I gather there is an old saying in military circles that goes something like: “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, generals talk strategy”. This is precisely why getting caught up in the tactical minutiae and “war porn” of the Banderastan War is actually quite pointless, because if you only pay attention to how far the lines move, or how much military hardware is being used by whom, you will completely miss the bigger picture.
One of the very few prominent commentators on the Banderastan War who routinely talks logistics and strategy, and speaks sensibly on both subjects, is Col. Douglas Macgregor (USArmy-Ret), whose military CV is impressive, to say the least. He is also one of the very few Western military analysts of the modern era who has actually fought in a real tank battle against an enemy force – and dealt out a tremendous beating in the process, during the Battle of 73 Easting.
He is also well qualified to speak about things like the effectiveness of Russian military doctrine and especially air defence, considering his role as the top planner for Gen. Wesley Clark‘s air campaign against Serbia in the (frankly illegal) 1999 bombing campaign.
So when he talks about military matters, especially when it comes to the combined-arms war currently being fought against the 404th UkReich and the Empire of Lies that backs it to the hilt, we should all sit up and pay attention. I certainly do, which is why his commentary features very prominently in its own section within the Great Mondaydact Browser Smashers.
The three-part interview in which he sat down with Dr. Michael Vlahos recently is a great example of thinking through long-term decision-making and strategy, without getting distracted by tactics on the ground.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Col. Macgregor isn’t always right – the most notorious examples of him being wrong, consist of his predictions about the timings of this war. (I have also repeatedly made a number of predictions about the end of the war, and I have been wrong every single time. I freely admit this fact. War has a habit of defying common sense, logic, and patterns of evidence.) Back in March, he said the war would be over in a matter of days, and the Russians had basically destroyed the Ukrainian military. He was actually right about the second part – all the intelligence and information I have seen in the intervening months tells me that the hohols were essentially unable to mount any serious offensive actions with what remained of their army after March.
But he did not predicted, and COULD NOT have predicted, the incredibly stupid and frankly evil intervention staged by the US and UK after Zelebobik the Crackhead-in-Chief rejected peace terms with Russia, after initially backing a peace proposal at talks in Istanbul.
This one fateful act, which involved Boris the Liar flying from London to Kiev on an urgent secret mission to tell Zelebobik to stay the course (and keep his nose parked in endless amounts of Western-supplied “white flour”) and keep fighting the Russians right down to the last Ukrainian, may well go down in history as the single most despicable, traitorous, and cowardly deed ever committed by a Western leader since the Fall of the Soviet Union.
And, considering the competition, that’s saying quite a lot.
The failure of the West to engage in a meaningful peace process will lead to exactly the consequences Col. Macgregor predicts in this long interview – namely, the destruction of NATO and the collapse of the US military.
Personally, I believe the failure of the Istanbul peace process was inevitable – you cannot trust the Ukrainian government, no matter who is in charge, given their track record over the past 10 years. (Of course, you can’t really trust Ukrainians either, as a general rule – I speak from long personal experience here. There are many quite honourable individual exceptions, but corruption and dishonesty is a way of life in that country.)
I also believe the refusal to come to a meaningful “Minsk 3” type of peace settlement in March, was the last and final chance for the West to avoid collapse. Everything we have seen since, of the way in which the Empire of Lies has gone completely off the deep end, tells me that Western elites are committed to that course, and have absolutely no reverse gear, because they are ideologues in thrall to a very evil and dangerous way of thinking.
This brings us to where Col. Macgregor is absolutely right.
He is correct about the degradation of NATO, and about the ways in which the US military is failing and will continue to fail. He is right about the fact that the US is primarily an air and sea power with lots of punch but very little strategic depth. And he is certainly right that no vital US interests are served by these endless “savage wars of peace”, which destabilise sovereign nations and regions and leave nothing but devastation in their wake.
How does one go about solving the US’s military problems? I don’t know, short of letting the whole system collapse. Certainly, the current crop of military generals in charge are a hopeless bunch. The parade of perfumed panjandrums within the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel prize, as a whole, conformity over competence. When they retire on rather decent government pensions, they can then earn millions as “consultants” (read: lobbyists) for the American military-industrial complex. The price for such a lifestyle is to keep one’s mouth shut and never actually do what is right, or stand up to the civilian leadership and tell them to stop with these stupid imperial wars – because when those wars end, the MIC’s profits plummet.
When the collapse of the USSA finally comes – and at this point, even the most pessimistic projections look like they are years off the true date, which may be sooner than any of us realise – the US military may reform itself. We shall see. But I strongly suspect that Andrei Martyanov‘s oft-repeated statement, that the US has never understood what it means to fight a real war, will continue to influence and affect whatever military comes out of the horror that will follow – and the core lessons of the Banderastan War will not be learned.
More’s the pity, really, because professionals like the two above have been trying to tell the rest of us how real wars are fought, for years.
1 Comment
“But I strongly suspect that Andrei Martyanovâs oft-repeated statement, that the US has never understood what it means to fight a real war, will continue to influence and affect whatever military comes out of the horror that will follow…”
I’d offer at least the other side of the coin flip that as a result of all this, the people in America do end up understanding what it means to fight a real war.