Are you saying you don't think wars are run by people thinking and planning strategically? Because I'd say this one looks like it isn't. You could make the same case for Vietnam and Iraq, among many others. But there are plenty of wars where the opposite is true
Yes.
All wars are wage by humans. Sometimes it is more important kneecapping your fellow general than winning. Vietnam is an easy example thanks to the Pentagon Papers, but try looking into documents and details of other wars; I do think that you will see the pattern.
That NYT article is worth reading in full (and re-reading), it is offering a different perspective, not exactly the official version repeated again and again; even if everything done by the Americans seems to be 150% successful.
I would like to bring to attention a few points (
and my comments.)
The Biden administration would find itself forced to keep crossing its own red lines
simply to keep the Ukrainians afloat.
Ukraine was a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars; Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later. (
Ukraine is just another pawn.)
According to a former senior U.S. military officer, "The Americans go: ‘Oh, that’s the Moskva!’ The Ukrainians go: ‘Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye.’" (
US didn't know about Ukrainian anti-ship missiles.)
General Syrsky quickly came around: The Americans could provide the kind of battlefield intelligence his people never could.
In March, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, surging additional forces east and south; a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.
In Wiesbaden, officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency were joined by coalition intelligence officers; a British general would manage the logistics hub and a Canadian would oversee training.
"You can ‘Slava Ukraini’ all you want with other people. I don’t care how brave you are.
Look at the numbers." (
Reality, not wishes.)
The locations of Russian forces would be 'points of interest.' Intelligence on airborne threats would be 'tracks of interest.' (
In this SMO.)
So as not to evoke memories of the American military advisers sent to South Vietnam in the slide to full-scale war, they would be known as "subject matter experts."
(Again, in this SMO.)
The Ukrainians would set a trap: First, they would fire toward Russian lines. When the Russians turned on the Zoopark to trace the incoming fire, the fusion center would pinpoint the Zoopark’s coordinates in preparation for the strike. (
But that is not direct participation of US in this war, that is Ukraine fighting with one hand behind its back.)
Sievierodonetsk was widely reported as an early and important Ukrainian victory. Unspoken was that the Americans had supplied the points of interest that helped thwart the Russian assault.
Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks.
Mr. Zelensky was hoping to attend the mid-September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. A showing of progress on the battlefield, he and his advisers believed, would bolster his case for additional military support. So they upended the plan at the last minute. (
Order, counter-order: disorder.)
"It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched," one Ukrainian official remarked.
Mr. Zelensky had made it clear that he wanted, and needed, a big win to bolster morale at home and shore up Western support.
(And to hell with reality.)
The British, unlike the Americans, had placed small teams of officers in the country after the invasion.
The Biden administration had authorized helping the Ukrainians develop, manufacture and deploy a nascent fleet of maritime drones to attack Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. (The Americans gave the Ukrainians an early prototype meant to counter a Chinese naval assault on Taiwan.) First, the Navy was allowed to share points of interest for Russian warships just beyond Crimea’s territorial waters. In October, with leeway to act within Crimea itself, the C.I.A. covertly started supporting drone strikes on the port of Sevastopol.
A predawn swarm of maritime drones, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked the port, damaging several warships and prompting the Russians to begin pulling them back.
The coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.
A plan that required five million shells and one million drones. To which an US General responded "
From where?"
The Americans now presented Mr. Zelensky with what they believed would constitute a statement victory, a bombing campaign, using long-range missiles and drones, to force the Russians to pull their military infrastructure out of Crimea and back into Russia.
The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil. (
Still, Russia hasn't responded to US provocations with WW3. How real were those nuclear threats that never existed?)
Biden administration officials would joke bitterly that they knew more about what the Russians were planning by spying on them than about what their Ukrainian partners were planning.
"It wasn’t almost blackmail, it was blackmail," a senior Pentagon official said.
(Vietnam, again.)
My conclusions.
American victories, Ukraine is just the puppet.
Zelenski is delusional or incompetent.
(Both.)
Ukraine should be thinking about the final lesson from Vietnam.
Ukraine is not "holding its own" against Russia. Ukrainian cannon fodder, NATO weapons (and money) and US intelligence allows Ukraine to keep losing this war.
lostarmour.info
