Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
In today’s New York Times send-out, I saw the following story:
Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say
American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.
Listen to the U.S. military, Ukraine! Don’t be casualty-averse! Concentrate your forces. Take the fight to the Russian enemy. Use all those cluster munitions we’ve sent you. Commit your armored reserve and punch a hole in the Russian lines. Break through, break out, and drive toward Crimea. You know: just like Americans would do in your place.
One might forgive Ukrainians if they asked, When was the last war you “experts” won for America? Afghanistan? Iraq? Vietnam? Korea? What about ongoing military commitments to Syria and Somalia? If you’re so good at winning wars, how come the U.S. military didn’t win in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam where you had overwhelming materiel and firepower superiority?
With respect to why Ukraine has its forces “too spread out”: perhaps Ukraine needs to garrison its lines so that it can fend off Russian counterattacks? If Ukraine concentrates its strategic reserve and uses it in a big counteroffensive that stalls, what’s to stop Russia from a decisive riposte? Think of Kursk for Nazi Germany in 1943. Once that huge offensive failed for Germany, using up its strategic reserve, the Red Army seized the initiative on the eastern front and never lost it.
At Kursk in 1943, the Germans committed their reserves in a desperate gamble to seize the initiative from the Soviet Union. When the offensive failed, the Red Army counterattacked and proved unstoppable.
Headlines like the one posted above from the New York Times are intended to be exculpatory for the U.S. If the war turns worse for Ukraine, U.S. “experts” can point to articles like this, casting blame on the Ukrainians for not following sage American advice.
If “we” win in Ukraine, it will be because of generous U.S. aid and especially vaunted U.S. and NATO weaponry; but if they (the Ukrainians) lose, it’s all their fault for not following the advice of America’s master strategists. And, obviously, even if Ukraine loses, plenty of weapons manufacturers in the U.S. are winning and will continue to win. Indeed, a Russian victory could be just the thing to propel even more weapons spending by NATO countries as well as even larger and more monstrous Pentagon budgets.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.
Exactly right; these comments are designed to shift blame from the “advisors” to the “advised” if things continue to head south.
NO ONE should listen to the US military about anything; there is not a single US officer who ever fought in a war where the US did not have overwhelming air supremacy, firepower superiority, unconstrained logistical support, and a technological edge over the enemy; yet our results have hardly been anything to brag about – even our mythologized “100 hour war” accomplishment in Iraq was full of bad planning, bad leadership, hesitancy, and page after page of “lessons learned” (I read many of the after action reports myself, when in CGSC in the early 1990s). Results would have been very different had the fat bastard schwartzkopf actually faced a peer enemy.
And, anyone familiar with weapons systems should peruse the Oryx site for the full list of equipment “generously supplied” to Ukraine; it’s more of a used car lot full of obsolescent crap than it is a thought-out aid package for the task at hand.
So, if our “advisors”, knowing the extent of russian defenses, and knowing the tools we provided the ukrainians, still encouraged this offensive, then they are incompetent criminals, and in a fair world should be handed over to the ukrainians who should shoot them in the face.
William J Astore wrote a great article. It would be good for Ukrainians to ask the Americans why they continue their wars if they win. They should also tell the Americans that they should quit arming their country to fight a war with Russia that would go on forever because they want Russia to lose. The Ukrainians are suffering from the war no matter how it started and no matter who is waging war there.
So many Americans think wars are good because they take place away from their homeland.
These Ukrainians just do not show the gratitude required for destroying their country and killing their young men for the glory of America’s MIC. How dare they not sacrifice themselves by the tens of thousands weekly …. daily for the Neocon’s utopia? Sheeeeesh …..
So it goes………………