The border of Ukraine has zero importance to the USA. And yes the Ukrainian regime are Nazi influenced and corrupt as it gets. Nothing good will ever come from this.
I disagree with much of each thing you write, which is why I really like your writing - since I'm forced to think hard about why I agree with some parts and disagree with others.
In this case though, it's quite a relief to see someone calling this out. Watching my "allies" among the libertarians and the right talk about how Putin seems like a nice guy; totally reasonable; a master of history; and entirely authentic, has made me want to vomit.
I'm perfectly capable of disagreeing with our participation in Ukraine, while still considering Putin a totalitarian warmonger bag of shit.
He is a bag of shit. I am not sure if we should stop him in Ukraine---but I can be persuaded to. NO ONE has made a coherent fact based cost/opportunity cost argument.
It is interesting to me that leftists were against the Vietnam war and anti-war generally in the 60s. Now it seems they are pro-war and for fighting in Ukraine. What changed?
• The NATO thing is mostly bunk. NATO has grown by 2 members since the war and Putin hasn't done squat.
• Putin is who he always was. He believes his own nonsense. He fooled a lot of westerners for a long time. The first time he went into Ukraine (during GWB) should have been the last time. Westerners, especially Germans, liked the $.
• The people who understand best are the East Europeans, especially the Poles and Estonians. They listen to Putin's ramblings and they see themselves as next. Thus, right-wing Polish PM called out supreme BS-er Vance and the other isolationists. Mike Pompeo has a much better grip on the situation than any other 'non-RINO'.
• Putin is not a genius. He thought the SMO was going to take a few days. They sent parade uniforms with their very first wave of troops.
• Ukraine certainly was corrupt. They've made major strides in reducing corruption in pursuing EU membership. They'd rather be like Poland than Russia. Is it perfect? No. Will it stick? Hard to know
• The Russian economy is probably fairly brittle. They can't get some goods, like western aircraft parts to service their stolen planes. They do seem to be able to get all their Luis Vuitton luxury goods. Pre-ware over 20% of Russians didn't have indoor plumbing. The war didn't help any of those people.
• China certainly waits. South Korea and Japan need to develop their own nukes ASAP.
• There will almost certainly be more NATO troops in East Europe. It will be worth it for the USA.
• No current need for NATO to go into Ukraine. That was the purpose of all the arms supplied has been. The USA should have been faster with more advanced weapons.
• The USA is seen as a not very reliable ally by most countries at this point. There's some unknowable cost.
• The Ukraine war has exposed the USA's vulnerabilities. Drones change a lot. Shooting expensive missiles to shoot down cheap drones is not a good long-term program.
• IMO Ferguson overstates and understates conflict with China. China won't be attacking the US mainland, so it's hard to see CCP-US. But attacking Taiwan will cause catastrophic harm to global industry. It won't be just Apple falling by 50%.
• America is complacent. Cheering on unappealing contestants in the syphilis vs. gonorrhea battle of 2024. Not caring that no American companies know how to build good warships.
• What are the odds that Carlson is an FSB agent? Not probable, but at least possible?
I don't agree that NATO could quickly overpower Russia with little loss of life. If we get more involved supply lines become targets. A new Battle of the Atlantic would be an ugly, bloody thing. If American troops are directly fighting Russian troops in Ukraine, Putin would feel justified interdicting shipping supporting our troops.
It's not responsible to compare what would be required to drive Russia out of Ukraine to the liberation of Kuwait. Russia is a near-peer adversary with much more capability than Iraq.
It would be a mistake to get involved more deeply, and Ukraine has zero chance of driving Russia out of Ukraine. The US needs to help negotiate peace.
Finally, a dose of sanity. Judging from certain comments here, some Americans are in for a rude awakening when this fiasco ends in utter defeat for Ukraine. But perhaps not. I would have thought that our humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by the rapid takeover by the Taliban, would have opened people's eyes. If that didn't wake people up to reality, perhaps nothing will. A couple of other points. One commenter mentioned that the Russians can't get aircraft parts to service their Western-made planes. As if the Soviet Union didn't have a domestic jet aircraft industry. I've flown all over the Russian Federation on soviet-made aircraft and lived to tell the tale. The Russians are reviving their domestic aircraft industry with no problem. They would have had to do this anyway, given the way Boeing is going. I'd take a Russian-made plane before a Boeing 737 MAX any day. Finally, another commenter mentions that the US allows religious freedom. There are numerous youtube channels run by US and other Western Christian families who have emigrated to Russia because they feel themselves to be persecuted as Christians in the West. I think they are naive about conditions in Russia, but it says something when Christians feel they have to move to a place like Russia to freely practice their religion.
Let me just comment on Ukraine and Nato as there is a long and misunderstood history at work here.
First, for any nation to become part of Nato, that nation must request what is called an MAP (membership action plan) and the entire Nato membership must unanimously agree to grant that request. This unanimous acceptance is a real problem.
Ukraine requested such an MAP as far back as 2002 and again, vigorously, in 2008. George W Bush was keen on the idea of Ukraine joining Nato. Ukraine joining Nato is a two decade old idea and Ukraine is not the problem here.
After the 2008 Nato MAP request, Ukraine changed its constitution to be a "non-aligned" nation which it continued to be until the Russian invasion. So much for non-alignment, eh?
Step back for a second -- Sweden and Finland on the heels of Russia's unprovoked attack against Ukraine requested an MAP, it was granted, and they were admitted as part of Nato in less than two years. Still Turkey and Hungary -- both Russian sympathizers -- were a pain in the ass during the process.
It is important to recognize these two countries were quite unique -- in the case of Sweden they are a naval power with a superb submarine force that controls northern waters of great significance to Russia; and, Finland has a very competent army and shares a huge border with Russia in the vicinity of where Russia's nuclear attack arsenal is located.
So much for the silliness that Nato has to provide Russia a buffer at its national border. Fuck Putin and Russia -- this is exactly what they need: to be surrounded by an overwhelming force capable of defeating them in depth.
Back to Ukraine -- Ukraine upon its exit from the failed USSR agreed to give up its nuclear weapons (that the Russian Federation claimed were theirs) IAW something called the Budapest Memorandum that had the US, UK, and Russia guarantying Ukrainian freedom from attack now that they had no nuclear deterrent. Clearly our word -- Pres Clinton -- was no good. God we are a terrible ally when the chips are really down.
Russia then began the attack on Ukraine in 2014 with its phony insurrection in the Donbass and Luhansk oblasts and their faux referendum in Crimea. This is when the war started in Ukraine. They were fighting for 8 years.
It is fair to say this war did not broaden until there was a weak American leader -- "an elderly man with a bad memory." That guy.
This was supposedly solved by something called the Minsk Agreement that again guaranteed Ukrainian protection, but Russia did not comply with its own agreement.
Ukraine had already turned toward the European Union economically/socially and was looking west toward Europe and not toward Russia.
Ukraine provided Nato and the US troops in the Iraq war -- thereby acting exactly like a Nato ally.
One of my classmates from VMI was the senior US military advisor to the International Division that included Ukrainian combat formations. He said they fought well and when the Russian attack on Ukraine began he said the Ukrainians would not be pushovers. He -- rather than the Pentagon, CIA, MI6, and the Russians -- was right. Shows one the benefit of actual combat and field experience.
He wrote a good book on it and other things called "In Strange Company."
The Putin sales pitch that Ukraine is part of Russia is total nonsense. The US speaks English, but we are not part of England. In fact, we militarily, economically, culturally sought to distance ourselves from England just as Ukraine did from Russia.
When Geo NMI Washington was offered a crown to be our first King, he passed on the idea because we did not fight the Revolution to become like England. We specifically did not want to become England and have a royal family.
The US allows religious freedom and England had a state sponsored religion. Huge difference and one enshrined in our founding documents that prohibited a state sponsored religion.
Putin -- a guy who would undoubtedly burst into flame if he entered a Russian Orthodox church -- claims that the religious tie provided by the Russian Orthodox church is proof of their close cultural bond which is nonsense.
The US embrace of Episcopalianism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam is not evidence of a cultural bond or a sign we want to strengthen that bond and become part of the country in which those religions originated. This is why the very notion of freedom is so important.
Ukrainians of a certain age who previously lived under the USSR know Russia well -- they may speak Russian, they may be Russian Orthodox, they may love borscht, they may own Matryoshka nesting dolls -- and have no desire to be part of Russia because of that experience. This is an informed consent.
Putin is just wrong when he says these are cultural bonds that indicate a desire to be part of Russia. I love Italian food, but I have no desire to be part of the Italian state.
Let's be honest here: Nato is not going to attack Russia in a Pearl Harbor type ambush and Nato is best served when Russia is worried. Russia did nothing to Finland and Sweden because they could not.
Russia is a much smaller country than the combined might of the US and Nato and we should act accordingly.
Ukraine is the first paragraph of the first chapter of Nato v Russia. This is the Spanish Civil War prelude to WWII. We get a free look at Russia and their weapons and we get to test ours.
Thus far, the Russians fail to impress.
The best possible outcome is a mortally wounded, defanged Russia stripped of its ability to create more mischief and a mighty and united Nato. That is the path to world peace.
We need to cowboy up and get the fuck on with it and stop pretending that morons like Biden and Putin are going to work this out. We do this on the cheap investing less than 10% of the current annual DoD budget and we get world peace if we play our cards right.
Kamela Harris offered membership in NATO to Ukraine....Putin invaded soon after. You cannot blame Putin for not wanting a rival on his doorstep. The right thing to do was to keep Ukraine neutral.
The Russians aren't the war machine we expected, but at the same time, all the trillions isn't helping Ukraine win. Today, some intel was released that there is no way they can win.
If indeed Putin has designs on Poland and the rest of the free European countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain, he needs to be defeated. NATO could do it in a couple of weeks.
I think what you are referring to is an ill fated Kamala Harris Tweet she posted on 18 Feb 2022 wherein she said the US was defending Ukraine as "part of its commitment to Nato."
Totally wrong as Ukraine was not part of Nato and everybody with a brain -- which excludes Kamala -- knew it.
The Russians invaded Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022, 6 days after Kamala Harris misspoke.
There is no connection between those two events as the Russians had been building forces along the Ukraine Belarus border for more than a year and along the Crimea Ukraine border for the same time period.
Keen observers realized this was likely the real thing when intel leaked the Russians were moving whole blood and plasma to their medical units. You don't go on maneuvers with whole blood and plasma.
The Russians and the Ukrainians had been fighting since 2014 in Donbas and Luhansk oblasts and had seized Crimea in the same year.
The Pentagon, MI, CIA, MI6 -- in a gigantic failure of their basic craft and skill -- had the Russians winning in a walkaway in less than a week. This was the best possible intel even having seen the Ukrainians fight against the Russians since 2014 and having seen the Ukrainians fight in Iraq as part of the International Division.
All the spooks got it wrong, woefully wrong. Grossly wrong. Heads should have rolled for getting it this wrong.
There are two elements to that blunder: a gross overestimation of the Russian ability to fight a combined arms fight whilst snatching air supremacy -- the US/Nato would own the sky in the first six minutes of a shooting war -- and a gross underestimation of the Ukrainian ability to plan, shoot, move, and communicate.
It took the west a month to figure out the Ukrainians had stalled the Russian column pressing toward Kyiv by destroying all their mobile fuel tankers with ATGMs from the fields adjoining the axis of advance. That is some damn good soldiering, initiative, and creative use of inexpensive and easy to deploy weapons.
The Ukrainians stopped an armored attack of more than 1,500 tanks and killed most of them. How did our intel guys get that so wrong on both sides?
I have not seen the intel you suggest, but I have seen a ton of disinformation suggesting the Russians can win with which I disagree.
The Orcs are a third rate, poorly led, weak doctrine, unimaginative, conscript army that has a very questionable industrial base and that is unable to field its best gear because it cannot make enough of it.
Their supposed best tanks and planes are not deployed because they have only made a couple dozen of each. Instead, they are refurbishing armor and howitzers that last saw action in the late 1940s/early 1950s.
Starting with the Russians -- can they win? Not if the US/West/Nato doesn't lose their manhood and bail on the Ukrainians.
The American Revolution lasted 8 1/2 years and we were fighting the best army/navy in the world, but Geo NMI Washington found a way to fight the superior enemy and rounded into combat shape over the winters at Valley Forge.
Can the Ukrainians win? Fuck yes!
The real question is this -- does America and the American military have enough sack to see it through? We bailed on Vietnam and A'stan. Will we bail here?
The US was the winning ingredient in WWII because we mobilized our industrial base to defeat the enemies. Right now, the US is struggling to make up the reductions in inventory as a result of supporting Ukraine. There is no excuse for that.
I am betting we will come to our senses and recognize this is a historic opportunity to defang and dismember Russia which would be the best stroke for world peace and would inform China, Iran, N Korea that the way of Russia is the hard way.
Ukrainians probably could win back in 2022, when it didn't go well for Russia. But they didn't have enough equipment to fully capitalize on their big success in the fall of that year, and that ship has sailed. Now they still don't have the goods and they are also running out of manpower. Ordinary people don't want to get involuntarily conscripted to fight for their corrupt government and are doing their best to dodge it, but the government has doubled down with a new law intended to make it very hard to escape the draft. But what good will it do if the people are not willing to fight? This is not going to end well for Ukraine. Sorry for bursting your bubble
Having been educated at Virginia Military Institute and all the institutions of higher education the Army has to offer, having been a professional soldier, I can only say that we shall disagree, but my disagreement shall be based on facts, history, and knowledge rather than emotions or glib sophistry.
Wars are won by superior logistics, leadership, strategy, and as an adjunct to logistics -- resources. They are lost by failures in the same elements of basic warfighting capabilities.
In reality, in every instance, the outcome is created by a set of strengths v a set of weaknesses that may not be universal. One side never has all the strengths or weaknesses. Many times what we think we know is simply wrong.
In WWII, as an example, the Brits and the Americans thought they had bombed German industrial capabilities into dust, but it turned out the greatest month of German tank production in the entire war was the month before they surrendered. The Allies were killing them faster - primarily with air power at the end of the war - than the Krauts could produce them.
The Russians are truly unimpressive by any yardstick and while they have launched a gigantic disinformation campaign, there are irrefutable numbers as to tank production that paint a troubling picture for the Orcs and an encouraging picture for the Ukrainians.
Tanks are a good yardstick as they were thought to be a huge strength of the Russian army and, clearly, are virtually inconsequential given drones and ATGMs.
The Russians are hauling out their best mothballed 1940s/1950s tanks and trying to renovate (up armor, better guns, target computers, optics, engines -- a lot by cannibalizing their existing fleet of mothballed tanks) them because they can only produce a literal handful of their top tanks.
Their very top tank and aircraft they have only produced 2 dozen since they announced their adoption; and, neither have appeared in Ukraine.
Tanks are a good bit of gear to follow as we have perfect satellite observation of the #Muscovy tank factories and can count new units headed to the railhead as well as rehab hulks arriving also by rail. Drone recon provides exact info as to tanks unloaded at the railhead.
It is important to note as it relates to tanks, the Russians can repair minimal damage in the field, but any way you skin it, the Russians have run through 6,000 tanks and cannot keep up with battlefield losses.
As to manpower, history teaches us there has never been a war that has not turned on manpower. The American Revolution wherein the upstart Colonials drove out the largest and best army/navy in the world fresh from the combat experience of the Seven Years War was plagued by manpower issues. Perhaps Geo NMI Washington's best skill was recruiting and getting those state militias to stay the course at Valley Forge.
Geo Marshall in WWII (VMI grad) planned for 200 divisions to fight and win against the Germans and the Japs in WWII and knew he would be scraping the bottom of the barrel as to available American manpower. He ended up raising fewer than 100 and gambling her could knock out the Krauts early enough to move European divisions to the Pacific for the attack on the Home Islands.
Russia has lost more than 2MM men of military draft age who have fled the country, went through its prisons, and has been forced to conscript more than 400,000 men. [Note: A good number of those men have gone to their manufacturing facilities rather than their battlefield army.]
What is more important is no newly trained Russian unit has appeared and fought well on the battlefield in this war. Conscription is not producing combat power and good formations.
They lost an entire airborne division -- typically elite, well-trained and rugged troops, I was an airborne Ranger combat engineer in my day -- in the first month of the war in an ill-fated attempt to conduct a coup de main and seize an airfield north of Kyiv.
It took them almost 2 years to replace that one airborne division, train it, and when committed to combat was destroyed in one week -- casualty rate of more than 50% and rendered combat ineffective. So much for Russia's ability to stand up additional forces.
Remember the Russian army has always been a conscript army and drafts more than 300,000 men annually and has for decades.
To me, the most telling data point in the entire Russian military gamebook is their complete inability to seize air superiority. American doctrine teaches us to control the skies first and then the ground. It is not for want of trying. They just don't have that capability. Nato does BTW.
Yes, the Ukrainians are going to have to develop more manpower and they are going to have to be more effective than the Russians in fielding quality units with a winning strategy.
The Ukrainians Achilles heel is the failure of the West to support them with high quality weapons systems and ammunition. The West is still being parsimonious with its best weapons though they have begun to send some of their really good stuff in the last 60 days.
The loss of Arviidka -- an advance of 6.8 miles at a single point along a 620 mile front at great cost -- is attributable to the US Congress' fecklessness, the failure of the Biden admin to send them expired artillery ammo and better munitions (more ATACAMS), and the diversion of artillery rounds to Israel.
The US only produces 24,000 155mm artillery rounds a month and should be producing 125,000 given our own demands, that of our allies, the replenishment of Nato stockpiles, and Israel. The Rheinmettal plant in Ukraine will produce almost 1MM annually starting within 6 months. They are the largest ammo supplier in Nato right now.
Still, military the Ukrainian stand at Arviidka was a perfectly proper use of the "defense" to bleed the attacker, to inflict huge losses in men and material, and to force the Russians to commit their best units to the fight. Doctrine wise this is why experienced commanders go over to the defense. If this was the Army War College, they would applaud the Ukrainians.
Right now the Ukrainians are doing the right things -- organic production of FPV drones, setting up co-op manufacturing (Rheinmettal artillery ammunition plant in Ukraine that should be capable of producing huge amounts of artillery ammo this year) -- and if the West will fulfill its commitments, they will be just fine.
The Russian economy is in trouble. Economists are trying to sell the notion that Russian GDP is rising, but the facts are that more than 25% of internal Russian economic vigor is based solely on supplying the war in Ukraine. Just like the US Vietnam War sugar high in the US economy.
#Muscovy claims a 5% increase in GDP -- their numbers -- which means they had a 25% war time shot in the arm netting a non-military economy loss of 20%.
Like any war, the key will be leadership. I give Zelenskyy high marks, same for the Brits, Biden is a little squishy, and Trump will surrender to the Russians.
Can the Ukrainians win? Yep. Will it be easy? Nope. Never is.
Can the Russians win? Yes, if Ukraine and the West lose their resolve. The Russians are not winning right now.
I QUOTE: "Concrete cost/benefit cost/opportunity cost analysis, with the framework used to arrive at those decisions transparent."
This is an overly verbose and underly meaningful argument, or what some people would call DRIVEL. In international politics you can't come up with an accountant's justification, unless it's pure justafiction. But of course I realize that living in Las Vegas doesn't predispose one to feel concern for a faraway country that has experienced nothing but grief from its obnoxious, murderous neighbor.
What may cut more hay is this: 1. The cost of supporting Ukraine is nothing compared to what the US has spent on other wars that were much less deserving of our favors, and unlike Ukraine, killed and maimed Americans for life. 2. Anybody who has studied the lead-up to WWII and the catastrophe that followed should be able to discern the remarkable resemblance between Hitler and Putin's methods. 3. This is why, should Putin defeat Ukraine, not only will there be a bloodbath in that country, but he will continue trying to pick off more countries to add to his collection -- most likely small NATO members. And then what?
If point three is correct, then NATO should attack Putin vigorously tomorrow. Point one is not relevant. It's not about other wars versus this war. Point two I agree with some of it, but I don't believe Putin=Hitler.
I don't follow your logic in points 1 and 3, but let's see about the Putin = Hitler comparison:
In March 1936 Hitler started his conquests by seizing the Rhineland, which he had no right to do because it was supposed to remain 'demilitarized', but by his logic he should rule every place that contained German-speaking people, and the allies did nothing. Then he annexed Austria, by the same logic. Then he took -- with the approval of Chamberlain -- Peace in Our Time, and all that -- the Sudetenland, the edges of which included some Germans, but that enabled him shortly afterwards to invade and occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia, because the Sudetenland had contained that country's best defenses. Next item on the list was Poland, in September 1939, which he invaded while claiming that the Poles had invaded German territory.
And once they had Poland, the Germans abducted all the Polish children they could find who looked "Aryan", meaning blond and blue-eyed; those children were adopted, under different names, by German families.
And through all this, Hitler justified every move by racial arguments. Every one of these moves was mirrored by Putin: in Georgia, then Czechia, then Crimea, and now Ukraine; and if he gets it, you can bet the Baltic countries will be next.
And throughout all this, each dictator was telling tales about a mythical, glorious past of the Germans, c.q. the Russians, that must be restored.
I think the comparison has to go no deeper than an insane, crazed, nationalist zealot spinning a tale of absurd national destiny based on a flawed view of history with a willingness to risk it all whilst killing its neighbors.
The key ingredient, the linchpin, the keystone, the secret sauce was the world did nothing when this crazy motherfucker could have been crushed and then were unable to put together the right package until the cost was horribly high.
There is no downside to eliminating Putin, defanging Russia, and dismembering it.
The cost to the US and Nato (they need to spend more on defense as part of their commitment to Nato) is a gigantic bargain compared to total US defense spending.
For less than $100B annually (about 10% of US defense spending), the US can defang and dismember Russia and prevent its eye from casting about. If that sounds familiar, it is the way the US won the Cold War using George Kenan's Long Telegram from Moscow approach.
So, yeah, let's pound the fuck out of Russia, bleed it dry economically and militarily, on the cheap.
I agree wholeheartedly. It sure beats going into dismal places like Afghanistan, only to slither out with our tails between our legs.
And I don't quite understand these people who are predicting Putin will attack other countries, like Poland and the Baltic republics next; that is, I don't think he will do that if he loses in Ukraine (which may well mean the end of his regime, anyway); besides, it would take a considerable rebuilding of his military to do that -- a military that has shown very little effectiveness.
The Russian doctrine built on the BTG - battalion tactical group -- as a combined arms unit (infantry, armor, artillery, lots of artillery, drones) -- is based primarily on massive artillery. This is not a revelation.
This artillery is of the 152mm size and capable of firing from 10 miles with a rocket assist to twice that distance.
The western 155mm is capable of firing 15 miles with a rocket assist out to 25 miles.
The west has superior counterbattery radar and can locate the Russians very quickly.
The US HIMARS is so important as it can fire -- with pinpoint GPS targeting -- out to 300 km (ATACMS missile) and can generally fire a six pack of missiles to 50 km.
A HIMARS can prep to fire in 15 seconds, fire in 45 seconds and reload in 5 minutes. Thus, the HIMARS can shoot, move, and communicate before Russian counterbattery fire can develop.
This means a HIMARS can reach deep behind the FEBA (forward edge of the battle area) and strike Russian artillery ammo supply dumps, firing batteries, fire direction centers, headquarters, or be sited behind Ukrainian lines far enough the Orcs cannot reach it.
We need to pour the HIMARS and the ATACMS into Ukraine and let them blow the fuck out of the #Muscovy. Right now we are not making enough HIMARS, ATACMS, missiles, and 155mm artillery rounds.
The best we can expect out of Ukraine is a stalemate. But neither side wants that (similar to the Middle East mess). Until the parties get that, the slaughter will continue. Resistance to further Russian expansion is necessary and supplying arms is the easiest way to do that. Not even Putin wants WWIII. So let’s play this out. Trump’s attempt to end it on “day one” is more narcissistic bluster that he is so good at. But his appeasement will be no different than the Obama/Biden Iran genuflection. Meanwhile the bad guys win. You really comfortable with creeping totalitarianism? I’ll settle for the crony capitalists.
We live in a country that defeated the universally acknowledged greatest army and naval power of its time. We did it with a set of under funded, rag tag, poorly equipped, untrained state militias brought under the control of an inexperienced commander-in-chief whose only meaningful military experience was the failed Braddock campaign.
This rank amateur -- noted for his height and being the best horseman in the Colonies as well as a charismatic leader who seemed to always be at the critical location in any fight -- adopted a brilliant strategy of never becoming decisively engaged, never risking his entire army even in victory, and learning the craft of soldiering on the job facing professional English generals who were battle hardened, educated, and fresh from the Seven Years War.
He made the singular brilliant decision to turn his army over to a faux general Von Steuben who taught the Colonialist how to deploy from a column of platoons to a front of platoons on the double with their cannons deployed behind them. The Colonial Army after Valley Forge could beat the British square.
During a great deal of the war the campaign might have graciously been judged as a stalemate, but our brilliant C in C was waiting for the moment when he could control the field and deal a decisive defeat to the Brits.
He was wise, prudent, and patient -- for 8 1/2 years.
He found it at Trenton (the most brilliant double river crossing, envelopment, night attack in the history of American/English arms) and Saratoga and, finally, at Yorktown when he trapped the Brits and the French fleet did the rest.
That war lasted 8 1/2 years and at no time were the Colonies "winning" until they trapped Cornwallis and it still took 2 years from Yorktown until the Brits pulled out.
On the day this Russian invasion started our Pentagon, CIA, MI6, and the Russians expected it to last a week with a Russian victory and the hanging of the Ukrainian President in a Russian occupied Kyiv.
Such is the majesty of freedom and the noble pluck of free men that we stand with the Russians unable to conquer Ukraine and the Ukrainians fighting back for their homeland with esprit and elan.
For less than 10% of the DoD annual budget, we can support Ukraine to not just a stalemate, but to victory -- driving the Russians out of Ukraine in every square foot including Crimea.
It will take the brilliance and patience of Geo NMI Washington to do it. The Ukrainian leader is the right man and has proven it. We now need to prove our worth as an ally and as a champion of freedom.
On the other side of this is a defanged Russia and a much better shot at world peace.
It is the early innings and if we and the Ukrainians stay the course, Russia is going to implode or have a regime change.
WWI lasted for 4 years.
The Russians are in the midst of a bloody offensive risking 500+ tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers that is being brutally crushed. That is really happening.
The Russians have incompetent leadership and are rapidly depleting their gear and conscripts as the Ukrainians become more and more battle hardened.
The Russians cannot win, but they damn sure can beat themselves.
The border of Ukraine has zero importance to the USA. And yes the Ukrainian regime are Nazi influenced and corrupt as it gets. Nothing good will ever come from this.
I disagree with much of each thing you write, which is why I really like your writing - since I'm forced to think hard about why I agree with some parts and disagree with others.
In this case though, it's quite a relief to see someone calling this out. Watching my "allies" among the libertarians and the right talk about how Putin seems like a nice guy; totally reasonable; a master of history; and entirely authentic, has made me want to vomit.
I'm perfectly capable of disagreeing with our participation in Ukraine, while still considering Putin a totalitarian warmonger bag of shit.
He is a bag of shit. I am not sure if we should stop him in Ukraine---but I can be persuaded to. NO ONE has made a coherent fact based cost/opportunity cost argument.
It is interesting to me that leftists were against the Vietnam war and anti-war generally in the 60s. Now it seems they are pro-war and for fighting in Ukraine. What changed?
They did away with the draft and they now can pontificate from the sidelines with no fear of having to serve?
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
• The NATO thing is mostly bunk. NATO has grown by 2 members since the war and Putin hasn't done squat.
• Putin is who he always was. He believes his own nonsense. He fooled a lot of westerners for a long time. The first time he went into Ukraine (during GWB) should have been the last time. Westerners, especially Germans, liked the $.
• The people who understand best are the East Europeans, especially the Poles and Estonians. They listen to Putin's ramblings and they see themselves as next. Thus, right-wing Polish PM called out supreme BS-er Vance and the other isolationists. Mike Pompeo has a much better grip on the situation than any other 'non-RINO'.
• Putin is not a genius. He thought the SMO was going to take a few days. They sent parade uniforms with their very first wave of troops.
• Ukraine certainly was corrupt. They've made major strides in reducing corruption in pursuing EU membership. They'd rather be like Poland than Russia. Is it perfect? No. Will it stick? Hard to know
• The Russian economy is probably fairly brittle. They can't get some goods, like western aircraft parts to service their stolen planes. They do seem to be able to get all their Luis Vuitton luxury goods. Pre-ware over 20% of Russians didn't have indoor plumbing. The war didn't help any of those people.
• China certainly waits. South Korea and Japan need to develop their own nukes ASAP.
• There will almost certainly be more NATO troops in East Europe. It will be worth it for the USA.
• No current need for NATO to go into Ukraine. That was the purpose of all the arms supplied has been. The USA should have been faster with more advanced weapons.
• The USA is seen as a not very reliable ally by most countries at this point. There's some unknowable cost.
• The Ukraine war has exposed the USA's vulnerabilities. Drones change a lot. Shooting expensive missiles to shoot down cheap drones is not a good long-term program.
• IMO Ferguson overstates and understates conflict with China. China won't be attacking the US mainland, so it's hard to see CCP-US. But attacking Taiwan will cause catastrophic harm to global industry. It won't be just Apple falling by 50%.
• America is complacent. Cheering on unappealing contestants in the syphilis vs. gonorrhea battle of 2024. Not caring that no American companies know how to build good warships.
• What are the odds that Carlson is an FSB agent? Not probable, but at least possible?
I don't agree that NATO could quickly overpower Russia with little loss of life. If we get more involved supply lines become targets. A new Battle of the Atlantic would be an ugly, bloody thing. If American troops are directly fighting Russian troops in Ukraine, Putin would feel justified interdicting shipping supporting our troops.
It's not responsible to compare what would be required to drive Russia out of Ukraine to the liberation of Kuwait. Russia is a near-peer adversary with much more capability than Iraq.
It would be a mistake to get involved more deeply, and Ukraine has zero chance of driving Russia out of Ukraine. The US needs to help negotiate peace.
Finally, a dose of sanity. Judging from certain comments here, some Americans are in for a rude awakening when this fiasco ends in utter defeat for Ukraine. But perhaps not. I would have thought that our humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by the rapid takeover by the Taliban, would have opened people's eyes. If that didn't wake people up to reality, perhaps nothing will. A couple of other points. One commenter mentioned that the Russians can't get aircraft parts to service their Western-made planes. As if the Soviet Union didn't have a domestic jet aircraft industry. I've flown all over the Russian Federation on soviet-made aircraft and lived to tell the tale. The Russians are reviving their domestic aircraft industry with no problem. They would have had to do this anyway, given the way Boeing is going. I'd take a Russian-made plane before a Boeing 737 MAX any day. Finally, another commenter mentions that the US allows religious freedom. There are numerous youtube channels run by US and other Western Christian families who have emigrated to Russia because they feel themselves to be persecuted as Christians in the West. I think they are naive about conditions in Russia, but it says something when Christians feel they have to move to a place like Russia to freely practice their religion.
Let me just comment on Ukraine and Nato as there is a long and misunderstood history at work here.
First, for any nation to become part of Nato, that nation must request what is called an MAP (membership action plan) and the entire Nato membership must unanimously agree to grant that request. This unanimous acceptance is a real problem.
Ukraine requested such an MAP as far back as 2002 and again, vigorously, in 2008. George W Bush was keen on the idea of Ukraine joining Nato. Ukraine joining Nato is a two decade old idea and Ukraine is not the problem here.
After the 2008 Nato MAP request, Ukraine changed its constitution to be a "non-aligned" nation which it continued to be until the Russian invasion. So much for non-alignment, eh?
Step back for a second -- Sweden and Finland on the heels of Russia's unprovoked attack against Ukraine requested an MAP, it was granted, and they were admitted as part of Nato in less than two years. Still Turkey and Hungary -- both Russian sympathizers -- were a pain in the ass during the process.
It is important to recognize these two countries were quite unique -- in the case of Sweden they are a naval power with a superb submarine force that controls northern waters of great significance to Russia; and, Finland has a very competent army and shares a huge border with Russia in the vicinity of where Russia's nuclear attack arsenal is located.
So much for the silliness that Nato has to provide Russia a buffer at its national border. Fuck Putin and Russia -- this is exactly what they need: to be surrounded by an overwhelming force capable of defeating them in depth.
Back to Ukraine -- Ukraine upon its exit from the failed USSR agreed to give up its nuclear weapons (that the Russian Federation claimed were theirs) IAW something called the Budapest Memorandum that had the US, UK, and Russia guarantying Ukrainian freedom from attack now that they had no nuclear deterrent. Clearly our word -- Pres Clinton -- was no good. God we are a terrible ally when the chips are really down.
Russia then began the attack on Ukraine in 2014 with its phony insurrection in the Donbass and Luhansk oblasts and their faux referendum in Crimea. This is when the war started in Ukraine. They were fighting for 8 years.
It is fair to say this war did not broaden until there was a weak American leader -- "an elderly man with a bad memory." That guy.
This was supposedly solved by something called the Minsk Agreement that again guaranteed Ukrainian protection, but Russia did not comply with its own agreement.
Ukraine had already turned toward the European Union economically/socially and was looking west toward Europe and not toward Russia.
Ukraine provided Nato and the US troops in the Iraq war -- thereby acting exactly like a Nato ally.
One of my classmates from VMI was the senior US military advisor to the International Division that included Ukrainian combat formations. He said they fought well and when the Russian attack on Ukraine began he said the Ukrainians would not be pushovers. He -- rather than the Pentagon, CIA, MI6, and the Russians -- was right. Shows one the benefit of actual combat and field experience.
He wrote a good book on it and other things called "In Strange Company."
https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Company-American-Soldier-Multinational/dp/1636243940
The Putin sales pitch that Ukraine is part of Russia is total nonsense. The US speaks English, but we are not part of England. In fact, we militarily, economically, culturally sought to distance ourselves from England just as Ukraine did from Russia.
When Geo NMI Washington was offered a crown to be our first King, he passed on the idea because we did not fight the Revolution to become like England. We specifically did not want to become England and have a royal family.
The US allows religious freedom and England had a state sponsored religion. Huge difference and one enshrined in our founding documents that prohibited a state sponsored religion.
Putin -- a guy who would undoubtedly burst into flame if he entered a Russian Orthodox church -- claims that the religious tie provided by the Russian Orthodox church is proof of their close cultural bond which is nonsense.
The US embrace of Episcopalianism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam is not evidence of a cultural bond or a sign we want to strengthen that bond and become part of the country in which those religions originated. This is why the very notion of freedom is so important.
Ukrainians of a certain age who previously lived under the USSR know Russia well -- they may speak Russian, they may be Russian Orthodox, they may love borscht, they may own Matryoshka nesting dolls -- and have no desire to be part of Russia because of that experience. This is an informed consent.
Putin is just wrong when he says these are cultural bonds that indicate a desire to be part of Russia. I love Italian food, but I have no desire to be part of the Italian state.
Let's be honest here: Nato is not going to attack Russia in a Pearl Harbor type ambush and Nato is best served when Russia is worried. Russia did nothing to Finland and Sweden because they could not.
Russia is a much smaller country than the combined might of the US and Nato and we should act accordingly.
Ukraine is the first paragraph of the first chapter of Nato v Russia. This is the Spanish Civil War prelude to WWII. We get a free look at Russia and their weapons and we get to test ours.
Thus far, the Russians fail to impress.
The best possible outcome is a mortally wounded, defanged Russia stripped of its ability to create more mischief and a mighty and united Nato. That is the path to world peace.
We need to cowboy up and get the fuck on with it and stop pretending that morons like Biden and Putin are going to work this out. We do this on the cheap investing less than 10% of the current annual DoD budget and we get world peace if we play our cards right.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Kamela Harris offered membership in NATO to Ukraine....Putin invaded soon after. You cannot blame Putin for not wanting a rival on his doorstep. The right thing to do was to keep Ukraine neutral.
The Russians aren't the war machine we expected, but at the same time, all the trillions isn't helping Ukraine win. Today, some intel was released that there is no way they can win.
If indeed Putin has designs on Poland and the rest of the free European countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain, he needs to be defeated. NATO could do it in a couple of weeks.
I think what you are referring to is an ill fated Kamala Harris Tweet she posted on 18 Feb 2022 wherein she said the US was defending Ukraine as "part of its commitment to Nato."
Totally wrong as Ukraine was not part of Nato and everybody with a brain -- which excludes Kamala -- knew it.
Here is an article that refers to her Tweet:
https://nypost.com/2022/03/16/kamala-harris-tweet-mistakenly-suggests-ukraine-is-part-of-nato/
The Russians invaded Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022, 6 days after Kamala Harris misspoke.
There is no connection between those two events as the Russians had been building forces along the Ukraine Belarus border for more than a year and along the Crimea Ukraine border for the same time period.
Keen observers realized this was likely the real thing when intel leaked the Russians were moving whole blood and plasma to their medical units. You don't go on maneuvers with whole blood and plasma.
The Russians and the Ukrainians had been fighting since 2014 in Donbas and Luhansk oblasts and had seized Crimea in the same year.
The Pentagon, MI, CIA, MI6 -- in a gigantic failure of their basic craft and skill -- had the Russians winning in a walkaway in less than a week. This was the best possible intel even having seen the Ukrainians fight against the Russians since 2014 and having seen the Ukrainians fight in Iraq as part of the International Division.
All the spooks got it wrong, woefully wrong. Grossly wrong. Heads should have rolled for getting it this wrong.
There are two elements to that blunder: a gross overestimation of the Russian ability to fight a combined arms fight whilst snatching air supremacy -- the US/Nato would own the sky in the first six minutes of a shooting war -- and a gross underestimation of the Ukrainian ability to plan, shoot, move, and communicate.
It took the west a month to figure out the Ukrainians had stalled the Russian column pressing toward Kyiv by destroying all their mobile fuel tankers with ATGMs from the fields adjoining the axis of advance. That is some damn good soldiering, initiative, and creative use of inexpensive and easy to deploy weapons.
The Ukrainians stopped an armored attack of more than 1,500 tanks and killed most of them. How did our intel guys get that so wrong on both sides?
I have not seen the intel you suggest, but I have seen a ton of disinformation suggesting the Russians can win with which I disagree.
The Orcs are a third rate, poorly led, weak doctrine, unimaginative, conscript army that has a very questionable industrial base and that is unable to field its best gear because it cannot make enough of it.
Their supposed best tanks and planes are not deployed because they have only made a couple dozen of each. Instead, they are refurbishing armor and howitzers that last saw action in the late 1940s/early 1950s.
Starting with the Russians -- can they win? Not if the US/West/Nato doesn't lose their manhood and bail on the Ukrainians.
The American Revolution lasted 8 1/2 years and we were fighting the best army/navy in the world, but Geo NMI Washington found a way to fight the superior enemy and rounded into combat shape over the winters at Valley Forge.
Can the Ukrainians win? Fuck yes!
The real question is this -- does America and the American military have enough sack to see it through? We bailed on Vietnam and A'stan. Will we bail here?
The US was the winning ingredient in WWII because we mobilized our industrial base to defeat the enemies. Right now, the US is struggling to make up the reductions in inventory as a result of supporting Ukraine. There is no excuse for that.
I am betting we will come to our senses and recognize this is a historic opportunity to defang and dismember Russia which would be the best stroke for world peace and would inform China, Iran, N Korea that the way of Russia is the hard way.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Ukrainians probably could win back in 2022, when it didn't go well for Russia. But they didn't have enough equipment to fully capitalize on their big success in the fall of that year, and that ship has sailed. Now they still don't have the goods and they are also running out of manpower. Ordinary people don't want to get involuntarily conscripted to fight for their corrupt government and are doing their best to dodge it, but the government has doubled down with a new law intended to make it very hard to escape the draft. But what good will it do if the people are not willing to fight? This is not going to end well for Ukraine. Sorry for bursting your bubble
Having been educated at Virginia Military Institute and all the institutions of higher education the Army has to offer, having been a professional soldier, I can only say that we shall disagree, but my disagreement shall be based on facts, history, and knowledge rather than emotions or glib sophistry.
Wars are won by superior logistics, leadership, strategy, and as an adjunct to logistics -- resources. They are lost by failures in the same elements of basic warfighting capabilities.
In reality, in every instance, the outcome is created by a set of strengths v a set of weaknesses that may not be universal. One side never has all the strengths or weaknesses. Many times what we think we know is simply wrong.
In WWII, as an example, the Brits and the Americans thought they had bombed German industrial capabilities into dust, but it turned out the greatest month of German tank production in the entire war was the month before they surrendered. The Allies were killing them faster - primarily with air power at the end of the war - than the Krauts could produce them.
The Russians are truly unimpressive by any yardstick and while they have launched a gigantic disinformation campaign, there are irrefutable numbers as to tank production that paint a troubling picture for the Orcs and an encouraging picture for the Ukrainians.
Tanks are a good yardstick as they were thought to be a huge strength of the Russian army and, clearly, are virtually inconsequential given drones and ATGMs.
The Russians are hauling out their best mothballed 1940s/1950s tanks and trying to renovate (up armor, better guns, target computers, optics, engines -- a lot by cannibalizing their existing fleet of mothballed tanks) them because they can only produce a literal handful of their top tanks.
Their very top tank and aircraft they have only produced 2 dozen since they announced their adoption; and, neither have appeared in Ukraine.
Tanks are a good bit of gear to follow as we have perfect satellite observation of the #Muscovy tank factories and can count new units headed to the railhead as well as rehab hulks arriving also by rail. Drone recon provides exact info as to tanks unloaded at the railhead.
It is important to note as it relates to tanks, the Russians can repair minimal damage in the field, but any way you skin it, the Russians have run through 6,000 tanks and cannot keep up with battlefield losses.
As to manpower, history teaches us there has never been a war that has not turned on manpower. The American Revolution wherein the upstart Colonials drove out the largest and best army/navy in the world fresh from the combat experience of the Seven Years War was plagued by manpower issues. Perhaps Geo NMI Washington's best skill was recruiting and getting those state militias to stay the course at Valley Forge.
Geo Marshall in WWII (VMI grad) planned for 200 divisions to fight and win against the Germans and the Japs in WWII and knew he would be scraping the bottom of the barrel as to available American manpower. He ended up raising fewer than 100 and gambling her could knock out the Krauts early enough to move European divisions to the Pacific for the attack on the Home Islands.
Russia has lost more than 2MM men of military draft age who have fled the country, went through its prisons, and has been forced to conscript more than 400,000 men. [Note: A good number of those men have gone to their manufacturing facilities rather than their battlefield army.]
What is more important is no newly trained Russian unit has appeared and fought well on the battlefield in this war. Conscription is not producing combat power and good formations.
They lost an entire airborne division -- typically elite, well-trained and rugged troops, I was an airborne Ranger combat engineer in my day -- in the first month of the war in an ill-fated attempt to conduct a coup de main and seize an airfield north of Kyiv.
It took them almost 2 years to replace that one airborne division, train it, and when committed to combat was destroyed in one week -- casualty rate of more than 50% and rendered combat ineffective. So much for Russia's ability to stand up additional forces.
Remember the Russian army has always been a conscript army and drafts more than 300,000 men annually and has for decades.
To me, the most telling data point in the entire Russian military gamebook is their complete inability to seize air superiority. American doctrine teaches us to control the skies first and then the ground. It is not for want of trying. They just don't have that capability. Nato does BTW.
Yes, the Ukrainians are going to have to develop more manpower and they are going to have to be more effective than the Russians in fielding quality units with a winning strategy.
The Ukrainians Achilles heel is the failure of the West to support them with high quality weapons systems and ammunition. The West is still being parsimonious with its best weapons though they have begun to send some of their really good stuff in the last 60 days.
The loss of Arviidka -- an advance of 6.8 miles at a single point along a 620 mile front at great cost -- is attributable to the US Congress' fecklessness, the failure of the Biden admin to send them expired artillery ammo and better munitions (more ATACAMS), and the diversion of artillery rounds to Israel.
The US only produces 24,000 155mm artillery rounds a month and should be producing 125,000 given our own demands, that of our allies, the replenishment of Nato stockpiles, and Israel. The Rheinmettal plant in Ukraine will produce almost 1MM annually starting within 6 months. They are the largest ammo supplier in Nato right now.
Still, military the Ukrainian stand at Arviidka was a perfectly proper use of the "defense" to bleed the attacker, to inflict huge losses in men and material, and to force the Russians to commit their best units to the fight. Doctrine wise this is why experienced commanders go over to the defense. If this was the Army War College, they would applaud the Ukrainians.
Right now the Ukrainians are doing the right things -- organic production of FPV drones, setting up co-op manufacturing (Rheinmettal artillery ammunition plant in Ukraine that should be capable of producing huge amounts of artillery ammo this year) -- and if the West will fulfill its commitments, they will be just fine.
The Russian economy is in trouble. Economists are trying to sell the notion that Russian GDP is rising, but the facts are that more than 25% of internal Russian economic vigor is based solely on supplying the war in Ukraine. Just like the US Vietnam War sugar high in the US economy.
#Muscovy claims a 5% increase in GDP -- their numbers -- which means they had a 25% war time shot in the arm netting a non-military economy loss of 20%.
Like any war, the key will be leadership. I give Zelenskyy high marks, same for the Brits, Biden is a little squishy, and Trump will surrender to the Russians.
Can the Ukrainians win? Yep. Will it be easy? Nope. Never is.
Can the Russians win? Yes, if Ukraine and the West lose their resolve. The Russians are not winning right now.
Can the Russians lose? Absolutely.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Class of 73?
Yes.
I QUOTE: "Concrete cost/benefit cost/opportunity cost analysis, with the framework used to arrive at those decisions transparent."
This is an overly verbose and underly meaningful argument, or what some people would call DRIVEL. In international politics you can't come up with an accountant's justification, unless it's pure justafiction. But of course I realize that living in Las Vegas doesn't predispose one to feel concern for a faraway country that has experienced nothing but grief from its obnoxious, murderous neighbor.
What may cut more hay is this: 1. The cost of supporting Ukraine is nothing compared to what the US has spent on other wars that were much less deserving of our favors, and unlike Ukraine, killed and maimed Americans for life. 2. Anybody who has studied the lead-up to WWII and the catastrophe that followed should be able to discern the remarkable resemblance between Hitler and Putin's methods. 3. This is why, should Putin defeat Ukraine, not only will there be a bloodbath in that country, but he will continue trying to pick off more countries to add to his collection -- most likely small NATO members. And then what?
If point three is correct, then NATO should attack Putin vigorously tomorrow. Point one is not relevant. It's not about other wars versus this war. Point two I agree with some of it, but I don't believe Putin=Hitler.
I don't follow your logic in points 1 and 3, but let's see about the Putin = Hitler comparison:
In March 1936 Hitler started his conquests by seizing the Rhineland, which he had no right to do because it was supposed to remain 'demilitarized', but by his logic he should rule every place that contained German-speaking people, and the allies did nothing. Then he annexed Austria, by the same logic. Then he took -- with the approval of Chamberlain -- Peace in Our Time, and all that -- the Sudetenland, the edges of which included some Germans, but that enabled him shortly afterwards to invade and occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia, because the Sudetenland had contained that country's best defenses. Next item on the list was Poland, in September 1939, which he invaded while claiming that the Poles had invaded German territory.
And once they had Poland, the Germans abducted all the Polish children they could find who looked "Aryan", meaning blond and blue-eyed; those children were adopted, under different names, by German families.
And through all this, Hitler justified every move by racial arguments. Every one of these moves was mirrored by Putin: in Georgia, then Czechia, then Crimea, and now Ukraine; and if he gets it, you can bet the Baltic countries will be next.
And throughout all this, each dictator was telling tales about a mythical, glorious past of the Germans, c.q. the Russians, that must be restored.
I think the comparison has to go no deeper than an insane, crazed, nationalist zealot spinning a tale of absurd national destiny based on a flawed view of history with a willingness to risk it all whilst killing its neighbors.
The key ingredient, the linchpin, the keystone, the secret sauce was the world did nothing when this crazy motherfucker could have been crushed and then were unable to put together the right package until the cost was horribly high.
There is no downside to eliminating Putin, defanging Russia, and dismembering it.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Are you British? I've notices the English tend to use "whilst" a lot
The cost to the US and Nato (they need to spend more on defense as part of their commitment to Nato) is a gigantic bargain compared to total US defense spending.
For less than $100B annually (about 10% of US defense spending), the US can defang and dismember Russia and prevent its eye from casting about. If that sounds familiar, it is the way the US won the Cold War using George Kenan's Long Telegram from Moscow approach.
So, yeah, let's pound the fuck out of Russia, bleed it dry economically and militarily, on the cheap.
Let's also sell as much LNG as we can to Europe.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I agree wholeheartedly. It sure beats going into dismal places like Afghanistan, only to slither out with our tails between our legs.
And I don't quite understand these people who are predicting Putin will attack other countries, like Poland and the Baltic republics next; that is, I don't think he will do that if he loses in Ukraine (which may well mean the end of his regime, anyway); besides, it would take a considerable rebuilding of his military to do that -- a military that has shown very little effectiveness.
The Russian doctrine built on the BTG - battalion tactical group -- as a combined arms unit (infantry, armor, artillery, lots of artillery, drones) -- is based primarily on massive artillery. This is not a revelation.
This artillery is of the 152mm size and capable of firing from 10 miles with a rocket assist to twice that distance.
The western 155mm is capable of firing 15 miles with a rocket assist out to 25 miles.
The west has superior counterbattery radar and can locate the Russians very quickly.
Slight performance advantage Ukraine, quantity advantage Orcs.
The US HIMARS is so important as it can fire -- with pinpoint GPS targeting -- out to 300 km (ATACMS missile) and can generally fire a six pack of missiles to 50 km.
A HIMARS can prep to fire in 15 seconds, fire in 45 seconds and reload in 5 minutes. Thus, the HIMARS can shoot, move, and communicate before Russian counterbattery fire can develop.
This means a HIMARS can reach deep behind the FEBA (forward edge of the battle area) and strike Russian artillery ammo supply dumps, firing batteries, fire direction centers, headquarters, or be sited behind Ukrainian lines far enough the Orcs cannot reach it.
We need to pour the HIMARS and the ATACMS into Ukraine and let them blow the fuck out of the #Muscovy. Right now we are not making enough HIMARS, ATACMS, missiles, and 155mm artillery rounds.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
You’ll be interested in this interview below. Kisin is Jewish background in Britain that grew up in Russia and has family in Ukraine.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_wyvERQjvkE&pp=ygUOVHJpZ2dlcm5vbWV0cnk%3D
The best we can expect out of Ukraine is a stalemate. But neither side wants that (similar to the Middle East mess). Until the parties get that, the slaughter will continue. Resistance to further Russian expansion is necessary and supplying arms is the easiest way to do that. Not even Putin wants WWIII. So let’s play this out. Trump’s attempt to end it on “day one” is more narcissistic bluster that he is so good at. But his appeasement will be no different than the Obama/Biden Iran genuflection. Meanwhile the bad guys win. You really comfortable with creeping totalitarianism? I’ll settle for the crony capitalists.
We live in a country that defeated the universally acknowledged greatest army and naval power of its time. We did it with a set of under funded, rag tag, poorly equipped, untrained state militias brought under the control of an inexperienced commander-in-chief whose only meaningful military experience was the failed Braddock campaign.
This rank amateur -- noted for his height and being the best horseman in the Colonies as well as a charismatic leader who seemed to always be at the critical location in any fight -- adopted a brilliant strategy of never becoming decisively engaged, never risking his entire army even in victory, and learning the craft of soldiering on the job facing professional English generals who were battle hardened, educated, and fresh from the Seven Years War.
He made the singular brilliant decision to turn his army over to a faux general Von Steuben who taught the Colonialist how to deploy from a column of platoons to a front of platoons on the double with their cannons deployed behind them. The Colonial Army after Valley Forge could beat the British square.
During a great deal of the war the campaign might have graciously been judged as a stalemate, but our brilliant C in C was waiting for the moment when he could control the field and deal a decisive defeat to the Brits.
He was wise, prudent, and patient -- for 8 1/2 years.
He found it at Trenton (the most brilliant double river crossing, envelopment, night attack in the history of American/English arms) and Saratoga and, finally, at Yorktown when he trapped the Brits and the French fleet did the rest.
That war lasted 8 1/2 years and at no time were the Colonies "winning" until they trapped Cornwallis and it still took 2 years from Yorktown until the Brits pulled out.
On the day this Russian invasion started our Pentagon, CIA, MI6, and the Russians expected it to last a week with a Russian victory and the hanging of the Ukrainian President in a Russian occupied Kyiv.
Such is the majesty of freedom and the noble pluck of free men that we stand with the Russians unable to conquer Ukraine and the Ukrainians fighting back for their homeland with esprit and elan.
For less than 10% of the DoD annual budget, we can support Ukraine to not just a stalemate, but to victory -- driving the Russians out of Ukraine in every square foot including Crimea.
It will take the brilliance and patience of Geo NMI Washington to do it. The Ukrainian leader is the right man and has proven it. We now need to prove our worth as an ally and as a champion of freedom.
On the other side of this is a defanged Russia and a much better shot at world peace.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I don't think Ukraine can drive them out. Evidence is to the contrary, and at best we get a WW1 stalemate
As I always ask -- what evidence?
It is the early innings and if we and the Ukrainians stay the course, Russia is going to implode or have a regime change.
WWI lasted for 4 years.
The Russians are in the midst of a bloody offensive risking 500+ tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers that is being brutally crushed. That is really happening.
The Russians have incompetent leadership and are rapidly depleting their gear and conscripts as the Ukrainians become more and more battle hardened.
The Russians cannot win, but they damn sure can beat themselves.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com