Oh! Not Again!

Military "analysis" about why NATO already lost and finding reasons on the surface, instead of looking at what the US military ultimately is. 

The two and a half years of war since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have produced no decisive result. After thwarting Russia’s initial advances, Ukraine’s hopes of regaining all of its stolen territory by military force have stalled—despite a flood of Western aid. Since the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive in 2023—and after little movement along the frontlines over the past year—Russian forces have started to make incremental advances. In the spring of 2024, they consolidated moderate gains around Kharkiv—Ukraine’s second largest city—in what could be a preview of Moscow’s broader plans to go on a summer offensive. As the Russians moved forward quickly in May, Ukrainian defensive fieldworks in Kharkiv remained unbuilt or deficient amid allegations of corruption.¹ Confronted with far less Ukrainian progress than they’d hoped for, Washington has tended to blame itself rather than ask deeper questions. Many analysts see belated or insufficient military aid to Ukraine as the main cause of Moscow’s gains and Kyiv’s failures, regardless of the underlying facts. Ukraine, it is said, is losing not because of its own limitations or errors, but the irresolution of its backers. But faster or larger aid packages wouldn’t have made the decisive difference many presume, either then or now. Instead, Ukraine continues to falter on the battlefield for four main reasons: an endemic manpower shortage, an inability to generate offensive combat power, diminishing returns on a litany of supposed “game-changing” Western weapons, and poor tactics. More military aid will do little to fix any of these problems.

The issue is not just aid, of course, or lack of capacity of the combined West. This all is just one of many factors which contributed mightily to this clusterfuck of a war. The main factor is lack of any serious strategic intelligence (author of this piece should know--he is former CIA military analyst) and forecasting in Washington--always very weak, now--absent altogether, and, of course, lack of any experience in building effective military machine from the top--General Staff--down to the basic tactical sub-units. The US simply has no structure for that, nor does it have experience. One can pontificate on "the finest fighting force in history" whatever one wants, but...

Read my lips--the REAL combined arms war which propelled the United States in 1945 to the position of superpower happened on the Eastern Front, period. You either show the winning record or you don't. Want to try to change things? How about starting from studying the real history of WW II with proper relation of scales, scope and contributions. That's gonna be a good start--to study the history of two real finest fighting forces in history duking it out between themselves from 1941 through 1944 until it was over. That's what is called "showing the money". It also means learning REAL lessons on what it takes to fight a real war, which the US has about zero experience of fighting. Now these people lament:

It is now clear Ukraine cannot reclaim all of its occupied territory via military force. It lacks both the manpower and hardware necessary to generate new combat power or achieve an advantage in fires that will lead to sufficient offensive capacity. Russia is getting better at blunting the impact of Western weapons, and Ukraine’s poor tactics can’t simply be ignored forever. Because more aid alone is unable to rectify these problems, both Washington and Kyiv must now consider other avenues to end the war. Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence recently stated there is no pathway for Ukraine to win on the battlefield. If the best Kyiv can do—as Biden administration officials are now admitting—is to hold what it has, then Washington should press Kyiv to begin talks before Ukraine loses more territory. But even a shift to a defensive strategy aimed at demonstrating enough resilience to Moscow to force talks will be difficult to execute. The hope that Putin begrudgingly accepts that the frontlines are unlikely to move, thereby increasing Moscow’s willingness to negotiate, seems farfetched. As long as Russia has a 5:1 latent manpower advantage, it has time on its side.

I have news for these guys: it was clear from the first day of SMO not "now". The only issue was how Russia will approach escalation and the gradual involvement of NATO until it becomes clear that it is between combined West and Russia. Well, let me give you the date--April 12, 2022. Here is from my latest book. 

This date can be marked as the official start of the slip of the combined West, headed by the U.S., from its 500-year long supremacy toward a long descent into global obscurity. As with any large landslide, it starts initially with tremors and a few rocks rolling down the steep slope, but eventually the number of rocks increases dramatically, and it becomes a deafening stream of rocks, trees and dust until the whole slope yields and rushes down where once a peaceful and undisturbed foothill lay.

This was the date when clown Boris Johnson, on behalf of Biden Admin, sabotaged Istanbul talks and the REAL SMO has started. I know for a fact that General Staff fully anticipated NATO's involvement from the start and contingency planning has been done accordingly. Now, the combined West pays for its arrogance and delusions. And don't get me started on technological dimension of this all. Short of the transfer of nuclear weapons to 404 the US arsenal is nothing more than a collection of pieces not suited for the real war of the XXI century. As per talks--Russia's conditions are known, if Washington wants to talk it better rush, because this offer expires soon and the next one will be even more humiliating. Meanwhile Abrams tanks continue to be annihilated, this time it is GLONASS and laser-guided Krasnopol--a nasty-nasty SMART munition.

I am sure Russians sacrificed so many washing machines and dishwashers to get chips for all that. So, will the US military get a General Staff? Nope, profit margins for Raytheon are more important and to thrive it needs conflicts, there is one problem--this time they chose a wrong enemy... But then again, when was the last time the US fought the "right" one? Or as Cuba Gooding says--show me the money. In the end talking about strategy and practicing it successfully are two completely different sets of skills.