"After all, there’s nothing unusual about soldiers being in poor physical condition: when Britain introduced conscription in 1916, the authorities were horrified at the poor physical state of many of the recruits. Anecdotally, many of the private soldiers who fought were barely 1,50 metres in height, and officers often stood at least a head taller than the men they were commanding."
It's interesting (to me, at least) to consider that recruitment health conditions might have parallels when the growing inequality in wealth is similar. Sure, they were short then, and they're fat now, but it's both a consequence of the upper class attempting to recruit the lower class and being forced to confront what abominations they've done to the food supply in pursuit of a more efficient work force.
Precisely this. The Brits of that era at least realized that they had to actually DO something about it, materially improving the lives of "the lower orders" if for no other reason than out of sheer self-preservation.
Our supposed elite, being the neoliberal, spreadsheet wielding numpties that they are, have disappeared up their own arses in a self-referential world utterly divorced from material reality.
That was only after WW2 with the Labour government and fighting men determined not to be screwed over like the fighting men after WW1 - "a land fit for heroes". That was then all thrown away starting with Callaghan and Healey in the 1970s.
I was looking for an account involving the British Army under Wellington, I believe, perhaps in the Spain campain (?). Basically, they ran out of white flour because of a problem with the mills in England. So they started making wholegrain loaves instead. At first the soldiers would throw them back at the bakers handing them out (each man got a loaf a day). But after a while hunger trumped outrage and they started eating the bread. To everyone's surprise, general health improved markedly, far less sick days were taken and the men started to look and feel stronger. A year or so (?) later when the mill problem was resolved, white bread (probably similar to commercial 'whole wheat' today which is only about 15% whole grain) was back on the menu. At which point the men started throwing THOSE loaves back at the bakers insisting they get the dark loaves instead.
PS Thanks to Aurelien for another excellent article.
In the Roman army, each contubernium (or group of 8 legionaries) had to grind their own flour before making their bread. But it seems they had to give the whitest and finest flour to their officers and keep what was left and the bran for themself.
Maybe it is how they conquered half of the world...
I love a good pumpernickel, dark bread is something us anglo-derived cultures suck at. You've gotta eat the babies if you want the good stuff. Literally, the brown bit of a cereal is where the concentrated minerals, aminos, and everything else needed by a starving baby plant is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal_germ
My guess is that consciously or subconsciously deciders in the West were assuming the fighting would be done by people who were NOT brought up on the culture of self gratification and indolence. One handy characteristic of the citizens of Josep Borrell's "jungle" is that they can endure hardship on behalf of the puffy Wall-E citizens of the "garden" (or is the H.G.Wells Morlock/Eloi metaphor more fitting?). The trouble is that the tougher people can easily see how much power they have if they get organized. This is a recurring theme in history, so enough said. Eventually they decide to march on Rome.
In Heinlein's SF Starship Troopers, there was an effort to maintain a quasi-fascist branch of society to do the heavy lifting...but that was the only way to earn citizenship. That idea won't fly in postmodern post-consequence Western life in 2024. There sure are a lot of people saying this whole set-up is doomed. I think the real question is: what is the stable equilibrium place where we will land after this top-heavy construct topples (or is toppled by a nation or society that isn't so weak)?
Well, that's basically the logic used to motivate Ukraine. Go and fight your relations on our behalf and we'll let you join The Golden Billion, the magical land where institutions basically work.
When I lived in Ukraine (2004-2012), nationalists were seen as freaks and losers.
Perhaps instead of wondering how the US will rebuild its military and make it fit for fighting major conventional land wars we should concentrate more on making friends and allies instead of making enemies. Crazy, I know. But Bismarck, who knew a thing or two about employing military force to make Germany a great power in his day said the secret to successful politics was: “make a good treaty with Russia.”
I’d like to pick out the part of this essay on priorities. From my time as a technical (not management) consultant and a project manager (no, it’s not a real job) I’ve found that actually accomplishing anything requires someone to make the decision of what they want to accomplish. It’s like pulling teeth.
An example might be the iron triangle of construction: it can done be cheaply, quickly or well and you get to choose two of the three. But if the decision maker(s) can’t or won’t prioritize one of those three, the project will end up over budget, the schedule won’t be met and the quality will be poor. Every time. In my time I’ve found mostly blank stares if I directly ask the question, “what do want to achieve?” Even when I frame it as a multiple choice question with no wrong answers.
It is perhaps a fundamental and systemic problem with the “west” at this stage of development.
Where you defer to others your whole life, and when you are forced to make a decision, you freeze up like a stunned mullet, because you cannot defer to anyone else.
We've lost the ability to make trade-offs. This means understanding the idea of constraints. Even if you have that ability, it requires the ability to visualize and anticipate consequences, then preparing for the worst case. Even if you have that ability too, you have to take a stand and say "this is the decision I've made," which can be risky. This is way too much emotional and cognitive overload for today's "seasoned" PMC managers.
I've had similar experiences as a PM, it's that people who make no decisions think that they can't be held responsible for anything. My strategy is to write long emails explaining the exact decision to be made all the constraints and then at the end I suggest a course of action and say that's what I'll be doing unless I hear otherwise. Then I schedule the email to be sent at 5:15 PM on Friday afternoon. My ass is covered, the higher ups don't have to read it if they don't want to, and usually by the time they do, we're too far in to reverse course.
A common theme expressed by younger men and women in the West is that they feel cheated of life's opportunities - caused by the mistakes and greed of their elders. Well I think they have a point but overplay the woe and tend to wallow in self pity and poor life choices. Putting my views to one side, it is certainly the case that the current generation of military age is much less likely to be prepared to fight for their national cause as they take a generally dimmer view of what it has dealt them. Notwithstanding generations now of encouraging mental weakness and perpetual childhood, as well as playing up toxic masculinity. And so on.
We also have over a generation of de-industrialisation and budgetary constraints. This has left western militaries in a parlous condition with only a long term solution of re-industrialisation to produce enough equipment and ammo etc to rebuild them. Cold war stocks have now gone. Even the mighty USA is experiencing severe problems right now. To rebuild for most nations - including the USA - will require economic pain. And most civilian tax payers do not see this as high on their priority list.
One solution to this was James Bond type special operations, color revolutions and the information war. Well we have seen this has its limitations. However targeted propaganda appears also to work well within Western populations. Maybe not well enough to make the sacrifices required to rebuild their MICs.
In summary, to sort of quote Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get thumped in the face. Hard reality is now intruding on delusional thinking. However on almost every issue of major importance, the West is engaged in fantastical thinking and irrational groupthink. It is going to be a long trip down, and a long way up again. The End of History? I think not.
Why should I sacrifice my life in a trench for a country that no longer exist? Sure, the administrative state still exists but the people, the community in it, is gone. Covered by an endless parade of gays and immigrants with my own made invisible and only mentioned in the media as backwards, racist, sexist fools who should die already.
That has been the message for decades now, and now they want me to fight for their Blackrock portfolio?
Our leadership class can go fuck themselves and if the Russians where to ever send a khinzal to Davos we would pop open the champagne.
Exactly this. Even if you take the view it's misguided (for the record i don't), this is how many see the world. Men who create everything have practically disappeared, like the elves leaving middle earth.
People are willing to die for their country, if they think their country is worthy of sacrifice, but since the United States is controlled by greedy, incompetent monsters who use the military for what are effectively enormous country destroying chevauchées, why should anyone want to join the military?
If the United States was every invaded, I thing people would be surprised at the enlistment numbers, but no more fighting for the glory of the empire.
I vaguely remember that episode from the Simpsons where "wars of the future will be fought by small robots, and it will be your job to maintain those small robots". Someone must have taken that as prophecy instead of parody.
If that lack of interest in the military had been accompanied with a willingness to create ties with the countries usually on the opposite side of us and to develop fairness and justice all would’ve been well. But no.
I often walk past a recruitment office here in England and the ads on the windows seem to emphasise two main things: fitness and travel, two of the obsessions of modern people it seems. I chuckle to myself.
"But even if western armies could once again study effectively the type of operations the Russians are conducting, they do not have the forces available to reciprocate, and almost certainly never will."
Interestingly enough, Russia seems to be avoiding large-scale operations in Ukraine. I suspect that this is not the result of any real strategy, but out of a desire to keep casualty numbers politically manageable, while hoping that something happens in the meantime.
For my part, I consider this to be foolish on the part of Russia.
"What this may mean in practical terms is that, for example, if the Air Force of your country has a flying training budget and the price of oil goes up sharply, flying training will have to be reduced, even if other parts of defence cannot spend all the money they are given. "
That is why God gave us commodities hedges. If you know you are going to to require vast quantities of JP4, you buy long futures contracts or call options to hedge against price spikes.
"So I repeat, even if the immense organisational, technical and industrial challenges of rebuilding defence could be overcome, you still need large numbers of Mk 1 human beings ready to embrace the military life. As things stand, far from enlarging our armed forces over the next decade, I suspect that most western countries will do well to avoid losing them all together. I’m not sure the Russians have quite the same problem."
This is the real military problem that the West faces right here. Most Westerners are weak and soft, certainly the PMC are, and those that aren't are not the sort of people that the PMC wants to entrust with any kind of hard power.
This was one point I have a quibble with in Aurelien's text.
The platoon-size engagements we're seeing from Ukraine are also what we're seeing from Russia. It may be related to NATO experience, but it is much more related to the reality of the new way of war with prevalent ISR and rapid response in the form of drone strikes. Any time Ukraine or Russia has got a large group together, they've been slaughtered.
The natural response is to not get a large group together. We've seen both sides trying to organise large groups broken down into small units until the last possible moment, as a strategy of both misdirection and also purely for survival.
Where I think the respective strategies differ, is that Russia is executing a press of many small groups across a large length of the front, with more fed in only where a weakness is found. Ukraine seems to be feeding entire brigades in small groups into the same points over and over.
"The platoon-size engagements we're seeing from Ukraine are also what we're seeing from Russia. It may be related to NATO experience, but it is much more related to the reality of the new way of war with prevalent ISR and rapid response in the form of drone strikes. Any time Ukraine or Russia has got a large group together, they've been slaughtered."
Russian failure to use enough force to smash Ukraine quickly and from the very outset was a big mistake, as it gave NATO time to organize a defense for its proxy.
There was no intent to smash, or to use the appropriate strategy term, “crush” Ukraine at outset. Much misunderstanding mixed with bogus reporting of the initial phase of conflict. A further lack of either knowing or understanding the point upon the evolutionary arc of military theory that Russia had reached, and which understanding might further aid the way to read what’s been going on since Feb’22, combines to make most conjecture by commenters not more than “a priori” reasoning. I do not mean it to sound pointed toward you, or disrespectful. It’s natural to wonder wtf. I do it all the time.
Reading the history of the development of Russian military theory immediately makes the facts of this conflict more sensible. Svechin’s “Strategy”, and Isserson’s tome on the Evolution Of Operational Art” would help. (Again, I do not suppose that you have not. I’ve read many of your comments here and elsewhere, and you make good points that I often learn from. I merely make general comments.)
Faced with the rapid advance of UAV technology, and their tactical applications quickly developing, changing, evolving, plus widespread EW use, multiple layered ISR capabilities (all of which are characteristics of a new epoch in warfare), it has made massive force projection, and maneuver warfare perhaps part of history. Much of that epochal change understanding may yet not be fully absorbed, just like how other epochs witnessed changing battlefield dynamics without seeing the full implications. If you’d like to see how deeply ingrained maneuver warfare is in American military thinking, then check out The Maneuverist column in the US Marine Corps Gazette. It makes understanding the way the ukro counteroffensive was conceived more clear, if not aware of how fighting can take place these days.
What Russia set out to achieve in the initial period of the SMO was, to a rather astonishing extent, achieved. Even the misunderstood heavily slanted, fundamentally ignorant, western reporting of the battles at Kiev airport and environs was successful. This wasn’t a disjointed tactical event, but an integral aspect of a broader operation along a 1200km line of contact that very rapidly took partial control of 4 important oblasts, creating an initial buffer zone around the southwestern Russia and Crimea. Mopping up at Mariupol commenced, and was not long in the doing. After which, the onset of what has ensued began. There’s neither stalemate nor Russian disarray. But this is a different matter from the gist of your comment.
I think your comment is not necessarily wrong, but it seems wishful, and certainly in retrospect maybe fewer dead bodies would have attended to this conflict had the Russian stavka did what you suggest. I believe the strategy going in was to achieve what was achieved, and to quickly bring Ukraine to a point of negotiation. That point occurred, except it was then scuttled by the US/UK intervention with promises of payola, and armaments support for “as long as it takes”, right! Thus, Vladimir Vladamirovich, Shoigu, and Gerasimov had to retool the project for a long term battle of attrition. Russian thinking about what is involved in attrition warfare is also quite developed. It’s interesting to see it playing out as theorists have described the concept. Gerasimov is among those students of the long line of Russian thinkers. His role in adapting to the reality of modern battle space may eventually rank him among the other legendary ones. It remains to be seen. Unfortunately, the west decided that more corpses are acceptable.
Again, the understanding of “crushing” maneuver war vs one of attrition is a well thought out debate in Russian military thinking. The timbre of the initial period of war in the first couple months was not accidental.
Taking what you wrote as given, the early stages of the war then represent another miscalculation on the part of Russia. Only a fool gives up his leverage as a good will gesture, especially in the middle of active hostilities .
As far as what happened *after* negotiations collapsed (as any idiot could see that they would, since there was no longer anything to force Kiev to capitulate and its western sponsors had every reason to keep the conflict going as long as possible) - what exactly is the strategy here? How does this end? Fight to literally, the last Ukrainian, at great expense to Russia? That's really the only possible way Russia could achieve its goals?
Come on.
More likely, there is no real plan, just try to keep the conflict to a manageable level and hope that something happens in the meantime.
I'd love to believe that this is all part of some Master Plan, some eleven-dimensional chess move. But much simpler and less pleasant explanations are available, ones that don't require assuming a lot of facts not in evidence and assuming away admitted facts.
In hindsight, I think the Russian convoy which at the time seemed like a logistical SNAFU and chaos was a threat parked outside Kyiv for negotiating leverage. It disappeared very quickly and efficiently, suggesting it was not parked there out of logistical failings. But at the time, we had no insight into the negotiating timelines, so it just looked stupid.
So maybe they did use enough force to smash Ukraine quickly, but Putin's preference for negotiation over violence led him to trust too much in that process (see also: Minsk), while NATO was more than happy to use it as a delaying tactic.
Therein lies another miscalculation, in which Russia has consistently underestimated just how sociopathic her enemies are.
I suspect without knowing that the Russian leadership do not want to believe, do not want to admit to themselves that europe hates and fears them, that europeans will never let Russia join their club, that europeans are so slavish that they prefer being American puppets to being free, etc..
Everyone always assumes others are mostly the same, with a few key differences, right? The usual problems with everyone being trapped in their own head.
So the Russians are assuming the West is more patient than it is, less stupid than it is. And the West is assuming the Russians are greedier than they are, less honourable than they are.
note1: Honourable <> trustworthy, I think Russia would absolutely take power if they see a chance, but if you've got an agreement they'll stick to it, perhaps literally to the letter and no further.
I would say that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. Except that catnip is basically harmless, while power attracts precisely the sort of people who should not have it.
Perhaps, power is to sociopaths what cocaine is to addicts.
Hope is mainly about Ukraine and very small about west - imo .
I mean Ukraine had to know russia is militarily strong .that is the limit of toying with russia because of it's weakness in soft power due to dissolution of USSR ( communism)
No, the basic proposition to Ukraine is that if you fight your brothers and parents and grandparents, we, the West, will let you join The Club, The Golden Billion, The Magical Land Where Institutions Basically Work. (Whether that promise will be kept, in what form, and whether the West is all beside the point.)
That is why Ukraine fights, that is why there is no serious resistance to "mobilization", even as men are basically kidnapped off the street and slaughtered in droves.
One of Russia's many problems is that it has nothing comparable to offer. Even if peace were made today, Russia would not be admitted to The Club, and it matters little to the average frustrated Russian whether or not Kherson is or is not a part of the Russian Federation.
<i> I think the Russian convoy which at the time seemed like a logistical SNAFU and chaos was a threat parked outside Kyiv for negotiating leverage</i>
Oh, it was definitely a threat. A 65km line of vehicles just sitting there. It said, "You Ukrainians are so weak you cannot even attack a sitting target. Maybe you'd like to deal".
And Ukraine was willing to deal before the US and UK intervened. The Ankara deal was initialized before Johnson visited Zelenskiy.
In 1812, Russia basically dragged a superior French Army deeper and deeper into Russia, weakened the French and their allies through winter until Borodino, then went on the attack.
For starters, Ukraine was in no way a superior army and had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the war would long have bene over.
Early on in the war, Putin only used a small force because he did not want to risk the Russian economy and may have actually thought that Ukraine would negotiate - as they did in Turkey until the West pulled the plug.
Once it was obvious what the West's positions was the Russian army was pulled back from the non-defensible positions and the mobilization efforts started. The latter could be done because the Russian economy showed itself capable of dealing with the Western sanctions.
Putin is still running a very cost effective war on a battlefront which is far away from the Western suppliers and close to the old Russia. The West has now twice rebuilt the Ukrainian army that the Russians keep destroying at very high relative losses for the Ukrainians. It will continue to do so, setting up meat grinders that the Ukrainians feel they have to defend (e.g. Avdiivka, Artymovsk) losing huge numbers of their best fighters. The same goes for Krynky, where some of the best Ukrainian units are being bled dry.
Once the Ukrainians collapse under the weight of their human and material losses, it will be much easier for the Russians to take what they want. When will that be, Spring? Fall? next Spring? the Russians can wait, the European and US politics will be in chaos through 2024 and 2025. We are already seeing the infighting within the Ukrainian elite as they start to see that the jig is up.
Sun Tzu said the best general is the one who wins without fighting a battle. The Russians are mass slaughtering the Ukrainian army with Ukie losses accelerating recently, without risking their troops with a major campaign in a time of mass Western surveillance and drone warfare. The Russian MIC is now in full gear and providing a cast material advantage to the Russians.
I can see Putin opening another front north of Kharkov, but not with any "big arrows". More another area to stretch the Ukrainian forces and to act as a new meat grinder.
For reasons that I explained earlier, it was foolish to think that Ukraine would negotiate - after Russia gave up its leverage.
Moreover, Russian mobilization efforts did not begin until after the fall of Krasny Liman, which was something like August/September, 2022. Of course, the West was pouring money, guns and lawyers into Ukraine all that time.
Otherwise, the "strategy" you describe can be summarized as "wait and hope". well, that hasn't been working.. For that matter, we've been hearing predictions of an imminent Ukrainian collapse for well over a year now. It hasn't happened, and the regime has proven indifferent as to casualties. The Ukrainian elite has been remarkably cohesive. I can wish otherwise, but wishing don't make it so.
Correct, but the long-range missile and drone strikes are an offensive, just not boots and tracks on the ground. I expect they will be grinding things down and poking holes in Ukrainian lines until the early spring-summer. Then push hard on multiple points maybe also with airborne. Targets, Odessa and the Black Sea coast aiming to link up with Transnistria. Then Moscow will start to make terms.
Nope. They are quite happily wiping out the Ukrainian manpower with loss rates way in their favour. With Ukraine now finding it very difficult to get people to go fight at the front thee decline is setting in. Better to attack an exhausted enemy .
Had Russia used adequate force at the outset, a lot fewer people, Russian and Ukrainian, would have gotten killed. As it is, we still see Russia suffering serious losses, to give one example, the A-50 shot down the other day. Russia already has a shortage of such aircraft, and dithering only puts people and assets in harm's way.
Anyway, the West is nowhere near done doubling down, nor will they be, unless and until their leaders start to face very real and very personal consequences.
I've been saying for years now, bring back the draft, and make it fair across classes. When Rumsfeld and Cheney realized that a volunteer army would solve some immediate problems after the disaster of Vietnam, they knew conscription is what turned the tide against the MIC during that debacle. I was there, and, to be truthful, I didn't want to be sent off to some faraway place to kill Asians in jungles, and it really got my attention. Our entire foreign policy would change for the better if the voting public had their children snatched away to do that again.
"we tend to forget how deeply ingrained the idea of “service to the nation” actually was, and how universal were assumptions about military service, both as an ethical duty and a coming-of-age ritual" is perhaps right in the US or France, with their republican traditions. But it is plain wrong in Sweden where peasants were fiercely anti-war as long as there were any peasants. They made socalled peasant peaces over the international borders in case of war, they dodged military recruitments and were finally convinced about 2 months military service in the late 19th century – provided that their taxes were substantially cut.
Russia has has its own share of problems with Armed Forces so I'll list a few.
First is a relatively low quality of the higher command. A significant portion of people there are so-called Parquet generals. Staff like this usually accumulates in the military naturally over a relatively long period of peace, but in the times of war they should go as they are simply unable to command and coordinate effectively. Unfortunately, they are politically protected from facing the consequences of their mistakes and failings. This factor limits the effectiveness of battlefield operations and supply. Apparently Kremlin did not expect to fight a major war and largely it still tries not to, because allowing competent people to rise in ranks in military would force Kremlin to rethink it's own approach to hiring. For the decades Kremlin enlisted political and financial managers from it's own close circle judging people by loyalty, not merit. Wars always force regimes to abandon practices like these so Kremlin avoided
the full-scale war and mobilisation, hence Minsk 1 and 2, Stambul peace talks and general idea of SMO. This unfortunate condition is compensated by bravery and skill of common soldiers and junior officers. And as the war goes on Kremlin simply has to install more and more competent people in military.
Second is a low quality of intelligence service. I guess two years ago Kremlin was still thinking Ukrainian army is going to meet Russians with open arms to unite and overthrow a corrupt Kiev regime. This attitude undobtedly supported by intellingence reports brought a disaster after disaster. At the start of the SMO Russian simply drove by UAF compounds only to be shot in the back. We did not bomb military bases, we did little to break the supply or control the already taken settlements. Generally this unpreparedness to deal with a strong and motivated enemy forced Russian Army to withdraw from the northern oblasts of Ukraine to maintain the stable frontline. This event gave rise to overly optimistic expectations in the West and you know the rest of the story.
Third there there are some shortages of basic goods like clothes and medicines due to organisationals problems in the military. The sitation is getting better as Russian army learns and adapts. There is also a pretty strong volunteer support movement crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for the needs of the frontline.
As for the morale, motivation and discipline they only improve over time. The West did its best to boost Russian fighting spirit by introducing Balkenkreuz in Ukrainian steppes.
This essay is undermined by its tendency to lump the European part of "the West" with its American portion. The armed forces of the U.S. have more than enough recent combat experience, thank you (I devoutly wish it were less). The budget constraints discussed at some length are inoperative -- Congress habitually gives the armed forces more than they request, annually. And, in a country in which the major institutions are derided and objects of contempt, the armed forces are virtually uniquely respected (just look how many generals are promoted to Cabinet positions).
Shooting goat herders and attacking third-rate nations with economies/militaries already destroyed by a decade of brutal sanctions is not "combat experience" that will equip anyone for fighting the Russians. The US MIC is also the most corrupt, thieving and inefficient monstrosity on the Earth which turns military budgets into profits not viable weapon systems and well-trained combat groups and officers. The US population is also the most fat, unhealthy and drugged up in the whole of the West, then add in all of the "woke" programming.
The Russians also hadn't been fighting wars like the one in Ukraine until they invaded Ukraine.
You can't just go pick a war for practice.
The article makes good observations about problems in the US and European militaries but I don't know why you would look at Russia's performance in Ukraine and think that's the military to emulate.
Or why you would think the US/NATO whatever their defects wouldn't be a equally capable of taking a fifth of Ukraine and then holding it in a grinding stalemate.
From 2014 to 2022 Putin played a very careful game with Ukraine, only doing what he had to do - take Crimea back into Russia and support the Donbass enough so they did not get beaten. That included not capitalizing on the defeat of the Ukrainian army at Debaltseve in 2014. The Russian economy was not ready for a full on Western economic war (oil prices had crashed in 2014). He also accepted Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 even though the West were mendacious with respect to them.
In February 2022 Putin used a relatively small force, plus the DPR militias to grab a large chunk of land, including safeguarding Crimea. I do believe that the Russian elite thought that the Ukrainian regime may fold and Russia needed to limit the costs given the probably Western sanctions. There was very nearly a peace deal early on, but of course scrapped by the West. That small force was not big enough to hold the gains so a more militarily defensive position had to be taken, adding to that force would have denuded the Russian military in other geographies.
Once it was obvious that the 7 billion would not be drawn into the sanctions of the golden billion, that the Russian economy was doing well, and that the West would never accept a peace without Russian regime change, Putin ramped up the military for a full war.
The Russian MIC managed to survive the 1990s relatively intact, and has not been penetrated by the oligarchs and capital in general. Its focus is to produce weapons not profits, and the residual incompetences have been swiftly dealt with. Quite the opposite of the Western MIC, which also no longer has access to the manufacturing base that the West used to have. The Western MIC products have been shown to be not fit for the purpose, together with their tactics.
Inside Russia, the sanctions and war have enhanced the position o the nationalists and greatly weakened the "liberals", making it easier for Putin to go to a more war like footing.
In the past 18 months, Russia has been fighting Ukraine+NATO with the Ukrainians used as expendable proxies. Ukraine is now on its third army, having been rebuilt twice already by the West. The Ukrainians also have full access to NATO surveillance abilities. It also takes time to conscript and properly train hundreds of thousands of men.
Putin is still fighting a very cost effective war, limiting the impact to the wider Russian economy. Grinding the Ukrainian cannon fodder reserves down, and destroying much of the Western arsenals. At some point the Ukrainians will start to collapse under the weight of the losses and the financial strains, then Russia can take what it wants. Putin is practising patience, always with an eye on what else the West will try to get cooking on its borders. There will be chaos politically in the US this year and next, so he has time.
The last thing Putin wants is 10,000s of Russian body bags coming back from the front and an out of control level of military expenditure.
True enough, and yet the US military is also consistently falling sort of its recruitment targets.
Morale is always difficult to measure, and I am certainly no expert, but the scraps of information I am getting indicate that it's low and sinking lower. There seems to be a growing sentiment among that section of American society that traditionally provided the bulk of its manpower that both the federal government and the military have become actively hostile to them and their way of life. This may or may not be true but the very existence of such a sentiment is very troubling.
Terrorizing third world residents while enjoying full-spectrum air and firepower supremacy is not necessarily the most useful type of combat experience here.
The Danish, British, Germans, and others all have the same history of experience that the current US military has, because they were there in the same stupid wars. The article already makes the point that this experience is not pertinent to the type of war now underway in some places and anticipated in others.
The armed forces are openly respected in western European countries in much the same way they are in the US, and they are quietly disrespected in the same way as jobs for poor stupid people who can't make it in Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
And despite general budgetary constraints, most nations are increasing spending on defense continuously. It just doesn't go as far as it once did, as is discussed in the article at length.
I do wonder though how the US military would fair in a true industrial war.
Colonial campaigns in the Middle East are not the same as taking on Russia. How would the US military achieve its doctrinal requirement of total air dominance, for example, against Russian air defence. It is a bit like the 1895 Battle of Omdurman being seen as preparation for World War One.
The military gets money too but how much of it is misspent on boondoggle MIC programs?
Interesting that Israel with its mandatory conscription and what seems like "morale" and esprit de corps, doesn't seem to be terribly better at actual fighting than the rest of the West.
I suppose the neoliberalization and lack of a clear mission (as traditionally understood) is not made up for by a comparatively better crop of recruits.
The IDF is full of snowflakes who revel in cosplay on social media, but pretty quickly fold when face to face with the determined fighters of Hamas and Hezbollah. The 1960s IDF is long gone.
Seriously? In addition to my US Army service, I also served in the IDF (Artillery). My daughters, nieces and nephews, friends and their children, also served... many still serving. "Snowflakes who revel in cosplay on social media"? Stick it where the sun don't shine... along with your "Geopolitics And Climate Change", יא חנטריש.
Wow, a real life religious supremacist, ethnic cleansing, apartheid-supporting, genocidal Zionist! And all proud of himself. How has your extended family enjoyed making life hell for Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, shooting kids, torturing people, jailing people forever without charges, murdering over 20,000 in just a few short months? Oh, and yes of course stealing their land.
Wasn't that just like what the Nazis did to the Jews? Maybe parallels between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto? Of course, that would take self reflection.
The one good thing to come out of the Gazan genocide is that the Holocaust victimhood defence is no longer able to cover up the disgusting regime that Israel is, even the youth of America (including a lot of Jews) are very much coming on side with this. Added to the ongoing fall in the numbers of Christian Zionists and the unconditional support for Israel has a limited time span.
At the very time that Israel should be trying to make friends it is burning hatred in the hearts of every Arab, Persian and Turk while its US support is waning.
The people I really respect are the anti-Zionist Haredi Jews who live in Occupied Palestine, now that really takes balls. Dropping shells and bombs on civilians does not.
The IDF got its ass handed to it by Hezbollah, and is unable to defeat a few thousand committed Hamas freedom fighters. This will not end well for Israel.
What you say may accurately describe the IDF of the past, but today? I'll go with Scott Ritter who says the IDF is a -- quote "third rate force." He provides lots of examples in the IDF's many failures in Gaza and the Northern Border. He claims that if the IDF invades Lebanon, Lebanon's army and Hezbolla militias will quickly take Northern Israel to the Galilee.
Who is right? I don't know. Are you sure you do? Also, is Israel and the IDF equipped to fight a long war with a wobbly U.S. ally in a difficult election year?
I admire Israel's pluck, but all I can say is, good luck.
"But from the 1990s onwards, the Notional Left began to veer increasingly towards a kind of humanitarian militarism (less politely, humanitarian fascism) which saw the use of violence as a perfectly acceptable tool to overthrow recalcitrant states and rulers, and to remake them in our Liberal image."
I thought Aurelian's notion of "humanitarian fascism" was quite interesting. The U.S. poured trillions of dollars into this project, particularly since 9-11, but it had (and has) a lousy return on investment. Over time, doubts accumulated (at home and abroad) about how humanitarian it really was in motivation or execution.
The U.S. is tiring of spending more $ billions on places like Ukraine and Gaza without success and with huge amounts of blowback. "Humanitarian fascism" may now be on its last legs. What will replace it? Unabashed coercive "militaristic fascism"? Further escalation? Possibly with nukes?
"After all, there’s nothing unusual about soldiers being in poor physical condition: when Britain introduced conscription in 1916, the authorities were horrified at the poor physical state of many of the recruits. Anecdotally, many of the private soldiers who fought were barely 1,50 metres in height, and officers often stood at least a head taller than the men they were commanding."
It's interesting (to me, at least) to consider that recruitment health conditions might have parallels when the growing inequality in wealth is similar. Sure, they were short then, and they're fat now, but it's both a consequence of the upper class attempting to recruit the lower class and being forced to confront what abominations they've done to the food supply in pursuit of a more efficient work force.
Precisely this. The Brits of that era at least realized that they had to actually DO something about it, materially improving the lives of "the lower orders" if for no other reason than out of sheer self-preservation.
Our supposed elite, being the neoliberal, spreadsheet wielding numpties that they are, have disappeared up their own arses in a self-referential world utterly divorced from material reality.
That was only after WW2 with the Labour government and fighting men determined not to be screwed over like the fighting men after WW1 - "a land fit for heroes". That was then all thrown away starting with Callaghan and Healey in the 1970s.
I couldn't find what I was searching for but did find this about UK's 'National Loaf' in 1942, 85% whole grain: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-bakers-reintroduce-world-war-ii-bread-coronavirus-fight-n1180536
I was looking for an account involving the British Army under Wellington, I believe, perhaps in the Spain campain (?). Basically, they ran out of white flour because of a problem with the mills in England. So they started making wholegrain loaves instead. At first the soldiers would throw them back at the bakers handing them out (each man got a loaf a day). But after a while hunger trumped outrage and they started eating the bread. To everyone's surprise, general health improved markedly, far less sick days were taken and the men started to look and feel stronger. A year or so (?) later when the mill problem was resolved, white bread (probably similar to commercial 'whole wheat' today which is only about 15% whole grain) was back on the menu. At which point the men started throwing THOSE loaves back at the bakers insisting they get the dark loaves instead.
PS Thanks to Aurelien for another excellent article.
In the Roman army, each contubernium (or group of 8 legionaries) had to grind their own flour before making their bread. But it seems they had to give the whitest and finest flour to their officers and keep what was left and the bran for themself.
Maybe it is how they conquered half of the world...
I love a good pumpernickel, dark bread is something us anglo-derived cultures suck at. You've gotta eat the babies if you want the good stuff. Literally, the brown bit of a cereal is where the concentrated minerals, aminos, and everything else needed by a starving baby plant is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal_germ
Good story, it reminds me of the one about how the British forgot the cure for scurvy https://www.barkeuropa.com/logbook/detail/the-tragic-tale-of-scurvy-how-beliefs-trumped-science
you may consider "People of the Abyss" then
My guess is that consciously or subconsciously deciders in the West were assuming the fighting would be done by people who were NOT brought up on the culture of self gratification and indolence. One handy characteristic of the citizens of Josep Borrell's "jungle" is that they can endure hardship on behalf of the puffy Wall-E citizens of the "garden" (or is the H.G.Wells Morlock/Eloi metaphor more fitting?). The trouble is that the tougher people can easily see how much power they have if they get organized. This is a recurring theme in history, so enough said. Eventually they decide to march on Rome.
In Heinlein's SF Starship Troopers, there was an effort to maintain a quasi-fascist branch of society to do the heavy lifting...but that was the only way to earn citizenship. That idea won't fly in postmodern post-consequence Western life in 2024. There sure are a lot of people saying this whole set-up is doomed. I think the real question is: what is the stable equilibrium place where we will land after this top-heavy construct topples (or is toppled by a nation or society that isn't so weak)?
Well, that's basically the logic used to motivate Ukraine. Go and fight your relations on our behalf and we'll let you join The Golden Billion, the magical land where institutions basically work.
When I lived in Ukraine (2004-2012), nationalists were seen as freaks and losers.
Perhaps instead of wondering how the US will rebuild its military and make it fit for fighting major conventional land wars we should concentrate more on making friends and allies instead of making enemies. Crazy, I know. But Bismarck, who knew a thing or two about employing military force to make Germany a great power in his day said the secret to successful politics was: “make a good treaty with Russia.”
Yeah, the unipolar moment apparently ate America's strategic and diplomatic brains ...
Yeah, but if Bismarck was really smart he would have arranged for an accident to happen to Wilhelm before he croaked.
I’d like to pick out the part of this essay on priorities. From my time as a technical (not management) consultant and a project manager (no, it’s not a real job) I’ve found that actually accomplishing anything requires someone to make the decision of what they want to accomplish. It’s like pulling teeth.
An example might be the iron triangle of construction: it can done be cheaply, quickly or well and you get to choose two of the three. But if the decision maker(s) can’t or won’t prioritize one of those three, the project will end up over budget, the schedule won’t be met and the quality will be poor. Every time. In my time I’ve found mostly blank stares if I directly ask the question, “what do want to achieve?” Even when I frame it as a multiple choice question with no wrong answers.
It is perhaps a fundamental and systemic problem with the “west” at this stage of development.
I call it the Nanny state mentality.
Where you defer to others your whole life, and when you are forced to make a decision, you freeze up like a stunned mullet, because you cannot defer to anyone else.
We've lost the ability to make trade-offs. This means understanding the idea of constraints. Even if you have that ability, it requires the ability to visualize and anticipate consequences, then preparing for the worst case. Even if you have that ability too, you have to take a stand and say "this is the decision I've made," which can be risky. This is way too much emotional and cognitive overload for today's "seasoned" PMC managers.
I've had similar experiences as a PM, it's that people who make no decisions think that they can't be held responsible for anything. My strategy is to write long emails explaining the exact decision to be made all the constraints and then at the end I suggest a course of action and say that's what I'll be doing unless I hear otherwise. Then I schedule the email to be sent at 5:15 PM on Friday afternoon. My ass is covered, the higher ups don't have to read it if they don't want to, and usually by the time they do, we're too far in to reverse course.
Fucken awesome post
A common theme expressed by younger men and women in the West is that they feel cheated of life's opportunities - caused by the mistakes and greed of their elders. Well I think they have a point but overplay the woe and tend to wallow in self pity and poor life choices. Putting my views to one side, it is certainly the case that the current generation of military age is much less likely to be prepared to fight for their national cause as they take a generally dimmer view of what it has dealt them. Notwithstanding generations now of encouraging mental weakness and perpetual childhood, as well as playing up toxic masculinity. And so on.
We also have over a generation of de-industrialisation and budgetary constraints. This has left western militaries in a parlous condition with only a long term solution of re-industrialisation to produce enough equipment and ammo etc to rebuild them. Cold war stocks have now gone. Even the mighty USA is experiencing severe problems right now. To rebuild for most nations - including the USA - will require economic pain. And most civilian tax payers do not see this as high on their priority list.
One solution to this was James Bond type special operations, color revolutions and the information war. Well we have seen this has its limitations. However targeted propaganda appears also to work well within Western populations. Maybe not well enough to make the sacrifices required to rebuild their MICs.
In summary, to sort of quote Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get thumped in the face. Hard reality is now intruding on delusional thinking. However on almost every issue of major importance, the West is engaged in fantastical thinking and irrational groupthink. It is going to be a long trip down, and a long way up again. The End of History? I think not.
Why should I sacrifice my life in a trench for a country that no longer exist? Sure, the administrative state still exists but the people, the community in it, is gone. Covered by an endless parade of gays and immigrants with my own made invisible and only mentioned in the media as backwards, racist, sexist fools who should die already.
That has been the message for decades now, and now they want me to fight for their Blackrock portfolio?
Our leadership class can go fuck themselves and if the Russians where to ever send a khinzal to Davos we would pop open the champagne.
Exactly this. Even if you take the view it's misguided (for the record i don't), this is how many see the world. Men who create everything have practically disappeared, like the elves leaving middle earth.
I have champagne tastes, but, sadly, I'm on a beer budget. So, a brewski for the Russkis.
People are willing to die for their country, if they think their country is worthy of sacrifice, but since the United States is controlled by greedy, incompetent monsters who use the military for what are effectively enormous country destroying chevauchées, why should anyone want to join the military?
If the United States was every invaded, I thing people would be surprised at the enlistment numbers, but no more fighting for the glory of the empire.
If the US is invaded, I suspect that there will be those who open the gates if they think the other side can do a better job.
The US government and ruling class has lost legitimacy among young people.
I vaguely remember that episode from the Simpsons where "wars of the future will be fought by small robots, and it will be your job to maintain those small robots". Someone must have taken that as prophecy instead of parody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycRwMezUex8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
If that lack of interest in the military had been accompanied with a willingness to create ties with the countries usually on the opposite side of us and to develop fairness and justice all would’ve been well. But no.
I often walk past a recruitment office here in England and the ads on the windows seem to emphasise two main things: fitness and travel, two of the obsessions of modern people it seems. I chuckle to myself.
"But even if western armies could once again study effectively the type of operations the Russians are conducting, they do not have the forces available to reciprocate, and almost certainly never will."
Interestingly enough, Russia seems to be avoiding large-scale operations in Ukraine. I suspect that this is not the result of any real strategy, but out of a desire to keep casualty numbers politically manageable, while hoping that something happens in the meantime.
For my part, I consider this to be foolish on the part of Russia.
"What this may mean in practical terms is that, for example, if the Air Force of your country has a flying training budget and the price of oil goes up sharply, flying training will have to be reduced, even if other parts of defence cannot spend all the money they are given. "
That is why God gave us commodities hedges. If you know you are going to to require vast quantities of JP4, you buy long futures contracts or call options to hedge against price spikes.
"So I repeat, even if the immense organisational, technical and industrial challenges of rebuilding defence could be overcome, you still need large numbers of Mk 1 human beings ready to embrace the military life. As things stand, far from enlarging our armed forces over the next decade, I suspect that most western countries will do well to avoid losing them all together. I’m not sure the Russians have quite the same problem."
This is the real military problem that the West faces right here. Most Westerners are weak and soft, certainly the PMC are, and those that aren't are not the sort of people that the PMC wants to entrust with any kind of hard power.
This was one point I have a quibble with in Aurelien's text.
The platoon-size engagements we're seeing from Ukraine are also what we're seeing from Russia. It may be related to NATO experience, but it is much more related to the reality of the new way of war with prevalent ISR and rapid response in the form of drone strikes. Any time Ukraine or Russia has got a large group together, they've been slaughtered.
The natural response is to not get a large group together. We've seen both sides trying to organise large groups broken down into small units until the last possible moment, as a strategy of both misdirection and also purely for survival.
Where I think the respective strategies differ, is that Russia is executing a press of many small groups across a large length of the front, with more fed in only where a weakness is found. Ukraine seems to be feeding entire brigades in small groups into the same points over and over.
"The platoon-size engagements we're seeing from Ukraine are also what we're seeing from Russia. It may be related to NATO experience, but it is much more related to the reality of the new way of war with prevalent ISR and rapid response in the form of drone strikes. Any time Ukraine or Russia has got a large group together, they've been slaughtered."
Russian failure to use enough force to smash Ukraine quickly and from the very outset was a big mistake, as it gave NATO time to organize a defense for its proxy.
There was no intent to smash, or to use the appropriate strategy term, “crush” Ukraine at outset. Much misunderstanding mixed with bogus reporting of the initial phase of conflict. A further lack of either knowing or understanding the point upon the evolutionary arc of military theory that Russia had reached, and which understanding might further aid the way to read what’s been going on since Feb’22, combines to make most conjecture by commenters not more than “a priori” reasoning. I do not mean it to sound pointed toward you, or disrespectful. It’s natural to wonder wtf. I do it all the time.
Reading the history of the development of Russian military theory immediately makes the facts of this conflict more sensible. Svechin’s “Strategy”, and Isserson’s tome on the Evolution Of Operational Art” would help. (Again, I do not suppose that you have not. I’ve read many of your comments here and elsewhere, and you make good points that I often learn from. I merely make general comments.)
Faced with the rapid advance of UAV technology, and their tactical applications quickly developing, changing, evolving, plus widespread EW use, multiple layered ISR capabilities (all of which are characteristics of a new epoch in warfare), it has made massive force projection, and maneuver warfare perhaps part of history. Much of that epochal change understanding may yet not be fully absorbed, just like how other epochs witnessed changing battlefield dynamics without seeing the full implications. If you’d like to see how deeply ingrained maneuver warfare is in American military thinking, then check out The Maneuverist column in the US Marine Corps Gazette. It makes understanding the way the ukro counteroffensive was conceived more clear, if not aware of how fighting can take place these days.
What Russia set out to achieve in the initial period of the SMO was, to a rather astonishing extent, achieved. Even the misunderstood heavily slanted, fundamentally ignorant, western reporting of the battles at Kiev airport and environs was successful. This wasn’t a disjointed tactical event, but an integral aspect of a broader operation along a 1200km line of contact that very rapidly took partial control of 4 important oblasts, creating an initial buffer zone around the southwestern Russia and Crimea. Mopping up at Mariupol commenced, and was not long in the doing. After which, the onset of what has ensued began. There’s neither stalemate nor Russian disarray. But this is a different matter from the gist of your comment.
I think your comment is not necessarily wrong, but it seems wishful, and certainly in retrospect maybe fewer dead bodies would have attended to this conflict had the Russian stavka did what you suggest. I believe the strategy going in was to achieve what was achieved, and to quickly bring Ukraine to a point of negotiation. That point occurred, except it was then scuttled by the US/UK intervention with promises of payola, and armaments support for “as long as it takes”, right! Thus, Vladimir Vladamirovich, Shoigu, and Gerasimov had to retool the project for a long term battle of attrition. Russian thinking about what is involved in attrition warfare is also quite developed. It’s interesting to see it playing out as theorists have described the concept. Gerasimov is among those students of the long line of Russian thinkers. His role in adapting to the reality of modern battle space may eventually rank him among the other legendary ones. It remains to be seen. Unfortunately, the west decided that more corpses are acceptable.
Again, the understanding of “crushing” maneuver war vs one of attrition is a well thought out debate in Russian military thinking. The timbre of the initial period of war in the first couple months was not accidental.
Taking what you wrote as given, the early stages of the war then represent another miscalculation on the part of Russia. Only a fool gives up his leverage as a good will gesture, especially in the middle of active hostilities .
As far as what happened *after* negotiations collapsed (as any idiot could see that they would, since there was no longer anything to force Kiev to capitulate and its western sponsors had every reason to keep the conflict going as long as possible) - what exactly is the strategy here? How does this end? Fight to literally, the last Ukrainian, at great expense to Russia? That's really the only possible way Russia could achieve its goals?
Come on.
More likely, there is no real plan, just try to keep the conflict to a manageable level and hope that something happens in the meantime.
I'd love to believe that this is all part of some Master Plan, some eleven-dimensional chess move. But much simpler and less pleasant explanations are available, ones that don't require assuming a lot of facts not in evidence and assuming away admitted facts.
No doubt there were miscalculations.
More importantly - what is the strategy going forward?
I truly am not trying to cast blame here, although the first step to fixing a problem is to admit that there is a problem.
I was comparing yesterday the timelines on this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Kyiv_convoy and the timelines on this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_negotiations_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
In hindsight, I think the Russian convoy which at the time seemed like a logistical SNAFU and chaos was a threat parked outside Kyiv for negotiating leverage. It disappeared very quickly and efficiently, suggesting it was not parked there out of logistical failings. But at the time, we had no insight into the negotiating timelines, so it just looked stupid.
So maybe they did use enough force to smash Ukraine quickly, but Putin's preference for negotiation over violence led him to trust too much in that process (see also: Minsk), while NATO was more than happy to use it as a delaying tactic.
Therein lies another miscalculation, in which Russia has consistently underestimated just how sociopathic her enemies are.
I suspect without knowing that the Russian leadership do not want to believe, do not want to admit to themselves that europe hates and fears them, that europeans will never let Russia join their club, that europeans are so slavish that they prefer being American puppets to being free, etc..
Everyone always assumes others are mostly the same, with a few key differences, right? The usual problems with everyone being trapped in their own head.
So the Russians are assuming the West is more patient than it is, less stupid than it is. And the West is assuming the Russians are greedier than they are, less honourable than they are.
note1: Honourable <> trustworthy, I think Russia would absolutely take power if they see a chance, but if you've got an agreement they'll stick to it, perhaps literally to the letter and no further.
note2: Crudely generalised.
I would say that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. Except that catnip is basically harmless, while power attracts precisely the sort of people who should not have it.
Perhaps, power is to sociopaths what cocaine is to addicts.
Hope is mainly about Ukraine and very small about west - imo .
I mean Ukraine had to know russia is militarily strong .that is the limit of toying with russia because of it's weakness in soft power due to dissolution of USSR ( communism)
No, the basic proposition to Ukraine is that if you fight your brothers and parents and grandparents, we, the West, will let you join The Club, The Golden Billion, The Magical Land Where Institutions Basically Work. (Whether that promise will be kept, in what form, and whether the West is all beside the point.)
That is why Ukraine fights, that is why there is no serious resistance to "mobilization", even as men are basically kidnapped off the street and slaughtered in droves.
One of Russia's many problems is that it has nothing comparable to offer. Even if peace were made today, Russia would not be admitted to The Club, and it matters little to the average frustrated Russian whether or not Kherson is or is not a part of the Russian Federation.
<i> I think the Russian convoy which at the time seemed like a logistical SNAFU and chaos was a threat parked outside Kyiv for negotiating leverage</i>
Oh, it was definitely a threat. A 65km line of vehicles just sitting there. It said, "You Ukrainians are so weak you cannot even attack a sitting target. Maybe you'd like to deal".
And Ukraine was willing to deal before the US and UK intervened. The Ankara deal was initialized before Johnson visited Zelenskiy.
Russia took the plans Robert E Lee often used, pick a defensible site and let the enemy run into your strength in artillery and other fires.
Even in Gettysburg, Longstreet wanted to get Meade to attack him on Seminary ridge. Lee went off script!
With ISR and long range fires donated to Ukraine big arrow move need to wait for a colapse, like the one western planned projected on Russia.
The problem is that this is not a strategy. Nobody won a war by staying on the defensive.
Ever studied the Russians against Napoleon? That's exactly how the Russians won!
Except they didn't.
In 1812, Russia basically dragged a superior French Army deeper and deeper into Russia, weakened the French and their allies through winter until Borodino, then went on the attack.
For starters, Ukraine was in no way a superior army and had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the war would long have bene over.
Early on in the war, Putin only used a small force because he did not want to risk the Russian economy and may have actually thought that Ukraine would negotiate - as they did in Turkey until the West pulled the plug.
Once it was obvious what the West's positions was the Russian army was pulled back from the non-defensible positions and the mobilization efforts started. The latter could be done because the Russian economy showed itself capable of dealing with the Western sanctions.
Putin is still running a very cost effective war on a battlefront which is far away from the Western suppliers and close to the old Russia. The West has now twice rebuilt the Ukrainian army that the Russians keep destroying at very high relative losses for the Ukrainians. It will continue to do so, setting up meat grinders that the Ukrainians feel they have to defend (e.g. Avdiivka, Artymovsk) losing huge numbers of their best fighters. The same goes for Krynky, where some of the best Ukrainian units are being bled dry.
Once the Ukrainians collapse under the weight of their human and material losses, it will be much easier for the Russians to take what they want. When will that be, Spring? Fall? next Spring? the Russians can wait, the European and US politics will be in chaos through 2024 and 2025. We are already seeing the infighting within the Ukrainian elite as they start to see that the jig is up.
Sun Tzu said the best general is the one who wins without fighting a battle. The Russians are mass slaughtering the Ukrainian army with Ukie losses accelerating recently, without risking their troops with a major campaign in a time of mass Western surveillance and drone warfare. The Russian MIC is now in full gear and providing a cast material advantage to the Russians.
I can see Putin opening another front north of Kharkov, but not with any "big arrows". More another area to stretch the Ukrainian forces and to act as a new meat grinder.
Roger Boyd,
This post is excellent. The first two paragraphs are worth gold.
You've done every reader here a great favor, and this post should be available as widely as possible.
Synapsid
For reasons that I explained earlier, it was foolish to think that Ukraine would negotiate - after Russia gave up its leverage.
Moreover, Russian mobilization efforts did not begin until after the fall of Krasny Liman, which was something like August/September, 2022. Of course, the West was pouring money, guns and lawyers into Ukraine all that time.
Otherwise, the "strategy" you describe can be summarized as "wait and hope". well, that hasn't been working.. For that matter, we've been hearing predictions of an imminent Ukrainian collapse for well over a year now. It hasn't happened, and the regime has proven indifferent as to casualties. The Ukrainian elite has been remarkably cohesive. I can wish otherwise, but wishing don't make it so.
Correct, but the long-range missile and drone strikes are an offensive, just not boots and tracks on the ground. I expect they will be grinding things down and poking holes in Ukrainian lines until the early spring-summer. Then push hard on multiple points maybe also with airborne. Targets, Odessa and the Black Sea coast aiming to link up with Transnistria. Then Moscow will start to make terms.
We've been hearing such predictions for well over a year now. Meanwhile, Russia continues to dither.
Nope. They are quite happily wiping out the Ukrainian manpower with loss rates way in their favour. With Ukraine now finding it very difficult to get people to go fight at the front thee decline is setting in. Better to attack an exhausted enemy .
Had Russia used adequate force at the outset, a lot fewer people, Russian and Ukrainian, would have gotten killed. As it is, we still see Russia suffering serious losses, to give one example, the A-50 shot down the other day. Russia already has a shortage of such aircraft, and dithering only puts people and assets in harm's way.
Why should they care about anyone's timeline but their own?
Because dithering is getting good people killed.
"Nobody won a war by staying on the defensive."
I think Sun Tzu disagrees.
I'd need to see the receipts.
Anyway, the West is nowhere near done doubling down, nor will they be, unless and until their leaders start to face very real and very personal consequences.
"Russia took the plans Robert E Lee often used, pick a defensible site and let the enemy run into your strength in artillery and other fires."
Likewise Wellington.
I've been saying for years now, bring back the draft, and make it fair across classes. When Rumsfeld and Cheney realized that a volunteer army would solve some immediate problems after the disaster of Vietnam, they knew conscription is what turned the tide against the MIC during that debacle. I was there, and, to be truthful, I didn't want to be sent off to some faraway place to kill Asians in jungles, and it really got my attention. Our entire foreign policy would change for the better if the voting public had their children snatched away to do that again.
"we tend to forget how deeply ingrained the idea of “service to the nation” actually was, and how universal were assumptions about military service, both as an ethical duty and a coming-of-age ritual" is perhaps right in the US or France, with their republican traditions. But it is plain wrong in Sweden where peasants were fiercely anti-war as long as there were any peasants. They made socalled peasant peaces over the international borders in case of war, they dodged military recruitments and were finally convinced about 2 months military service in the late 19th century – provided that their taxes were substantially cut.
And I don't even mention workers!
Russia has has its own share of problems with Armed Forces so I'll list a few.
First is a relatively low quality of the higher command. A significant portion of people there are so-called Parquet generals. Staff like this usually accumulates in the military naturally over a relatively long period of peace, but in the times of war they should go as they are simply unable to command and coordinate effectively. Unfortunately, they are politically protected from facing the consequences of their mistakes and failings. This factor limits the effectiveness of battlefield operations and supply. Apparently Kremlin did not expect to fight a major war and largely it still tries not to, because allowing competent people to rise in ranks in military would force Kremlin to rethink it's own approach to hiring. For the decades Kremlin enlisted political and financial managers from it's own close circle judging people by loyalty, not merit. Wars always force regimes to abandon practices like these so Kremlin avoided
the full-scale war and mobilisation, hence Minsk 1 and 2, Stambul peace talks and general idea of SMO. This unfortunate condition is compensated by bravery and skill of common soldiers and junior officers. And as the war goes on Kremlin simply has to install more and more competent people in military.
Second is a low quality of intelligence service. I guess two years ago Kremlin was still thinking Ukrainian army is going to meet Russians with open arms to unite and overthrow a corrupt Kiev regime. This attitude undobtedly supported by intellingence reports brought a disaster after disaster. At the start of the SMO Russian simply drove by UAF compounds only to be shot in the back. We did not bomb military bases, we did little to break the supply or control the already taken settlements. Generally this unpreparedness to deal with a strong and motivated enemy forced Russian Army to withdraw from the northern oblasts of Ukraine to maintain the stable frontline. This event gave rise to overly optimistic expectations in the West and you know the rest of the story.
Third there there are some shortages of basic goods like clothes and medicines due to organisationals problems in the military. The sitation is getting better as Russian army learns and adapts. There is also a pretty strong volunteer support movement crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for the needs of the frontline.
As for the morale, motivation and discipline they only improve over time. The West did its best to boost Russian fighting spirit by introducing Balkenkreuz in Ukrainian steppes.
This essay is undermined by its tendency to lump the European part of "the West" with its American portion. The armed forces of the U.S. have more than enough recent combat experience, thank you (I devoutly wish it were less). The budget constraints discussed at some length are inoperative -- Congress habitually gives the armed forces more than they request, annually. And, in a country in which the major institutions are derided and objects of contempt, the armed forces are virtually uniquely respected (just look how many generals are promoted to Cabinet positions).
Shooting goat herders and attacking third-rate nations with economies/militaries already destroyed by a decade of brutal sanctions is not "combat experience" that will equip anyone for fighting the Russians. The US MIC is also the most corrupt, thieving and inefficient monstrosity on the Earth which turns military budgets into profits not viable weapon systems and well-trained combat groups and officers. The US population is also the most fat, unhealthy and drugged up in the whole of the West, then add in all of the "woke" programming.
The Russians also hadn't been fighting wars like the one in Ukraine until they invaded Ukraine.
You can't just go pick a war for practice.
The article makes good observations about problems in the US and European militaries but I don't know why you would look at Russia's performance in Ukraine and think that's the military to emulate.
Or why you would think the US/NATO whatever their defects wouldn't be a equally capable of taking a fifth of Ukraine and then holding it in a grinding stalemate.
Aside from not wanting to of course.
From 2014 to 2022 Putin played a very careful game with Ukraine, only doing what he had to do - take Crimea back into Russia and support the Donbass enough so they did not get beaten. That included not capitalizing on the defeat of the Ukrainian army at Debaltseve in 2014. The Russian economy was not ready for a full on Western economic war (oil prices had crashed in 2014). He also accepted Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 even though the West were mendacious with respect to them.
In February 2022 Putin used a relatively small force, plus the DPR militias to grab a large chunk of land, including safeguarding Crimea. I do believe that the Russian elite thought that the Ukrainian regime may fold and Russia needed to limit the costs given the probably Western sanctions. There was very nearly a peace deal early on, but of course scrapped by the West. That small force was not big enough to hold the gains so a more militarily defensive position had to be taken, adding to that force would have denuded the Russian military in other geographies.
Once it was obvious that the 7 billion would not be drawn into the sanctions of the golden billion, that the Russian economy was doing well, and that the West would never accept a peace without Russian regime change, Putin ramped up the military for a full war.
The Russian MIC managed to survive the 1990s relatively intact, and has not been penetrated by the oligarchs and capital in general. Its focus is to produce weapons not profits, and the residual incompetences have been swiftly dealt with. Quite the opposite of the Western MIC, which also no longer has access to the manufacturing base that the West used to have. The Western MIC products have been shown to be not fit for the purpose, together with their tactics.
Inside Russia, the sanctions and war have enhanced the position o the nationalists and greatly weakened the "liberals", making it easier for Putin to go to a more war like footing.
In the past 18 months, Russia has been fighting Ukraine+NATO with the Ukrainians used as expendable proxies. Ukraine is now on its third army, having been rebuilt twice already by the West. The Ukrainians also have full access to NATO surveillance abilities. It also takes time to conscript and properly train hundreds of thousands of men.
Putin is still fighting a very cost effective war, limiting the impact to the wider Russian economy. Grinding the Ukrainian cannon fodder reserves down, and destroying much of the Western arsenals. At some point the Ukrainians will start to collapse under the weight of the losses and the financial strains, then Russia can take what it wants. Putin is practising patience, always with an eye on what else the West will try to get cooking on its borders. There will be chaos politically in the US this year and next, so he has time.
The last thing Putin wants is 10,000s of Russian body bags coming back from the front and an out of control level of military expenditure.
Yes. And Russia's military budget is just $80 billion -- increased from $60 billion when the SMO started. US military budget is over $1 trillion.
True enough, and yet the US military is also consistently falling sort of its recruitment targets.
Morale is always difficult to measure, and I am certainly no expert, but the scraps of information I am getting indicate that it's low and sinking lower. There seems to be a growing sentiment among that section of American society that traditionally provided the bulk of its manpower that both the federal government and the military have become actively hostile to them and their way of life. This may or may not be true but the very existence of such a sentiment is very troubling.
Terrorizing third world residents while enjoying full-spectrum air and firepower supremacy is not necessarily the most useful type of combat experience here.
Not sure I understand this comment.
The Danish, British, Germans, and others all have the same history of experience that the current US military has, because they were there in the same stupid wars. The article already makes the point that this experience is not pertinent to the type of war now underway in some places and anticipated in others.
The armed forces are openly respected in western European countries in much the same way they are in the US, and they are quietly disrespected in the same way as jobs for poor stupid people who can't make it in Wall Street or Silicon Valley.
And despite general budgetary constraints, most nations are increasing spending on defense continuously. It just doesn't go as far as it once did, as is discussed in the article at length.
I do wonder though how the US military would fair in a true industrial war.
Colonial campaigns in the Middle East are not the same as taking on Russia. How would the US military achieve its doctrinal requirement of total air dominance, for example, against Russian air defence. It is a bit like the 1895 Battle of Omdurman being seen as preparation for World War One.
The military gets money too but how much of it is misspent on boondoggle MIC programs?
Interesting that Israel with its mandatory conscription and what seems like "morale" and esprit de corps, doesn't seem to be terribly better at actual fighting than the rest of the West.
I suppose the neoliberalization and lack of a clear mission (as traditionally understood) is not made up for by a comparatively better crop of recruits.
The IDF is full of snowflakes who revel in cosplay on social media, but pretty quickly fold when face to face with the determined fighters of Hamas and Hezbollah. The 1960s IDF is long gone.
Seriously? In addition to my US Army service, I also served in the IDF (Artillery). My daughters, nieces and nephews, friends and their children, also served... many still serving. "Snowflakes who revel in cosplay on social media"? Stick it where the sun don't shine... along with your "Geopolitics And Climate Change", יא חנטריש.
Wow, a real life religious supremacist, ethnic cleansing, apartheid-supporting, genocidal Zionist! And all proud of himself. How has your extended family enjoyed making life hell for Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, shooting kids, torturing people, jailing people forever without charges, murdering over 20,000 in just a few short months? Oh, and yes of course stealing their land.
Wasn't that just like what the Nazis did to the Jews? Maybe parallels between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto? Of course, that would take self reflection.
The one good thing to come out of the Gazan genocide is that the Holocaust victimhood defence is no longer able to cover up the disgusting regime that Israel is, even the youth of America (including a lot of Jews) are very much coming on side with this. Added to the ongoing fall in the numbers of Christian Zionists and the unconditional support for Israel has a limited time span.
At the very time that Israel should be trying to make friends it is burning hatred in the hearts of every Arab, Persian and Turk while its US support is waning.
The people I really respect are the anti-Zionist Haredi Jews who live in Occupied Palestine, now that really takes balls. Dropping shells and bombs on civilians does not.
The IDF got its ass handed to it by Hezbollah, and is unable to defeat a few thousand committed Hamas freedom fighters. This will not end well for Israel.
What you say may accurately describe the IDF of the past, but today? I'll go with Scott Ritter who says the IDF is a -- quote "third rate force." He provides lots of examples in the IDF's many failures in Gaza and the Northern Border. He claims that if the IDF invades Lebanon, Lebanon's army and Hezbolla militias will quickly take Northern Israel to the Galilee.
Who is right? I don't know. Are you sure you do? Also, is Israel and the IDF equipped to fight a long war with a wobbly U.S. ally in a difficult election year?
I admire Israel's pluck, but all I can say is, good luck.
So where are your loyalties?
Where's the conflict? (IRL, not hypothetically)
Israel faces the same genre enemy that Chiang (1945) and the US faced in east Asia (from 1961).
"But from the 1990s onwards, the Notional Left began to veer increasingly towards a kind of humanitarian militarism (less politely, humanitarian fascism) which saw the use of violence as a perfectly acceptable tool to overthrow recalcitrant states and rulers, and to remake them in our Liberal image."
I thought Aurelian's notion of "humanitarian fascism" was quite interesting. The U.S. poured trillions of dollars into this project, particularly since 9-11, but it had (and has) a lousy return on investment. Over time, doubts accumulated (at home and abroad) about how humanitarian it really was in motivation or execution.
The U.S. is tiring of spending more $ billions on places like Ukraine and Gaza without success and with huge amounts of blowback. "Humanitarian fascism" may now be on its last legs. What will replace it? Unabashed coercive "militaristic fascism"? Further escalation? Possibly with nukes?