{"id":191652,"date":"2022-03-15T09:40:28","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T08:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=191652"},"modified":"2022-03-15T09:40:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T08:40:29","slug":"time-to-get-real-about-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=191652","title":{"rendered":"Time to Get Real About Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kurt Schlichter writes at Town Hall\u00a0Can We Have Some Real Talk About Ukraine?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpts in italics with my bolds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to get real. Ukraine is an equal opportunity crisis<\/strong> because it provides politicians of both parties a chance to be wrong,<\/strong> although it allows the Democrats the opportunity to do what they do best and be much, much more wrong. For the Republicans<\/strong>, it lets them indulge the desire of some to return to a time when America could focus its moral firepower<\/strong> \u2013 if not its firepower firepower \u2013 upon a readily-identifiable baddie<\/strong> like it did during the Cold War or the War on Terror. For the left, it allows them to create a moral panic to replace COVID, which, naturally, requires that we Americans \u201csacrifice\u201d even more of our freedom and money.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the perspective of someone who actually trained Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, commanded US forces, and attended the US Army War College<\/strong> \u2013 though it\u2019s kind of the Chico State of war colleges \u2013 the whole way our elite is approaching the crisis is an epic clusterfark.<\/strong> Don\u2019t believe anything<\/strong> anyone tells you \u2013 and certainly, sanity check whatever I\u2019m telling you, too<\/strong> \u2013 most of these insta-experts on intra-Slavic conflict know absolutely squat-ski. Moreover, their remarkably dumb observations and credulous acceptance of conventional wisdom<\/strong>, which has proven long on conventional and short on wisdom<\/strong>, are being presented without any kind of strategic context.<\/strong> They don\u2019t know where this crisis came from and certainly have no clear notion of where they want it to go beyond the vague and unhelpful idea that they want Putin<\/strong> (which they use interchangeably with Russia) to \u201close\u201d without knowing what that even means.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biases are important, and here are mine.\u00a0I sympathize with the Ukrainian people<\/strong>, partly because I worked with them and partly because I was an end-stage Cold Warrior who came up training to fight Russians. I understand that\u00a0this mess is not merely the result of Putin being bad or Trump being insufficiently anti-Putin,<\/strong>\u00a0like LTC Sausage and the rest of the failed foreign policy elite and regime media insist.\u00a0Putin\u2019s badness plays a part, but he\u2019s merely exploiting<\/strong>\u00a0thousands of years of bloody history, of ethnic hatred, and of Orthodox mysticism, as well as\u00a0totally misguided and poorly considere<\/b><\/span>d Western interference.<\/strong>\u00a0The idea that we could just make Ukraine part of NATO and the Russians would just lump it is remarkable for its dumbness, but it is fully in keeping with\u00a0our foreign policy elite\u2019s unbroken track record of failure<\/strong>\u00a0since the old-school military\u2019s victory in the Gulf War \u2013 something I discuss in-depth in my upcoming Regnery book \u201cWe\u2019ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My bottom line is that the Ukrainians are imperfect, and regardless of whether the Russians have some quasi-legit beefs in some cosmic sense, you don\u2019t solve them by sending in a couple hundred thousand mechanized soldiers.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expectation was that the Russian forces would smash through,<\/strong> surround the Ukrainian forces pinned down facing the Russians in the occupied regions to the east, and isolate the main cities.<\/strong> I did not expect them to go into the cities immediately since Russians 1) generally bypass hard defenses; 2) they have bad experiences with city fighting (Stalingrad, Grozny); and 3) that would not necessarily be necessary. It would not be necessary if the idea was to neutralize the main Ukrainian combat formations and force the government in the cities to capitulate,<\/strong> then have the West pressure the Ukrainians to accept a ceasefire and \u201cpeace\u201d that recognized Russian gains and ended the idea of Ukrainian allying with the West<\/strong>. In fact, that is pretty much what the Russian \u201cpeace plan\u201d consists of.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that did not work for a couple of reasons.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the Russians did not fight as well as expected.<\/strong> You should always treat the enemy as if it is the best possible enemy. We did in the Gulf. We prepared to fight elite Republican Guard divisions of highly trained and motivated soldiers using top-shelf Soviet equipment and tactics. None of that was so; we crushed an entire national army in 100 hours.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russians are poorly led<\/b><\/span>, with very weak synchronization among maneuver forces and fires.<\/strong>\u00a0Their plan is okay \u2013 in fact, you\u00a0look at a map, and it\u2019s obvious what they would do<\/strong>. But their\u00a0gear is <\/strong>badly maintained<\/b>, and their\u00a0troops are unsuited<\/strong>\u00a0to the task of supporting a rapid advance. Look at all the evidently intact gear simply abandoned by the side of the road. Lots of it looks like it broke down (note all the flat tires). Much of it seems to have run out of gas. And, of course, lots of stuff had been blasted apart.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the second part of the equation \u2013 the Ukrainians fought back hard.<\/strong> If you are a Lord of the Rings nerd, think of the Ukrainians as the dwarves. Not super-sophisticated but tough and ready to fight, and also often drunk.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to see the future of this war, look at videos of Ukrainian infantry patrolling near the front.<\/strong> Every second guy has an anti-tank weapon, like a Javelin or some other system, and the rest are carrying spare missiles. Mechanized forces unprotected by infantry are vulnerable to ambush by anti-tank teams.<\/strong> The Russian armor outstripped its ground pounders and is getting pounded itself. Further, Ukrainians seem to have success with drones firing anti-tank weapons<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war is not going to be won by conventional battalions of Ukrainians operating with conventional aircraft. It will win with light infantry and drones armed with missiles.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why the whole Polish MiG thing is so silly and why Republicans are so wrong to get behind it.<\/strong> So, the Poles will (in return for F-16s and F-15s) give up their 30-year-old MiG-29s to the US, which will then give them to Ukraine, which will then fly them to victory. No. Let\u2019s leave the escalation part aside \u2013 and that\u2019s a pretty big consideration. Putin has nukes, and escalation is not in our interest.<\/strong> If America is using a base in Germany to assemble a bunch of fighters that will be attacking Russians, are they a target and thereby a trigger for WW3? Yeah, I know the argument that it\u2019s not an escalation, but guess what?<\/strong> We don\u2019t get a vote. Putin<\/strong> \u2013 who we have been told is an amalgam of crazy, stupid, and evil (the third is undeniable; the first two wishful thinking) gets to decide. He\u2019s the guy with the finger over a button, and it doesn\u2019t say \u201cReset.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at the practical part. Fighters are part of a conventional war, which Ukraine should not fight since Russian conventional forces are so much larger.<\/strong> A couple of dozen hand-me-downski fighters are going to turn the tide? If the Ukrainians\u2019 own jets flown by their top pilots got shot down already by Russia\u2019s formidable air defenses, which is probably true (don\u2019t buy the \u201cGhost of Kyiv\u201d stuff), what\u2019s going to happen to a bunch of planes that \u2013 assuming they are even flyable \u2013 are being flown by the Ukrainian equivalent of Randy Quaid in \u201cIndependence Day\u201d? It\u2019s the Bad News Bears squadron; they might as well plaster \u201cSponsored by Chico\u2019s Bail Bonds\u201d on the tails.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This war gets won by cheap drones and little groups of armed Ukrainians packing AKs and plinking tanks and IFVs with portable missiles.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what does \u201cwin\u201d mean?\u00a0Has anyone in the US government articulated what conditions we are seeking to achieve?<\/strong>\u00a0Is it to \u201cbeat the Russians?\u201d What\u2019s that mean? Our establishment is gung-ho to help, and I don\u2019t mind, but what are we helping to do?\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s interests involve pushing Russia out of its territory. But time for some hard truth<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 continuing this economically disastrous\u00a0war until every boot is off Ukrainian soil is not necessarily in America\u2019s interest,<\/strong>\u00a0and America\u2019s interests need to come first. We could live with resolutions that the Ukrainians might not want to live with.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if our elite can\u2019t articulate a short-term end-state, it sure can\u2019t articulate one for five years from now.<\/strong> It is in America\u2019s interest to wean Russia from China over the long term<\/strong>, but are we aiming at that? Do we want to do such damage to Russia that we can never hope to recover it from China\u2019s orbit? After all, China is the big enemy.<\/strong> Russia is just a Shell station guarded by Paul Blart, except instead of a whistle, he\u2019s got H-bombs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPutin bad\u201d is true, but it\u2019s insufficient.\u00a0It\u2019s time for some real talk about America\u2019s interests, which may not be Ukraine\u2019s interests, and how we are pursuing them<\/strong>. Except no one wants to talk about that because that\u2019s not fun. Moral panics are and stopping for a second to think strategically spoils the party for many in both parties.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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via Science Matters<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 15, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to Get Real About Ukraine | Science Matters (rclutz.com)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kurt Schlichter writes at Town Hall\u00a0Can We Have Some Real Talk About Ukraine?\u00a0 Excerpts in italics with my bolds. Time to get real. Ukraine is an equal opportunity crisis because it provides politicians of both parties a chance to be wrong, although it allows the Democrats the opportunity to do what they do best and be much, much more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":191658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","9":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/4f5dee0f4930ac7aa66558d29aa77115.jpg?fit=548%2C560&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-NRa","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":275568,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=275568","url_meta":{"origin":191652,"position":0},"title":"Nord Stream attack: Escape route leads to Ukraine","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"25\/08\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A year ago, a secret commando blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.\u00a0Who is behind the sabotage of the\u00a0Nord Stream pipelines?","rel":"","context":"In \"German Interior Minister\u00a0Nancy Faeser\u00a0(SPD)\"","block_context":{"text":"German Interior Minister\u00a0Nancy Faeser\u00a0(SPD)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=german-interior-minister-nancy-faeser-spd"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/02113973.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/02113973.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/02113973.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/02113973.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/02113973.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":249998,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=249998","url_meta":{"origin":191652,"position":1},"title":"European Green Ambitions Depend on the USA Funding Ukraine","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"28\/03\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Here I argue US funding for Ukraine is liberating resources British and European governments are using to undermine Republicans, and drive their radical green agenda right into the heart of the American political landscape.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1196.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1196.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1196.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1196.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/image-1196.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":279622,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=279622","url_meta":{"origin":191652,"position":2},"title":"Green Revolution Fail: Congress to Refuse Funding for Ukraine?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"20\/09\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in March, George Soros wrote that the Ukrainian defeat of Russia was vital for progressing the global green revolution. 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