia has remained stable and continued to flourish during the war. Consider the economy. Russians who support Putin despite opposing the war are generally optimistic about how the economy has performed in the face of Western sanctions. About half of them think the economy is either unchanged or has even recovered over the last 12 months. (By contrast, just 14 percent of Russians who do not support Putin and are against the war see the Russian economy in this positive light.) Russians who are pro-Putin but antiwar are also much more likely to have avoided personal financial losses since the invasion of Ukraine: three in four report that their household finances have remained the same or improved over the past year. More than half of respondents who oppose both Putin and the war say their economic situation has worsened. But there is a tension in the Kremlin’s efforts to downplay the war and promote a sense of normality. At various moments, including the launch of Putin’s reelection campaign in December 2023, he has emphasized that Russia’s fight—in Ukraine and against the West—is an existential one and that every Russian must do their part. Another such moment was when Putin ordered the “partial mobilization” in the fall of 2022, calling up hundreds of thousands of Russians to fight. Such moves contradict the Kremlin’s other messaging that seeks to minimize the war. Raising the stakes of the war effort is a risky strategy in itself. Should Putin continue to push an existential narrative and his supporters tire of the war, they may become more likely to break with him if developments take a negative turn in other areas they care about, such as the economy. This risk could increase if opposition to the war grows or if Russia’s economic outlook deteriorates. For example, our research shows that Putin supporters who oppose continuing the war are still divided about whether financing the offensive should take priority over social programs. This may partly reflect the Kremlin’s success, at least so far, in increasing social spending and maintaining a sense of economic stability even as it put the economy firmly on a war footing. If Russia experiences an economic decline or a demand for more social spending, this acquiescence to the war could diminish, eroding Putin’s base. IT’S THE WAR, STUPID A larger potential concern for the Kremlin is the specific nature of popular opposition to the war. The most recent RES survey shows that some groups from which Putin has traditionally drawn support now oppose the military campaign. For one thing, Russians who are skeptical about the war are disproportionately women, and more than a quarter of Putin’s female supporters want the special military operation to end. For another, Putin’s supporters in rural areas are more opposed to prolonging the war than his backers in Russia’s major urban centers, with one in three saying they are against continuing it. These rural areas have been hit harder by military recruitment than urban centers. If antiwar sentiment among these Russians begins to align with anti-Putin sentiment, as it more often has in cities, it could be a turning point for the Kremlin. Added to these potential problems is the possibility that the Kremlin might be compelled to order another round of mobilization. Such a decision would have a particular impact on women and rural Russians. Men from rural areas are far more likely to be mobilized than those from major cities. And wives and mothers of soldiers, who are particularly concerned about high casualty rates and eager for their loved ones to be rotated home from the front, have already become a key source of public protest against the government’s war strategy. To mollify this constituency, the Kremlin could rotate frontline troops more frequently—but that could, in turn, require fresh rounds of mobilization. Among Putin supporters, opposition to the war is particularly concentrated in groups that are more likely to be recruited for military service and facing economically precarious circumstances. In remote ethnic regions in Siberia such as Buryatia, Altai, and Zabaykalskii Krai, where death rates among men of military age have been among Russia’s highest, as many as two-thirds of Putin supporters are outright against continuing the war. On average, in these regions and in other ethnic republics, such as Chuvashia and Udmurtia, roughly half of all Putin supporters express antiwar sentiments. Similarly, less-educated Putin backers are more likely to oppose continuing the war than their counterparts with advanced degrees. Faced with this ambivalence toward the war in the very regions where the Russian military has been concentrating its recruitment efforts, the Kremlin has taken no chances. After initially allowing the antiwar opposition candidate Boris Nadezhdin to register for the presidential election, the Russian authorities disqualified him on the grounds that the signatures he had collected were invalid. Clearly, the Putin regime thought that it was too dangerous for Nadezhdin to press his case to an electorate already skeptical about continuing the “special military operation.” To paper over antiwar sentiment, Russian state television regularly broadcasts displays of pro-military fervor and bellicosity, and Russian schools have doubled down on patriotic education. But such efforts have been unable to quash doubt, even among the war’s supporters. For example, only half of Russians who support continuing the war say that the best path available in February 2022 was “starting a full-scale military operation.” THE THREAT FROM WITHIN For Putin to retain his base of support, an electoral victory is less important than what comes after. In the past, he has sometimes deferred unpopular moves until after elections. A new wave of mobilization is the most opposed potential policy on the horizon. Even many backers of the war do not seem interested in making personal sacrifices to advance the effort. In a recent RES survey, seven of ten respondents who support the war said they were opposed to a fresh mobilization. In a hypothetical election scenario, support for a candidate declined by 25 percentage points when respondents were told that the candidate advocated mass conscription. Even Putin backers reduced their support for this hypothetical candidate by 16 points. All these findings suggest that there is only so much Putin can ask Russians to sacrifice for the war without fomenting more serious opposition. For now, the Kremlin’s official position is that no new mobilization is needed. It has recruited enough soldiers on lucrative contracts over the past year to carry out some limited rotation and forestall the demand for more troops. The Kremlin’s strategy for avoiding a new mobilization appears to be to place the principal combat burden on politically marginalized groups—ethnic minorities, the rural poor, and convicts—and to pay big salaries and bonuses to those who volunteer to fight. At the same time, the Kremlin has asked the wives and mothers of soldiers at the front to be patient, promising new benefits and social mobility for combat veterans who return home. Putin has assured loyalists—war supporters and those who have served—that they are the “true elite” and will be showered with rewards. Only time will tell whether he will uphold his promise to place and promote them in state companies, education, public associations, and government, a pledge he made in his annual address in February. Further battlefield setbacks for Russia, however, would make signing up new contract soldiers and other volunteer forces the Kremlin has used to fill manpower gaps more difficult. If fewer Russians volunteered, this would raise the pressure for more extensive mobilization, an option that Putin is clearly trying to avoid. A stagnating economy would compound this challenge, reducing his room to maneuver and making it more likely that he would effectively have to choose between the war and his core supporters. Even staunch Putin supporters are largely ambivalent about the war. To make either scenario more likely, Western countries must challenge Moscow in its current bet that Western war fatigue is eroding support for Kyiv. Although Western analysts have suggested in recent assessments that Russia may be gaining the upper hand over Ukraine, that trend can be reversed. The West must supply Ukraine with the military support it needs to make Russia’s rotation of troops more urgent and the Russian costs of volunteering high. At the same time, Western nations should send Russian audiences a message that the economic and military costs of continuing the war in Ukraine outweigh the benefits. In doing so, the West could exploit the fact that war fatigue is now a problem for Moscow itself and that popular dissatisfaction with continuing the offensive is real—even among Putin’s own supporters. Such efforts to capitalize on Russian opposition to the war will not automatically drive Putin from office. It is hard to oust an autocrat, especially in wartime, and even autocrats who lose wars often stay in power. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein survived ruinous wars against Iran and Kuwait. But the dissonance among the Russian leader’s base must unnerve the Kremlin. After the February death of Alexei Navalny, it may seem that the regime has all but eliminated viable sources of opposition. But Putin’s greatest threat may now come from his own current supporters. Putin’s policies have not always followed public opinion, but he has generally avoided taking steps—such as steep increases in the pension age—that are broadly unpopular, and military mobilization certainly falls within this category. Moreover, despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, even staunch Putin supporters are largely ambivalent about the war. That the Kremlin devotes so much energy to snuffing out even trivial forms of antiwar activity suggests that it is acutely aware of the danger that such discontent poses—a danger that even an overwhelming electoral victory cannot hide. This essay was updated to address the terrorist attack that took place outside Moscow on March 22. TIMOTHY FRYE is Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University and the author of Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia. HENRY HALE is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. ORA JOHN REUTER is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Co-Principal Investigator of the Russian Election Study. BRYN ROSENFELD is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University and Co-Principal Investigator of the Russian Election Study. MORE BY TIMOTHY FRYE MORE BY HENRY HALE MORE BY ORA JOHN REUTER MORE BY BRYN ROSENFELD More: Russian Federation Politics & Society Political Development Public Opinion War in Ukraine Vladimir Putin Most-Read Articles Give War a Chance Edward N. 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Trump has made similar incendiary comments before. Europe should take his threats seriously. He is once again the presumptive Republican candidate for president of the United States, and he leads Joe Biden, the incumbent, in many recent polls. Should he be elected to a second term, Trump’s attitudes toward Ukraine, Russia, and NATO—and his mercurial and self-interested mindset—will be pivotal for the war 战斗力差这么多!中国海军为何放弃歼-20选择歼-35?(图) 新闻来源: 万乘之尊 于2024-03-23 22:32:09 正常字体 提示:新闻观点不代表本网立场 前言：自003航母开始建造，航母舰载机选型讨论就一直热闹非凡，歼-15舰载战斗机先天不足，未来必须使用隐身舰载战斗机，歼-20战斗机的成熟度和性能超群，但在竞标新一代舰载机时，性能远远不如歼-20战斗机的歼-35战斗机却成为下一代舰载机。 一：歼-20隐身战斗机 歼-20隐身战斗机是中国21世纪初源自中国空军718工程，研制目的是击败美国空军的F-22战斗机，因此设定起点非常高，采用了双发、DSI进气道全动双垂尾，升力体加边条翼与鸭翼布局，气动设计是现代战斗机中最复杂的，兼顾了高亚声速和超声速能力，可以说达到最高的水平，配套的涡扇15发动机后推重比达1.3，超声速巡航速度达到1.8M，雷达反射截面积、超机动能力也不输F-22战斗机，机长比F-22长2米，空重却轻了一吨。 歼-20战斗机在机腹和进气道侧面设有3个弹舱，可以挂载4枚射程150千米“霹雳”-15远程空空导弹或6枚射程100千米的“霹雳”12改型中距空空导弹，两侧弹舱则各挂载1枚“霹雳”-10近距格斗空空导弹，作战前将可导弹伸出舱外，然后关闭弹舱门，不影响隐身能力和飞行阻力，比F-22只能临时打开舱门将导弹导引头伸出舱外的设计更合理，歼-20机翼下还有4个外挂点，每个可挂载了2000升副油箱或1.5吨重导弹，对地(海)攻击作战能力远高F-22战斗机和F-35战斗机 第二代有源相控阵雷达的天线阵面尺寸比F-22战斗机大0.1米，T/R组件比F-22战斗机多200个，对空探测距离比F-22战斗机远60公里，比F-35战斗机远120公里，作战半径，还装备了F-22战斗机没有的光电分布孔径系统和光电瞄准系统，全综合大屏幕玻璃化座舱以及头盔瞄准具等先进设备，拥有极强的目标探测及周边态势感知能力，无论是超视距空战还是近距离格斗，歼-20战斗机都是F-22战斗机最凶悍的对手，对美国F-35C战斗机更是占有压倒性的优势，F-35C战斗机战斗力只有歼-20战斗机的70%，3架F-35C战斗机才顶2架歼-20战斗机。 Recommended by 5 Redenen om deze maand een bezoek te brengen aan Plopsaland 5 Redenen om deze maand een bezoek te brengen aan Plopsaland www.plopsalanddepanne.be 二：歼-35战斗机 F-35C战斗机更像中国另一种隐身战斗机-FC-31，沈飞研制的FC-31隐身战斗机应该是中国第五代隐身战斗机竞标的失败方案，沈飞自掏腰包继续研制，计划用于出口，FC-31空重12.5吨，与F-16、F/A-18C/D以及米格-29同属的中型战斗机，气动布局融合了F-22和F-35的特点，弹舱和F-35一样没有侧弹舱，机腹弹舱只能挂载4枚中距空空导弹，采用RD-93发动机时推重比只有1.1，作战半径比F-35高100千米，比歼-20战斗机低800千米。在FC-31基础上改进的歼-35战斗机采用WS-13涡扇发动机后，基本性能和F-35C战斗机差不了多少。 虽然歼-35战斗机的成熟度和性能都难以匹敌歼-20战斗机，但有一个优势就是尺寸小，歼-35战斗机长约17米，翼展约12米，占据的甲板面积只有歼-20的55%~60%，歼-15战斗机投影面积为155平方米，歼-35战斗机应该在140平方米左右，“辽宁”号航母如果用歼-35战斗机替代尺寸和歼-20战斗机差不多的歼-15战斗机，4000平方米的机库可多装3-4架，甲板可多停放5架，载机量多出近50%，可以有效缓解战斗机不足的问题，尺寸较小在甲板/机库内调度空间也更充裕。 美国海军一直以F-14战斗机为远程防空首选，但F-14战斗机投影面积达190平方米，6800平方米的“尼米兹”级只能装载35架，舰载战斗机越少，投入各方向的战斗机数量数量就越少，防御密度就越低，防空空隙自然也就越大，这个的弱点只能靠集中2艘甚至3艘航母和搭载A-4攻击机来承担近距防空任务来克服，直到F/A-18多用途战斗机服役后才重新恢复中距防空圈，冷战后没有了对手争夺海空控制权，美国海军才敢于放弃F-14重型战斗机，选择各方面性能平衡的F/A-18E/F作为主力舰载战斗机，中国采用重型舰载机的航母同样面临这个问题。 三：歼-20隐身战斗机的防空能力 小与多既是优势，同时也是弱点，重型战斗机一直美国航母的首选，重型战斗机虽然尺寸较大，但防空拦截能力比歼-35战斗机有着压倒性的优势，对于航母编队防空能力有着巨大的增强效果，航母战斗机对速度要求相当高，F-4和F-14战斗机发动机就是设计可以无限制使用加力燃烧室，以便能从起飞开始就全加力赶到拦截点，歼-20战斗机的1.8马赫巡航速度比F-22还高，自然也高于歼-35战斗机，除了速度，中型战斗机的航程和载荷也是劣势之一。 F-14重型战斗机为对付携带远程导弹的反航母轰炸机群，战斗机的巡逻半径增大到了550千米，在保持2分钟格斗空战和20分钟着舰复飞油量下可在离航母240千米处巡逻2小时，或者在离航母800千米处巡逻30分钟，歼-20战斗机内部燃油9吨，作战半径可以达到2000千米，舰载改进后结构会增重7%一11%，作战半径可能减到1350千米，可在离航母700千米处巡逻1小时5分钟，歼-35战斗机内部燃油7吨，作战半径只有1150千米，同样条件下只能巡逻45分钟，还是没舰载改进的数据。 以航母一天最多可出动200架次算，歼-20战斗机每架次可飞5小时，每架一天可飞3.33次，30架一天可飞500小时，其中400小时用于防空，歼-35战斗机每架次可飞4小时，一天可飞400小时，从作战效率上看，歼-20战斗机优于歼-35战斗机。而且歼-20战斗机还比歼-35战斗机多装载2枚空战导弹，多一次迎头拦截机会，在执行中等距离拦截任务时，歼-20战斗机的综合战斗力是歼-35战斗机的1.55倍，双机编队的战斗力相当4机双编队的歼-35战斗机(因为3机编一队太多，也无法编两队) 歼-20战斗机具备超巡作战能力，超巡飞行油耗比要加力才能超音速三代机下降了一半，超音速截击作战半径增加一倍，增加的巡逻战斗时间比歼-35战斗机高17%，可以在更远的距离上拦截敌机。F-35C战斗机作战半径1100千米，当双方航母相距900千米时就可发动攻击，如果歼-20战斗机在550千米处巡逻，F-35C战斗机的JSM隐身反舰导弹射程555千米，考虑到歼-20战斗机的空空导弹射程，除非拥有足以压倒歼-20战斗机的护航力量，否则就要突防100千米，歼-20战斗机有更大的作战半径，自然更适合航母编队的防空作战。 前出巡逻战术可大幅度向外推进防空圈，压缩敌方攻击机的攻击强度，迫使采取比直线多2.2倍倍的迁回机动以回避歼-20战斗机的拦截，让F-35C战斗机勉强够用的航程变得不够用了，“拉断”的攻击机航程会明显增加攻击组织的复杂性，加大所需的攻击、护航、加油及电子战机的数量，最终削减用于攻击的火力，正如美国海军在装备F/A-18E/F战斗机后，很多航母指挥官仍然认为中型战斗机无论如何也无法与重型机拼战斗力的，重型战斗机可以直接提供100%的战斗力，中型战斗力只能提供70%。 四：歼-20隐身战斗机的攻击能力 在攻击能力方面，航母距离敌方越远，敌方要搜索的海域就越大，如果舰载机作战半径是600千米，攻击距离600千米就只能沿直线飞向目标，敌方只需根据来袭方向和飞机作战半径，搜索航母与目标连线为中轴正负约15度的范围，就发现航母位置，如果作战半径增加到840千米，攻击距离还是600干米，敌方搜索范围就扩大到航母与目标连线为中轴正负约60度的范围，搜索面积增加4倍。如果攻击距离是900干米，搜索面积就达100万平方千米。 Recommended by 5 Redenen om deze maand een bezoek te brengen aan Plopsaland 5 Redenen om deze maand een bezoek te brengen aan Plopsaland www.plopsalanddepanne.be 如果中国航母装备歼-20战斗机，可以距离美国航母1300公里处即可发起攻击，如果中国航母装备歼-35战斗机，攻击半径就要缩小200公里，003航母最多可搭载45架歼-20战斗机，甲板停放30架，一个波次就可出动30架，6架负责护航，4架负责电子战和空袭效果评估，10架执行对地攻击任务，如果换成歼-35战斗机，那么甲板载机增加到40架，执行对地攻击任务的战斗机可增至20架，隐形状态下10架歼-20可以携带20吨弹药，20架歼-35战斗机也是携带20吨弹药，而非隐形状态下歼-35战斗机携弹量则超过歼-20战斗机40吨。 假如隐形状态下需要投弹20吨才能消灭目标，歼-20战斗机只需出动10架，而歼-35战斗机需要出动20架，假如非隐形状态下需要投弹40吨才能消灭目标，歼-20战斗机只需出动5架，而歼-35战斗机需要出动7架，最大起飞数量也决定了航母的作战能力，航母一般会在飞行甲板上停放40余架飞机，搭载近20米的歼-20和18米的歼-35战斗机数量差异为:2x31+18=3架，假如全部为战斗机，差异是:2x39+18=4架，两者的攻击波数量只差1架，歼-35战斗机的攻击波并没有数量上的优势。 目前美国海军还能维持3~4个航母战斗群和近200架舰载战斗机，中国航母还处于起步阶段，至少在2030年前在舰载机数量上，中国还处劣势，能够投入攻击的舰载战斗机规模相当有限，每架舰载战斗机都是宝贵的，如果歼-35战斗机用来执行对海打击，弹舱只挂载2枚空空导弹和2枚反舰导弹，歼-20战斗机弹舱可载2枚空空导弹和4枚反舰导弹，武器数量高1倍，单机火力越强，投入攻击的舰载战斗机数量就越少，一架能够向目标投弹4枚的舰载战斗机效率高于两架各可投弹2枚的舰载战斗机。 五：歼-35战斗机的优点 当然歼-35战斗机也不是毫无优点，实战不是一对一单挑，而是综合能力的对抗，如果歼-35战斗机杀出第一岛链，那绝对不如歼-20战斗机好用，但是如果歼-35战斗机在距离中国大陆600千米以内，在空军“空警”500预警机500千米雷达覆盖内作战，航程和载荷劣势就会基本抹平，综合战斗力也基本能和F-35C战斗机抗衡，数量优势使综合战斗力和歼-20战斗机不相上下，歼-20数量较少但综合战斗力较强，歼-35战斗机数量多可获得更大的灵活性， 数量多的一方可以有更多、更灵活的战术选择，100架歼-20战斗机可能挡得住150架F-35战斗机，但挡不住200架F-35战斗机，而且歼-35战斗机向上则可以用于003航母，向下可以兼容辽宁舰和山东舰，甚至076两栖攻击舰，另外，歼-20战斗机展弦比小，零升力系数不如F-35战斗机，角着陆速度过快、起飞升力过小，必然要延长翼展增加升力，因而改动范围较大，生产线标准化水平下降，研制费用和难度不亚于重新设计一架战斗机，而歼-35战斗机的气动布局几乎不用作任何改动。 最后，歼-35战斗机的原型是沈飞独立自筹研制费用的歼-31项目，并没有军方投资，这笔费用对于沈飞是一个非常沉重的负担，中国海军采购后可以摊平这笔费用，而且成飞生产线已饱和，沈飞的歼16订单已经差不多生产完了，沈飞也要吃饭，不能让成飞全占了好处，中国空军也需要一型便宜战斗机代替歼-10战斗机，和一型出口的隐身战斗机和F-35战斗机争市场，中国海军的采购刚好可作为表率，如果能出口，无疑又能大大降低中国海空军的采购成本。 六：结语 尽管歼-20战斗机非常强大，但综合考虑，还是歼-35战斗机比较划算一点。