We won’t fight a war of attrition against China either
Nevermind the fact that Soviet Union and Russia supplied weapons to every third world country fighting against the revolution capitalist Americans for three quarters of a century now.
The basic problem is that a conventional war against a peer power is likely to turn into a war of attrition, a possibility that NATO has generally ignored. That was the conclusion from a recent paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.
The first phase of a successful war of attrition is to destroy the opposing army while conserving friendly forces. Territory is a secondary consideration. That is what Russia has been doing for most of the war in Ukraine.
Russia appears to be entering a second phase in Ukraine:
When the second phase begins, the offensive should be launched across a broad front, seeking to overwhelm the enemy at multiple points using shallow attacks. The intent is to remain inside the layered bubble of friendly protective systems, while stretching depleted enemy reserves until the front collapses. There is a cascading effect in which a crisis in one sector forces the defenders to shift reserves from a second sector, only to generate a crisis there in turn. As forces start falling back and leaving prepared fortifications, morale plummets, with the obvious question: ‘If we can’t hold the mega-fortress, how can we hold these new trenches?’ Retreat then turns into rout. Only then should the offensive extend towards objectives deeper in the enemy rear. The Allies’ Offensive in 1918 is an example. The Allies attacked along a broad front, while the Germans lacked sufficient resources to defend the entire line. Once the German Army began to retreat it proved impossible to stop.
The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine
A conventional war between the US and Russia or China is very likely to become a war of attrition, which the US cannot sustain.
“Western hegemony” is another way of saying that the US is the world’s bully. The objective is to expand and consolidate a global Anglo-American empire.
The Romans were smart enough to learn the limits to their empire after the defeat in Germania at Teutoburg Forest. They controlled the “known world”, but they wrote off expansion east of the Rhine and those areas remained largely “unknown”.
In contrast Spain was the hegemon in Europe in 1600. Spain had a global empire that included all of Latin America and much of Asia, but it kept fighting a long series of wars until it was exhausted and became a backwater.
Will the US be smart enough to recognize the limits to its empire?
Every world power is a world bully.
Each and every one of them.
That’s not a bad thing
Especially since while in PA you enjoy the benefits
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has had the delusion that it can successfully bully the entire world indefinitely.
The problem is that the rest of world has grown rapidly. That is especially true in Asia. The US and Europe are no longer the center of the world.
Starting WW3 is likely to accelerate the relative decline of the west. Either that or it will result in thermonuclear annihilation.
As far as benefits of the empire, they have been sucked up by a corruption and inefficiency in Washington. The same was true for ancient Rome, but instead of bread and circuses we have pork and the MIC.
This was promised by Lenin. Like 100 years ago.
Every Soviet child was taught from a young age about the perennially declining west.
It’s a fantasy
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Russia is not a near peer, they’re a gas station with nukes. They can’t beat Ukraine in a conventional war.
Any war with China would be Naval and Air, they are nowhere near our level in those categories.
Russia has been destroying its own army in Ukraine. because they are strategic idiots.
LOL… in a conventional war the US would defeat Russia in short order.
Leninism is as dead as the corpse in the tourist attraction in Moscow. Russia and China have adopted most of the features of the western market economy.
The idea that a billion people in NATO should continue to dominate the 7 billion in the rest of the world is silly. There is every reason to believe that India and China will get to a similar level of economic output per capita as exists in the US and EU, and they have four times the population. Short of a nuclear war between China and India, there is nothing that can stop that.
The US had 5 times China’s GDP-PPP in 1991. They were equal in 2016. In 2022, China was about 20% bigger. India is about 10 to 15 years behind China.
Rostow was surprisingly close in his predictions about India and China in his “non-Communist manifesto” in 1960. The inevitable rise of Asia is not based on Communist dogma.
p. 127
Who would have known that using World War I infantry tactics and charging men into machine gun fire is a bad idea?
Yes, that is a good description of the US-imposed strategy for the Ukrainian Army. Ukrainian lives are a free, expendable resource as far as neocons are concerned.
A dead Ukrainian is practically as good as dead Russian from a neocon perspective if Russia takes control. The people who run Washington can’t tell the difference between a Russian and a Ukrainian any way.
These views explain the push from Washington for sending more Ukrainian conscripts to die on the front lines.
“It’s the best money we’ve ever spent.”
The Ukrainians aren’t the ones charging into entrenched PKs and RPKs. That’s what the Russians are doing.
There’s a reason so many Heroes of the Federation awards are being handed out in the Ukrainian war. It’s a sign that “our tactics suck so the only solution is for us to throw your lives away uselessly in machine gun fire. It’s a tried and true Russian infantry tactic comrades.”
I’m not saying the Russians can’t win by doing that. It’s how the second war in Chechnya and the war in Georgia were done and Russia completed its objectives in both of those conflicts. It also worked brilliantly for the USSR in World War II. But a whole bunch of Russian young men in the prime of their lives have to die for it to work.
Lots of Russian moms are getting Hero of the Federation medals for it though.
Yes, thanks for a summary of the party line from Washington.
In order to launch offensive operations, the US Army requires a 3:1 numerical advantage, air support, and advantage in artillery. Ukraine was nowhere near any of those requirements before it launched the failed offensive last summer. Massive Ukrainian casualties were guaranteed.
Russia has at least five times the population of Ukraine, which is roughly the same ratio the white population in the Union and the Confederacy. There is no way that Ukraine is going to win a war of attrition even if the number of casualties were the same.
Ukrainian lives are expendable as far as neocons are concerned, and if Russia wins, every dead Ukrainian is as good as dead Russian.
Did you not read my edit. I specifically pointed out that such a strategy can produce a viable outcome if you’re willing to kill enough of your men. The Russians have done it several times. Hell they won World War II by mostly using that tactic.
Biden’s ability to prevent or even avoid a WW III amounts to staying away from a gas pilot lite after eating cabbage.
I hope he has a braniac in his antorage who will keep him at a safe distance for his own safety.
What the reason for the change?
