2 Comments

Ukraine is still in Russia’s backyard, much like Cuba is still in ours. Guess one needs to make the obligatory nod to the American delusion that we’re different. We can do regime change in Libya Syria and in the Russian backyard as well, because we’re exceptional.

Expand full comment

This is a facet of the puzzle of net-centric warfare every general staff and chancery not full of themselves and their imaginary superiority has applied themselves to today. The US Civil War Between The States was the nations' first Industrial Era War at scale. Russia's SMO in Ukraine is the nations' first Cyber Era War at scale.

In many key weapon systems, Russian engineering is superior to American and has rendered major American weapon systems mere budget give-aways and force personnel abattoirs. See, for example, how American ADA fails to stop Iranian rockets in Iraq and Saudi Arabia (Jeddah most recently, coming from Yemen).

The order of nations is multipolar now. The families running D.C. today will take the country to ruin rather than admit that fact, so dedicated are they to their dollar supremacy, aka their right to tell all and sundry how to live, when to jump, and how high.

The Fed can print money, but they cannot print commodities. Ditto the ECB. Russia has commodities. Her economy is not fiat currency, as are US and EU. The ruble is worth more against the dollar today than it was just before 24FEB22! That is because the ruble is backed by commodities, not fiat currency.

American mil is not preeminent, very far from it, is far from world-class, especially because it is not unified net-centric across all five combat domains: Space, Air, Cyber, Sea, Land. Russian mil is net-centric across these combat domains.

US branch morale is burrowing under the cellar, the service academies are toxic junk, branches spit at each other like cats and beat their chests like monkeys, lawyers make everyone afraid of everyone else, hardly the behavioral profile of a capable much less victorious national combined arms force.

A preening parade of POTUSs, Congresses, Federal Judges, SecDefs, COCOM Commanders, and Theatre Commanders could not bring to reason and quiet a parking lot and transshipment node (Afghanistan) jammed with practitioners of pederasty and bestiality?

Maneuver in Ukraine is dodgy because of ubiquitous rivers, lakes, and estuaries, which inhibit movement of heavy vehicles. Think, muddy roads. Russians are solving this problem, which is huge. Also, Chinese tires on Russian heavy vehicles self-shred under campaign conditions. (Note to acquisition department: DO NOT BUY CHINESE, they cheat on everything, even to themselves!).

Von Manstein faced the same muddy road conditions in the same area and was able to solve it. Russian commanders today have the same flexibility of initiative for maneuver von Manstein demanded and grudgingly received, finally, from Hitler. He used it effectively in his sector of the war. Commanders give directives, not specific orders, right down to the squad level.

I'm sure American mil will come through this with a fresh and effective -- at fighting and winning -- total force, united and net-centric. But the prius of that is shifting out of D.C. forever the degenerate families who today run the GO and NGO apparat in D.C. And I mean degenerate, like what ordinary people would never even imagine, could never even imagine.

Expand full comment