Substack, 10/3/23

A few weeks ago the U.S. Army War College released a paper which was an urgent call for the U.S. armed forces to adapt to the modern style of warfare being innovated in the Ukrainian conflict. [https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3240&context=parameters]

The paper made the rounds due to some startling admissions, which we’ll get to. But what’s most important to understand is that it represents a general shift in thinking that’s propagating throughout the entire sphere of the Atlanticist West, and was released in concert with several other key thinktank pieces and policy shift announcements from the EU, NATO, etc., which holistically represent an internal panic deep within their structures, resulting in an urgent need for a strategy change.

And this point is one of the central themes of the War College paper itself. Its opening preamble can be summarized in a single sentence: the current time period marked by the Ukrainian conflict represents the largest “inflection point” in 50 years of military history. The authors believe that the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was the previous most impactful inflection point. They recount how the U.S. army was demoralized by its experience in Vietnam, and inability to meet its objectives, followed by Israel almost losing to a Soviet-equipped Egypt in the Yom Kippur War.

As a very brief and over-generalized backdrop, though Israel is listed as officially having “won” the Yom Kippur War, Egypt in fact achieved most of its political objectives, which was to seize some land east of the Suez in order to eventually take back the Sinai peninsula, which they did. And although Egypt made huge blunders that caused part of their army to be routed, ultimately the war proved to Israel, the U.S., and allies that the future would be dangerous as the Arabs were getting much stronger, particularly under Soviet backing. In fact, for anyone interested, just purely coincidentally there’s a new article from a week ago in the Jerusalem Post about the irony that years later, Israel views the Yom Kippur War as a somber experience whereas in Egypt it’s celebrated as a grand victory.

Either way, the War College explains that as a result of this inflection period, the U.S. founded TRADOC (United States Army Training and Doctrine Command) school. Which is actually a network of schools tasked with creating new operational doctrines to prepare the U.S. military for future conflicts. In short, they were spooked by the developments of the previous years, and needed a way to “jump ahead” of the competition. This resulted in a series of new doctrines like the AirLand Battle I wrote about at length in this previous dissection of a U.S. internal thinkpiece:…

But this seems to highlight the odd dichotomy: on one hand the entire report, entitled Escalation in the War in Ukraine, appears to go into overdrive in attempting to convince readers and policymakers that Russia is surrounded by a plethora of escalation options, insinuating that it will have no choice but to use one of them as it gets increasingly ‘desperate’ in the war effort. But on the other hand, they admit Russia actually doesn’t see any reason to escalate. [https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2807-1.html]

This leaves us to conclude that the real current course in Western military command centers and thinktank-land revolves around finding further pressure points and ways to make Russia want to escalate in a way that could turn global perception against it, and could justify further NATO intervention of some kind to save Ukraine. In a sense, as I implied before, this report appears more like a handbook or guidebook on how to make Russia give us the casus belli to increase our own provocations and escalations to save a floundering AFU.

What it ultimately highlights is the fact that the West appears greatly irked and peeved by Russia’s stoic, mannered approach to this war. They are beside themselves, and can’t believe that Russia can fight such a devastatingly protracted conflict in so calm and measured a manner, without major political, societal, and economic upheaval to throw them off-kilter and create the ripe groundswell of turmoil which would necessitate an off-balancing “escalation” that would prove a major blunder, and hand the salivating NATO thinktankers an enormous gift.

Thus, in light of this, the West plans to use all possible means to coax Russia into shooting itself in the foot by disproportionately responding to one of the planned provocations they have in store, in order to give raison d’etre for some intervention to save Ukraine. This doesn’t have to be something of maximal proportions yet, like full-on NATO invasion or something like that. No, even the justification of further increased support, or the activation of more lethal strategic weaponry supplied to Ukraine would suffice.

Remember, a major portion—perhaps the biggest one—of the West’s support is convincing their own publics and lawmakers in justifying increasingly more provocative weapons pledges. Even provoking a relatively minor Russian rash response could be used to convince wearying Western populaces in warming to the hand over of things like ATACMS or other items.

Of course, I find all this to be a relatively pointless exercise and strategic dead-end because I don’t think they have much left to hand over that could do anything in changing the now-crystallized trajectory of this conflict. The only other potential pivot I could glean from the Rand document which could conceivably form the axis of a strategy is in the final item on their escalations options list: Option G.

It reads: Ukraine expands its strikes inside Russia. Motivation: Increase domestic political costs for Russian leadership.

That encapsulates just about the only realistic option they have left, and given recent trends it appears to be one of the main thrusts they’re going with. I’m referring to the other big recent provocation, German Bundestag member Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann’s statement that Ukraine has the right to strike Russian territory with German Taurus missiles. Putting the two together, we can only come to the conclusion that the progressive push for Ukraine to strike deeper and deeper into Russian territory has nothing whatever to do with any strategic or military considerations, but rather revolves entirely around Rand’s assessment of “putting political pressure on Russian leadership.”

To wit, they believe that by striking deep into Russia they can cause enough fear, panic, and public distress as to force Russian citizens to begin pressuring the government to end the war, or simply create enough unpopularity as to give Western intel services opportunities to oust key leadership, whether that might be election, overthrow, etc. Unfortunately, this has virtually no chance of having any effect as the Russian public either doesn’t care nor notice any strikes, including the ones to the heart of Moscow, or is simply unified into greater solidarity by them.

Dmitry Medvedev’s “populist” pandering-style response to both the aforementioned provocative announcements likely leaves Western thinktankers with an inkling of hope:

“The number of leadership idiots in NATO countries is growing.

“One newfangled cretin – the British defense minister – has decided to move British training courses for Ukrainian soldiers to the territory of Ukraine itself. That is, to turn their instructors into a legal target for our Armed Forces. Realizing perfectly well that they will be ruthlessly destroyed. And not as mercenaries, but as British NATO specialists.

“Another fool – the head of the Defense Committee of the Federal Republic of Germany with a hard-to-pronounce surname – demands to immediately supply the Khokhobanderites with Taurus missiles, so that the Kiev regime can strike at the territory of Russia to weaken the supply of our army. They say this is in accordance with international law. Well, in that case, strikes on German factories where these missiles are made would also be in full compliance with international law.

“After all, these morons are actively pushing us towards World War III….”

– Medvedev

But alas, ever the stoic practitioner of the ‘long game’, I doubt Putin will give them the uncharacteristic slipup they’re counting on to salvage their disastrous Ukrainian campaign. Painful as it might be for us to take some of the obviously deliberate provocations ‘on the cheek,’ good chance remains that sometime in the future, after Ukraine’s rapid disintegration and subsequent capitulation—perhaps even only a year or two from now—we may recognize, in hindsight, the wisdom of the strategy which staved off nuclear war by way of a methodical, unwavering, and strategically disciplined approach.