Developing Stavridis' Thesis.

Was Admiral Stavridis a good naval officer? Undeniably so, the guy commanded in his life Arleigh Brurke-class DDG, Carrier Battle Group, he graduated with distinction from USNA in Annapolis as a Surface Warfare officer. Stellar career, especially in 1990s and early 2000s in what then was undeniably the most powerful Navy in the world. But speaking about this one must understand that for all big talk about US Navy's carriers in the dressed down form even CBG is an operational level force. It can certainly have a strategic effect but only in the framework of warfare of 1950s and even then only as--a rationale that have spared carrier force after the WW II--reserve (second) nuclear strike platforms. Like broken DNA which doesn't betray itself in a small child and a young human and then manifests itself at the adult phase with vengeance by a host of diseases, some of them deadly, the US Navy has sown the seeds of its strategic and operational degeneration in the post-WW II period, including operating in the uncontested waters off Korea, Vietnam, Middle East and Yemen ... ooops! About that Houthi thing. 

Stavridis is the product of this tactical and to a degree operational thinking, unlike it is the case with Patton and other US generals, which is based on a pardonable pride--US Navy was the best Navy in the world since 1930s well into the 2010s. But that is not about that, it is about becoming Top Brass in the US and especially for ANY US officer moving in the higher operational and strategic positions, such as was the case with Stavridis who first became the Commander of the US Southern Command (first Admiral to do so) and then--SACEUR. Here lies the problem for Stavridis or any other US Admiral--they cannot command effectively any Command, let alone be Supreme Commanders of such thing as Europe because they are no good, the reason they are no good is because the US has no good generals, who are specifically educated (how--is a separate issue) to command what the US military tries to produce and fails constantly, and will continue to fail--a joint force. This problem is conditioned by such factors as:

1. Overall low level of military education in the US across the board and lack of any serious strategic grasp of the realities of modern warfare. Stavridis is not an exception--he is a product of American military mythology and tactical and operational views from 1990s. 

2. The US as a whole didn't fight (forget about winning) any REAL continental war since Korea. Instead of learning lessons, the US continued on with rewriting military history and losing the arms race due to an extremely low level of strategic foresight and lack of knowledge of, say, Russia. For any US officer to grasp Russian military culture and history is often an impossible task because it creates a serious cognitive dissonance. 

3. Stavridis, who left the service in 2013 does not understand that he has to take a look at a "performance" of NATO navies near Yemen and he must reevaluate everything he knows about bombing the shit out of defenseless people from the third world and that technology and operations since 2013 changed so dramatically, that the world he used to know is no more. His tactical and operational views are obsolete, as is the Navy (with the exception of its still superb submarine force) which made him an admiral, and that everything he knew about combined operations as a SACEUR--is crap. 

The US "elite" doesn't know what Strategy is--how developing and marrying one's resources to a political objectives of war happens. They don't teach this in the US military and diplomatic schools, they simply don't know. Modern American "strategist" from Pentagon or RAND will be able to quote many one-liners from Clausewitz and wax intellectual and historical, while in reality knowing basically nothing about REAL history of WW II, about how Soviet Union defeated Axis, they don't know what REAL procurement and what is based on is, why the Soviet Union collapsed et al. That's strategy, and they suck at it. As Stavridis' latest statement shows he knows nothing not only about strategy--a normal state of the US top brass--but he doesn't understand even tactical and operational realities of Russia. He simply doesn't. Or if he does, then, well, too fucking bad--US will lose conventional war against Russia, including on the high seas (God forbid) very fast, the US will escalate to a nuclear threshold immediately because it is WEAK conventionally and lost the arms race a decade ago. But he is free to teach BS about two things the US has no idea about and lost all skills--international relations and diplomacy. This is what Stavridis presides over in Fletcher's School of Law and Diplomacy. Was he a good officer in the US Navy? Absolutely! He knows everything about Alpha-strikes ... 

Here are Krasnoyarsk and Omsk launching P-700 Granit and P-800 Oniks yesterday. 

I bet Stavridis knows everything about that ... Nah, I am screwing with you.