People Complained About MoA Link...

 ... Guys, this is not me, this is Disqus algorithm which removes some posts with links to Spam folder. Here is the link to Bernhard's excellent piece at his blog MoA. 

When I was in officer school, pre-1991, NATO was less dependent on air-superiority than it is today. We also had some good air defense systems. Our artillery was not superior to the Soviet one but was well layered - from short, medium to long ranged systems - and would have created very significant damages. We also had good pioneer equipment that allowed for the crossing rivers and ditches as well as serious mine fields. All this changed after the 1991 Gulf war in which U.S. air superiority and tank fist destroyed the Iraqi defense forces. That war was misconstrued as a big win when it in fact was simply the effect of a by far superior professional force over a unmotivated conscript army with old and often defunct weapons.

As an effect of the first Gulf war and later operations in Serbia, Afghanistan and again in Iraq the believe in NATO air-land doctrine was reinforced. Air superiority was the holy grail while the strong land force capabilities atrophied. An emphasis on guerilla suppression and on vehicles that could withstand simple improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan further unbalanced the force. It explains why the Ukrainian troops were miss-trained and miss-equipped for a counter-offensive even when the opposing force was a much harder to crack one than some goat herders from Helmand, Afghanistan.

Absolutely correct! And this doctrine could have emerged only through the operational and technological wishful thinking and self-erected mythology. Again, the Army that worships Patton as "genius" tank commander is bound to be defeated, because it doesn't study the REAL WWII history, and has some issues with basic arithmetic, forget about operational calculus. Read the whole thing at MoA. 

Bernhard About VSU Losses.

He refutes obvious BS from Financial Times:

I follow and like Adam Tooze. His Chartbooks have always good materials. This recent one on the Silicon Valley Bank crash is also fine. But I was somewhat disturbed by a recent tweet of his:

Adam Tooze @adam_tooze - 20:11 UTC · Mar 9, 2023

"Some experts worry Ukraine may be expending high-quality troops and equipment to kill mere Russian prison recruits as “cannon fodder”." Wow the language around the attritional battle at Bakhmut is getting grotesque! 7:1 ratio not good enough for you?

Link: ft.com Military briefing: Ukraine’s battle of diminishing returns for Bakhmut

Was that satire?

Moon of Alabama @MoonofA - 20:14 UTC Mar 9, 2023
Replying to @adam_tooze

7:1 to whose advantage?

He did not respond. But no, it was not satire. The linked Financial Times piece, reprinted in the Irish Times, actually quotes the Ukrainian national security chief Oleksiy Danilov as saying that the kill ratio was one to seven in Ukraine's favor.

I want to reiterate my position here: ANY, I underscore, ANY Western MSM ranging from BBC and Financial Times to WSJ, NYT and MSNBC is a propaganda outlet tasked with disseminating lies and fake "facts". Most people who work there, they are either psychopaths, or down right evil. Few ones who still retain some redeeming human qualities, work there after making the deal with own consciousness out of pure material (mortgage, car payments, life style) or even fear (family, own well-being etc.), or lack of any useful professional skills reasons. They are also slaves of the circumstances and only very few of them have enough integrity to challenge the lies, including by means of declaring that "I am not going to do this shit anymore". 

So, Bernhard counters this BS with a purely professional approach (I would have done the same):

When I was in officer school the number estimated for a big war in Europe was 75% of casualties due to artillery and aerial bombing.

Data from the European Commission, quoted by El Pais, says that Russia has a 10:1 advantage in artillery:

According to data from the European Commission to which EL PAÍS has had access, Russia fires between 40,000 and 50,000 artillery shells per day, compared to 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian forces expend. The Estonian government, which has been one of largest contributors to Kyiv’s war effort, puts the average use of artillery at between 20,000 and 60,000 Russian shells per day, and 2,000 to 7,000 Ukrainian rounds, according to a document sent to EU Member States by Tallinn, to which this newspaper has had access.

The Russian forces fire ten times the number of shells the Ukrainians can fire. In a modern war artillery fire causes 65+% of all casualties. It is thus impossible that Ukraine is losing less soldiers than the Russians.

The total ratio may well be 7 to 1 but it will certainly be to the advantage of the Russian forces side.

But minimizing the losses Ukraine has in Bakhmut seems to be a current propaganda scheme. A recent Newsweek piece quotes similar nonsense.

But this is the whole issue, honest reporting and knowledge of all relevant facts is not just not in the plans, it is physically impossible even if to assume that some people in MSM would want to report thing right and try to fight own biases the way real journalists are supposed to do. Simplest example? Sy Hersh, he repeats the same utterly incompetent BS about Holodomor, which is a mathematical and demographic impossibility, same goes even for highly respected by me Douglas Macgregor who speaks about "a million Red Army soldiers" executed by "Stalin's hedge detachments (zagradotryads)", when in reality their main task was anything BUT executing anyone, unless we are talking about open panic-mongers and saboteurs. That is why the number of "executed" is two orders of magnitude smaller than Macgregor's "million". 

But in the world where such grotesque lies continue to perpetuate, anything is possible. And Russia, for all her immense size and military power still remains the great unknown in the Western World, because it is the ONLY country which time after time beat the shit out of the best West ever could master and intellectual class in the West lives with it, whether it is aware of it, or not. That is why any iota of common sense and actual news reporting in the West becomes the event of a huge significance, because it is so rare. West views Russia same way Marshall Zhukov warned about: "We liberated them, and they will hate us for that".(c) In Russian-American case, it goes even further since Russia wasn't supposed to steal American thunder of the 19th and 20th century but she did, from battlefields to space, to education and that, especially today, underscored America's status as a newcomer. American elites cannot take it, for all truly amazing and admirable America's achievements. And "they hate us for that"(c). I am on record: America's "elite-making" machine is broken and cannot be fixed any time soon. And I am not even talking about British desperation of a pip-squeak.         

Bernhard Gives... So Does Brian.

 ... a good retrospective of the run-up to the events of February 2022 and commencement of SMO. Highly recommended. 

The Buildup To War In Ukraine - Saturday, February 19, 2022

A must read, actually. Enjoy at MoA blog. Typical Bernhard--meticulous and detailed.  

Also, Brian's always excellent summary: 

The first "anniversary" of SMO is coming in 4 days and it is a good time to make some intermediate summaries. In related news, Sasha Rogers in his classic acerbic, sardonic really, manner explains (sadly, only in Russian) to all "armchair strategists" those "teeny-weeny" issues related to real statesmanship--unknown subject in the combined West--and guiding a monstrous ship of state such as Russia, especially through SMO.

Bernhard Did An Excellent Write-up.

On this whole situation with VSU's "victories" and how Western media are beginning to recognize a horrendous truth (for them) behind demolishing of VSU, which at this stage is literally being pummeled into utter submission. Bernhard discusses fighting doctrines of Russia and NATO and notes (correctly):

'Western' doctrine, which is essentially U.S. doctrine, is betting on air supremacy. The enemy's air defenses get destroyed in first few days of the war. After that enemy formations get wiped out by applying a huge amount of aerial bombing against them. Russian doctrine never has believed in air supremacy. Russia itself has excellent air defenses so it knows what it is talking about. To destroy enemy formations Russia applies artillery, lots of it.

He also compares combat organization of the main fighting units of Russian and US armies and, again correctly, arrives to the state-of-the-affairs for VSU. 

Unless the defending forces are fully under armor or extremely well dug in, as they had been for eight years at the Donetsk frontline, they have no hope to hold out against Russian artillery. Since the Russian army broke through the immediate frontline the Ukrainians have lost the protection of fortified dugouts and are on the run.  None of the above is new and it was the reason why I and other could easily predicted that the Ukrainian army would lose the war.

Read the whole thing, it is an excellent write up from Moon of Alabama. 

In related news, as was anticipated, the US decided not to play with fire and the danger of own annihilation and stopped any silly talks about sending HIMARS to 404 and it is all for the better. The US still wants to send some kind of MLRS (maybe even same HIMARS) but with much shorter range munitions. As Dmitry Medvedev noted today: 

«Разумно. Иначе при атаке на наши города Вооруженные силы России исполнили бы свою угрозу и нанесли удары по центрам принятия этих преступных решений. Часть из них находится совсем не в Киеве. Что дальше – объяснять не надо»

Translation: Makes sense. Otherwise, upon attacks on our cities, Russia's Armed Forces would have delivered on their threat to strike these criminal decision making centers. Part of those centers is located absolutely not in Kiev. What would follow--no explanation is needed. 

So, there you go. Meanwhile VSU continues to do what it was doing for the last 8 years--using civilians as human shield an shelling civilian areas of liberated cities and towns in Donbass. In other news, Denmark and Netherlands decided not to pay for Russian gas in Rubles. Sure, no problem.

The threat of cutting off gas supplies, if not being paid in Rubles, is taking another casualty. Russian gas giant Gazprom has announced that it will stop gas supplies to the Netherlands by Wednesday, in a reaction to the refusal by Dutch energy trader GasTerra to pay in rubles.

Evidently, the concept of money and paying for goods and services is still not developed in these two nations at this stage of their historic development, but, I think, in a few centuries they may figure this principle out and whatever will be left of them will join the family of civilized nations. Same goes for the present CIA big honcho William Burns (the US so called "diplomat"), who tries to wax Russia "insiderish" but fails miserably due to an extremely low professionalism of the current US "diplomacy" and "foreign service", so, he triers himself as Putinologist--a euphemism for ignorant US "diplomats" who, as it is normal now, know nothing about Russia. Even after being ambassador to Russia as Burns did.  So, he states:

Half of Washington, D.C., is in the business of analyzing Vladimir Putin’s every word and move these days. But when CIA Director William Burns speaks of the Russian leader, an autocrat waging a brutal war on Ukraine, his words carry unusual weight. Putin is the epitome of a “peculiarly Russian combination of qualities”: “cocky, cranky, aggrieved and insecure,” Burns has written. The Kremlin chief is “an apostle of payback,” Burns has declared.

But even this sophomoric "journalism" from Politico notes:

Burns may be a good Putinologist, but even he didn’t predict how much the Russian leader would scramble the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda.

I have news for these US "diplomats" and "journos"--there are NO real "Putinologists", let alone good level specialists on Russia, anywhere in D.C. Because there is no US diplomacy as art and as noble profession in principle. Most what US foreign policy establishment, including its "elite" schools produces as its "diplomats" is a grey mass of under-educated ignoramuses who learn absolutely nothing about outside world and the same goes pretty much to any institution in D.C., including CIA. Burns is not an exception. 

It is the clock-work of the US "elite" education and selection mechanism which is completely broken and, as a result, produces people who are utterly unqualified to carry out any tasks related to any actual governance, be it in political, economic, diplomatic or military spheres. So, whenever the phrase such as "but even he" is used nowadays I always smile, "even they" in D.C. drove the United States to the precipice due to their corruption, careerism and lack of any professionalism. May be they should stop trying to be "Putinologists" and concentrate on their immediate professional responsibilities, instead of spewing PR BS through media which are as ignorant and amoral as they are. Nah, not gonna happen...

The Saker Adds To A Broadside.

The Saker people wrote a good retort to Western (Ukie) canards about timeline. Replying to continuous US MSM BS about "the plan" Saker's staff concludes:

The US and its allies spent 8 years building up the military the Ukraine had at the beginning of Russian military operations in February 2022. This Ukrainin military failed to prevent Russian forces now from shaping the battlefield in Donbas creating the conditions for Ukrainian forces there to be cut off, encircled, and systematically destroyed. After 8 years – this was the best the US and its allies could do to prepare Ukraine. Despite the urgent (reported) flood of weapons and money into Ukraine now along with remedial training programs – nothing now can be done better or quicker than over the past 8 years – Russia is removing Ukrainian combat capabilities off the battlefield faster than the Ukraine and its allies can replace or regenerate it.

They also note this wide-spread BS about Putin's "apology" to Israel, which, of course, was primarily a figment of imagination of the Israeli media. In related topic, Bernhard of MoA continues to develop the thesis, with which I agree completely, that:

The geniuses (not) at the National Security Council want to goad Russia into direct attacks on U.S. forces or interests. That would give the U.S. an excuse to further escalate the war in Ukraine into an open confrontation. It would also diverts the attention away from domestic problems.

Generally, I don't see anymore any need to rely on any idea on warfare and geopolitics coming from the US (forget dumbfvcks from EU) Establishment, because, frankly, they are utterly incompetent and are one-trick pony capable only of manipulation of public opinion. That is it.

Bernhard of MoA Did A Good Write Up.

On "strategy" of brainiacs in D.C. 

The U.S. strategy to 'fix' Russia in Europe by imposing 'crushing sanctions' on it to then attack China is failing. That is because it was completely misconceived.

Strategy is a buzz word among politicos and journos because it is "loaded" and it gives an impression of something really mysterious and cool. I will be talking about it in my next video. Strategy as a "plan" of achieving political aims in anything, however, in the field of practical geopolitics of the second half of the 20th and the 21st centuries is a bit more than a "plan". As in military campaigns, one cannot become a "strategist" without having tactical and operational background and that is why all advanced military education in the world is structured around taking an officer from the tactical, to operational to strategic level of thinking, thus providing a pivot around which all strategic decisions, with inputs form tactical and operational levels, will revolve. This is not how modern political "science" and what passes for "strategic decision making" in the West works. 

Modern geopolitics as primarily the realm of raw power of the states projected against the geographic background is unknown to Western governing class. It cannot be known due to a radical lack of comprehension of instruments which dictate geopolitical reality--physical economy and military. These ARE very complex fields and at some point of time West's "intellectual elite", which is grown and brought up primarily within the confines of "humanities" departments of the US Ivy League and UK's old educational institutions, simply ran out of expertise which already was lacking even by the end of 19th century. In the 21st century--explaining to Vicky Nuland or Jake Sullivan what is combat networks' topology (granted basic course in the Graph Theory is taught) and how it is no less important than raw firepower--this is a fool's errand and an exercise in futility. 

But this is just one small segment out of very many of modern day reality which is more important to practical geopolitics and global power balance than what comes down to personal opinions of incompetent people with zero backgrounds in real strategy development and governance. And it is this and many other factors, not some abstract political concepts, which drive modern real strategies. US "elites" don't do strategies, they do strategy and doctrine-mongering which exist in a virtual world of illiterate personal passions, vendettas and ambitions and results of such "strategies" are telling--the country, the US is being run into the ground by people who literally do not know how the world works. Read Bernhard's excellent piece. It explains how those "strategies" fail. The US needs better "strategists", not political hacks operating on a white board "strategies" which fail time after time because they are detached from reality. But then again, that brings us to a larger question of US "political elites" being adequate to the task. The answer is obvious--they are not.  

Bernhard Is Furious, And Rightly So.

Bernhard of Moon of Alabama is furious with Glenn Greenwald and rightly so.

Greenwald seems to presume that it is the right or the job of a U.S. president to 'permit' pipelines between two foreign country? That is of course completely false. The U.S. has no right, duty or whatever to interfere in regular businesses between foreign partners. Such interference is in fact illegal under international law. Biden, as well as Trump, should be criticized for even thinking about 'permitting' it.

B's fury is entirely justified. Recall what I wrote few years ago about US "realists". I merely qualified them as yet another iteration of the American exceptionalists. Even American "realists" still operate on the utterly false basis of the American omnipotence and God-given right to decide what to do and how to do it, including making decision for others, denying them any subjectivity and the right to decide for themselves. 

As I wrote yesterday, and B confirms it, US dropping sanctions on Nord Stream 2 is a result of Germany finally having enough of the US meddling into Germany's affairs, especially having, for Germany, an existential significance, once one considers Germany's industrial and living energy costs being one of the highest in the world. Yet, Greenwald, evidently thinks that the US "granted" Germany the right to have NS2 completed this year. This is a very wrong way to rub German business. But then again, recall John Mearsheimer, one of the foremost US realists talking couple of years ago about Russia as having economy the size of Texas (or Spain, or Netherlands, what have you) and "mediocre" Armed Forces. This is not an exception, this is a feature of American "realists". They still think that the United States controls the world and is the one which grants everyone the right to exist.This is a complete delusion. 

American circumstances today are dire--both economically and politically, with country losing fast its weight and influence globally and being, for the lack of better word, a complete fvcking mess internally, surviving only on printing a shitload of money which already run a serious inflation. Reputational losses are altogether a whole other story ripe for truckload of Ph.D theses to be written on that issue. It took Germany merely an act of a serious talking to the United States and threatening with actions--some of them could include a complete reorientation towards Eurasian projects--that the US got the message that not only it may lose its main vassal, which is trying to break the bonds of vassalage as we speak, but any serious prospects in Europe. Now imagine US worst nightmare: Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis and a much faster coalescence of the colossal Eurasian space into a unified market. That removes the US immediately to the rank of the regional powers and to the fringes of what evolves already into the engine of global economic and civilizational development. 

This will happen one way or another, but at least, as the US thinking goes now, this will be a somewhat protracted process once Germany's demands re: NS2 are accepted and the sanctions are dropped. This, as they think in D.C., buys the US a little bit more time but it also marks a rather significant inflection point in the post-Soviet history of Europe when Germany stated her interests clearly and exhibited a will to defend them and the United States caved in. Let's be honest, with Russia's support behind the scene. And those ARE Germany's interests because Germans are the ones who finance a huge share of NS2 project. Who gave the United States the right to decide for Germans, or, for that matter, anyone else how they are supposed to live and solve their internal problems? And Germany, sure as hell, has a shitload of problems, many of them of own making, but it is what it is. Things change, ever so incrementally, until they accumulate into a qualitative shift and this is exactly what we observe today in the US-German relations. 

But, as I said--Zugzwang, ladies and gentlemen. You observe here a classic case of Zugzwang and of a black belt level geopolitical Judo (or Aikido). Well, Putin and Steven Seagal are personal friends, I am sure Steven has shown his martial arts buddy some Aikido moves. But in the end, these are German people who have the right to decide how they want to live and run their country and no one has the right to deny them this opportunity. It is also crucial for Germany in the long run if it wants to get well after a long and nightmarish globalist slumber. Germany is not a country in the Middle East or in Central America, which could be sneezed at by the US and it seems Germans begin to get a feel of that.