by Observer R for the Saker blog
[typographical corrections 2/15/2023]
As the Ukraine war enters its second year, RAND Corporation entered the ring with two punches. The first was the January issuance of a study entitled Avoiding a Long War. The second was a February article by a RAND researcher entitled What Russia Got Wrong, which was published in Foreign Affairs. The latter article was sent by email on February 10, 2023, as part of an advertisement to subscribe to Foreign Affairs. It is an advance copy of the print edition for March/April 2023. That issue was not out yet and did not appear on the magazine website when this paper was written.
The January report, Avoiding a Long War, received wide publicity and comment because it seemed to overturn a previous RAND study done in 2022 that had suggested a long war in Ukraine would benefit the US. It was widely noted that RAND receives most of its funding from the US Defense Department, and that the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had suggested in late 2022 that it was a good time for Ukraine to negotiate a cease fire. His opinion was that Ukraine had achieved the maximum territory possible in the war and that things would go worse for Ukraine if the war continued. The Chairman’s opinion was outside the official narrative at the time and did not get much traction in public. Thus the RAND report in January was viewed as another attempt by the generals to educate the rest of the government and public that, in all likelihood, the Ukraine war would turn for the worse come the new year. The RAND report did serve to help open up space for a competing narrative that the Ukraine War was using up resources that would be better used in the competition with China, the real peer country. Thus one could argue that NATO was not giving up or losing a small war in Ukraine, but was simply reorienting efforts in preparation for the big war with China. One US general conveniently announced that he expected war with China to begin in 2025.
The February article from RAND, What Russia Got Wrong, is also a lengthy and well-written attempt at getting the new narrative in place. It serves in two ways: It explains the mainstream reported success of Ukraine in 2022 as being in large part due to mistakes by Russia and extensive support by NATO, and also warns that Russia is learning from its mistakes and will be much improved in 2023. In addition, the NATO supply of ammunition and rockets is running out and it is doubtful that NATO support will be enough in the future. While the article does not specifically call for negotiations now, it points out at the end that war is unpredictable and that Russia could win after all. The importance of the article is that it was published in Foreign Affairs magazine, the organ of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
What Russia Got Wrong shows an extensive knowledge and expertise on the part of the author. The beginning of the article lays out the author’s case: “Before the invasion, Russia’s military was larger and better equipped than Ukraine’s….Why Russia did not prevail—why it was instead stopped in its tracks, routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive—has become one of the most important questions in both U.S. foreign policy and international security more broadly.” The author then goes on for a major portion of the article explaining and answering the question. The answer included “excessive internal secrecy… an invasion plan that was riddled with faulty assumptions, arbitrary political guidance, and planning errors that departed from key Russian military principles.” Additionally, Russia underestimated both Ukrainian resistance and Western support for Ukraine. The article goes on for many pages listing Russian military capabilities and a long list of deficiencies.
The article continues to follow the official narrative through most of the many words, only to waffle at the end. One point is the emphasis on the initial thrust of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia. It was very weak compared to the size of the Russian army, and the author notes it as a failure. There is a brief reference to Russian desire to avoid casualties and damage, but the author is basically looking at the situation as a military issue and assuming that major war strategy and tactics should have been followed.
Instead, Russia is berated for following a political strategy, without the article going into sufficient depth analyzing the war as a political issue. For example, one factor might have been that Russia was trying to keep the action as a small SMO in order to limit the scare it would give the European countries. Russia tried to portray the SMO as more of a police action to protect the separatist areas from Ukrainian army activities. Furthermore, it has not been clear to observers the reasons for Russian troops to venture into hostile territory so early in the invasion. There was some thought early on that the ventures may have had to do with the biological laboratories and the locations of nuclear materials, but this lacked clarification in the media.
In other words, perhaps Russia did not conduct the invasion of Ukraine according to Russian war doctrine because Russia was not intending it to be a war in the beginning. It appears that it was to demilitarize and remove any Nazi-type influence in Ukraine and to keep NATO out of Ukraine, but the methods were as much political as military. The military was to be kept to the minimum possible. The Russian plan almost succeeded: There were negotiations in Istanbul almost immediately between Russia and Ukraine, and some sort of partial deal was worked out. It is hard to find the exact terms agreed to, but presumably they were to have Ukraine become neutral, not join NATO, and recognize the local elections in areas to join Russia. These hopes were shattered when the prime minister of Britain flew to Kiev and reportedly convinced the Ukrainian government to trash the negotiated agreement. One of the members of the Ukraine team was assassinated when he returned to Kiev, with some talk that he was a traitor. This was murky enough, but got even more strange when, months later, he was declared a hero of Ukraine. In addition, the prime minister of Israel and the foreign minister of Turkey were very busy serving as mediators for ongoing negotiations among Ukraine, Russia and NATO powers to stop the war.
Russia could also be viewed as not wanting to start a war, but rather as issuing a wake-up-call to bring the various parties to the negotiating table. In this regard, Russia was successful. The fact that the negotiations failed can mean that Russia made a mistake, but if Russia had not gone the political route first, it also would have been later viewed as a mistake. In other words, Russia was “damned if it did and damned if it didn’t,” and many words can be spilled arguing each side and every point. Another instance where it appears that Russia tried to save the Ukrainian army and the people of Ukraine from destruction was when Moscow openly called on the Ukrainian army generals to carry out a coup and stop the war. This also failed, but even now some in the Western mainstream press suggest that factions would like to have the top military man in Ukraine take over the presidency with an eye to changing the situation.
Regardless of whether one views the first phases of the battle in Ukraine as an example of gross Russian ineptitude, or as the initial Russian moves in a game of three-dimensional chess, even the Foreign Affairs article admits that Russia improved a lot during the later stages of the battle. Among other things, the Russians have learned to use obsolete missiles and drones, instead of aircraft, to overcome Ukraine air defenses, and how to jam Ukrainian communications without jamming their own.
The conclusion of the article is that “there are reasons to think the shift will not salvage the war for Russia, partly because so many things need to change, no single factor explains why the war has gone so poorly for Russia thus far.” However, it goes on to hedge as follows:
“But analysts should be careful about forecasting outcomes. The classic adage still holds: in war, the first reports are often wrong or fragmentary. Only time will tell whether Russia can salvage its invasion or whether Ukrainian forces will prevail. The conflict has already followed an unpredictable course, and so the West should avoid making hasty judgments about what went wrong with Russia’s campaign, lest it learn the wrong lessons, devise incorrect strategies, or acquire the wrong types of weapons. Just as the West overestimated Russia’s capabilities before the invasion, it could now underestimate them.”
So, while the first punch from RAND warned that a long war in Ukraine is not in the US’s interest, this second punch from RAND warned that the US should be careful because it is possible that Russia might win the Ukraine war. Many analysts assume that these two RAND initiatives have occurred now because Russia really is winning and the “powers that be” want to break the news very gently to the public and the politicians.
A well-written article by a retired British diplomat, Alastair Crooke, does an excellent job of elucidating further on the topic of Ukraine:
“Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s former ‘spin doctor’ and adviser, has described the circumstance of the Russian SMO first entry into Ukraine: It was conceived as a bloodless mission and should have passed without casualties, he says. “They tried to wage a smart war… Such an elegant, beautiful, lightning-fast special operation, where polite people, without causing any damage to either a kitten or a child, eliminated the few who resisted. They didn’t want to kill anyone: Just sign the renunciation”.
The point here is that what occurred was political miscalculation by Moscow – and not military failure. The initial aim of the SMO didn’t work. No negotiations resulted. Yet from it flowed two major consequences: NATO controllers pounced on this interpretation to trumpet their pre-conceived bias that Russia was militarily weak, backward and stumbling. That misreading underlay how NATO perceived Russia would prosecute the war.
It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.
On the presumption of weakness, however, NATO switched plans from a planned guerrilla insurgency, to conventional war along the ‘Zelensky Defence Lines’ – thus opening the path for Russia’s artillery domination to attrit Ukraine’s forces to the point of entropy. It is an error that cannot be rectified. And to try it might just lead to WW3.”
Note that the author states that “No negotiations resulted.” He claims that it was a political miscalculation by Russia. Another opinion could be that it was a political gamble by Russia that did not pay off. In any event, it seems strange to claim that no negotiations resulted, when the news was full of reporting the mediation efforts by the foreign minister of Turkey and the prime minister of Israel. The foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met in Antalya, Turkey, in early March 2022, but the discussions did not yield concrete results according to Reuters. Russia-Ukraine peace talks began later in March in Istanbul. The Turkish foreign minister attended the talks and worked as a mediator. He announced that the two sides were close to agreement. However, no actual final result was obtained.
Mr. Crooke does know how to turn a phrase, so this article will borrow one of his paper’s final paragraphs to help wrap up this analysis:
“However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged (albeit, with the compulsion to avoid seeming ‘defeatist’ – that persists in certain quarters). They know too that the NATO (as ‘formidable force’) ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.”
The official narrative about the Ukraine war is changing. The word “narrative” has replaced the older term “party line” that was used in the days of the Soviet Union. But the meaning is similar. The articles by the RAND researchers are an illustration of how the new narrative is broadcast to everyone concerned. The update in the party line is taking effect as the headlines in the mainstream media reflect the bursting of many dreams and delusions about Russia and Ukraine.
References:
Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe, RAND Corporation, January 2023
What Russia Got Wrong: Can Moscow Learn From Its Failures in Ukraine?, Dara Massicot, Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2023
Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, February 13, 2023
“Why Russia did not prevail—why it was instead stopped in its tracks, routed outside major cities, and put on the defensive..” (cough cough cough!)”
“excessive internal secrecy… an invasion plan that was riddled with faulty assumptions, arbitrary political guidance, and planning errors that departed from key Russian military principles.” Additionally, Russia underestimated both Ukrainian resistance and Western support for Ukraine. The article goes on for many pages listing Russian military capabilities and a “long list of deficiencies.”
What Russia Got Wrong shows an extensive knowledge and expertise on the part of the author.
Um, I personally think that what this article shows is that this Dara Massicot, character doesn’t know, as Maryanov sometimes says, is that he/she doesn’t know a post digestive posterior exudate from this stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinola#/media/File:Shinola.jpg
What can be wrong when you start the game with E2-E4 and then just follow a path depending on the moves of your opponent? There are many ways to the end of the game and this game has only just begun. So many watchers judging the opening while analysis need time to get real quality only after the game is fully done. Furthermore, isn’t only the opener able to judge his own game? Imagine an opener who wants to draw or even lose, or sacrifice a piece. Can any watcher analyse or judge while the play is unfolding? Which board is watched? Where does the watcher stand? Is this opening fully analysed or brand new? Are there only 32 pieces on the board or is this game even more complex on so many levels?
The very title ‘What Russia Got Wrong’ is filled with arrogance. In reality it says nothing about what Russia got wrong, but a lot about what the US and its advisors like RAND Corporation got wrong in their total misestimation of Russian aims, which Russia had quite openly being declaring all along. This came about from their ethnocentric contempt for Russia and Russian views over eight years and more before the SMO began.The US simply cannot understand the approach of another Civilisation which does not use lies and cunning to express itself. Now it is making exactly the same mistake with China, whose views on Taiwan are also abundantly clear. The US should know better because this is the same mistake that it made in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, misestimating the views and will to resist of others. This one size fits all mentality is cultural arrogance – the US can only understand others through its own spectacles. An honest title for this report would be: ‘What the US Got Wrong’. And what it wrong all stems from the US its inability to understand others and other cultures and so its rock-solid belief in its own delusions.
You said everything I was going to say. Thank you,
Vietnam, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – and Serbia
“What Russia Got Wrong shows an extensive knowledge and expertise on the part of the author”.
I think what your “expert” gets wrong is that Russia outsmarted the West. Russia did not get, and is not getting, anything wrong in this operation.
What seems to be paining RAND and its MIC sponsors is that Russia did not fight the type of war they had hoped it would fight. The NATO had thought that Russia would go for a total take-over of Ukraine and then would be stuck with the recalcitrant well-trained guerilla terrorists.
That would have been the perfect Soviet-Afghanistan 2.0 for Russia. That was the NATO plan. But Russia cleverly turns the table on the NATO. Now the whole operation is turning into a NATO-Afghanistan 2.0. Or as they have started to call it in the USA, a Vietnam 2.0 for Joe Biden.
“NATO-Afghanistan 2.0”
I would say it is turning out even worse. They’ve broken the economy of Ukraine and have 20+ million welfare clients to take care of. The entire Ukrainian state is on western life support, at a time there is a growing ‘cost of living’ crisis domestically in most NATO countries.
My bet is on that they will arrange a pro-Russian coup and make a run for it.
I’ve been perplexed by Russia’s tactics in the Ukraine, but I think you have clarified it. The “double reverse” guerrilla war. Wow! This will get really messy before it is all over. How does the saying go, “don’t get into a fight with a pig, ’cause the pig will drag you into the mud, and the pig likes it.”
While I do think that Russia got a lot wrong in the beginning of the SMO and is generally far from perfect, this @Tayo comment is absolutely pertinent.
Russia did indeed not set out to fight the war the West was hoping and had been planning for. The American generals and commentators gave it all away when they showed themselves disappointed at the low scale of Russia’s operation in terms of manpower. They wanted Russia to go full in and then be faced with the guerilla problem and be bled to death.
They had equipped the Ukro army just for that job with all those manpads and javelins and whatnot. And they were very proud of it. And yes, they did put them to some use during the chaotic first phase of the war. But then, Russia revised their approach, withdrew and began to tackle the Donbass fortifications using artillery.
I don’t know whether it really turns into a Vietnam 2.0 for Uncle Sam. I prefer to read Strelkov and stay on the cautious or even pessimistic side. But Russia did not react according to Western planning.
As for the RAND studies, the Crooke article and the one by Observer R : I’m absolutely not sure what Uncle Sam is going to do. It looks to me like they want to embolden and encourage Russia. This is how I read these studies, and also the article by former British intelligence agent Crooke. Maybe I’m too suspicious an observer, but I absolutely don’t trust these communications, be they RAND studies or alternative articles.
@iR.47 : They couldn’t care less about the Ukro people if they’re not useful as soldiers or farmers or miners. Broken economy? Let Europe deal with it. Uncle Sam is outta here. Arrange a pro-Russian coup? I don’t think so. Why would they sabotage their own game?
First comment for me as a registered user here. Allt the best to the Saker and other commenters here in what appears to be the final days of the blog.
@Lumi : A manufactured pro-Russian coup would be the easy way of running away from the bill. Both the operating- and reconstruction costs. With a pro Russian regime in place, which they would not recognize, how could they continue to support it ? Leave that for the Russians. The overall goal of the operation was to drain the Russians, not themselves.
In February 2022, the Russians cut off Ukraine and took 1/5, then gave the West a gentleman’s offer. The West refused it, along with the Ukrainians, and the Russians saved their souls.
Many years ago, I went to a business school that most of you would recognize. The business major classes were often case-based, that is, you studied a case and presented analysis of the elements.
Those cases, and the lessons they taught when you read between the lines, remain in my memory.
One of the cases, a long one, had a meta-message that you can witness every so often. All of the C-suite, line managers and staff who were included in the case presented the company’s issues as issues due to some other department. So, for example, the purchasing department personnel commented on the design teams, manufacturing had criticism of the QA team, and so forth. There were a lot of details unimportant here, I have distilled the entire case and presented the meta-message, which was the personnel’s focus on the ‘other guy’, when in fact they had little grasp of the details of that other department.
The west’s analysis of Russian motivation, plans, tactics and resources all come from their own prejudices and, fantasies of Russia. They describe Putin’s motives according to their own misguided beliefs, they repeat discredited analysis because it fits their bias, and they state as certain Russian strategies about which they could not possibly know. Intelligence professionals, elected officials, military ‘experts’ bloviating from their imaginations, all contribute to this dysfunction.
@ Observer R
Excellent piece. Thank you very much.
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I posted a link to the Rand Corporation article,
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html
“Avoiding a Long War – U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict”
as part of a comment I wrote
/a-panicked-empire-tries-to-make-russia-an-offer-it-cant-refuse/#comment-1169160
to one of Pepe’s articles,
/a-panicked-empire-tries-to-make-russia-an-offer-it-cant-refuse/
A panicked Empire tries to make Russia an ‘offer it can’t refuse’
in which Pepe elaborated on an Op-Ed Blinken wrote in the WaPo with what Pepe called “an offer Russia can’t refuse.”
Pepe grounded the “offer Russia can’t refuse” on two “Atlantic Council” articles, the last one from November 2022 spelling out military, political, economic, and diplomatic recommendations for Ukraine against the background of Ukrainian’s “successes” on the battlefield. The first one, October 2022, was similar with a different approach, focused on “reconstruction and stabilization of Ukraine,” it portrays three hypothetical scenarios, with policy recommendations for each one of them, none contemplating Ukraine’s defeat.
I posted Rand’s “Avoiding a Long War” to show Pepe there was another vector at work, probably closer to the motivations behind Blinken’s Op-Ed than the “Atlantic Council” ones, even though Pepe was on the mark about US/NATO’s real intentions as elaborated by the “Atlantic Council.” I made some (short) observations in my comment similar to yours about the background of “Avoiding a Long War.”
The title to the second article from Rand, “What Russia Got Wrong,” seems to have the intention to mislead the reader by framing an image to its narrative that was easy to deconstruct, as you did show us through your well thought-out piece.
The main block appears to be the inability to understand “Russia’s Way of War.” Once and again Putin has stated the goals of the SMO are being achieved, that is, in Russian terms, which nobody except the stavka really knows what they are. To measure Russia’s “progress” in western terms, is the beginning of folly.
Russia’s political-military strategy in the context of the SMO didn’t start yesterday, what we are witnessing is the unfolding of a long-term strategic plan, an event that was foretold by Putin in different scenarios for two decades, warning the Collective West it was coming. However, the old adage “No plan survives contact with the enemy” has been proven true for Russia too, and there have been, and continue to be, serious setbacks in the implementation of the war effort.
We better believe they are working hard to catch up, and we can expect the coming new offensive, which Putin will announce on the 21st at midnight, will signal an improved Russian army with a new impetus to face the Herculean challenges they have by now realistically sized up.
The only thing Russia got wrong, IMHO, was not to believe the depth of corruption, depravity, and moral turpitude, of the Collective West. The SMO, however, was also a probe into the Collective West ethics, or lack thereof, which we hope has cured Russia from any illusions as to the real intentions of the psychopaths.
I fully agree with your dictum, re: NATO’s misperception about Russia’s prosecution of the war,
It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.
Hence the confidence expressed by Putin in a recent meeting with the head of the Communist Party of Russia, Genady Zhiuganov,
“…I believe the fight against Nazis today has taken on a fateful significance. I worked for 20 years at the Council of Europe and I never thought that Europe could become so submissive to the Americans who have become completely brazen of late. But, I hope, we must win – and we will win.
Vladimir Putin: That is the way it is going to be. Thank you.
Gennady Zyuganov: Thank you.
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And… that is the way it is going to be.
Thanks again for a great piece.
Lone Wolf
you contribute excellent comments and analysis …and other posters too…will miss them gonna be a big hole when saket closes.. think about setting up a telegram channel???????
T channels report military events ..Pepe is on T…but so few have extensive analysis and overall perspectives . We need such articles as this ….Batiushka .etc to continue under one umbrella .
If the US and NATO are running out of weapons and ammunition to give to Ukraine, how do the neocons in Washington and Brussels think they can fight a war with China?
@Kimiolka
How do they think they can fight a war with Russia?
Hell, they can’t even afford a war with Iran! Let alone fight a war with China, Russia and Iran combined.
How many more face-saving fubar articles can we expect from RAN(T), the US Government sponsored Hollywoodesque inspired Think-Tank? Plenty I expect, each one more delusional than the previous, culminating in how US-NATO lost militarily, economically, politically and geopolitically but actually won morally.
NATO heads’ meetings remind me of the Mafia bosses get-togethers in the Sopranos, whenever there’s a threat to their racketeering and extortion operations, turf wars.
I leave you with a popular song in the frontline Ukrainian trenches –
‘I was sick and tired of everything
When you called me last night from Bakhmut
Super trouper shells are gonna blind me
But I don’t feel blue
Like I always do
‘Cause somewhere in the crowd (of corpses) there’s you.
Why is Saker closing?
“Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia. It was very weak compared to the size of the Russian army”
Hell, it looked very weak compared to the size of the Ukrainian army! That’s why it was called an SMO.
Completely outnumbered, the SMO destroyed the Ukrainian airforce and most of its tanks in a couple of months, and pushed on to Liberate east and south Ukraine as far as Mariupol, with Odessa in sight. All the time our MSM singing the same tune: Russia is losing, Ukraine is winning. What an interesting way to lose a Special Military Operation: destroy the enemies military capaciaty and gain ground in the object territory.
Then the SMO settled down to its hardest task: to dismantle 8 years of military fortification dug in by NATZO along the border of Donetsk and Luhansk. This needed enlarging of the SMO strength, which was smoothly done. The SMO now outnumbers the Ukrainian army, at all points of contact, and has broken through the central core of NATZO’s Ukrainian fortifications: the so-called “Zelensky Line”. All this the SMO has accomplished with what is still only a “very weak number of troops compared to the Russian Army”. The real Russian Army is being held in reserve for when the real fight comes — against NATZO (assuming NATZO shows up for the fight).
“I have not even begun to fight” — Captain “John Paul Jones” Putin.
Talking about strategic goals…they have mostly been achieved, several times over, I believe…404 is kept going on a hemorrhagic “life support” by the US/NATO ICU, for as long as they can kidnap, enslave, and chain cannon fodder to a bleeding concoction patched up at Ramstein…
Other things being equal, 404 has been strategically defeated, it only needs to be fully disarmed…demilitarization takes a new meaning under the life support…it needs to be expanded…
Read on…
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The Russian command has mostly achieved the strategic goals of the special operation, Lu Xiang, an American political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times newspaper.
https://vz.ru/news/2023/2/14/1199159.html
GT: Russia has mostly achieved strategic goals in Ukraine
The Russian command has mostly achieved the strategic goals of the special operation, Lu Xiang, an American political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times newspaper.
According to him, it is already possible to say that Russia has achieved strategic goals in Ukraine, since the Armed Forces of Ukraine are completely “unable to defend themselves without endless supplies of weapons from the West,” reports Komsomolskaya Pravda with reference to the Global Times.
The expert stressed that Kiev ” is 100% dependent on the help of the United States and NATO.”
The day before, it became known that the United States advised Kiev to try to take territories from Russia before the negotiations.
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https://m.vz.ru/society/2023/2/15/1199239.html
Russia to isolate Ukraine from NATO
Chinese analysts believe that Russia has already achieved the goals of the special operation, because the Armed Forces of Ukraine are no longer able to fight independently and are completely dependent on NATO support. However, Russian experts say that such assessments are premature. Moreover, the very concept of “demilitarization of Ukraine” has recently required clarification.
The Russian command has mostly achieved the strategic goals of the special operation, the Chinese newspaper Global Times writes. According to Lu Xiang, an American political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the armed forces of Ukraine (APU) are no longer “capable of defending themselves without endless supplies of weapons from the West.”
The expert also stressed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine “are 100% dependent on the help of the United States and NATO.” Meanwhile, the United States itself is preparing another package of military assistance for the enemy’s army in the amount of almost $ 2 billion. For the first time, it includes long-range missiles capable of hitting a target within a radius of 150 kilometers.
Despite this, Moscow has created a “stable front” on the left bank of the Dnieper, and now it is not only launching counterattacks, but also conducting counterattacks in the western direction. As the Chinese newspaper notes, it is difficult to push Russia back on the battlefield. According to observers, Ukraine is also experiencing a crisis: a large number of young people, elites and talents are leaving the country.
Against this background, Washington’s position looks inconsistent. Western experts believe that Russia can survive a war of attrition, which “left NATO countries virtually defenseless, emptying their own reserves.” “The delivery of more sophisticated weapons will further provoke Russia and risk expanding the war,” Liu warns. In his opinion,
Today, the US wants to cut its losses in time and put on a good show. More importantly, this is an open question.
Alexander Bartosh, a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, agrees with the fact that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not able to fight without Western weapons. According to him, without Washington’s help, the Ukrainian conflict “would have ended long ago.” “The APU’s own potential was only enough for a few weeks of intense battles,” the expert is sure.
According to him, the strategic goal of demilitarizing Ukraine has been practically implemented by Russia, which has inflicted ” significant blows to the enemy’s military industry.” “Energy infrastructure facilities have been affected. The military-industrial complex of Ukraine is not able to independently produce and even repair weapons. Hundreds of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are destroyed every day, ” the expert said.
Without the supply of Western weapons, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will last no more than a month, but it is premature to talk about achieving the goals of demilitarization, adds Vadim Kozyulin, a professor at the Academy of Military Sciences.
“Yes, the Russian army seized the initiative. Western politicians believe that the situation needs to be reversed. Just like that, they will not refuse military supplies, ” the source emphasizes. In other words, it is impossible to achieve the set goals of demilitarization without physically stopping the regular supply of weapons to the western border of Ukraine from the United States, Kozyulin believes.
[At the same time, the very concept of “demilitarization”, according to experts, requires clarification and clearer criteria. In this regard, the views of the classics of military theory that the main object of any operation should not be the territory, but the enemy’s army remain relevant.
Based on this, the key importance in the SVO is not territorial acquisitions (which has been repeatedly confirmed by the Kremlin’s position), but the destruction of the enemy’s manpower, undermining its ability to forcibly mobilize the civilian population, as well as the elimination of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as an organized force.
“The theoretical legacy of Moltke and Clausewitz is not only relevant, but also applicable to the logic of the Russian special operation,” says Alexander Perendzhiev, Associate Professor of the Department of Political Analysis and Socio-Psychological Processes at PRUE. Plekhanova, member of the Expert Council of Officers of Russia.
According to him, the military infrastructure on the territory of Ukraine is almost destroyed. The mobilization potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, judging by the terrible shots on the Network, is undermined. However, NATO manages to build logistics and infrastructure in such a way as to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a sufficient amount of equipment and ammunition.
It turns out that on the one hand, Chinese experts are right: only one name and nominal leadership remain from the APU, “because real decisions are made at the US Air Force Base Ramstein in Germany.” On the other hand, the demilitarization of Ukraine can only be partially recognized as having taken place, because the final achievement of the goals of the CDF requires complete military isolation of Ukraine from the countries of the eastern flank of NATO.
“In fact, we are at war with the alliance, limited to the territory of Ukraine. This is the specifics of the conflict, which is supported only by the shipment of equipment from the United States and the EU. This means that stopping deliveries is a key criterion for achieving the goals of a special operation. And in any case, we will have to solve this problem in all available ways, ” Perendzhiev concluded.] {Highlight is mine}
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Lone Wolf
Set aside the grotesque human casualties incurred, there’s a delicious double irony now in play: as the US/NATO cuts and runs leaving the UkroNazis out to dry, the Taiwanese are watching carefully and wondering out loud whether they’re ready the American “ally” to convert Taipei into downtown Bakhmut in a proxy war with Beijing. Such are the rewards for serving as a American cannon fodder.
The Heritage Foundation raises the same reflexive irony in January comment on the last round of (admittedly local) elections on Taiwan in which the aggressively anti-Beijing DPP got its clock cleaned in late 2022.
Heritage notes:
“That lack of confidence also extends to the U.S. commitment to protect Taiwan. Even with America’s bulk arms sales and strengthening bilateral military ties, as well as President Joe Biden’s repeated pledges to defend Taiwan, only 44% of Taiwanese people in August believed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. That’s a clear decline from 65% in October 2021.”
https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/why-local-election-results-taiwan-have-implications-america
So assuming the Ukrainian War ends in a crushing defeat for the US/ NATO proxy government in Kiev, the US will emerge from the Ukraine fiasco as totally washed-up losers along. Hard to believe NATO survives either.
And at the same time, as a result of the Ukraine debacle, the American gambit in Taiwan fizzles on its own, as the Taiwanese vote the accommodationist KMT party back into power in the ’24 elections rather than letting themselves become the Ukraine of the East.
If this scenario plays out — as likely it will–Biden’s “Ukraine- Taiwan two-fer parlay” will make for an inglorious short order annihilation of the US Hegemon in world affairs once and for all. But everything hangs now on the AFR prevailing in a big way in Ukraine. I’m still not ready to take that for granted as an easy layup. At the moment, however, it seems the likely course of things.