Muddling through is a piece of CIA analytic vocabulary John Kiriakou says was in constant use, and which he offers as a corrective to the way forecasts are usually framed.
The term
At the CIA, in their analysis, Kiriakou says, they used this term all the time: muddling through.[1]
His explanation of why it was needed is a point about cognition rather than about any particular conflict. So many people, he says, naturally default to an either/or choice when they try to prognosticate — and what was often true instead was that the parties in the conflict just sort of muddled through, and things did not change over the medium term.[2]
Applied to Ukraine
Asked how the war in Ukraine ends, Kiriakou answered that muddling through is what he thinks is being looked at.[2]
One component of the forecast is nuclear restraint. He does not think the Russians will use nuclear weapons, and does not think they will use even tactical nuclear weapons — because doing so would cost them a propaganda advantage.[2][3] The advantage in question is the ability to say that the only country in the history of the planet ever to use nuclear weapons is the United States, and that it did so twice. Russia does not want to be lumped in with that, and has been able to point at Washington on the question since 1945.[3]
The second component is that they do not need to. Kiriakou says Russia has a virtually unlimited supply of suicide drones obtained from both the Chinese and the Iranians, and is attempting to purchase them from the Indians as well.[3] His arithmetic is that a small payload on a drone costing fourteen thousand dollars beats the hundred or two hundred thousand that American missiles cost, and that Russia will simply keep doing that.[3][4]
The settlement he expects at the end of the muddling is set out in his Ukraine settlement prediction.