billbindc

Starting with an inability to walk and chew gum logistically.

Dmitri Alperovitch with some clear eyed analysis.

Hitler certainly intended on attacking. Just on his own timetable...which is what happened at the end of the Phony War.

“I don’t think the Germans have any intention of attacking us. Do you?” - Neville Chamberlain This was at an inspection of the BEF in France in December, 1939.

Why do you imagine it would be just one offensive?

Any Starbucks in Rosslyn has 10 to choose from.

The obvious argument against kompromat is that it's never that simple and that in the policy sphere nobody almost ever finds a conspiracy driving events/decisions after the fact. The less obvious argument is that if the Russians have kompromat on German politicians, the US...which has pretty thoroughly turned Putin's inner circle inside out...already knows what it is and could use it just as easily. It's too easy an answer and so, suspect.

There's a lot more going on with this than just a planning meeting. This is a signaling exercise. To the Russians, most obviously...that there's a big punch coming and they'd better think about how much they want to grind their mobiks to dust in Bakhmut or waste them on feints towards Kyiv. To the Germans, that there's a war on, it's being fought in part from their own soil and they should be doing more in terms of Leopards, etc. To the rest of the world, that the US is shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian government.

I really wish we didn't have to debunk this periodically. There are 10's of thousands of dead Russians out there specifically so because of a pretty lavish endowment of weapons and support from the US and the Biden administration's cajoling and arm twisting...which it's doing to Germany *right now*...to get others to contribute too. There are other reasons besides escalation (i.e. maintenance, logistics, training time, fuel, available skills sets, etc, ad nauseam) that pertain to what gets delivered and why. And that doesn't even touch the difficult domestic politics that he has to deal with...which nobody takes into account because between Biden, and McConnell it's been handled so adroitly so far.

More grist for the mill:

I think the question isn't whether it's possible to take Crimea but rather whether or not it's efficient. Taking it creates greater escalation risks, effectively concentrates Russian forces on a smaller front, simplifies the MOD's supply problems and is likely quite expensive in men and materiel. If corrosion is more effective than maneuver for Ukraine then I would say there's a great argument for forcing Russia to exhaust more resources trying to find water and deliver the logistics needed to barely hold on to it.

Kofman is a very smart guy. He's also a very arrogant smart guy who is worth hearing but with the caveat that for all his knowledge he's been more wrong than right on this war.

You couldn't find a more perfect illustration of how Putin's ruling methodology...pitting sectors of the system against each other competitively...is gutting Russia's ability to fight the war in an efficient and effective fashion. Clausewitz said that "war is not merely a political act" but this is war as only a political act.

"The machine is turning and now only exhaustion will stop it." Alan Morehead, North Africa, 1941

The thick plottens.

His first book seems like it was essentially an attempt to curry favor with the Moroccan gov't and to legitimize the methods they were using against the Polisario in the Western Sahara. By all accounts it was a lucrative deal. That's Luttvak's game...he supplies a veneer plausibility to those who need it...especially himself.

I don't know him personally but intellectually speaking Luttvak is an absolute clown. His Coup D'Etat was a rip off of Malaparte and his 'Grand Strategy' books on the Byzantine and Roman Empires have no documentary or archaeological evidence. Nobody who you would take seriously takes Luttvak seriously.

And further evidence that the primacy of the Wagnerites has been over rated:

The US is the architect and main defender of a world more or less based on liberal democracy and lightly fettered capitalism for reasons that benefit us and that, in a way most hegemonies would not be able to fathom, also benefit a lot of other nations. The US doesn't need to articulate highly defined goals in this war because the one big one...that challengers to the status quo must be stopped and must be made to think twice before they try it again...is so preponderant. The details of a war Ukraine is fighting is obviously up to it. What I find striking about the realpolitik isn't that it is emergent...it's that it was there all along but for a variety of reasons many politicians tried to pretend it was not. Putin...ironically...being the worst offender.

The claim that states must clearly articulate objectives at all times is one of the worst canards of foreign policy debates.

To this, I can only say that it echos Curzio Malaparte's surprise in the mid 1930's that Hitler wasn't overthrown by the shock troops of Nazism because he refused the coup d'etat and the violent revolution. Malaparte eventually realized that Hitler was smarter than that. The levers of the state are what matters and Prigozhin is not close to controlling them.

Patrushev, pere and fils would be strong contenders. So would Ivanov and his kvost if the idea was to bring in someone untainted by the current debacle. Remember that visibility isn't really a big indicator of political viability because mass politics isn't that important in this milieu. Remember where Putin came from? And that's Prigozhin's mistake. He's playing to the crowd but the crowd doesn't have that much power. The key is who can direct the institutions of force. Prigozhin has one in Wagner, that's not even the biggest on paper, that is dependent for resources on the powers that be back in Moscow and is pushing in a revolutionary, unsettling direction that's quite likely to unite the rest of those institutions of force against him. Watch the grey men, not the clown waving his arms in the mud.

There *is* a system...it's a personalist autocracy imbued with the methods and values of the siloviki. That system is an oligarchy of strong men who are managed by Putin, the primus inter pares but *not* an absolute ruler in a mobilized state a la Stalin or Hitler. Mass action is almost entirely absent. Should Putin fall, his policies are up for grabs but the form of the state itself is quite unlikely to change unless an actual revolutionary agent such as Prigozhin can alter its composition. On this we agree...I don't believe that's a realistic scenario.

In any calculation, it should be noted that the Federal Protective Service of Russia controls near Moscow some 50,000 men who are fairly heavily armed, are between Wagner and the logistics that support Wagner and are under the FSB. Unless and until Prigozhin can figure out how to counter them, he's not getting anywhere near power without Patrushev and his cohorts acquiescing.

The problem with this eminently pragmatic suggestion is the same for Putin as it was for Hitler. He's gone way beyond the pale with his war in Ukraine. Russia could stop fighting tomorrow and the sanctions would remain until reparations and withdrawals have been made. Ukraine would and be seen as justified in continuing to take back territory. Domestically, Russia is a regime that rules by fear and violence. That means that, especially in the elites, there are a lot of folks who have axes to grind and the means to vie for power or take revenge if only enough of them decide to do so at once. What would be a very likely catalyst for that unity? The reaction to a losing war of choice that has destroyed their wealth, their lifestyle and their futures. So...what do you do if you are an older man who has trouble admitting error and no particularly appetizing choices? You grind it out, you subject all of your decisions to the demands of keeping domestic control and you hope that you somehow get lucky. It's been said that in a political and military sense Hitler was a degenerate gambler. Putin took the same path and now he's come to similar dilemma because depending on luck is an extremely stupid way to run a country.