This morning I stumbled upon some paper from Major Amos Fox who was (is) a student at the School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, KS. This couldn't have come at more opportune moment, against the background of Ukrainian National Security Council (SNBO) big honcho (and war criminal) Alexandr Turchinov (aka Bloody Pastor) promising his troops to take Moscow (in Russian). So, the acquaintance with Maj. Fox's fairly fresh paper titled: Battle of Debal’tseve: the Conventional Line of Effort in Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine was a lucky coincidence. It also goes back to the very beginning of this very blog where the importance of OODA Loop and situational awareness were underscored in the series of posts.
My task here is not to review Fox's paper but stress, yet again, the importance of a solid grounding in reality when dealing with war, since as famous truism goes--one can not make correct decisions based on a wrong information, let alone lacking a solid knowledge. When one reviews today some US institutional reactions to the outside world--be it ad nauseam Russiagate conspiracy pushed relentlessly on unsuspecting public by corrupt US media and political establishment, or be it a virtual world of Wall Street economy--one can not fail to notice this disturbing, dangerous and continuous (in fact, accelerating) departure from the reality. I am not going to elaborate on that now, but with all my due sincere respect for the US Armed Forces, I was literally floored by what I started to read. Especially when Fox provides a rationale for the study of the Battle of Debaltsevo:
It is the most recent major battle of the Russo-Ukrainian War, where the significance is that the battle reflects the collective conventional lessons learned by the Russian army throughout the conflict.
It seems that people in the West continue to live in a bubble of a complete disinformation when it comes to the so called "Russo-Ukrainian War". If this kind of a confusion is permissible for a housewife watching CNN or NBC, the same exhibited by a military professional is, frankly, dangerous since the failure to understand the nature of the conflict (war) is the first and most important strategic blunder which usually leads to the loss of a war, which is bad enough, but what is worse--this confusion may lead to unleashing the war. Vietnam and Iraq come to mind immediately. While there is no doubt that Russian Army learns from the conflict in Ukraine and Russia does support Donbass Republics and their militaries, Russia is not and never was a warring side in the so called "Russo-Ukrainian War" which is a figment of imagination of the West' propaganda-pushers and globalist ideologues. Should Russia have been involved in the "Russo-Ukrainian War", Russia would have had by now a huge pain in the ass in form of most of Ukraine, which would require a huge flow of Russia's resources in order to keep this largely hostile and ungovernable territory under control--a perspective which is not in Russia's interests and Russia explicitly refused to pursue such an objective.
By now, it is an axiom, not even a theorem that US "intelligence" organizations are simply ignorant, despite their major resources dedicated to Ukraine and a constant flow of information from the ground. One also gets a better understanding of the dynamics of a civil war (and that is precisely what it is) in Ukraine once all propaganda trash is removed from serious political and military considerations behind combined West's instigation of a bloody coup in Kiev. While Fox makes some correct references within operational framework, he completely discards main Russia's reaction to the West's "plan" for Ukraine which was to use her as a ram against Russia. In this sense, Ukrainian civil war must be viewed within the framework of geopolitical clash between the United States (and her European vassals) and Russia--a reality, which many in US desperately try to hide despite overwhelming empirical evidence of US intelligence and other government organizations and personas being directly involved in the Ukrainian catastrophe. The war in Ukraine is not between Ukraine and Russia--this hypothetical war would last a week or two and would result in a complete annihilation of Ukrainian Armed Forces and a collapse of a Kiev regime. This war is, at least was, between US powerful neocon (globalist) lobby entrenched in American institutes of power, and blessed by then US President Barak Obama, and Russia. Viewing this war outside this framework does not provide a proper strategic angle and, in fact, obfuscates real objectives of the sides, including on the operational level.
But what about actual military part of Fox's paper? Here we immediately run into the myth of Gerasimov Doctrine and of hybrid warfare yet again.
Russia’s hybrid warfare is deftly articulated in what is known as the Gerasimov Doctrine. Pundits argue whether Gerasimov’s ideas encompass a new mental model of warfare or a new approach to warfare, but Russian action indicates the efficacy of the Gerasimov Doctrine in driving Russian operational art, planning and tactical action
I wrote a short piece on that "hybrid warfare" crap a year ago. I by no means fancy myself a military "thinker" or "theorist" but that is what I wrote:
I don't know how this idiotic term came about but whoever invented this label should have known better. The reason for my irritation is simple--all warfare is "hybrid" by definition and widely known in narrow military-analytical circles as Gerasimov Doctrine is nothing more than further development of, to a significant degree, Marxist view on the warfare. Warfare is more than just application of military power and is fought in many fields simultaneously. Yes, you know all those fields such as propaganda, operations of influence, strategic diversionary operations, info operations, famous Soviet "maskirovka", economic warfare and on, and on, and on.
An idiotic meme invented in the deep recesses of US military-entertainment complex. Charles Bartles, from the same Fort Leavenworth's Foreign Military Studies Office, gives a retort to this completely superficial "theory" and stressed:
In my piece on the so called "Gerasimov Doctrine" I listed a number of major wars, from earliest to latest times, which would otherwise be known not as Napoleonic Wars or WWII but as "hybrid wars". But it seems now that for many the understanding of a war as a combined effort across the whole spectrum of state's activities (military, intelligence, political, diplomatic, economic, ideological, cultural etc.) is beyond the reach. Why, then, such a desire for doctrine-mongering and creation of purely mental structures in the West when it comes to war? Some of Fox's sources used in his paper are dated by 2016, yet he still repeats yet another myth:
The Russian army, like many armies in recent years, eliminated divisions and aligned its expeditionary capability in its brigades and regiments.
The statement is false since evidently very few really paid attention to the fact of a massive roll back of Serdykov's "reforms" in Russian Armed Forces, which, among many things saw the return of thousands of forcefully "retired" Russian officers back to service and return of Russian Army to a division structure on the most threatening strategic axes (directions)--Western. Despite Fox constantly referring to Donbass Republics' military forces as "Russian Forces", despite being supported in some important respects, those forces emerged primarily as people militias in the time (mostly throughout 2014) when Russia's response to Ukrainian events was largely situationally driven. While there is no doubts that some Russian special forces and intelligence officers are on the ground, as well as there are so called "vacationers", it is impossible to close eyes to a massive flow of Russian volunteers to Donbass. Most Russian men served in the armed forces. There are NO regular Russian Army units in Donbass, however, despite constant, unfounded claims and pure propaganda BS being perpetuated as a fact in the West. Fact is, many in the West do not even understand the simple fact that Russia is not a party to Minsk Agreements. Yet, even from the vantage point of 2016, when it became fairly clear what forces (political, military and intelligence) were involved in Ukraine, the myth of "Russian Forces" being in Donbass continues to be used, courtesy of such organizations as ISW (Institute For The Study Of War) whose "analysis" involves such neocon "pearls" as this "report".
There is nothing wrong with Major Fox preparing his paper and it is not his fault that he has to draw from the pool of tailored "facts" or open fabrications. But that is what kills, in the end, the whole purpose of supposedly academic research into something which provided a major political and cultural shock to the US. So, after reviewing all facts on the ground, one has to ask the question, especially when one considers US monstrous military-political think-tankdom, well-financed and promoted--what would it take for this so called "analytical" machine to face the facts on the ground? How many more wars need US to lose before all this pseudo-academic environment, which generates an astounding amount of pseudo-analytical trash based on hearsay, suppositions, "faulty" intelligence and down right incompetence (such as "reports" of Ukrainian military, aka "strongest Army in Europe"), will admit simply that they are not good at what they do and long ago live in the world of delusions? I doubt they will, precisely because they suck and would rather lie to cover this up. But then again, if not for Russians Hillary Clinton would have been POTUS, right?
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