Douthat sees Russia maintaining frozen conflicts in Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus. The U.S. does frozen conflict too:
That’s true of the AfPak wars; it’s true for now of our interventions against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; it’s true of smaller antiterrorism forays the world over. It’s even true of our quasi-conflict with Putin himself: He wants to divide and destabilize Ukraine without actually conquering it, we want to limit his gains without provoking escalation, and the result is grinding violence without much chance of resolution.Frozen conflict is an interesting concept. You don't try to take and hold territory, but merely mess with the opponent, hitting him where he's weak and making him look impotent. If both sides practice it, you end up with a Somalia where nobody holds more territory than the land on which they currently stand.
Of course, frozen conflict makes the lives of the people in the war zone a kind of unending hell. It requires a willingness to cause that pain.
Later ... it occurs to me there are at least two variants of frozen conflict - high tech and low tech. Low tech frozen conflict is what an insurgency typically wages, say the Viet Cong against the government of South Vietnam or FARC against the Colombian government. The U.S. most often does high tech frozen conflict with drone strikes, bombing campaigns, and special forces raids. The use of proxy forces tends to be more low tech.
