The Ukrainian Gordian Knot

Most Americans understandably favor the Ukrainian resistance against Russian President Vladimir Putin's naked 2022 aggression.

Yet for Ukraine to break the current deadlock -- our generation's Verdun with perhaps 600,000 combined casualties so far -- and "win" the war, it apparently must have the military wherewithal to hit targets inside Russia.

Such strategically logical attacks might nevertheless provoke a wounded and unpredictable Russia finally to carry out its boilerplate and ignore existential threats.

From the last 75 years of big-power rivalries, the operational "rules" of proxy wars are well known.

In Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan, Russia supplied America's enemies -- sometimes even sending Russian pilots into combat zones.