Please. This constant reference to the Gulf War 1.0 is nauseating. It is Al Bandy's four touchdowns in the game for his Polk High school.
It is not just strategy, however important it is, it is a combination of many factors, including foundational ones, the cultural DNA of the US confabulated military history turned into mythology based primarily on a very cautious choice of weak enemies. Here is a reminder from Atkinson about US major hero, who was nothing more than an average army commander.
The creeping arrogance, the hubris, which would cost
the American Army so dearly in Vietnam. Summing up the achievements of his
troops in crushing the German counterattack of December 1944, Patton with
pardonable pride claims to have “moved farther and faster and engaged more
divisions in less time than any other army in the history of the United
States—possibly in the history of the world... No country can stand against
such an Army.” These memoirs are valuable not least in showing, however
unwittingly, that a disastrous presumption of invincibility took root in the
ranks of officers who led the American military after World War II.
Nothing changed since then, period. In fact, things got worse, much worse. Especially in educational level of the US officer corps and very low level of operational planning and execution. The problem is manifold and it is vertical in nature--from lowest tactical level way up to the political top and, in the end, technological obsolescence of the US military, especially when compared to Russia. But Mearsheimer knows very little about it.
Putin "didn't figure out the plan", this "plan" was in force since 1945 and the guy who figured it out was Stalin. Fact is, he knew it already in 1939. West eager to finish Russia as a great power – John Mearsheimer.
The only difference have been 1980s and 1990s when USSR took the path (originally formalized in 1975 in Helsinki but conceived in 1960s) of "peaceful coexistence" between the West and USSR, which resulted in dissolution of said USSR, collapse of the socialist system and participation of Yeltsin's criminal gang in destruction of Russia.
Mearsheimer really needs to update himself on WW II and how and by who Nazism has been crushed and why today Stalin is increasingly venerated in Russia because population at large can see how right he was viewing the West as an existential enemy of historic Russia. All this, mind you, despite incessant anti-Soviet and anti-Stalin propaganda in Russian media and among the so called "creative class". Putin is a product of the system which KNEW always what the combined West was up to and even before Putin's "arrival", Russia understood what was transpiring--hence Primakov's Doctrine, a radically anti-Western geopolitical vision which has been realized now.
Here is an example of John Mearsheimer talking to Col. Daniel Davis today and starting immediately with the right conclusion based on a completely false premise. See for yourself--this is the start of the discussion.
He is absolutely correct stating that Trump will not get ceasefire, but it is not because "Russians are on the roll". Here we have, AGAIN, a complete confusion re: Russia's intentions and how General Staff works. For starters, Russians were on the roll the moment in 2023 it became clear that not only much touted "counteroffensive" has been defeated (with up to 200 000 casualties for VSU and their NATO curators), but because of HOW it was defeated--VSU forces have been demolished in the forefield (a "security zone" per the US Army's Field Manuals). Let's rewind back to January 6, 2023, Orthodox Christmas time. Here is Dmitry Medvedev verbatim:
I think it is clear that in 2023, and that was even before catastrophic "counteroffensive", that Russians have anticipated this suicidal move on part of Washington, and it was after this disaster for Washington and Kiev that General Staff issued forecast, extremely precise, that VSU lost any ability to conduct strategic offensive operations (in Russian). They still could do suicidal PR actions such as invasion of Kursk Oblast, where they lost a whole combined arms army, but for some reason most American "realists" and "experts" never studied Eastern Front in WW II properly (hard to do so in the West) and missed completely Russian Army setting into the strategic defense in the end of the 2022 which was the worst possible news for NATO planners who, due to them being mostly educated on Hollywood movies such as Patton, did not recognize that Russians haven't been into this business to capture territory--they are in this business for physical annihilation of the enemy, while preserving own forces.
And it was after the strategic catastrophe of VSU in 2023 that it became absolutely clear that there will be not any "ceasefires" nor any "negotiations". Moreover, it is difficult to explain to people who grew up on American post-Vietnam military mythology (such as John Mearsheimer) that American war metrics simply do not apply to SMO, especially when for many in the US it becomes a complete revelation that Russian Army never lost operational initiative. So, the argument, that Russians are on a roll is merely an outdated geographic metric which obscures real reasons for no ceasefire. Here are the numbers again--they are beyond the grasp of any graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College:
Translation:Moscow.February 20. INTERFAX.RU - The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the counteroffensive in 2023 amounted to over 166 thousand servicemen, more than 800 tanks, almost 2.4 thousand combat armored vehicles, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu."Having deployed such huge forces, the enemy did not even manage to reach the first line of defense. The first line of defense, and there are two more of them. Having lost 166 thousand killed and wounded, (...) more than 800 tanks, almost 2,400 combat armored vehicles," Shoigu said in an interview with Russian journalists.Shoigu also said that Russian troops destroyed more than half of the Leopard tanks supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
That's the main reason and that is what being on the roll is. Some time, I think, they have issues with basic math.
Highlighted in yellow (in fact the whole column) is the main reason why there will be no ceasefire. This is also why I question basic military professional skills of Kellogg, who believed Kiev's propaganda BS about losses. They know very little about real war and they are terrified of a moment when they will have to face a reality--reality of who they are, not to mention always huge issues with causality.
I do not deny credit to Mearsheimer for his book Israel Lobby and for him being somewhat sensible about SMO. Beyond that, he is a typical American exceptionalist and that is a diagnosis. Exceptionalism comes from a weak background in the history of the XX century.
... not reporting which is useful, makes sense, albeit Poletaev, whoever this person is (Vatfor is a collection of amateurs), should have read this blog about ten years ago when I warned that, indeed, as the tittle to his piece reads:
Any serious military expert will tell you that it is good to have a strong enemy but who is rational and understands realities rather than some monkey with the grenade, even if it has the best of intentions, in a monkey sense of the word. Now, people ask me why I do not give John Mearsheimer a wide berth when it comes to Russia and war. Let me remind you that in May 2014 he, correctly, pointed out in his article in Foreign Affairs titled: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. But this is as far as his "expertise" in Russia, warfare and economy goes. In fact, considering a well known feature of Washington establishment which makes its strategic decisions based on Hollywood and Kool Aid about own military "might" and economy, Merasheimer, who IS considered a sort of an "expert" in geopolitics committed in this piece a worst sin in medicine--Primum non nocere (First, do not harm).
This is exactly what they in Washington needed and wanted to hear (and read), because the whole premise of the clusterfuck they created in the last 10+ years was that Russia is weak, and that all Russia's offers have been not a rational conduct of diplomacy but the signs of weakness. And here comes the second most important tenet of medical ethics as derived from Hippocratic Oath:
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not"
Sadly, there is no ethics in American so called "strategic studies" and geopolitics and selling BS as knowledge is not only encouraged but rewarded handsomely most of the time. And here we are 10 years later and who knows how many millions of Ukies and tens of thousands of Russians killed and wounded.
It is not just about manufacturing capacity--in theory the US may build, in the next 10+ years, some facilities to increase production of 155-mm shells or drones. But it will not be able to match industrial capacity of Russia in this respect, even with theoretical addition of future, if any, European capacity. The issue here is not just quantity--the target impossible to reach due to utter destruction of US manufacturing base and an extremely complex supply chains for military production. This all is just the tip of the iceberg. The main body of the iceberg is a complete catastrophe that the US military doctrinal and, as a result, procurement development is.
I spoke about it for years--some gaps, such as in air defense or missilery the US will not be able to close, because as I type this, this gap continues to grow. It is measured not in years but in generations. This is, as an example, the result of misguided and illiterate approach to air defense based on... air power. You have to literally undo the whole thing, and this requires not just building some facilities, but a complete rethinking of America's defense or, rather, "offense" philosophy which doesn't work. It never did. This is impossible in the present state of the American geopolitical thought without rethinking the United States as it perceived itself in the last hundred years. The US has no courage, intellect and will to do so because it leads to a destruction of America's mythology.
So, the US is stuck. So, it is good that John Mearsheimer understands parts of it, but he doesn't understand the heart of the matter. After the US strategically and operationally "planned" VSU's "counteroffensive", the question of the competence of the US military establishment arose and was answered--it is incompetent! It will take a generation or two to even teach those who are currently in the plebe years in US service academies to think properly and within the framework of America's REAL military and industrial capability. This REAL capability has nothing in common with the US halcyon years of WW II and after and it is not coming back. Russia will not allow the US to unleash the war in Europe while thinking that the US can sit this one out again behind the ocean. Doesn't work like this anymore, especially with the construction tempo of Russia Navy's subs such as 3M22 Zircon carriers Yasen-class subs and frigates which already have Zircons deployed. These are technologies the US simply doesn't have and are nowhere near of getting them. China can rely on them, and much more from Russia in case of the US deciding to commit suicide, the US cannot.
It is grim picture of corruption, financial and, most importantly, intellectual within the US military and foreign policy establishment, and what John Mearsheimer fails to understand--these are not just some pieces of hardware whose utility the US suddenly recognized. Nope, the REAL experience of SMO is way more than technological, it is above all operational and strategic, which made Russia's General Staff a well-oiled machine which merely uses 404 as a trap and a junkyard for NATO's military capacity, because Russia fights not Ukraine, she fights NATO, and NATO, and the US, are in panic. In the end, Washington cannot do strategy, it has no real strategists--only whiteboard doctrine mongers, who will fail again to learn proper lessons, because one has to have a proper tool kit. The US doesn't have one. Good luck "containing" China.
P.S. I'll probably do podcast with my friend Colonel Vladimir Trukhan, and possibly with my other friend Colonel Oleg Shalandin fairly soon. I may also twist hands of some of my classmates--they are very humble people--to drag some of them to the podcast too. That depends, though.
Now about Mearsheimer, or, rather, why I do not read or listen to him, or why in general I am not interested in what he has to say. People brought again his platitudes up, and "analysis" at a discussion board today re: his, yet another, set of platitudes:
This paragraph alone demonstrates for anyone with serious military background (Mearsheimer is a graduate of USMA at West Point) a complete confusion which befell Mearsheimer, who passes in the US for "realist":
1. Defeat of the enemy and Victory are synonyms, and in REAL war, they are identical and mean "achieving POLITICAL goals of a war". If Mearsheimer, who is of a respectable age, still doesn't know it, he can start with Svechin's Strategy in order to avoid embarrassment...
2. ...when trying to predict the future having absolutely no tool kit when it comes to Russia and XXI century warfare. Mearsheimer doesn't have it and is the same product of American cultural and pseudo-academic milieu, whose views on warfare grew primarily based on entertainment industry and American exceptionalism. E.g. he has no grasp of the real size of Russian economy and, especially, of technological and production capability of Russian military-industrial complex. Neither have most US political "scientists" from Mearsheimer's environment.
3. He remains still THE American exceptionalist and is not well versed in the history of the XX century and, especially, its military history. It shines through his speaking and writing. Hence he always resorts to platitudes, which, once in a while make sense. But, as we all know, even the broken clock...
This is why I don't give Mearsheimer any respect as a scholar. In matters of the combined West against Russia in the XXI century he is an amateur with a lot of AMERICAN "academic" credentials which automatically disqualify those people from passing any judgement on issues of XXI century geopolitics. In the end, political "science" is a fraudulent academic field designed to give credence to opinions of people who, otherwise, are incapable of productive and meaningful intellectual labor. In general, as, sadly, the example of respected by me Colonel Macgregor shows, even the best and the brightest in the US have huge issues with learning the real history of WW II and America's path to greatness, however short-lived in historical terms, especially so of the Eastern Front which contributed decisively to America's post-WW II resurgence.
Realistically speaking he is a second rate geopolitical thinker who loves to claim to be a realist. There are NO world-class geopolitical thinkers in the West today for reasons which I explained on many occasions: most "thinkers" do not grasp the nature of modern military power because they lack background for understanding all technological intricacies and ways escalation dominance affects the balance of power. Yes, there are very few people of the scale of Douglas MacGregor who get it, but these exceptions merely confirm the rule. The actual claim to "authority" in geopolitics by Mearsheimer has nothing to do with geopolitics (of what passes for it today in the West) per se but with his and Walt's famous work on Israeli Lobby in the US.
Moreover, Mearsheimer was unlucky enough to graduate West Point in 1970 at the height of the America's humiliation in Vietnam and then served in the USAF precisely through the very end of America's Vietnam debacle in 1975. In other words, he was privy only to the US Armed Forces' doctrinal confusion and the early start of third stage of technological development of warfare which would manifest itself only in 1980s and into 1990s. So, speaking plainly, he missed most of it and his pseudo-academic trope of "offensive realism" is nothing more than a euphemism for American exceptionalism based on ignorance of the outside world and, as a matter of fact, America's main geopolitical rival today, Russia. Here is his today's piece about escalation.
I can easily answer his question about "where it all stops"--it is stopping now and those deliveries from NATO (and the US) make no difference whatsoever for the outcome and many in Washington begin to get it. But it is not what really makes it funny, no, it is the fact that he still uses beaten to death BS about "democracy". The fact that he doesn't understand how risible those statements about "democracy" and America's "desire to spread it" are, testifies to his lucid moments and grains of the common sense appearing periodically in his talking being merely sporadic, if not accidental altogether, touches with reality. The United States spreads not "democracy" but chaos and puppet regimes serving US' interests. He also needs to accept a simple fact of which I speak for many years now--NATO cannot fight the conventional war in Russia's geographic vicinity and hope to avoid catastrophic losses. Because of that the US will escalate to nuclear threshold because it is incapable of sustaining such losses on the battlefield and war effort economically. Mearsheimer doesn't understand that, as he doesn't understand the nature of escalation dominance.
No, the concern about this "sensitive technology" falling into Russian hands" as a reason for snag is a complete malarkey, albeit I do not state that there are no such concerns, they do exist but they are not about "security" primarily.
They are primarily about the fact that MQ1C Grey Eagle is not survivable in the real combat environment against Air Defense, Air Force and EW capabilities of Russia. Delivering those will simply add to an embarrassing "performance" of the US technology in Ukraine against Russian forces, with the latest US wunderwaffe such as vaunted Switchblade loitering munition which became a butt of jokes in Russia now because of its dismal combat "effectiveness" or, rather, lack thereof, amounting by different sources of SMO to a whopping... 20%. Clowns at Forbes rushed to do a damage control on the account of this munition, but the data (however incomplete) is already in and it is not good across the board for practically any type of the Western combat technology fighting in Ukraine. But then again, the problem is systemic and it cannot be resolved within present framework of America's combat technological culture which grew out of wars with grossly inferior enemies. One cannot buy this with money, period.
So, in this case Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a man who actually, unlike Mearsheimer, not only lived through but fought within new technological paradigm, contradicts Merasheimer dramatically, being, indeed, a true realist and a competent military observer.
Succinct, and that is why I am on record that the United States loses its wars due to ignorance and a systemic flaw in its strategic thinking and R&D and procurement philosophy, that is why I stated a few years ago that the United States lost the arms race to Russia, because it failed to adapt to fast changing realities of modern combat.
Well, it is good that Mearsheimer arrives to conclusions about the damage (he was on record for years that Russia has a "mediocre" military).
"Neutral Ukraine" stopped being "solution" about two months ago and it is not about Ukraine anymore. In fact, it never was from the git go in 2014. It is, indeed, an existential struggle for Russia and Putin is one of the dovish ones in Russian leadership. Moreover, what Mearsheimer fails to understand, that Russia didn't even roll out big guns and they are being kept in reserve in case Russia decides, which appears to be the case, to "expand" on her military-political objectives for SMO and is now in the mode of breaking up NATO. In this case, it really doesn't matter what the US wants or cares about--it is all connected to the escalation dominance Russia possesses and I warned about it as early as 2015-16. It is not about Putin, it is about Russian people, as a nation and we are long past the point of any negotiations about Ukraine. As I write for 8 years in this blog--the subject of negotiations is what will be the conditions of surrender of the combined West. I hope Mearsheimer begins to understand this.
Yeah, it is kinda self-evident. And here is what I want to stress. Seems not directly related but it is. Recall this I posted a month ago. Patrick Armstrong provided a link (at Colonel Lang's discussion board) to this review of Mearsheimer's latest work and I am quite happy that I do not need to write my own review now--I generally agree with this review. And here is couple of crucial points of this review:
I concur--American "realism" is merely a softer less bellicose verbally version of American exceptionalism and here where the review makes the most crucial observation:
Secondly there is a tendency throughout the book to take the US estimation of itself at face value.
Here is a huge problem which makes American "realists" merely another version of neocons whose common ground is American exceptionalism. I wrote about it two years ago. It was around that time that Mearsheimer was on record (if interested, you can find it) stating same old beaten to death cliches that Russia's economy was ten times smaller than that of the US and that Russian Army was a rather mediocre force. It IS a problem, and a huge one, that even what would be considered a relatively "sane" element in US foreign policy still believes grossly inflated American economic and military capabilities. They are simply not there anymore. This is not to mention my ad nauseam campaigning around the fact that overwhelming majority of these so called American exceptionalists know little about Russia and, well, about war. I will omit here the whole issue of the so called political "science" being basically a pseudo-academic fraud and the record this "science" provides an overwhelming empirical evidence of it being just that--a fraud.
So, the United States WILL exit both INF Treaty, and, eventually, START. All based on the assumption that the US will be able to return many stored warheads to her ICBMs and that it will be a competitor within INF limited (for now) weapon systems. It also could be a political ploy (I agree here with Putin) in the last attempts by the US to both regain full control of Europe (have you checked Visegrad Group recently? What they are up too?) and trying to present oneself as a sole superpower, which is not the case anymore--and for a long time. Putin is nonchalant about this whole thing and, as rumors have it, what was disclosed on March 1st in his speech to Federal Assembly was not the whole deal. I would expect so. Plus, the air of desperation with US "ultimatums" to Russia is tangible, and we may expect more provocations from Ukraine, in Syria and what have you--all of it with the blessing of large and influential parts of American oligarchy which basically put Trump (with very little resistance on his part) into his place of a figure head whose Administration is a panopticon of insane neocons trying to implement a completely ridiculous idea of American global domination while having no resources nor weapons to do so. But they don't know about it, as doesn't John Mearsheimer--but you would expect this from a political "scientist". So, read the book but periodically check the reality around yourself.
I finished latest book, The Great Delusion, by John Mearsheimer recently. I will review it later, it is not that important to do it now, I have to say, that while being sympathetic to the so called Realism in general, and some points Mearsheimer makes in this his treatise, it seems that he himself still resides in a delusion. Mearsheimer repeats, with conviction, some beaten to death cliches of American exceptionalism, such as the myth of "liberalism defeating Fascism",
Liberalism "defeating" Fascism
or stressing Soviet Union's "humiliating defeat in Afghanistan". Unlike Mearsheimer, who has very little knowledge of Russia, Colonel Lester Grau long ago addressed this issue. Unlike Merasheimer, who, despite his USMA West Point background, is a political "scientist", Grau is an authority on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. I will repeat his conclusions yet again:
In what can only be described as an empirical middle finger to Mearsheimer's assertion about "humiliating defeat" (and I get it where he comes from in his assertion, but about this later), we get today these news. You don't need to read Russian, just go directly to CNN video embedded in article (which is a transcript of the video) and listen.
Defeated, especially "humiliatingly", nations do not host in their capitals meetings of parties involved in the war in which the host supposedly was defeated. Obviously, even after this "humiliating defeat", Russia continued to exert an immense influence on Afghanistan both indirectly and directly, including, of course, arming Northern Alliance. "Humiliatingly defeated" nations do not behave like that. I will omit here the whole issue of Taliban being officially declared (in 2003) in Russia a terrorist organization, but times and things change. As in Syria, where Russia was forced to clean a mess created by NATO (US), Russia will have to make arrangements in Afghanistan. After all, we know by now how ISIS was defeated in Syria.
The United States has been in Afghanistan for 17 years--with zero results to show for it while redefining military common sense (and science) in terms of victory being "just staying there", and, of course, having a good PR machine, which can spin a defeat into victory. This is not how Russia works and that is what parties in Afghanistan know. The prime task is to prevent ISIS from reconstituting itself as a major player in Afghanistan. If it takes Taliban to help deal with this scourge--so be it, let's talk. In the end, the fate of a huge region is at stake, including Russia's "soft underbelly". And here we come to this "realism" thing; while I still would recommend a book by Mearsheimer to be read, it is really about time that many (not all) American "realists" followed Mearsheimer's advise and stopped living in delusion, no, not the liberal one, a "realist" one, and finally face geopolitical reality of a tectonic shift in power balance in the world in which real realism, capable to operate with tangibles, not simulacra, triumphed. In the end, one has to operate with reliable data, not propaganda cliches. Victory in war is defined by attaining war's political objectives. We know how that goes for the US lately.
No comments are needed. Listen attentively to Mearsheimer's remark on "freedom" in geopolitical sense. That is pure, distilled and very healthy Realism--the way it is supposed to be.
