... a real war. As one historian correctly noted--Rommel's myth was created by Churchill and Monty in order to embellish own achievements on the secondary theater of operations against rather average military commander, while colossal spectacle was happening on the Eastern Front with military leaders on both sides who would make Rommel nothing but the average corps commander who rode the wave of Hitler's propaganda when things started to go really sour for Wehrmacht in USSR. So, here is H.R. McMaster still not understanding what real war is and exposing his ignorance of REAL military history. He should have "modeled" himself after at least Erich von Manstein or Walter Model--those were real serious deals and commanded masses of troops Rommel could only dream about. But here it is--ignorant arrogance.
It is not accidental that on a number of occasions serious American historians absolutely trashed this amateurish copying of Wehrmacht by the US Army, while having practically no knowledge of the Red Army and circumstances of the Eastern Front described OBJECTIVELY.
So, you see--American officers can think properly in tactical and operational terms, but for some reason very precious few of them make it to the top. Indeed, empirical question remains--if they were so good why did they lose? Well, they don't teach it at West Point or US Army War College as the views of Macgregor or McMaster demonstrate. But the delusion from Kool Aid of the Gulf War and confabulated history of the US Army, which suffered from the Rommel's force at the Kasserine Pass, but in a larger scheme of things it was an insignificant event at the secondary theater of operations, continues. Well, they will not learn, as template thinking and losing in SMO has become a hallmark of Pentagon's "planning". They really do not learn. They cannot. In related news, sorry SOBs from VSU are pulverized near border.
P.S. One models oneself after winners, not losers. Just a hint.
... it is the fact, Colonel Davies, that Russia fights a combined West.
Otherwise, how can one explain the presence of hundreds of NATO tanks, APCs, Air Defense complexes, other weapon systems, war materiel and, not least, "advisers" on the side of VSU. Let's not muddy waters here, even WaPo is open about this now--the whole Goddamn thing was planned in Pentagon and by British military amateurs. Ukies have been merely awe-struck students who followed NATO "planning" and we can see the result of it now. I know it hurts, but Pentagon doesn't do real strategy or real serious operational planning against REAL armies or superpowers--they don't teach it in the US. US simply has no experience with fighting wars of such scale to any favorable outcome. "Brilliant" campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam are a testament to this inability. The system for such wars is simply not there, it never was. One cannot change the military "genetics" of primarily a naval power, which never fought anything but expeditionary warfare.
But now acrimony starts, as does whitewashing of Pentagon's incompetence, because it is a combined West, not 404, which has been militarily and economically defeated in what used to be Ukraine. NATO weapon systems' manifest failures as inadequate for modern battlefield, as well as tactics, which, in the end, VSU simply discarded in favor of good ol' Soviet/Russian Combat Manuals, is a testimony to a systemic failure of the NATO views on war. Litmus test is there--Army which venerates Patton as a great general has issues with real military history and warfare. Repeating beaten to death military cliches and living a sheer fantasy which passes in Pentagon for "military science" is not a substitute for real wars' experience and ability to execute operations based on realities, not PR BS. US exposed its hollow military power to the world and that is why this acrimony starts--it is over for bullying and self-proclaimed hegemon and many are hurt and bitterly angry because of that.
But Kubler-Ross for the combined West is now in transition from bargaining to depression, the acceptance is ahead. And no amount of words, the palliative verbiage can change the reality of a catastrophic defeat of not just US best ever proxy, but a complete collapse of the edifice of favorite myth of the "finest fighting force in history", it is not and, frankly, never was. It hurts, I know, but let's hope that in the long run it will lead to a serious reassessment of the US military-economic capability, which will be brought to the levels of America's real military needs, not the bloated and incompetent military-political bureaucracy and hollow force. I have a hint: how about reassessing own role in the world--that could be a good start.
... inability to plan operationally and strategically on the part of Washington in general and Pentagon in particular, I do not mean it as a figure of speech. I really mean it in terms of actual planning. Six years ago I called the lack of this ability "the myopia".
The definition must be changed. With myopia one at least can see near oneself. This IS NOT the case with Washington--it cannot see what is immediately in a front of its eyes and the issue is not myopia but what some people, yours truly included, begin to increasingly assertively state--there is NO strategic planning in Washington at all. It is not just the inability to strategically plan, it is a complete absence of such in principle.
It is a systemic problem and it cannot be addressed without rebuilding the system from the ground up and the good first step would be throwing out all those Ph.Ds in "strategy" who infest US "academe" and think-tankdom while having no fucking clue about what they preach. Studying military and political history in and of itself does not represent "strategic studies" due to inherently complex nature of modern warfare and a required accuracy in description of the object of study, such as a country, in our particular case--Russia. The US in general, and combined West in particular, DO NOT have the tool kit to handle all that, we can say it now with confidence. So, the issue is multifaceted and pseudo-academe and "experts" who dominate decision-making chain in the US are incapable of correcting the course. It is too late now anyway.
And that is my point, the US is so deep in lies, about itself, about the world, about history, about military et al, that I don't see how can one reasonably debate those people, those masters of discourse who pretend that learning several stratagems and abstract "strategic" constructs makes them masters of "strategy". As was stated numerous times--enough to look at the version of WW II by those "masters" to understand how hollow and ignorant they are. E.g. Mearsheimer's quip about liberal democracy "defeating Nazism" while quoting Fukuyama. So, I can sit here and produce one example after another for days, but that's not the point. The point is--US "strategic planning" is non-existent category and anyone who pushes the idea that it exists today should be disqualified as a scholar, since doctrine and strategy-mongering is not strategic planning, especially when done by people who are lost in the complexities of the modern world.
The existence of people here and there who do understand this fallacy does not change the issue that the problem is systemic and cannot be addressed from within--the critical mass of thinkers with integrity and intellectual tool kit are simply not there. And even the US military is losing remaining ability extremely fast--not surprising considering a catastrophe in military education. And here we are today:
How do you even deal with that? I don't know yet. But I was warning about this for many years. Once this whole myth is exposed, as it was in 404, where do you go from here, when the whole house of cards is built on lies. How can you talk to any Ph.D in "international affairs" or in "strategy" when most of them do not know basic facts of history and have zero military professional apparatus to pass judgement on the foundation of geopolitics which is not geography but balance of power? I don't know, I just know that they cannot hide anymore the scale of a catastrophe. Ideas?
Yesterday, Larry demolished what passes in the US for main stream "journalism" by exposing utter BS they publish about Ukraine and SMO, specifically NYT and WaPo.
Read the whole thing at Larry's excellent blog. But Bernhard of MoA didn't just read Larry's piece, he, in typical methodical Bernhard's manner, expanded and provided some additional insights. As Bernhard states:
Exactly, and Bernhard lists those "sources" and then concludes:
What is terrifying about such pieces is that 'officials' in Washington
and Europe are actually reading such stuff and come to believe in it.
They are consuming the myths they themselves produce and then act on
them. They thereby ignore history, basic facts and the very real life of
the people who become casualties of their wars.
Exactly! Somebody, a few years ago, complained that Louis C.K., the comic, was doing his Russian "routine", laughing at Russia he visited in 1990s. In 2015-16 he still thought that it was the same Russia, he never even bothered to visit Russia in 2016 and he still thought about this grim crime-ridden miserable place he saw in 1990s. This is the problem for the US, including also the problem that overwhelming majority of the US decision-makers are civilians with humanities degrees who never served a day in the uniform and who have huge difficulties with grasping even basic physics and mathematics principles behind modern warfare and as a result they tend to rely on absolutely the same ignoramuses from US media, who are in the business of spreading BS.
Sadly, even professionals, who should know better sometime don't know better. I was bombarded in the comments sections to my videos with questions like: but Prof. Postol says that Russian Early Warning System sucks compared to the American one.(c) After that even Douglas MacGregor repeats that, despite obviously missing the caveat by the same Prof. Postol that he was basing his opinion on late 1990s-early 2000s data. It has been more than 20 years since then. Remember? I had to write a separate post about this horrendous misperception.
What is horrible here is the fact that many still do not grasp a fundamental difference between Russian and US ABM systems--Russian ABM system at this stage already is capable to mitigate a nuclear attack on Russia by fielding (no, not planning but actually deploying) systems with a full blown intercontinental anti-ballistic capability such as S-500, S-550, A-235 Nudol. These are capabilities the US simply doesn't have. Importantly, one needs a system of BMEWS radar with accuracy characteristics such as Voronezh to not just detect but provide accurate targeting for ABM systems. Look at the comparative characteristics of Russian and US BMEWS radar. Especially their accuracy in targeting. Guess from three times who gets better probabilities for a hard-kill (kinetic, meaning physically slamming into nuclear warhead) of the incoming MIRVs. Right.
And this is just one example out of very many. Now to today's news, which reminds me the news from 1944 and Patton's (yes, yes, this "genius for war") Lorraine Campaign.
Translation:“Due to heavy losses, the Zelensky regime is taking measures to replenish the shortfall in the personnel of Ukrainian formations in the combat zone in Donbass.Thus, a decision was made to send mobilized citizens to the front line ahead of schedule, who began training at the training center of the 72nd mechanized brigade in the city of Belaya Tserkov, Kyiv region.Together with them, the wounded who were in hospitals are also sent, without waiting for them to complete the full course of rehabilitation after injuries."
You get the picture. Once one starts drafting 65 year olds, it is everything one needs to know about the state of the affairs on the front. For references see again the Patton's Lorraine Campaign. I will also be talking about what modern ISR complex is, including this Western and fanboys' fetish of UAVs and how modern (I stress again--modern) ISR complex is way more (much-much more) than mere UAVs.
Yes, yes, can you imagine--those backward Rooskies can launch not just satellites, but launch them when they want and however they want, not to mention the fact that those satellites nowadays are built around Russian-made microelectronics. Here, Russians are getting ready to start launching Sfera-program satellites (Skif series) for a high speed internet for Russia. And, naturally, all Western components were fast replaced by Russian-made ones (in Russian). Louis C.K. I am calling on you, granted that nowadays West made traveling to Russia extremely difficult, just get visa and go visit Russia today and see the difference between 1990s and 2022--you know, will be good for your stand up routine and your OODA loop.
Daniel Larison asks a question, a good one: about Kissinger's mythology. He asks the question based on Thomas Meany's (oh, he is so meany to good ol' Henry, couldn't contain myself;)) piece in New Yorker titled The Myth Of Henry Kissinger. Larison posits:
My main point is this: hey, guys, aren't you a bit too late to the party? I, personally, heard enough about Washington consensus, but apart from praises heaped on Kissinger by Washington and some in squarely pro-American camp elsewhere, I, as an example, since childhood, which fell on Vietnam War, heard nothing positive about the guy, which could have been explained by USSR support for Vietnam. Later, however, I came to appreciate all hollowness of his reputation as a "geopolitical thinker" or "maitre of global diplomacy" when started delving a bit deeper into the history of the American geopolitical mindset--there was nothing to admire not just on humanitarian grounds, but on academic ones too, about Kissinger. In fact, bar some things which qualify as war crimes, Kissinger's views are down right numbingly boring in their mediocrity and predictability. The history of the US "diplomacy" and geopolitical thinking in the last 30 years is one of a shoddy scholarship, perpetual delusion and demagoguery rooted deeply in the platitudes and cliches which by now became memes and a butt of jokes around the globe. Kissinger was the one who helped to forge this pitiful state of the US "foreign (lack of) policy" and present, with the assistance of many willing helpers, self-evident truths as insights worthy of a true statesmen. Insights they were not and America's obvious decline and geopolitical retreat, denied by some against the body of overwhelming empirical evidence, was in many ways predetermined by Kissinger's views of the world, which were and are, politely speaking, are those of a slick top government bureaucrat, pretending to be a scholar and a real statesman, while not being genuine article at all. We all know what this "scholarship" is. Enough to recall Kissinger's recent meandering pathos-ridden pseudo-historical piece in the Wall Street Journalwhere he waxes "geopolitical" and confirms the lack of proper intellectual rigor in modern US political class, obvious to everybody but the US political class itself.
Larison, however, while counter positioning (to Kissinger) praising George F. Kennan for his views regarding War in Vietnam, forgets that, be as it might, thinkers and scholars are not always defined by their careers. After all, Kissinger had a brilliant career when defined within the beltway framework where competence, principles and integrity play second, if not the third, fiddle to self-promotion and exposure in the media. Especially so in the modern US where self-aggrandizing is a pastime on the same level as baseball. Kennan might have been right on Vietnam, and later he lamented his famous Long Telegram but still, in his wonderful memoirs offered some prescriptions for the world which he would have never offered should he be alive today. For starters, Kennan, being a diplomat and, surprise-surprise, Russian speaker failed to grasp (later, in 1980s he will fail it again) the impact warfare had and continues to have on Russia.
Mind you, this was written in February 1946, 9 months after the end of war in Europe and 5 months after the end of WW II as a whole. The phrase about "learning the truth" reads especially comical today when Russia is on order of magnitude freer country than any one in Europe and we live with the consequences of a destruction of American political institutions which used to be commonly known as democracy, not to mention chaos, destruction and murder unleashed by NATO and its main sponsor, USA, on the world. This was written after yet another historic Russia's "direct contact" with the West, which, as was the case with yet another "contact" in 1854-56, 1812, and before that in 1618, and prior to this in 1242, among many others, resulted not only with the West "contacting" Russia, for some reason, again, on her territory, but in a genocide of Slavic and other people of Russia on a historic scale, resulting in 27 million people killed and most of the historic Russia literally wiped off the face of the earth. By any metric being a bit "neurotic" not only in Kremlin but on the level of the whole population of the historic Russia was more than reasonable. As history demonstrated so vividly up to this present moment--Russia's "sense of insecurity" was and is not only inevitable but highly warranted. Sadly, Kennan, being a man of, primarily, letters and law and having a rather idealistic, and in many respects "aristocratic", that is highly misguided, view of primarily pre-revolutionary Russia, couldn't grasp then the true scale of the events of the WWII and how it related not only to Russia, but to the Western world in general, and the US in particular.
Later, in his memoirs, while giving a recognition to the WW II, he would still stick to the narrative of a grotesqueness of a Stalin's "regime" and some alleged impact it had on Russians (that is why he is voted the most important Russia's statesman, I guess), implying, indeed, grotesque, Solzhenitsified figures of political repressions, debunked today by competent and honest historians both in Russia and in the West, not to mention by opening of the archives and by Russian people themselves. Yet, as idealistic and in many respects a well-wishing (prekrasnodushnyi) man Kennan was, he left one important realist legacy, which despite his role, even if unwitting, in unleashing a Cold War on false premises, he stated this, and that was a statement by a man of principles:
Little did Kennan know, that from the vantage point of 2020, his views of Russia and Russians, free to "directly contact" the West any time they want, could be a subject of scorn by overwhelming majority of these very same Russians who, justifiably, view the United States as a military aggressor doing over and over again what Kennan stood against in 1960s--the war. Thus, any references today to Western "democracies", while setting Kennan as a person on a much higher level than Kissinger, hardly make a better case for him being properly qualified to pass a judgement. In the end, as I repeat like a parrot--the problem is systemic and endemic in the American post-WW II exceptionalism exercised even by those who refer to themselves as realists (however meaningless this term is) and who still are trying to find a political and moral rationale where there never was any but greed, lust for power and gross overestimation of own power and significance. American modern elites are simply not good, no matter which opposites they praise in their pursuit of a chimera.
Dillon yesterday (thank you) dropped the link to Henry Kissinger's article in Wall Street Journalwhere Kissinger waxes geopolitical. For some reason Kissinger has reputation in US as a geopolitical thinker of scale, but then again Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinski also have the same reputation, which, in its turn, is an affront to the term "reputation", not to speak of the modern geopolitics as a combination of a broad spectrum of knowledge ranging from history, economics, international relations, geography, military, industry, technological development and some other funny things like theory of probability and other strictly math-physics related issues. We, of course, can all remember, among his achievements, his brilliant idea of "opening China" which resulted in the long run in stripping the US of its industrial might. In general, long term thinking is not a strong point among American geopolitical "thinkers" and Kissinger is an exhibit A of such a trait. Yet, good ol' 96 year old Henry, in his WSJ's piece on Covid-19 arrives to a funny conclusion:
The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment
values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause
the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and
internationally.
After I stopped laughing, I formulated a question: what ARE those Enlightenment values as Kissinger understands them? Last time I checked the main Enlightenment "value" which made combined West great was a rational thought. Everything else follows from it, including such a simulacra as man's freedom (whatever freedom is in each given historic age). The rest is up for never-ending philosophical debate on what those "values" truly are. And here is the problem--modern West lost its ability to think and act rationally long time ago. In fact, Kissinger should know this very well--he was and still is in the midst of the decision making kitchen in the West which begins to increasingly look and feel like a psychiatric ward populated with people very many of who suffer from acute cases of sociopathic decease, while some are down right open psychopaths incapable of rational thought and even basic reasoning in principle. If Kissinger thinks that figures of Merkel, W, Obama, Mike Pompeo or Trump are representative of "Enlightenment values" then we certainly think about very different "values".
But the next Kissinger's statement is altogether a wowser:
Third, safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.
My question is: did Kissinger actually study the history of "liberalism" and what it did both to the combined West and the world as a whole? This is what I wrote a year ago in my latest book:
Liberalism, in its different contemporary manifestations, such as globalist capitalism, also known as globalization, has a “stellar” record of using threats as a primary tool in international relations. Globalism is aggressive for a number of reasons ranging from purely economic interests to convictions of cultural superiority. These form a ballast for what goes on to become military aggression, easily resorted to because of the often complete inability to understand the practice (what really happens during warfare) and the consequences of the application of military power (what really happens as a result of that trauma and destruction) and accordingly an appreciation of how to achieve a global military balance precluding war.... There is no good life without peace and liberalism is not capable of defining that as a key component of a good life, due to liberalism and its scholarship living in a complete delusion about the predatory intentions driving its own economic and military (often grossly exaggerated) capability.
But forget about me, I wrote it in the times when the going was good and it seemed that everything will be fine. Well, it wasn't fine then already, in fact--it never was. And then, the man of a scale much larger than Kissinger ever was, and a geopolitical thinker orders of magnitude larger than him, stated:
So, Kissinger, using fuzzy platitudes doesn't want liberalism, or whatever passes today under this stupid term, as such to be preserved, he wants, behind this psychobabble of "geopolitical" doctrine-mongering, to preserve the world in which the United States is the only one force which sets up the rules. But this is this main issue with most American "geopolitical thinkers", Kissinger included--they still live in those halcyon days of America's self-proclaimed "exceptionalism" of early 1990s and they don't have required cognitive instruments to recognize the scale of the geopolitical balance's shift which happened since 2007. The world became much more complex and weapons evolved to the point of being unstoppable--a little fact they don't teach in political "science" courses.
What will evolve in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and America's steady departure, due to both ideological and economic bankruptcy, from its self-anointed status of hegemon is a topic for a separate discussion, which will require non-stop application of the main Enlightenment Value of a rational thought and competent reasoning--the value long ago lost in deep dark recesses of the liberalism's mythology as an answer to humanity's real challenges in the XXI Century. The answer it is not and the emerging new world order may yet answer this challenge by creating a more just and more peaceful world, that task the combined West ultimately failed at.
It occurred to me that some explanations regarding US Treasuries and main holders of those financial "instruments" must be explored in a separate addendum. This will help understand the dynamics of Russian-American relations. The main question is WHY buy US treasuries or US Treasury Bonds? Let's give those a clear definition from financial "wizards" from Fidelity.
So, as you can see, the United States treasury sells US debt to, actually, finance US economy. Foreign entities buy this debt because they think they can earn low yield but reliable buck on those. Buying US treasuries is also a good indicator of trust, or otherwise, in US not only economically, but even more so geopolitically. I repeat ad nauseam that Pax Americana's financial pyramid rests primarily with American military power mythology, not with US real economy. US real economy cannot generate enough growth to even scratch the surface of US debt obligations. Prior to roughly 2014 foreign governments' buying of US treasuries was based on US economic data which was, to put it mildly, not exactly connected to the reality and risk expectations were allayed primarily by the ideas that the United States, having enough military wherewithal, would be able to coerce a whole host of countries to "offer" their resources to the United States, thus providing enough fuel for continuation of the racket for a little bit longer. Then something got broken. Exactly around 2014.
The US military "primacy" was called into a serious question. You all know what happened then. Then there was 2015, and then March of 2018, and on and on, and on. The only country in the world who can both wipe the United States off the map and defeat in conventionally in Europe simply stated that she doesn't really give a shit. Recall this:
Pay attention to the date of this report: 18 July 2018. About 100 days after Putin's address to Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018. The dates are not accidental. As anyone can see, US treasuries are a bit more than just financial instruments (any government issues those) but they have more sacral meaning as world's admission, and a sign of belonging, to what was considered the global elite club based in Washington D.C. Now take a look at this graph:
Can you find Russia in it? Don't even try. Russia is not going to be financing the economy of a country which declared Russia an absolute evil. You just don't help people who viscerally hate and ready to kill you. So, as reputable Vesti reports (in Russian), Russia's "investment" in the US treasuries on December 2019 was exactly $9.974 Billion. In other words, Russia has 7 times fewer US treasuries than Bermuda, and 25 times less than mighty Luxembourg. You see, at issue here is what drives the American "elites" completely mad and desperate. Here is simple answer, unlike even China, not to speak of occupied Japan, Russia has an official receipt of being fully sovereign country. Even economically mighty China cannot have as much freedom as Russia does in China's economically symbiotic relations with the United States.
Russia does have those freedoms not just because she has one of the most, if not THE MOST, undervalued economy in the world--a courtesy of swindlers from all kinds of Western ratings and economic "analysis" institutions--but because this grossly undervalued economy produces weapons which allow Russia to insulate herself from any kind of blackmail and be her own thing. One of those major things is Russia's refusal to get US financial "debt" as a sign of submission to the rules of self-proclaimed hegemon. Moreover, Russia, considering her global status, is leading the way in dumping US treasuries, and that is a deadly threat to existing regime in the West. As many observers within the Empire are noting, something really strange is happening to the symbol of the financial reign by the United States:
American banks (very large holders),
hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and other institutions along
with individual investors in their brokerage accounts or at their
accounts with the US Treasury were huge net buyers, while nearly everyone else was selling, increasing their holdings by $1.36 trillion
over the 12-month period. These American entities combined owned the
remainder of the US gross national debt, $7.5 trillion, or 34.4% of the
total!
The United States literally turns itself into the self-licking ice-cream cone and, eventually, she will lick herself into the empty cone, with no ice-cream left. Moreover, the United States has been denied her post WW II myth of military omnipotence thus showing very clear signs of weakness, like recent events with Iran, which indicate to many foreign US treasuries' holders that at some point of time they may submit those obligations for cashing without serious consequences for themselves and that is the big game and plan for them--big players, such as China, already doing this, however slowly (but then again, China holds more than a trillion worth of US treasuries) and the whole thing is already in progress and pass the point of no return.
American "elites" know who drives this process--Russia. And China. And desperation shows:
Mark Esper and many people in Pentagon are not stupid, they can calculate and do operational planning, they know that the US military today is capable to fight only third world militaries, and even there success is not guaranteed. And yes, in Esper's definition of Russia "not willing to be a responsible international actor" is correct, precisely because she knows what kind of rogue state she is dealing with and that is why she was in a separation mode non-stop since 2014. But Russia is still in business with the US, as she should be, because Russians finally learned a good ol' capitalist truism--money doesn't smell, only business--nothing personal. Only hard cold cash--no treasuries. What a funny world we all live in.
