... and something else:
This "something else" is, thanks to Saker's Blog discussing it today, about the fact that they cannot do strategy inside the Beltway and I am talking top-bottom, Pentagon including, not to speak of think-tanks such as RAND. One can build a cottage industry based just on debunking RAND's BS and exposing their incompetence. Enter Foreign Affairs rag. These people have been very busy as of lately discussing things they have no clue about--e.g. United States doesn't have diplomacy in any operational sense, among many other things--related to SMO and Russia. Here is one such Exhibit:
What Russia Got Wrong. Can Moscow Learn From Its Failures in Ukraine?
As I stated, thank to Saker's blog I stumbled on this "jewel" of a "strategic (lack thereof) thought" from Dara Massicot who, if to believe a very limited info on her background, is:
DARA MASSICOT is a Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation.
Before joining RAND, she served as a senior analyst for Russian military
capabilities at the Department of Defense.
And here I have to immediately point out the issue I am dealing with for the last almost decade and a half, and that is that neither Pentagon nor the so called US "intel community" have any clue about Russian military capabilities because they don't have proper academic framework economically, militarily, historically and politically because of the scandalously low intellectual level of US "elites". Dara Massicot, considering the paucity of info on her, could have been a spook or simply yet another "product" of the US "strategic studies" degree mills for good ol' boys and girls, who in either case wouldn't last academically a semester in any serious military academy in Russia. Consider also aggravating factor of a Russia Study field in the US being a playground of academic frauds, primitive ideologies and all kinds of former Soviet citizenry selling themselves as "experts" while having no clue about the subject. E.g. former English Language teacher with not even DSP clearance in Russia/USSR "consulting" US on Russia's "strategic culture".
The record of shysters from USSR/Russia selling BS to rather uncultured US "elites" on Russia is long--from notorious Golitsyn who damaged CIA profoundly, to no less notorious Bezmenov who packaged well known open facts into "intel" and sold it to US media, to, of course, Solzhenitsyn with his fiction on just about anything to, already mentioned, "expert" in Russia's "strategic culture" Koffler. So, to expect that some gal from RAND, who wouldn't know the difference between the doctrine and strategy and how many parts the latter is subdivided into, and what it all means, is down right risible and Massicot doesn't disappoint with confirmation of what I wrote three books about and am writing fourth one--they cannot do strategy in Washington D.C. They also cannot fight the modern war and they do not understand, in the nation subverted by ethnic and religious lobbies, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, and Qatar with Ukraine, what national interest is and how it is formulated.
Massicot immediately goes for the jugular of a remaining credibility she might have had and states:
Why Russia did not prevail—why it was instead stopped in its tracks,
routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive—has become one of
the most important questions in both U.S. foreign policy and
international security more broadly. The answer has many components. The
excessive internal secrecy gave troops and commanders little time to
prepare, leading to heavy losses. Russia created an invasion plan that
was riddled with faulty assumptions, arbitrary political guidance, and
planning errors that departed from key Russian military principles.
Well, Massicot who, obviously, never attended any serious military institution and has zero serious military background, doesn't understand the process of serious strategic and operational planning by such institutions as Russian General Staff, and she never heard of a development of decision tree, which manifests itself in such thing as contingency planning. I will omit here the issue of Markov Processes and how they apply in modern operational and strategic planning, but Massicot, of course, parades her ignorance here by presenting her personal (that is serving only narrative) preferences as strategic wisdoms. They are not, this is the writing of the amateur who doesn't understand what Russia is and how she fights. Not to mention the fact, that she simply lies, especially about Russian losses or Russian intentions. It is natural for a "senior analyst of Russian military capabilities" from organization which loses all of its wars since Korea. She should simply go back to Washington Post's famed Afghanistan Papers and relearn how Pentagon "fights", primarily in media field.
But she doesn't stay there, she develops another thesis, which shows both a serious butthurt and lack of knowledge of Russian military culture:
Yet in January 2023, Surovikin was demoted in favor of General Valeriy
Gerasimov. Although the reasons for this command change are unclear,
palace intrigue and cronyism may be behind it rather than any specific
failure of Surovikin’s leadership. And no Russian commander has been
able to break Ukraine’s will to fight even though Russia continues to
launch missiles that inflict suffering on the Ukrainian people. But the
bombings and entrenchment may well degrade Ukraine’s capacity, making it
harder for the country to reclaim more of its land.
The reason she writes this sophomoric BS straight out of the Ukie propaganda, about Surovikin being "demoted", is because she doesn't understand what coordination is and why, the Red Army was using throughout WW II the "institute" of Representatives of STAVKA at the fronts, who, like Zhukov and Vasilevsky, at different times either coordinated or directly commanded several fronts (army groups). She, obviously, never heard about it, because she doesn't know that Russian General Staff IS the main organ of combat control (Главный Орган Боевого Управления) of ALL Russia's Armed Forces ranging from ground forces to strategic nuclear ones, to navy and the list goes on, and on, and on. The big honcho in all that is Valery Gerasimov, who, as a Chief of a General Staff, unlike Surovikin, who never was "demoted", has supervision of everything, and Russia is playing here for much more than Ukraine. But, evidently, this former Pentagon's and present RAND's "analyst" doesn't read what is openly available in Russian media and not a secret since the inception. Here is me from BEFORE February 24.
1. Q: Do Russians know who people in D.C. are?
A: Yes, they do, in fact, I think they know it better than people in D.C. themselves.
2. Q: Did Russia issue ultimatum to NATO in hope of a compromise?
You see? I warned. Nobody heeded, least of all all those Russia "experts" (most of them frauds) in the US. In the end, after reading this sophomoric BS from Massicot, she has to contend with the fact of the US military technology failing dismally in Ukraine, moreover, with the fact that the fields of strategic planning, strategic intelligence, TOE of the US Armed Forces, doctrine, strategic studies, national defense policy, procurement policy are a complete wasteland of academic and intellectual fraud which cannot hide anymore Western military impotence against serious military power, let alone military power such as Russia who exposed Western military impotence for the whole world to see. Massicot's sophomoric propaganda in the CFR's rag is one of the many signs of a systemic crisis of the combined West, who in desperate attempts to save the face, is also desperately trying to re-frame BS narrative, with some therapeutic BS added to the new one, by means of constructing the alternative reality. This is the only thing they are capable of doing.
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