About White Noise, Again.

Larry is doing a superb job of breaking through the white noise and tactical minutiae constantly, now Saker did a good write up on all this tactical-operational BS. 

In Russian there is an expression “this is unpleasant/upsetting but not dangerous” (это обидно, но не опасно).  I think that this fully applies here: nobody in Russia is particularly happy about what is taking place (except maybe the Russian General Staff IF we assume that this is all a big trap the Russians deliberately created, and there is some evidence for that as the force concentrations prior to this attack were reported by numerous observers, so it was hardly a secret that the Ukronazis were about to attack somewhere in the northeast).  But we need to really keep aware of the proportions of what is happening: after six months of warfare, this is the first and only Ukrainian attack which shows some real capabilities, and it is all limited to a rather narrow corridor within the Russian tactical defenses only!  As I said, these are strong tactical attacks and clashes, but the size of them does not even amount to a real “battle” or “offensive”, at least not in the military sense of the word.

So, it is a tedious task to explain to laymen all intricacies of operations, real ones, and what comes in their planning. But I will add even more gravitas to this whole thing--strategy, a real one, not some BS "taught" in political science courses. 

Here is me yesterday trying to draw the larger scheme of things:

Defining this whole affair as a white noise created by tactical minutiae. The hardest thing in life is grasping this seemingly simple principle of the "in the grand scheme of things". What we are facing today is a complete remake of the world order and, effectively, a wrap-up of the 20th century with real victors coming back for their spoils. But describing this is a whole other matter and that is why I tell my publisher about the new book--not yet, not yet...