When Cope Harder Phrase ...

 ... fully applies))

US wins against Russian and Chinese air defenses in other countries risk teaching the wrong lessons. US forces that executed a raid in Venezuela to capture its now-former leader walked away with no aircraft lost to the country's Russian-made air-defense systems and Chinese-made radars. In the aftermath, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that it "seems those Russian air defenses didn't quite work so well, did they?" He didn't elaborate any further, but in briefings, the top US general spoke about how US forces dismantled and destroyed enemy air defenses. While the US can draw a certain degree of confidence in its capabilities from the success of the mission, there's a risk of reading too much into that success, especially when it comes to weapons made by American rivals in the hands of other militaries. Some of the failures of the Venezuelan-operated foreign air defenses, for example, have been attributed to issues like inactivity, incompetence, and a dearth of functional cohesion between different systems.

Some? You mean Venezuelan military being corrupt and bought out and thus disabling air defense?  WOW! There is a reason why Russia was wrapping up her presence in Venezuela in a duration of the last five years or so. I know, many people from Latin America are afraid of facing reality, but it was exposed in Venezuela and how it gladly sold its President to the US. Moreover, Pete Hegseth with his basic education in "Politics", whatever that means, and ROTC (a euphemism for pseudo-military "training") wouldn't know a first thing about Air Defense, nor will understand it due to a complete lack of an academic and experience tool kit for that. 

Having said all that, people with a much broader (still amateurish) grasp of technological realities in Pentagon (yes, there are still some there) put their input into the 2026 National Defense Strategy and tacitly admitted what I was warning about for the last almost two decades. 

Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future. Indeed, although Russia suffers from a variety of demographic and economic difficulties, its ongoing war in Ukraine shows that it still retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power. Russia has also shown that it has the national resolve required to sustain a protracted war in its near abroad. In addition, although the Russian military threat is primarily focused on Eastern Europe, Russia also possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the U.S. Homeland.

But even here, the atrocious level of incompetence in the US military and intel circles shines through:

Fortunately, our NATO allies are substantially more powerful than Russia—it is not even close. Germany’s economy alone dwarfs that of Russia.

You cannot fix stupid and that is why US loses all of its wars and will continue to do so because it learns nothing and American military institutions do not provide advanced military education for the XXI century other than Hollywood mode representation of the warfare. So, they cope, they lie to themselves, they lie to the world because they have no guts to admit that the "finest fighting force in history" would crumble in real war within a few weeks and will immediately escalate to the nuclear threshold. I know, it hurts. But today, in Russia, it is a Day of General Staff. 

It was established by the Order of Catherine the Great in 1763 based on the Quartermaster Office of Russian Army established by Peter the Great in 1711. The US will try to emulate it, it will continuously fail--there is no staff and national and military culture which exists in the US capable to support that--US "operations" in 404 exposed what kind of delusion the US military lives in. Nor will the issue of procurement be fixed because you have to have a system in place which the US doesn't have. Just to demonstrate how Russia's General Staff and Russian economy won the arms race. 

Here is comparison of Sarmat and Minuteman III. Yes, hypersonic weapons (such as Avangard), unlimited range and almost 10 times larger payload. But I am sure Germany can replicate it, after all its economy "dwarfs" Russia's. Good luck and cope harder. 

"Joint Vision", LOL))

Mark Milley, leaving his post (and because of that) suddenly recognizes the fact of which I wrote for years--JCS is not really up for such a complex task as planning and fighting a REAL war. Milley went for a jugular and went for offering de facto... Russian model of "harmonization of services" and that created an outcry from grifters from Pentagon. 

Milley’s case for inter-service harmonization is, more specifically, a case for a wholly joint approach to doctrinal, technological and strategic development. It rests not upon new technology, but on technology that came into being during the Cold War. Milley’s point of departure is AirLand Battle, the doctrine that assisted the flowering of operational theory in U.S. military practice. Milley’s criticism of AirLand Battle is that it was insufficiently joint — it never included a naval role, nor did it delineate properly between aerial and ground responsibility for long-range fires. This criticism is telling in that Milley’s argument does not actually rest upon the new technologies he mentions. Rather, it rests on the assumption that the greatest change in modern warfare in the last century is the development of jointness itself, embodied in an empowered chairman and the centralization of force design and doctrinal development in the Joint Staff.  

Oh boy, Seth Cropsey who "served" as a middle level bureaucrat in several administrations as a conduit for incompetent neocon "way of war" is really hurt by the de facto admission by Milley that this whole "Air Land Battle" and JCS structure is designed to "fight" 5 year old kids in the sand box. SMO exposed completely this "flowering operational theory" (LOL, I am still laughing))) as nothing more than PR BS not designed for fighting any serious enemy. Especially the one which actually has world-class air defense, air force and a dramatic advantage in high precision and stand-off weaponry supported by advanced ISR. 

But the fact that Milley essentially calls for the US equivalent of General Staff butt-hurt Cropsey really badly. To the point of this:

Centralizing force design through a “future jointness czar” is not strategic wisdom — it is hubristic, bureaucratic policymaking. The danger is that the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the next Secretary of Defense, are too blinded by their conviction in the arc of technological change that they commit the U.S. military to the wrong transformational program. Jointness is useful in creating a military force whose cooperation in training multiplies effectiveness in combat. But as the author of force design and doctrine for all the military services, it would be a disaster to trade experience for “harmonization.” 

I have news for Cropsey--America's war "experience" within existing structure and what passes in the US for "doctrine" and "joint vision" is one of a sequence of losses of wars and I do not even talk about US Armed Forces losing not just wars but the technological arms race--the fact Cropsey cannot wrap his brain around. But Cropsey shouldn't worry--IF this transition even takes place it will not succeed, because the US has no experience of the warfare of such scope and scale as SMO, not to speak of hundreds of years of the evolution of the General Staff which Russia has. Pentagon exists as a branch of the US military-industrial-media complex and is not designed to fight real wars. 

But then again, I am on record: strategic planning is what Russian General Staff does and it has an incredibly good intel collection and strategic analytical structures (GRU) of its own, not to mention dedicated own Academy of the General Staff, which allow it to occupy the role of a true "harmonizer" for all services of Russian Armed Forces and having a very serious influence on the decision making process of Russian political top. It is a very different organism which grew out of a very different historic, cultural and military experience than that of the US. But I applaud Cropsey's audacity when calling a dismal record of US lost wars a "flowering of operational theory", LOL. But then again, we may admit that when looked at as a theory of how NOT TO FIGHT real war, we may allow for this term of "flowering".

Ah, The "Backtracking" By Khodaryonok.

I seldom post here anything from a human brothel of CNN, but I do now because it is symptomatic. 

Make no mistake, no person of basic ethics and integrity would go to work for CNN, but after a major (in their minds) informational "coup" with Mr. Khodaryonok's recent "revelations", CNN tries to make a case that Khodaryonok's "backtracking" is some kind of "Putin's regime" pressure. Of course it is not, despite CNN producing copious amounts of BS on anything Russia related, which this report is an Exhibit A of these beaten to death tropes. 

No, Khodaryonok started to backtrack because he is a coward and defeatist, and most likely there were many people, including from Russia's General Staff and Foreign Ministry who, after Khodarynok's verbal excrement, especially about Russia's "isolation", simply told him to his face the same what I wrote in the previous post and in this one. As I already stated not for once, for years this creep was not just utterly wrong in his "forecasts" but he was offering opinions on subjects of which he has very little, if any, understanding, especially in the time when some platitudes simply do not fly in specialists and professional circles. And, of course, this former officer has next to zero understanding of the political, military and economic dynamics of the combined West. 

Now, when he understood that he, basically, paraded himself (yet again) as a jackass and that could cost him his "journo" and "analytical" sinecures, because no respectable Russian media outlet would want to hear and pay to him for his sophomoric "opinions" on geopolitics anymore, he started to backtrack, he started a classic damage control routine which has zero relation to integrity and ethics but a lot with personal pockets. Once removed from the informational and cultural environment of the General Staff of Russia, Khodaryonok (or Khodarenok in other spelling) found himself completely detached from the military-political and military-economic realities of both Russia and, especially, the combined West and was forced to speak from his personal experiences of the Russian Armed Forces of 1990s, which, for all intents and purposes were in the process of disintegration. This also can explain a lot in his views. And then, of course, he was patently wrong in his description of Russia's "isolation". Hence, backtracking. So, here it is. A Freudian slip, an internal "struggle" with whatever complexes Khodaryonok suffers from, they all lead to this. 

-Учитывая, что европейская помощь вступит в полную силу и в бой может вступить один миллион вооруженных украинских солдат, нам нужно видеть эту реальность ближайшего будущего, и мы должны учитывать это в наших оперативных и стратегических расчетах. Ситуация для нас будет откровенно хуже. Давайте посмотрим на эту ситуацию в целом с точки зрения нашей общей стратегической позиции, — сказал он. - Давайте не будем махать ракетами в сторону Финляндии — это выглядит просто смешно. Самая большая проблема нашего военно-политического положения в том, что мы находимся в полной геополитической изоляции. И весь мир против нас — даже если мы не хотим этого признавать.

Translation:  Given that European assistance will come into full force and one million armed Ukrainian soldiers may enter the battle, we need to see this reality of the near future, and we must take this into account in our operational and strategic calculations. The situation for us will be frankly worse,” he said. “Let's look at this situation as a whole in terms of our overall strategic position,” he said. - Let's not wave rockets towards Finland - it just looks ridiculous. The biggest problem of our military-political situation is that we are in complete geopolitical isolation. And the whole world is against us - even if we don't want to admit it.

Somebody should have told him, that for the last 22 years he is nothing more than military "journo" and knows nothing about modern world. I doubt he ever knew. SMO achieved an incredible result--it served as a litmus test, which Khodaryonok failed in a spectacular fashion. Time for him to apply for job at CNN or Fox.

LOL. Why Not 1.5 million.

Let me be very clear, Ben Wallace, same as any top brass in UK Armed Forces didn't see real armies and real wars in ages. UK as a whole is now a clownish country grasping at the last remaining myths of long passed greatness, and the same goes to British Army. 

Around 15,000 Russian troops have been killed as Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine enters its ninth week, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has told MPs. Giving an update on the conflict, Mr Wallace said the death toll suffered by Vladimir Putin's forces came in addition to the loss of thousands of pieces of military equipment by Russia. He told the House of Commons that latest estimates suggest more than 2,000 Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed or captured - including at least 530 tanks, 530 armoured personnel carriers and 560 infantry fighting vehicles.

Let me put it this way: even the United States who, unlike the UK, has a massive ISR complex ranging from signint in the space to ground, UK has zilch, nada, nothing, even the US cannot make any real assessments of Russia's losses, because nobody can with the exception of Russia's General Staff. Some clownish US former generals who spew primarily Ukie propaganda BS from TV screens in the US do not really represent Pentagon. They represent merely their sinecures in Military-Media-Industrial Complex. 

So, any claims by British has-beens on this, as well as other similar matters related to warfare, are just that--a pile of steaming bullshit. As I already stated, even when adjusted for obvious propaganda and brainwashing of the Western public, one inevitably begins having question about overall professionalism and competence of Western militaries. The question is not just that even respectable West Point has been reduced academically to a joke, but in the fact that the signals of a professional decay of a much more combat experienced US Army have been around for at least two decades. 

Now, the UK which is a woke shell of once great empire and its Army, which can fit (all of it) into the Wembley Arena, underwent a debilitating loss of competence since 1990s and British Army fully reflects the pathetic lap dog status of the UK. Royal General Staff unofficially may sound impressive and pompous, but reality is that the Army whose regular force numbers around 82,000 with zero modern ISR capability and being completely dependent on its master, the United States, strategically and operationally, DOES have General Staff structures which are totally adequate to a rather pathetic state UK Armed Forces as a whole are in. So, the whole idea that UK military and its brain, General Staff, can independently have ANY kind of real data on Russia's losses is down right risible. These pip squeak of the armed forces of a country which has clowns running it assure that the only way UK can ease the pain of being a pompous parody of its glorious self of the past, is to continue to shoot fairy tales about James Bond in which glorious MI-6 fights for the (supports terrorism) everything good against everything bad. 

Now, today Russian MoD warned London (in Russian) that if London thinks that if British weapons transferred to Ukraine "are not necessarily a problem" if they hit Russia proper, Russia will respond, for starters, with wiping out all those "glorious" British "advisers" and spooks on the ground and if need be... well, here is the issue, Russia can do it, UK cannot. Maybe UK does require a little bit of beating to be shaken back into its own reality of being a second-rate country in a complete decline and having the army which faces this:

LONDON — The limitations of the British Army’s ability to field modernized armored fighting forces in the 2020s have been laid bare in evidence submitted by the military to the parliamentary Defence Committee. The Army admitted that by 2025 it would only be able to field a combat division consisting of just a single maneuver brigade and an interim maneuver support brigade.

So, Wallace and his Scots Guards buddies better sit back and learn how real wars are fought in modern times and what are modern combined arms operations against the enemy who uses civilians as human shield. In other news, Russian Military Academy of the General Staff has international programs and, I am sure, that will serve Wallace and his military well, if they are squeamish to enroll there,  to merely go over the list of the alumni of that academy.  May be they will get a hint. But don't hold your breath. 

P.S. To give the scale of British Army to Russian Army one has to know that Russian Army (its Ground Forces alone) are around 300,000 troops (that is 3.7 times larger) and field organic Air Defense and firepower British Army can only dream about.  I don't want to go over other forces which are tightly integrated with Russia's ground forces. But that is a separate issue altogether.

What's The Deal With Ben Hodges?

Politico waxes strategic: 

Europe’s roads and railways aren’t fit for a fight with Russia. EU struggles to reverse years of neglect on spending to improve road and rail to shift troops and tanks. Having a better army doesn't much matter if you can't get it moving.

I don't know who said to Hanny Cokelaere and Joshua Posaner who penned this piece, that NATO has "better Army", but neither author has even remotest qualifications to pass the judgement on any military issue and the problem here is that while European NATO armies are a joke, the US Army is the last army in the world which has a record worthy of self-proclaimed (well, by many, Obama included) of a "finest fighting force in history"(c). The fact that the US Army can use sensor fusion, satellite imagery and stand-off munitions to blow Afghan weddings to smithereens, children and women included into "package", or can demolish Faluja, doesn't make one "better" at anything. Especially when compared to Russians and their record of military victories which make NATO military "accomplishments" look rather very insignificant. 

 

But never mind this constant self-aggrandizing which does betray a huge complex of inferiority and immediately after intro posted above from this Politco military psychobabble, authors introduce us to Mr. Ben Hodges.    

“The further east you go, the infrastructure does not support the heavy weight of U.S., German, British and Dutch tanks, it’s the bridges,” said retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe and now affiliated to think tank CEPA. “We’ve got to show we can move as fast or faster than the Russian Federation in the Suwałki Gap [between Poland and Lithuania] or in Romania.”

The immediate question which one has to ask is why Ben Hodges thinks that "we've got to show" those damn Roosskies. I don't know what Ben Hodges thinks, and he left a rather impressive record of spewing BS, while on the job as the US Army Commander Europe, but he has to really update himself on what Russians do and how they study militarily. Suffice it to say that Russia's General Staff was formed fully in 1763 by order of Catherine the Great (no, not in 1812 as English-language WiKi tells us) and the history of this General Staff goes back to 1711 to Peter the Great's order of the Staff Positions of General Staff (in Russian). So, it is not like Russians need to run around constantly repeating mantras about how great they are, but the United States didn't exist as a nation, when Russians already had their General Staff, and the good one at that. Yes, this little "skirmish" in 1812 in which Russian Army defeated the greatest Army assembled at that time and led by a genuine military genius Napoleon. Obviously, nothing to look at, against the background of the "American war against Napoleon", but these were Russians who actually entered Paris in 1814. 

So, there is no necessity for Russians "be shown" anything, because studying the enemy (and the United States Armed Forces are "potential enemy" of Russia) is on the level which the United States can only dream about and that has a lot to do with both military history and general education of the military cadres. So, Russians know and have been preparing to fight combined NATO forces since WW II and in doing so they developed doctrine and weapons which suit this purpose perfectly. Russians, who also have all this C4ISR mambo-jumbo, from intel satellites and anti-sat weapons to computers and signint, they know how the US Army fights and what are the limitations (sometimes severe) of any combined NATO force if it decides to fight Russian Armed Forces conventionally in the Eastern Europe. 

 

Ben Hodges has to know this--the first thing NATO (US that is) will lose will be its ISR, starting from removal of crucial US space-based assets from their orbits, and then jamming of NATO communications. That in itself removes the crucial advantage NATO always had over its third-rate backward enemies. Obviously, the issue, which I write about non-stop, is the issue of air defense is what NATO simply doesn't have against Russia's stand-off weapons and this is the thing which many (not all) US generals cannot wrap their brains around--any Command and Control structure of NATO--staffs, command posts, communications facilities, what have you--are absolutely defenseless and the level of this vulnerability continues to grow as I type this. So, it is not that Russians will throw their T-90s and T-14s at Suwalki Gap to face off with NATO's tanks. No, Russians will demolish Command and Control system of NATO, including it "decision making centers" and airfields. NATO navies also will be sunk.

After that, NATO will start escalating towards nuclear threshold because it will be denied most of its tentative advantages which Russians are very well aware of, because they usually don't waste time on PR BS and self-aggrandizing but study wars and operations by the "potential enemy" and do it extremely seriously. Unless, of course, one considers Russians, coldly narrating their well-known military achievements in the last 800 or so years, as self-aggrandizing, but those who do should see a good psychologist specializing in complex of inferiority.  So, even if to imagine that Ben Hodges would be able "to show" those damn Rooskies that NATO can move as fast or faster it makes no difference whatsoever because the US Armed Forces never faced the enemy like this and never fought the war like that. 

On a more metaphysical level, of which Patriarch of All Russia spoke recently in his sermon, Ben Hodges should understand a simple fact that Russia-West breakup is for real and Russians will never forget nor forgive US support for this:

The US supports admirers of SS Division Galizien (Calicina) and, in general, de facto Nazi regime in Kiev which is mired in war crimes and crimes against humanity. What can I say, good that most of Russian WW II veterans who viewed Americans as good allies are not with us anymore. I can only imagine what they would feel, knowing that former Allies turned out this way. But then again, if Ben Hodges or Petraeus are the "best" what the US can produce, then there should be no surprise. I will reiterate--NO US servicemen ever fought in defense of his country, all modern wars the US Armed Forces fought are expeditionary wars, the wars of conquest far away from own shores. No US servicemen ever knew what it means to lose own family and property to real war. This is the cultural difference which cannot be bridged--any Russian family has more real military pedigree than Ben Hodges ever would, because in Russia any family has somebody who fought and died in WW II.

 

We all are into the new territory, where the REAL face of the West and the US has been exposed. Sadly, most of the public in the West will not know what is happening. They are kept oblivious by Western media and by the realities of every day survival in the midst of a massive economic calamity which unfolds before all of us. Here is Andrei Raevsky providing a glimpse into who the US is supporting.

This article provides an overview into a deeply disturbing trend in Ukraine, one that started in 2014, that has accelerated and intensified since 24 February 2022. Extrajudicial killings, harassment, arbitrary detentions by men in camouflaged uniforms, beatings and disappearances continue to take place on a regular basis in Ukraine.  Most of the detentions and disappearances are often carried out by the Ukrainian Security service, (SBU), under a sweeping repression.

Few honest common sense voices barely register in the background of deafening lies and propaganda and that drives further Russians' disgust with the combined West. I cannot blame them, in fact--it is a normal reaction of any normal human. These are reactions which lead to consequences which neither Ben Hodges nor White House, nor CIA, can calculate--they simply have no instruments for that. That is why they do not have a grasp of what is happening here, in Russian villages and towns with Russian Army moving to the front lines. 

But then again, they do not know what real war is. Ben Hodges certainly doesn't.

Double Plus LOL!!

US journos never disappoint. No, really, certain Nathan Hodge and Julian Barnes of Wall Street Journal rag fame just made my morning. Make no mistake, there always was a degree of melodrama in US when dealing with war, the same as lack of any grasp of issues of scales and proportions. Enough to remember grossly exaggerated, if not completely false, dichotomies, such as contrived "rivalry", which never materialized, of Patton and Rommel--both being merely episodes, and by far not the most important ones, of WW II. Certainly not even close to the scale of  Valilevsky, Rokossovsky, Manstein or Guderian. Not even in the same universe. Yet, there it was--a Hollywood version of something that even never existed. Today, above mentioned WSJ journos, while repeating this idiotic Patton-Rommel cliche, came up with another cringe-worthy melodramatic, totally contrived BS which they called: 

The New Cold War Pits a U.S. General Against His Longtime Russian Nemesis

You can read fuller version of this crap here. 

Really? No, I really mean, really? How trivial and shallow one has to be when coming up, for starters, with such sappy baloney as "nemesis". Nemesis, if to follow popular Greek Mythology derived definition, is something a person can not overcome. The immediate question is, then, this--in what sense Russia's Chief Of General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov is a "long-time nemesis" for US National Security Adviser General McMaster? How, in what inflamed fantasy, can Valery Gerasimov, who, throughout his career, commanded both 58th Army and then what would amount to several Army Groups, before becoming Chief Of General Staff, be a nemesis to a man, with all due respect to McMaster, whose "accomplishments" involve such things as, even if viewed briefly from Wiki:

In August 2008, McMaster assumed duties as Director, Concept Development and Experimentation (later renamed Concept Development and Learning), in the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) at Fort Monroe, Virginia, part of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. In this position McMaster was involved in preparing doctrine to guide the Army over the next ten to twenty years.   

Apart from obvious gross mismatch in rank, command, responsibilities and accomplishments--Gerasimov's level is a level of the Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff--one is forced to ask the question: and what are those "military thinking" accomplishments of McMaster per him being a Director, Concept Development and Experimentation? Almost ten years passed from the moment of McMaster's involvement with US doctrine. And what are the results? Results are in the open, for everyone to see and they are not pretty. But then, another question comes: does Gerasimov even know that he is McMaster's "nemesis"? Did troops commanded or guided through operational plans developed by Gerasimov and McMaster ever meet on a battlefield? Never heard of that. But then again, Gerasimov as Chief Of General Staff has at his disposal, a world-class and with pedigree to back it up, GOU (Главное Оперативное Управление--Main Operational Directorate) which for the last 15 years has shown a rather impressive track record. One is literally forced, then, to inevitably "compare the records" purely on merit and without preposterous references to "nemesis". 

I will abstain from elaborating on the records' comparison, albeit I did it not for once, such as here, but let Patrick Armstrong speak on that:

I can’t get two questions out of my mind:

When was the last time the USA won a war?

When was the last time US trained troops fought effectively?

Spectacularly successful at raining death and destruction in the first few weeks, something goes wrong later. Obviously there is something wrong in the way the USA fights wars.

I can explain why USA loses its wars and what is a unbridgeable, irreconcilable difference not only between Gerasimov and McMaster but between Russian and American military thinking: US Armed Forces never fought in real defense of their homeland in the last two hundred plus years. Never. Russia does it for millennium. All US warfare is expeditionary in nature with US proper remaining completely oblivious to the realities of the wars it unleashes elsewhere. That it is the reason American soldier inevitably loses an interest and stake in fighting American wars since, in the end, his (her) family at home, his property, everything he (she) loves and treasures remains untouched by brutality of the warfare and other things which come in this terrifying package. Russia and her soldiers and generals (as well as the nation as a whole) think in a completely different plane, because know, on a genetic level, what war can bring to their homeland.

So, when these two WSJ hacks write this:

Their dynamic sheds light on the evolving military competition between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers at a time of rising diplomatic tension. Moscow has narrowed a yawning gap in the quality of its conventional forces, but the U.S. remains far more powerful in that category. It is this imbalance that has shaped the strategic thinking of the two generals. It’s American force and resolve against Russian cunning and diversion.   

They expose not only their utter ignorance on a whole spectrum of military issues (those two certainly never heard of Russia's Military Doctrine--explicitly defensive), they parade their incompetence by mentioning some non-existent dynamic between a man, who leads institution (Russia's General Staff) which goes back to the times of Peter The Great and has in its record victories over Charles XII, Napoleon, Wehrmacht, recently, over terrorist armies in Syria, and a guy whose "accomplishments", apart from being popular within US Army, are rather... not impressive. So, what dynamic? I can tell you what--none. As per studying somebody's combat experience--that is what military professional do, everywhere since earliest times and in this Sun Tzu's department of "Know Thyself And Know Thy Enemy" US "strategists" fail miserably time after time since the times of Korean War. McMaster will not be an exception, he will fail too. The only task now is to make sure that while failing, this will not bring the world to the edge of confrontation which will have catastrophic consequences. Gerasimov and McMaster, apart from not having any "dynamic" as WSJ hacks claim, are in different universes military strategic thinking and experience wise and both are not only not comparable, they are irreconcilable and will remain so. As per imbalance, currently no single or combination of Armed Forces, that includes US Army, can defeat Russia conventionally in her immediate geographic vicinity. I hope McMaster is smart enough not to try  testing this because it will not be Gerasimov who may then become his "nemesis" in reality but Russia as a whole herself, and her military track record speaks volumes. As per WSJ journos--nice try, double plus LOL, morons.