The ISW (State Department) position is that if America sticks its head up its ass hard enough, the problem will go away. And on past performance, that is what America is going to do.
The ISW, which is the voice of the State Department, complains that
A Ukraine strong enough to deter and defeat any future Russian aggression with an economy strong enough to prosper without large amounts of foreign aid is the only outcome of Russia’s war that the United States and the West should accept
And if an unacceptable outcome happens, like the Ukrainian economy being levelled to the ground, the Ukraine’s army collapsing in attritive warfare, and the Russians installing a Marshall Petain in Kiev?
This is like someone jumping off a cliff and half way to the jagged rocks at the bottom, declaring that the only acceptable outcome is that he lands like a feather.
The last of the Greatest Ukrainian Offensive seems to have ended today, or is ending, with the Ukrainians throwing in the towel at Krynky. Our rulers have been showing internal division, with some of them deciding that the Greatest Ukrainian Offensive ended a long while ago, with the result that Krinky became strangely invisible to them, some of them hailing Krinky as a mighty Ukrainian victory which was about to cause the collapse of Russia and the fall of Putin, and some of them noticing the facts on the ground – that it was a killing field for the Ukrainian army, with life expectancy for troops of a day or so, and highly unlikely to get much further than it had gotten, but producing clever rationalisations that the Russian were hurting even worse.
For some months the Russians have been increasingly on the offensive. And those offensives have been costly. The gains in turf have been absolutely insignificant, something in the ballpark of a square kilometre a day, but the gains in positional advantage for a war of attrition have been significant. When a local Russian offensive succeeds (and it frequently fails) they grab a strong point where the lie of the land and/or human built defences make it strong. And they then have a strong salient poking into weak Ukrainian territory, which becomes a killing field for Ukrainians. And then they cheerfully let the Ukrainians hang out in the killing fields until the Ukrainians decide to leave, whereupon it is time to grab another salient.
So far the Ukrainians have shown absolutely no sign of getting wise to this strategy, though giving up on Krinky may mean it is finally starting to sink in. They tend to hang on to unfavourable turf, and the Russians let them keep it.
The Ukrainian offensive was predicated on the reverse strategy – they would charge through at the weakest point, which was generally between strong points on either side, and then charge forth all the way to the Azov sea, whereupon those strong points, now cut off, would fall like ripe fruit. This was Kagan’s plan. I thought it moronic when he told us, and even more moronic to tell the plan on Youtube months in advance of attempting to carry it out, so the Russians would have lots of time to get ready for it. What predictably happened of course was that the Ukrainans found themselves in trapped in weak point salients surrounded by strong points, and the weak point salients became killing fields.
The Ukrainians seem to have become increasing reluctant to provide Krinky with the fresh cannon fodder it endlessly needs, or are just having some difficulty rounding up fresh cannon fodder.
The reason Krinky has been so bad for the Ukrainians is not because it is a natural weak point – it is just a random point on the delta much the same as everything around it. The problem is that everything has to be supplied in small unarmored boats that have to cross a broad river in plain sight from a long distance away, and these boats cannot carry heavy weapons. And the journey back is even more dangerous, because by the time the small unarmoured boat reaches a drop off points and drops off the latest cannon fodder, it has likely been spotted. Except during heavy rain or snow, it is a one way trip. Also the surface of the river is now turning to icy slush, too strong to drive a boat through, too weak to walk over. The boats creep slowly through the thickening slush. Maybe they have not stopped sending boats to cross the river, the boats may have stopped reaching their destinations.
The Russians have been fighting a war of attrition. The Ukrainians have been stubbornly and unusccesfully attempting to fight a war of movement, on the the instructions of deluded people from Washington. But now the tune is changing to war of attrition, to be followed by negotiations once the Russians are exhausted. Except that it is the Ukrainians that are becoming exhausted.
The killing and dying could continue for years, but the writing is on the wall. It has been on the wall for some time. The armies of the Ukraine might be able to hold the line for years, and then collapse, or months, and then collapse.
This war resembles world war I, a static war of immovable front lines, until one side collapses from attrition, though advancing drone technology and production might change that to drone on drone air warfare, and drone on drone operator air to ground warfare.
The question that remains to be revealed, is how long this goes for before the Ukrainians collapse. Signs of strain are showing. We are seeing the ruling elite, here and in the Ukraine, develop increasing amnesia and blindness, which is how they handle defeats. They unhappen them.
Their current plan, insofar as they have a plan rather than an amnesia attack, is that static warfare should continue, leading somehow to negotiations. But static warfare only leads to negotiations when the losing side realises that their negotiating position is very bad and is only going to change for the worse. And, during war, information channels that could lead to that realisation tend to get shut down.
War is a test of will and capability. Maximum will is akin to madness, but is not madness at all. What, however, we tend to observe in practice, is madness substituted for will. Rational conduct would be, once will and capability was revealed, to negotiate a peace based on what was revealed. This seldom happens in practice, and with the kind of reality blind elite we have now, even less likely to happen. Collective sanity is harder than individual sanity, because collective action is harder than individual action, and wars tend to happen because on or both sides are incapable of acting as a single cohesive unitary rational individual.
World War I started because Serbia was incapable of deciding between war and peace, incapable of choosing peace while unwilling to choose war. It became a two front war because the German generals ignored the Kaiser and invaded neutral Belgium. When you are up to your neck in alligators, bad idea to invade anyone, let alone a neutral. Likely it would have become a two front war anyway, but if it became a two front war through France invading Germany, rather than Germany invading Belgium, Germany would have had fewer enemies, and France fewer allies. If you invade a neutral unprovoked, everyone is going to figure you need to be taken out, lest you invade them next. The Kaiser understood this, while the Generals merely understood war. There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides for starting the war. No one should have supported Serbia, since the regime was incapable of rational action or decision making, but if the Germans had not invaded Belgium, the blame for starting the war would have been entirely on Russia, and on France if France attacked, which was far from certain. Germany attacked France through Belgium because France might attack Germany. Which might have been sane had Germany not already been at war with Russia.
The Serbians complained that Austria’s demands were an insult to their sovereignty, which they were, but the reason for the demands was that Serbia was incapable of exercising sovereignty over itself, incapable of restraining its minority war faction from making war. If we think of Serbia as an individual, it was an individual with a bad case of schizophrenia, and a schizophrenic’s neighbours have little choice but to interfere with his sovereignty.
Germany lost the war, because it kept stubbornly trying to regain war of movement in France, to knock France out of the war in a quick blow, as the ISW has been stubbornly trying to knock Russia out the war with a quick blow. This was more generals trying to prove that invading Belgium had been a good idea, than it was a rational military strategy. And trying to take Russia out with a quick blow is the ISW trying to prove that endlessly provoking Russia with ever escalating provocations and threats has been a good idea.
Rational behaviour would be to cut a deal on the basis of the cards that are now lying face up on the table. What is likely to happen instead is ever deeper and ever stronger delusion.
