When M.K. Bhadrakumar Forgot A Small Detail. Dmitry Orlov on NATO.

He wrote an excellent, insightful post on the issue of Germany and her aspirations. He makes an astute observation:

The hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon axis is pivotal to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is only partly true. Germany is actually Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier, after the United States. Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a new arms package worth 700 million euros, including additional tanks, munitions and Patriot air defence systems at the Nato summit in Vilnius, putting Berlin, as he said, at the very forefront of military support for Ukraine.  German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius stressed, “By doing this, we’re making a significant contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s staying power.” However, the pantomime playing out may have multiple motives. Fundamentally, Germany’s motivation is traceable to the crushing defeat by the Red Army and has little to do with Ukraine as such. The Ukraine crisis has provided the context for accelerating Germany’s militarisation. Meanwhile, revanchist feelings are rearing their head and there is a “bipartisan consensus” between Germany’s leading centrist parties — CDU, SPD and Green Party — in this regard.

Bingo! After that he elaborates on the territorial issue--the ever-present Europe's malaise and precedes it with this guy's statement:

In an interview in the weekend, the CDU’s leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, the Nato should consider to “cut off Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.” Berlin is still smarting under the surrender of the ancient Prussian city of Königsberg in April 1945. ... Evidently, Kiesewetter’s remarks show that nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after 8  decades. Thus, Germany is the Biden Administration’s closest ally in the war against Russia.

And here is this forgotten detail: Russians also have a very good memory, in fact it is better than that of Germany, enough to take a look at May 9 celebrations across Russia, and are keenly aware of Germany's wet dreams to "return" Kaliningrad, and follow Germany's militarization very attentively. Because of that, any Germany's attempts to instigate "cutting off" Kaliningrad will result in Germany ceasing to exist as a nation. Unlike Bundeswehr, which has been reduced to a toy force, Russian Armed Forces have all, and the best, tools at their disposal to finish German militarism once and for all. Which brings us to an excellent piece by Dmitry Orlov about NATO, where he explains WHY Zelensky was treated at NATO summit as an outcast and why Pentagon is very unhappy. 

Dmitry arrives to the same conclusion as I do in terms of NATO weapons' "performance". 

So, what did the Ukrainians do to raise the ire of the Pentagon so suddenly, and as a direct consequence, fall into disfavor with NATO? In short, the Ukrainians demonstrated that NATO's weapons are crap. Evidence of this built up slowly over time. First, it turned out that various bits of US-made shoulder-fired junk — anti-aircraft Stingers, anti-tank Javelins, etc — are rather worse than useless in modern combat. Next, it turned out that the M777 howitzer and the HIMARS rocket complex are rather fragile and aren't field-maintainable. The next wonder-weapon thrown at the Ukrainian problem was the Patriot missile battery. It was deployed near Kiev and the Russians quickly made a joke of it. They attacked it with their super-cheap Geranium 5 "flying moped" drones, causing it to turn on its active radar, thereby unmasking its position, and then fire off its entire load of rockets — a million dollars' worth! — after which point it just sat there, unmasked and defenseless, and was taken out by a single Russian precision rocket strike.This was sure to have seriously pissed off US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, whose major personal cash cow happens to be Raytheon, the maker of the Patriot. Yes, the Patriot proved useless using the First Gulf War, where it failed to protect Israel against ancient Iraqi Scud missiles; and it proved useless later on when it failed to protect Saudi oil installation against ancient Yemeni Scud missiles... but you aren't supposed to advertise that fact. And now this!

 

And to top it all off, the German-donated Leopard 2 tanks and the US-donated Bradley infantry vehicles, not to mention the silly French wheeled non-tanks, performed absolutely miserably during the recent Ukrainian efforts to approach, never mind penetrate, Russia's first line of defense. Rubbing salt into the wounds, Putin remarked off-the-cuff that Western armor burns rather more easily than the old Soviet-made stuff.

Exactly. Just to demonstrate what even latest Leopard-2 tanks are, find (easy to do) the photos of one or two Leopards with their turrets' armor snapping apart just from... the explosion of 152-mm shell nearby. It is downright breathtaking. Ah, this vaunted German quality and engineering. Do you want to ride into the battle in such a dud? Do you think latest Abrams will do better? Or can you imagine the impact of the burning Challengers on the fragile British public's mental state? There you go. Dmitry is absolutely correct: NATO weapons were supposed to be super-pooper, as even some fanboys on this blog's discussion boards try to profess, but poor poor dears--they still cannot grasp this simple truth that I stated a few years back: 

The partial answer to some of these rather dismal failures of American military technology is that those weapons never had to be realistically effective since they were never used in actual defense of the United States. Russian military technology was honed in non-stop fighting against external enemies, including those such as Napoleon or Hitler, who, at the time, occupied leading military technological and operational positions in the world. In the Russian view, the weapon must work since the nation’s survival depends on it and that is what dominates Russian military-technological thought. Effectiveness, cost/effectiveness ratios and reliability were and remain defining characteristics of Russian weapons. Surely, Russians have managed to produce their own share of questionable weapons or pursue questionable technologies, but Russian military history is too violent to allow commercial and profit considerations to eclipse what mattered and matters the most—the weapon must reliably kill. 

And do not even start me on the issue of Field (Combat) Manuals and fighting doctrines. Read Dmitry's excellent piece in full and especially his deciphering of NATO post-summit communique. This is your Weekend primer.