I love your work, JVL, but this piece feels so much like you’re just telling them to “lay back and think of England”, as they say in the UK.
Dying to defend your homeland - even in a futile effort on an individual level, even with a strong likelihood of dying, and even if the result is likely a fait accompli - is the ultimate in sacrifice and bravery. Do you think the dead of
The Warsaw Uprising were foolish, or that they were heroes who showed the absolute measure of their incredible bravery?
What happened to “give me liberty or give me death”?
To misquote Churchill, it may not be the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning. Russia failed to score a coup de main, the Ukrainians did not rise up in joy to meet Russian forces, and the Russians failed to gain air superiority, knock out the command and control structure, or prevent damaging images and reporting from Ukraine. Russia has not been able to seal the Polish border, nor has it stopped rail transfer across that border. Its elite forces have been decimated; the street fighting reported in Kyiv was probably Ukrainian forces hunting down and killing wandering Russian paratroopers. Questions have arisen over how many missiles Russia has left. The majority of its quickly available combat forces have been deployed. Quick victory seems more and more unlikely.
Additionally, according to the Pentagon, Russia is having a hard time resupplying its forces. The main supply line for the troops aimed at Kiev runs through Europe's largest swamp, and the area is in partial thaw. If Russia has moved armored vehicles down paved highways, those highways are now unusable.
The specter of a longer war with high casualties confronts Russia. Its economic pain will only increase. The Ukrainian war is forcing Sweden and Finland, neutrals on Russia's northwestern flank, to consider closer relations with NATO. NATO itself is revitalized, and its members are beginning to direct lethal aid to the Ukraine.
It's far too early to say Russia missed the bus; but it obviously was consulting the wrong timetable.
The rule is, the strong rule, and the weak suffer and die, sooner or later, like heroes quickly, like dogs slowly. But at any given moment it is easier to be a dog than a hero. So mostly we just die like dogs.
I’m listening to the Secret Podcast and just spit out my breakfast when I heard about Rick Scott wanting to name a border wall after Trump. Please come to my kitchen to help clean it up. Thank you.
I'm not familiar enough yet with JVL's work to be disappointed, but I am surprised at the tone of defeatism and futility in the reflections above.
Parallels with the 1930s are slippery and tricky at times like this, but if there really is one, I'm more inclined to lean toward the resistance of the Poles in 1939 than to the plight of the tragic, morally compromised Republicans of the Spanish Civil War. The Poles, too, were massively outmanned and outgunned, but if they hadn't been betrayed and outflanked by the Soviet invasion, they were prepared to fight on, with or without hope in the short term. They never planned to ask for terms, and they're one of Hitler's few victims who never did.
Jan Karski was one of my professors at Georgetown in the 1970s. The defeat of the Nazis brought not victory but a longer, equally hopeless-seeming defeat to Poland. But even through all that, he never seemed to lose hope or faith in the ideals that drove his heroism in the '40s. Through such indomitable people, Polish freedom was ultimately restored.
If the Ukrainians seek terms, no one can blame them, and no one should condemn them: the kind of courage that Poland showed in 1939 and after is a gift, not an obligation that one person or nation can try to impose on another. But if they choose to resist until they cannot resist any more, and then still spit in the aggressor's eye, our only moral response is profound respect, and whatever we can do to aid the survivors, the refugees, and the captives.
I'd like to believe it. But I'd also like to believe that Disney movies were about reality.
Gaul became France because Julius Caesar cut off the hands of all the males who objected to becoming a province of Rome. They lost, Ceasar won, and a couple of millennia later the descendants of the Gauls were blessed with, and pretty much embraced, a quisling government in Vichy. Then in my lifetime the so called heroic leader of France, who survived WWII only through the intervention of interested foreign powers, withdrew from NATO so he could have the benefits of not being deposed by a pro-Soviet cabal without having to endure the inconveniences of self-defence, leaving all that annoyance to the aforementioned alliance.
Then the descendants of the self-interested power that saved the bacon of that self-same egotist voted to install as their leader a paid agent of a corrupt gangster empire. That agent's primary foreign policy objective was to fulfil the directive of his master in Moscow to defenestrate the alliance that saved half of Europe from becoming postwar Kremlin satrapies. And those descendants will, in two short years' time, restore that paid agent to power so he can finish the work he started.
Pretty hard to be an optimist if you've read any history.
There's a photo tweeted by Adam Kinzinger of two children waving at Ukranian soldiers en route to confronting the myrmidons of the revanant ghost of Stalin. Where they will probably perish.
And yet here we stand, with Wars of Religion, Human Slavery, Absolutism, Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism largely consigned to our past, at least in the West. I would contend that, in the light of all that, being an optimist is easy. It's staying a pessimist that requires real work, constant effort, in fact.
Not sure about pessimism being more work... for me it seems the other way around. Although it is true I've predicted at least twelve of the last two recessions.
On the contrary. I'm no starry-eyed idealist, by any length. Even though there are a thousand steps upwards to civilized behavior, there's only one step downwards into barbarism. But history is a record of people choosing to mount that thousand steps upwards again and again, rather than indulge in what people of my home town used to call "nostalgie de la boue". Between decadence and depravity on one side, and civilization and decency on the other, that which is civilized and decent tends to take far greater strides than that which chooses to lie face down in the mud.
I have not your courage to will to believe that there is some merit in our species that can create a telos that will lead us to a Lamarckian better future.
But I would rather have you as a neighbor than a Cassandra like me. May you increase and multiply.
Maybe the closest I can come is -- I cannot honestly conclude humans ever will be good.
Yet I do believe, and know, it is in our power not to be as dreadful as we can.
Humans -- hell, Americans -- made the James Webb space telescope. And Galileo persisted: Eppur si muove.
Peter the Great's disastrous initial campaign in Europe, the Winter War in Finland, and the first Chechnya war might be better guides to what might happen in Ukraine. In all of them, Russia seriously underestimated enemy capacities and motivation, used poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts, followed military scripts from earlier campaigns, and had military commanders more noted for their political acumen than their command ability.
For a number of reasons, Spain is not a good analogy. Republican Spain had deeply split commands and ideological interference, began the war with an almost complete lack of heavy weapons and trained commanders, was denied weaponry by democracies which did not want to get involved.
Regarding the invasion, I'm beginning to wonder if Russia has been fooled by its own propaganda into thinking that they would be welcomed by Ukrainians. Russia's invasion force is much too small (an assaulting commander usually wants at least a 3:1 advantage in numbers), and probably a third of Russia's forces are not combat soldiers proper, but second-line and support troops, necessary to modern warfare. Also, Ukraine is a big place, where even 200,000 troops will be hard-pressed to maintain contact and cohesion.
Finally, what made the Red Army fearsome in WWII is missing here. Intense propaganda portraying Germans as inhuman beasts, soldiers who had all lost family and friends to German atrocities, and a Communist ethic hammered into those soldiers since birth, all made the Red Army a force with which to be reckoned. Now, Russian soldiers are being sent to attack a culture seen as similar and friendly by Russians, and they have no personal or ideological motive to fight.
As shown by the Snake Island incident, the Ukrainians are the ones here who have high morale and motivation, a willingness to fight and die for their own nation and freedom. Don't underestimate that.
Not to beat a dead horse-- or thread-- but the Russians now have a problem. You might want to read up on the narrow Allied thrust to Arnhem in WWII, which many call "A Bridge Too Far". There, the Allies dropped concentrations of airborne troops on important transportation centers and tried to link up with them along a single highway surrounded by impassable terrain. It didn't work.
It seems to me the Russians have now made the same mistake. They look like they have tried to seize narrow corridors oriented along highways, following airborne attacks on airports and strategic intersections. In Russian military doctrine, soldiers on the offensive carry little food or fuel, expecting constant resupply from a secured rear. But in Ukraine, they did not protect their flanks or attempt to subdue surrounding terrain; they have no secure rear area. They lost the special forces which seized transportation hubs. And now they are losing supply convoys because they did not protect their flanks. Lost convoys mean lost trucks; supply vehicles are the single most important weapon system in Eastern Europe. Their armored spearheads are now almost stationary, suffering from lack of food and fuel.
In America half of the population believes that bamboo ballots stole an election, that Donald Trump is a successful businessman, and that Hillary Clinton wears masks made from the skin of children tortured to death in non-existent basements of Pizza Parlors. People will believe any fool thing if you prevaricate, frighten, and confuse them enough.
Sanctions are important and necessary but realistically Ukraine is lost. If anyone is serious we need to be preparing for the next battle. We need tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of American troops on the borders of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. We need to have the answer in place to Stalin's question, how many divisions does the Pope have? And we need this until Putin dies, or Trump is reelected and pulls us out of NATO, or hell freezes over. Or until MAGAmerica completes its emotional journey to becoming an obedient ally of the revenant Russian Empire. Which is where most of it already is.
Don't confuse naivete with morale. I'm not going to fall into the mistake of defending the French WW I concept of "cran", that "guts" can defeat artillery shells, instead of merely being splattered by them. But greater numbers-- and greater weapons-- do not a victor make. Beginning with Marathon and Salamis, military history is littered with despots who made the mistake of thinking that numbers and weapons are all that matters.
At the beginning of WWII, France's army was much larger and better equipped than Germany's. At the beginning of operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia, Russia had the world's largest army and air force. But France's and Russia's armies were riddled with low morale, and their defeat was just as much a psychological victory as a physical one.
I was trying to recall the term, thanks, "Cran" -- what folly. The "triumph" of optimism over sanity.
Truly greater numbers and resources do not a victor make -- except in the hands of generals who know how to use them.
Lee outfoxed all the Union commanders in the Eastern theater... until the Union found a commander who understood how to take advantage of his resource superiority. After that it was simply a matter of how long before the inevitable happened.
And without in any way minimizing the incredible tenacity and bravery of the Red Army and the Russian people-- once it recovered from the self-inflicted near-suicide of leadership before Barbarossa, it too finished the war not so much with cunning as with overwhelming force and manpower.
Superior force and resources, even if wielded by mediocrity -- always prevails-- if it is applied as long as it takes.
America lost in Vietnam because it wasn't willing to stay as long as it took. For good reasons. Any prospect of military success for Ukraine lies in the hope that the Russian empire's force will not be applied as long as it takes.
It could take a long time, even if successful. Any such a victory necessarily comes at an unimaginable cost in suffering and degradation. Over 3.1 million Vietnamese lost their lives -- no one knows for sure -- and it went on for a quarter of a century. And that only begins to scratch the surface of the cost in human misery -- for, ultimately, what? The best excuse for our perpetuating that suffering is we (possibly) just didn't know any better and were in the grip of a delusion.
I'm not saying the Ukranians should not fight, nor that the West should not arm and support them... I'm just sick at heart.
I agree with everything Jonathan has written here about the horrific loss of life and extreme suffering that lies ahead for the Ukrainians if they keep up the fighting. But what about the purges and killings that surely also lie ahead if/when the Russian puppet government is installed? How many Ukrainians will join Navalny in prison camps in Russia?
US Intelligence has been scary accurate so far on what to expect, so I have no doubt that, when they says that the Kill and Deport Lists have already been prepared and distributed, we should believe it.
We always enjoy your column. I don’t get comparisons of Afghanistan to Ukraine. Afg. was a swamp for the USSR and also a country too diverse geographically & economically with corrupt++ political leaders for us to ever rebuild as a Democratic Nation. Different tribes, languages, etc. The Taliban were enforcing their Religious views. Ukraine is a Democrat nation on its own. Ukraine desires freedom & ties with the West. Ukraine men & women are defending their COUNTRY. Putin’s newest invasion is continuing a war he began in 2014 with his grab of Crimea. -“Windows on the Sea” + Determination to also take over or Puppetize the other countries formerly part of the USSR. Very different. Perhaps 🤔 I am too Eurocentric.
I see what Ted is getting at, but I don't think it's quite a fair analysis to say that the franchise was granted to Black men in 1870 but not to Black women until 1965. There were plenty of Black women living outside the Jim Crow South during 1920-1965. I feel like it minimizes the significance of the 19th Amendment to talk about it this way.
Thought Biden's overt reaffirmation of his campaign pledge in the not-too-distant past was perhaps a tactical mistake vis a vie cannon fodder for the Right. Thought stealth producing the same results perhaps a better approach. Well, screw it. What the hell do I know anyway?
"Because we all need some beauty and hope just about now." Well, that I do know.
So, hell yes, "A thousand times yes." And at this moment, even if for only a moment, I am more than proud of America and of having the privilege of calling myself an American.
And pleased that a politician that I voted for ended up keeping a promise, even if it wasn't the driving factor in his being my choice. A man who keeps his word about doing something good in an arena in which not doing so is more often the expectation is a little piece of something beautiful as well.
"...Tom Nichols hammering home how crucial it is to be skeptical of contemporaneous reports on the fighting in Ukraine."
I don't think this can be hammered home too hard or too often.
The hysteria pumped up on Twitter is absolutely nauseating both from those who support Ukraine and those who support or minimize Russia's behavior. Brief cell phone snaps and 10 second videos are not to be trusted without some journalistic exploration and educated understanding.
In the end the anti-social media will make a strong and effective response impossible because Putin has a pipeline of disinformation working for him at every level of American society. A political party that will support Ukraine--- but not the way Biden is doing it--- even though he is mostly doing what they say should be done... but "Let's Go, Brandon!"
Following WW2 we were able to hammer out a general bipartisan foreign policy that informed (for good or bad) our military posture. How to work the policy was debated but the overall objectives went unquestioned from Truman to George H. W. Bush. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire the bipartisan consensus began to fall apart. The Congressional slide into hyperpartisan "ownership" of the government beginning with newt Gingrich meant that both parties became hesitant to ratify the foreign policy choices of any administration. From then on a victory for America was a victory for "the other team" and credit could not be given lest the other team would be effective and popular. Better America fail than allow that to happen. That is where we are today.
The singular exception was the few months after 9/11 to election of 2002. Congress, under majorities of both parties, has not had the courage to declare war itself but ample acid to through in the face of administrations trying to engage militarily where it was felt necessary. George W. Bush and Obama could hardly rely on Congress for support at all.
So that is the vital and probably irreparably lost element to push America through any foreign crisis. Now an interloper like Trump can just cast any agreement made by a previous administration out the window and his party will support him. Anything a member of the other party does will be simply fodder to fuel the next election campaign. So until Americans elect politicians who are willing to commit to a unified bipartisan vision of where we are to go--- we will go no where.
Very well stated, Harley. I agree with everything you say here. In a nutshell, as you say, "The congressional slide into hyper partisan "ownership" of the government beginning with Newt Gingrich meant that both parties became hesitant to ratify the foreign policy choices of any administration. From then on a victory for America was a victory for "the other team" and credit could not be given lest the other team would be effective and popular. Better America fail than allow that to happen."
Newt Gingrich started this in Congress, and people like Rush Limbaugh in the media partnered with Gingrich in this successful attempt to do away with Democrats and Republicans in Congress working across the aisle with each other.
I am not sure that people remember any more that this is where our current pitiful state started.
Battlefields are chaotic and constantly changing, and their soldier inhabitants are filled with adrenalin, stunned by horror and fear, and chronically deprived of sleep. Reports by subordinates are skewed or corrupted by poor communication skills, personal viewpoints, confirmation bias, and a wish to report what their superior wishes to hear. And, in the age of advanced electronic sensors and communications, commanders are usually overloaded with data, and faced with the choice of either making intuitive decisions without considering facts, or delaying their decisions on a rapidly changing battlefield while underlings try to bring order to the massive amounts of data available.
"Fog of war" applies just as well to too much information as it does to a lack of information or erroneous information. By the time you sift through a bunch of kind-of-contemporaneous video clips to determine objective truth, the battlefield has moved on and you need new information in order to make decisions.
Eric, bro, society has never been more detached from reality. Forget fog of war, we are in perpetual fog. There are no gatekeepers for information and the dumbest among us now have an amplified voice. I used to enjoy having political debates. I thought they were an important element to an open society, but I don’t engage anyone anymore. How can you have a debate when you don’t share the same facts / reality? Anyway, you get the point.
I love your work, JVL, but this piece feels so much like you’re just telling them to “lay back and think of England”, as they say in the UK.
Dying to defend your homeland - even in a futile effort on an individual level, even with a strong likelihood of dying, and even if the result is likely a fait accompli - is the ultimate in sacrifice and bravery. Do you think the dead of
The Warsaw Uprising were foolish, or that they were heroes who showed the absolute measure of their incredible bravery?
What happened to “give me liberty or give me death”?
So how do you think Russian mothers are feeling ?
To misquote Churchill, it may not be the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning. Russia failed to score a coup de main, the Ukrainians did not rise up in joy to meet Russian forces, and the Russians failed to gain air superiority, knock out the command and control structure, or prevent damaging images and reporting from Ukraine. Russia has not been able to seal the Polish border, nor has it stopped rail transfer across that border. Its elite forces have been decimated; the street fighting reported in Kyiv was probably Ukrainian forces hunting down and killing wandering Russian paratroopers. Questions have arisen over how many missiles Russia has left. The majority of its quickly available combat forces have been deployed. Quick victory seems more and more unlikely.
Additionally, according to the Pentagon, Russia is having a hard time resupplying its forces. The main supply line for the troops aimed at Kiev runs through Europe's largest swamp, and the area is in partial thaw. If Russia has moved armored vehicles down paved highways, those highways are now unusable.
The specter of a longer war with high casualties confronts Russia. Its economic pain will only increase. The Ukrainian war is forcing Sweden and Finland, neutrals on Russia's northwestern flank, to consider closer relations with NATO. NATO itself is revitalized, and its members are beginning to direct lethal aid to the Ukraine.
It's far too early to say Russia missed the bus; but it obviously was consulting the wrong timetable.
If there are no rules in love and war, why don't more countries join Ukraine fighting against a larger nation?
The rule is, the strong rule, and the weak suffer and die, sooner or later, like heroes quickly, like dogs slowly. But at any given moment it is easier to be a dog than a hero. So mostly we just die like dogs.
Because there are nuclear weapons in the hands of a ruler who has declared himself ready to use them.
Also it's easy to decide to start exercising and stop eating cake and candy ... tomorrow.
I’m listening to the Secret Podcast and just spit out my breakfast when I heard about Rick Scott wanting to name a border wall after Trump. Please come to my kitchen to help clean it up. Thank you.
I'm not familiar enough yet with JVL's work to be disappointed, but I am surprised at the tone of defeatism and futility in the reflections above.
Parallels with the 1930s are slippery and tricky at times like this, but if there really is one, I'm more inclined to lean toward the resistance of the Poles in 1939 than to the plight of the tragic, morally compromised Republicans of the Spanish Civil War. The Poles, too, were massively outmanned and outgunned, but if they hadn't been betrayed and outflanked by the Soviet invasion, they were prepared to fight on, with or without hope in the short term. They never planned to ask for terms, and they're one of Hitler's few victims who never did.
Jan Karski was one of my professors at Georgetown in the 1970s. The defeat of the Nazis brought not victory but a longer, equally hopeless-seeming defeat to Poland. But even through all that, he never seemed to lose hope or faith in the ideals that drove his heroism in the '40s. Through such indomitable people, Polish freedom was ultimately restored.
If the Ukrainians seek terms, no one can blame them, and no one should condemn them: the kind of courage that Poland showed in 1939 and after is a gift, not an obligation that one person or nation can try to impose on another. But if they choose to resist until they cannot resist any more, and then still spit in the aggressor's eye, our only moral response is profound respect, and whatever we can do to aid the survivors, the refugees, and the captives.
Ukraine, even fallen, will rise again.
I'd like to believe it. But I'd also like to believe that Disney movies were about reality.
Gaul became France because Julius Caesar cut off the hands of all the males who objected to becoming a province of Rome. They lost, Ceasar won, and a couple of millennia later the descendants of the Gauls were blessed with, and pretty much embraced, a quisling government in Vichy. Then in my lifetime the so called heroic leader of France, who survived WWII only through the intervention of interested foreign powers, withdrew from NATO so he could have the benefits of not being deposed by a pro-Soviet cabal without having to endure the inconveniences of self-defence, leaving all that annoyance to the aforementioned alliance.
Then the descendants of the self-interested power that saved the bacon of that self-same egotist voted to install as their leader a paid agent of a corrupt gangster empire. That agent's primary foreign policy objective was to fulfil the directive of his master in Moscow to defenestrate the alliance that saved half of Europe from becoming postwar Kremlin satrapies. And those descendants will, in two short years' time, restore that paid agent to power so he can finish the work he started.
Pretty hard to be an optimist if you've read any history.
There's a photo tweeted by Adam Kinzinger of two children waving at Ukranian soldiers en route to confronting the myrmidons of the revanant ghost of Stalin. Where they will probably perish.
Words fail.
And yet here we stand, with Wars of Religion, Human Slavery, Absolutism, Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism largely consigned to our past, at least in the West. I would contend that, in the light of all that, being an optimist is easy. It's staying a pessimist that requires real work, constant effort, in fact.
Not sure about pessimism being more work... for me it seems the other way around. Although it is true I've predicted at least twelve of the last two recessions.
On the contrary. I'm no starry-eyed idealist, by any length. Even though there are a thousand steps upwards to civilized behavior, there's only one step downwards into barbarism. But history is a record of people choosing to mount that thousand steps upwards again and again, rather than indulge in what people of my home town used to call "nostalgie de la boue". Between decadence and depravity on one side, and civilization and decency on the other, that which is civilized and decent tends to take far greater strides than that which chooses to lie face down in the mud.
I have not your courage to will to believe that there is some merit in our species that can create a telos that will lead us to a Lamarckian better future.
But I would rather have you as a neighbor than a Cassandra like me. May you increase and multiply.
Maybe the closest I can come is -- I cannot honestly conclude humans ever will be good.
Yet I do believe, and know, it is in our power not to be as dreadful as we can.
Humans -- hell, Americans -- made the James Webb space telescope. And Galileo persisted: Eppur si muove.
Nihilism is not an option.
I'm working on it. Not very good at it. I guess if you are still horrified you're not yet a complete nihilist.
Beautifully stated. Thank you.
The Poles had their own Snake Island, in the local defense of a post office and a base in Danzig (Gdansk) .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_of_the_Polish_Post_Office_in_Danzig
Comment about Thursday. I will have to replay it. It was full of a lot of information and I want to listen again. LIke watching a rerun of a TV show.
Peter the Great's disastrous initial campaign in Europe, the Winter War in Finland, and the first Chechnya war might be better guides to what might happen in Ukraine. In all of them, Russia seriously underestimated enemy capacities and motivation, used poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts, followed military scripts from earlier campaigns, and had military commanders more noted for their political acumen than their command ability.
For a number of reasons, Spain is not a good analogy. Republican Spain had deeply split commands and ideological interference, began the war with an almost complete lack of heavy weapons and trained commanders, was denied weaponry by democracies which did not want to get involved.
Regarding the invasion, I'm beginning to wonder if Russia has been fooled by its own propaganda into thinking that they would be welcomed by Ukrainians. Russia's invasion force is much too small (an assaulting commander usually wants at least a 3:1 advantage in numbers), and probably a third of Russia's forces are not combat soldiers proper, but second-line and support troops, necessary to modern warfare. Also, Ukraine is a big place, where even 200,000 troops will be hard-pressed to maintain contact and cohesion.
Finally, what made the Red Army fearsome in WWII is missing here. Intense propaganda portraying Germans as inhuman beasts, soldiers who had all lost family and friends to German atrocities, and a Communist ethic hammered into those soldiers since birth, all made the Red Army a force with which to be reckoned. Now, Russian soldiers are being sent to attack a culture seen as similar and friendly by Russians, and they have no personal or ideological motive to fight.
As shown by the Snake Island incident, the Ukrainians are the ones here who have high morale and motivation, a willingness to fight and die for their own nation and freedom. Don't underestimate that.
Not to beat a dead horse-- or thread-- but the Russians now have a problem. You might want to read up on the narrow Allied thrust to Arnhem in WWII, which many call "A Bridge Too Far". There, the Allies dropped concentrations of airborne troops on important transportation centers and tried to link up with them along a single highway surrounded by impassable terrain. It didn't work.
It seems to me the Russians have now made the same mistake. They look like they have tried to seize narrow corridors oriented along highways, following airborne attacks on airports and strategic intersections. In Russian military doctrine, soldiers on the offensive carry little food or fuel, expecting constant resupply from a secured rear. But in Ukraine, they did not protect their flanks or attempt to subdue surrounding terrain; they have no secure rear area. They lost the special forces which seized transportation hubs. And now they are losing supply convoys because they did not protect their flanks. Lost convoys mean lost trucks; supply vehicles are the single most important weapon system in Eastern Europe. Their armored spearheads are now almost stationary, suffering from lack of food and fuel.
Morale is good, but morale vs machine guns = Somme
Also don't be so certain the Russian troops have no personal or ideological motive to fight. Why should they disbelieve the lies they've been told?
If you have the stomach for it...
https://twitter.com/HADIANews/status/1497197980847382572
In America half of the population believes that bamboo ballots stole an election, that Donald Trump is a successful businessman, and that Hillary Clinton wears masks made from the skin of children tortured to death in non-existent basements of Pizza Parlors. People will believe any fool thing if you prevaricate, frighten, and confuse them enough.
Sanctions are important and necessary but realistically Ukraine is lost. If anyone is serious we need to be preparing for the next battle. We need tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of American troops on the borders of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. We need to have the answer in place to Stalin's question, how many divisions does the Pope have? And we need this until Putin dies, or Trump is reelected and pulls us out of NATO, or hell freezes over. Or until MAGAmerica completes its emotional journey to becoming an obedient ally of the revenant Russian Empire. Which is where most of it already is.
Don't confuse naivete with morale. I'm not going to fall into the mistake of defending the French WW I concept of "cran", that "guts" can defeat artillery shells, instead of merely being splattered by them. But greater numbers-- and greater weapons-- do not a victor make. Beginning with Marathon and Salamis, military history is littered with despots who made the mistake of thinking that numbers and weapons are all that matters.
At the beginning of WWII, France's army was much larger and better equipped than Germany's. At the beginning of operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia, Russia had the world's largest army and air force. But France's and Russia's armies were riddled with low morale, and their defeat was just as much a psychological victory as a physical one.
I was trying to recall the term, thanks, "Cran" -- what folly. The "triumph" of optimism over sanity.
Truly greater numbers and resources do not a victor make -- except in the hands of generals who know how to use them.
Lee outfoxed all the Union commanders in the Eastern theater... until the Union found a commander who understood how to take advantage of his resource superiority. After that it was simply a matter of how long before the inevitable happened.
And without in any way minimizing the incredible tenacity and bravery of the Red Army and the Russian people-- once it recovered from the self-inflicted near-suicide of leadership before Barbarossa, it too finished the war not so much with cunning as with overwhelming force and manpower.
Superior force and resources, even if wielded by mediocrity -- always prevails-- if it is applied as long as it takes.
America lost in Vietnam because it wasn't willing to stay as long as it took. For good reasons. Any prospect of military success for Ukraine lies in the hope that the Russian empire's force will not be applied as long as it takes.
It could take a long time, even if successful. Any such a victory necessarily comes at an unimaginable cost in suffering and degradation. Over 3.1 million Vietnamese lost their lives -- no one knows for sure -- and it went on for a quarter of a century. And that only begins to scratch the surface of the cost in human misery -- for, ultimately, what? The best excuse for our perpetuating that suffering is we (possibly) just didn't know any better and were in the grip of a delusion.
I'm not saying the Ukranians should not fight, nor that the West should not arm and support them... I'm just sick at heart.
JVL says there's a special TNB tonight (Friday the 25th) but I'm not seeing a link anywhere. Did I miss something? Did I misunderstand?
I'm really sorry: That was a widow from yesterday's email that I forgot to delete. No show on Friday.
Two nights in a row with Tom Nichols? and with Amanda Carpenter there to drag Putin? It seemed too good to be true.
I agree with everything Jonathan has written here about the horrific loss of life and extreme suffering that lies ahead for the Ukrainians if they keep up the fighting. But what about the purges and killings that surely also lie ahead if/when the Russian puppet government is installed? How many Ukrainians will join Navalny in prison camps in Russia?
US Intelligence has been scary accurate so far on what to expect, so I have no doubt that, when they says that the Kill and Deport Lists have already been prepared and distributed, we should believe it.
Yes. This is an excellent point.
We always enjoy your column. I don’t get comparisons of Afghanistan to Ukraine. Afg. was a swamp for the USSR and also a country too diverse geographically & economically with corrupt++ political leaders for us to ever rebuild as a Democratic Nation. Different tribes, languages, etc. The Taliban were enforcing their Religious views. Ukraine is a Democrat nation on its own. Ukraine desires freedom & ties with the West. Ukraine men & women are defending their COUNTRY. Putin’s newest invasion is continuing a war he began in 2014 with his grab of Crimea. -“Windows on the Sea” + Determination to also take over or Puppetize the other countries formerly part of the USSR. Very different. Perhaps 🤔 I am too Eurocentric.
I see what Ted is getting at, but I don't think it's quite a fair analysis to say that the franchise was granted to Black men in 1870 but not to Black women until 1965. There were plenty of Black women living outside the Jim Crow South during 1920-1965. I feel like it minimizes the significance of the 19th Amendment to talk about it this way.
Thought Biden's overt reaffirmation of his campaign pledge in the not-too-distant past was perhaps a tactical mistake vis a vie cannon fodder for the Right. Thought stealth producing the same results perhaps a better approach. Well, screw it. What the hell do I know anyway?
"Because we all need some beauty and hope just about now." Well, that I do know.
So, hell yes, "A thousand times yes." And at this moment, even if for only a moment, I am more than proud of America and of having the privilege of calling myself an American.
And pleased that a politician that I voted for ended up keeping a promise, even if it wasn't the driving factor in his being my choice. A man who keeps his word about doing something good in an arena in which not doing so is more often the expectation is a little piece of something beautiful as well.
"...Tom Nichols hammering home how crucial it is to be skeptical of contemporaneous reports on the fighting in Ukraine."
I don't think this can be hammered home too hard or too often.
The hysteria pumped up on Twitter is absolutely nauseating both from those who support Ukraine and those who support or minimize Russia's behavior. Brief cell phone snaps and 10 second videos are not to be trusted without some journalistic exploration and educated understanding.
In the end the anti-social media will make a strong and effective response impossible because Putin has a pipeline of disinformation working for him at every level of American society. A political party that will support Ukraine--- but not the way Biden is doing it--- even though he is mostly doing what they say should be done... but "Let's Go, Brandon!"
Following WW2 we were able to hammer out a general bipartisan foreign policy that informed (for good or bad) our military posture. How to work the policy was debated but the overall objectives went unquestioned from Truman to George H. W. Bush. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire the bipartisan consensus began to fall apart. The Congressional slide into hyperpartisan "ownership" of the government beginning with newt Gingrich meant that both parties became hesitant to ratify the foreign policy choices of any administration. From then on a victory for America was a victory for "the other team" and credit could not be given lest the other team would be effective and popular. Better America fail than allow that to happen. That is where we are today.
The singular exception was the few months after 9/11 to election of 2002. Congress, under majorities of both parties, has not had the courage to declare war itself but ample acid to through in the face of administrations trying to engage militarily where it was felt necessary. George W. Bush and Obama could hardly rely on Congress for support at all.
So that is the vital and probably irreparably lost element to push America through any foreign crisis. Now an interloper like Trump can just cast any agreement made by a previous administration out the window and his party will support him. Anything a member of the other party does will be simply fodder to fuel the next election campaign. So until Americans elect politicians who are willing to commit to a unified bipartisan vision of where we are to go--- we will go no where.
Very well stated, Harley. I agree with everything you say here. In a nutshell, as you say, "The congressional slide into hyper partisan "ownership" of the government beginning with Newt Gingrich meant that both parties became hesitant to ratify the foreign policy choices of any administration. From then on a victory for America was a victory for "the other team" and credit could not be given lest the other team would be effective and popular. Better America fail than allow that to happen."
Newt Gingrich started this in Congress, and people like Rush Limbaugh in the media partnered with Gingrich in this successful attempt to do away with Democrats and Republicans in Congress working across the aisle with each other.
I am not sure that people remember any more that this is where our current pitiful state started.
As an ignoramus, I don't understand how there can be a fog of war in the age of cell phones/cameras and the Internet.
The more cameras, cell phones, and internet participants, the more varied, numerous, and ineradicable the lies.
Alas.
Battlefields are chaotic and constantly changing, and their soldier inhabitants are filled with adrenalin, stunned by horror and fear, and chronically deprived of sleep. Reports by subordinates are skewed or corrupted by poor communication skills, personal viewpoints, confirmation bias, and a wish to report what their superior wishes to hear. And, in the age of advanced electronic sensors and communications, commanders are usually overloaded with data, and faced with the choice of either making intuitive decisions without considering facts, or delaying their decisions on a rapidly changing battlefield while underlings try to bring order to the massive amounts of data available.
"Fog of war" applies just as well to too much information as it does to a lack of information or erroneous information. By the time you sift through a bunch of kind-of-contemporaneous video clips to determine objective truth, the battlefield has moved on and you need new information in order to make decisions.
Eric, bro, society has never been more detached from reality. Forget fog of war, we are in perpetual fog. There are no gatekeepers for information and the dumbest among us now have an amplified voice. I used to enjoy having political debates. I thought they were an important element to an open society, but I don’t engage anyone anymore. How can you have a debate when you don’t share the same facts / reality? Anyway, you get the point.