What's The Deal With Ben Hodges?

Politico waxes strategic: 

Europe’s roads and railways aren’t fit for a fight with Russia. EU struggles to reverse years of neglect on spending to improve road and rail to shift troops and tanks. Having a better army doesn't much matter if you can't get it moving.

I don't know who said to Hanny Cokelaere and Joshua Posaner who penned this piece, that NATO has "better Army", but neither author has even remotest qualifications to pass the judgement on any military issue and the problem here is that while European NATO armies are a joke, the US Army is the last army in the world which has a record worthy of self-proclaimed (well, by many, Obama included) of a "finest fighting force in history"(c). The fact that the US Army can use sensor fusion, satellite imagery and stand-off munitions to blow Afghan weddings to smithereens, children and women included into "package", or can demolish Faluja, doesn't make one "better" at anything. Especially when compared to Russians and their record of military victories which make NATO military "accomplishments" look rather very insignificant. 

 

But never mind this constant self-aggrandizing which does betray a huge complex of inferiority and immediately after intro posted above from this Politco military psychobabble, authors introduce us to Mr. Ben Hodges.    

“The further east you go, the infrastructure does not support the heavy weight of U.S., German, British and Dutch tanks, it’s the bridges,” said retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe and now affiliated to think tank CEPA. “We’ve got to show we can move as fast or faster than the Russian Federation in the Suwałki Gap [between Poland and Lithuania] or in Romania.”

The immediate question which one has to ask is why Ben Hodges thinks that "we've got to show" those damn Roosskies. I don't know what Ben Hodges thinks, and he left a rather impressive record of spewing BS, while on the job as the US Army Commander Europe, but he has to really update himself on what Russians do and how they study militarily. Suffice it to say that Russia's General Staff was formed fully in 1763 by order of Catherine the Great (no, not in 1812 as English-language WiKi tells us) and the history of this General Staff goes back to 1711 to Peter the Great's order of the Staff Positions of General Staff (in Russian). So, it is not like Russians need to run around constantly repeating mantras about how great they are, but the United States didn't exist as a nation, when Russians already had their General Staff, and the good one at that. Yes, this little "skirmish" in 1812 in which Russian Army defeated the greatest Army assembled at that time and led by a genuine military genius Napoleon. Obviously, nothing to look at, against the background of the "American war against Napoleon", but these were Russians who actually entered Paris in 1814. 

So, there is no necessity for Russians "be shown" anything, because studying the enemy (and the United States Armed Forces are "potential enemy" of Russia) is on the level which the United States can only dream about and that has a lot to do with both military history and general education of the military cadres. So, Russians know and have been preparing to fight combined NATO forces since WW II and in doing so they developed doctrine and weapons which suit this purpose perfectly. Russians, who also have all this C4ISR mambo-jumbo, from intel satellites and anti-sat weapons to computers and signint, they know how the US Army fights and what are the limitations (sometimes severe) of any combined NATO force if it decides to fight Russian Armed Forces conventionally in the Eastern Europe. 

 

Ben Hodges has to know this--the first thing NATO (US that is) will lose will be its ISR, starting from removal of crucial US space-based assets from their orbits, and then jamming of NATO communications. That in itself removes the crucial advantage NATO always had over its third-rate backward enemies. Obviously, the issue, which I write about non-stop, is the issue of air defense is what NATO simply doesn't have against Russia's stand-off weapons and this is the thing which many (not all) US generals cannot wrap their brains around--any Command and Control structure of NATO--staffs, command posts, communications facilities, what have you--are absolutely defenseless and the level of this vulnerability continues to grow as I type this. So, it is not that Russians will throw their T-90s and T-14s at Suwalki Gap to face off with NATO's tanks. No, Russians will demolish Command and Control system of NATO, including it "decision making centers" and airfields. NATO navies also will be sunk.

After that, NATO will start escalating towards nuclear threshold because it will be denied most of its tentative advantages which Russians are very well aware of, because they usually don't waste time on PR BS and self-aggrandizing but study wars and operations by the "potential enemy" and do it extremely seriously. Unless, of course, one considers Russians, coldly narrating their well-known military achievements in the last 800 or so years, as self-aggrandizing, but those who do should see a good psychologist specializing in complex of inferiority.  So, even if to imagine that Ben Hodges would be able "to show" those damn Rooskies that NATO can move as fast or faster it makes no difference whatsoever because the US Armed Forces never faced the enemy like this and never fought the war like that. 

On a more metaphysical level, of which Patriarch of All Russia spoke recently in his sermon, Ben Hodges should understand a simple fact that Russia-West breakup is for real and Russians will never forget nor forgive US support for this:

The US supports admirers of SS Division Galizien (Calicina) and, in general, de facto Nazi regime in Kiev which is mired in war crimes and crimes against humanity. What can I say, good that most of Russian WW II veterans who viewed Americans as good allies are not with us anymore. I can only imagine what they would feel, knowing that former Allies turned out this way. But then again, if Ben Hodges or Petraeus are the "best" what the US can produce, then there should be no surprise. I will reiterate--NO US servicemen ever fought in defense of his country, all modern wars the US Armed Forces fought are expeditionary wars, the wars of conquest far away from own shores. No US servicemen ever knew what it means to lose own family and property to real war. This is the cultural difference which cannot be bridged--any Russian family has more real military pedigree than Ben Hodges ever would, because in Russia any family has somebody who fought and died in WW II.

 

We all are into the new territory, where the REAL face of the West and the US has been exposed. Sadly, most of the public in the West will not know what is happening. They are kept oblivious by Western media and by the realities of every day survival in the midst of a massive economic calamity which unfolds before all of us. Here is Andrei Raevsky providing a glimpse into who the US is supporting.

This article provides an overview into a deeply disturbing trend in Ukraine, one that started in 2014, that has accelerated and intensified since 24 February 2022. Extrajudicial killings, harassment, arbitrary detentions by men in camouflaged uniforms, beatings and disappearances continue to take place on a regular basis in Ukraine.  Most of the detentions and disappearances are often carried out by the Ukrainian Security service, (SBU), under a sweeping repression.

Few honest common sense voices barely register in the background of deafening lies and propaganda and that drives further Russians' disgust with the combined West. I cannot blame them, in fact--it is a normal reaction of any normal human. These are reactions which lead to consequences which neither Ben Hodges nor White House, nor CIA, can calculate--they simply have no instruments for that. That is why they do not have a grasp of what is happening here, in Russian villages and towns with Russian Army moving to the front lines. 

But then again, they do not know what real war is. Ben Hodges certainly doesn't.