The United States Is Making Dangerous Military Miscalculations

 Apparently being a nuclear power for 80 years makes you a bit arrogant. Since WWII, America has, militarily-speaking, had little to brag about. As professor Dominic Tierney put it : "Since 1945, the United States has very rarely achieved meaningful victory. The United States has fought five major wars — Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan — and only the Gulf War in 1991 can really be classified as a clear success."

This has not stopped the Military Industrial Complex, however. America is a war economy, as in, it's economy is completely dependent on war to survive. Politicians, entertainment and other entities are caught up in it. Preparations are being made for future wars.

One problem with war running a nation's economy is that the conflict has no moral ground to stand on; the purpose is simply to keep the system alive. Because the military is now simply a mechanism to generate wealth, things like "history" "diplomacy" and "strategy" are ignored.

By "ignoring diplomacy", let's go to Scott Ritter, who gives a good example in his article on Ukraine's 2023 outlook:

Recent admissions on the part of the officials responsible for the adoption of the Minsk Accords of both 2014 and 2015 (former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former French President Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel) show that the goal of the Minsk agreements for the promotion of a peaceful resolution to the post-2014 conflict in the Donbass between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists was a lie.

Instead, the Minsk Accords, according to this troika, were little more than a means to buy Ukraine time to build a military, with the assistance of NATO, capable of bringing the Donbass to heel and driving Russia out of Crimea.

Seen in this light, the establishment of a permanent training facility by the U.S. and NATO in western Ukraine — which between 2015 and 2022 trained some 30,000 Ukrainian troops to NATO standards for the sole purpose of confronting Russia in eastern Ukraine — takes on a whole new perspective.

The admitted duplicity of Ukraine, France and Germany contrasts with Russia’s repeated insistence prior to its Feb. 24, 2022, decision to invade Ukraine that the Minsk Accords be implemented in full.

In 2008,  former U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, the current C.I.A. director, warned that any effort by NATO to bring Ukraine into its fold would be viewed by Russia as a threat to its national security and, if pursued, would provoke a Russian military intervention. That memo by Burns provides much-needed context to the Dec. 17, 2021, initiatives by Russia to create a new European security framework that would keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Simply put, the trajectory of Russian diplomacy was conflict avoidance. The same cannot be said of either Ukraine or its Western partners, who were pursuing a policy of NATO expansion linked to the resolution of the Donbass/Crimea crises through military means.

By "ignoring history" let's revisit the late Glen Ford, who was fairly spot-on in his predictions in the wake of the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014:

I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world. It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.

The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower, may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and more than a little bit awed. In fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa — these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.

U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization. Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony — and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.

The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China, not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.

That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness. Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear superiority is in weapons.

However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”

In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do its options.

By "ignoring strategy" let's look at retired U.S. Navy Captain Sam J. Tangredi's take on a China-vs-US naval confrontation:

Using technological advantage as an indicator of quality, historical research on 28 naval wars (or wars with significant and protracted naval combat) indicates that 25 were won by the side with the larger fleet. When fleet size was roughly equal, superior strategy and substantially better trained and motivated crews carried the day. Only three could be said to have been won by a smaller fleet with superior technology.

When professional naval competence and strategic acumen were equal, the larger fleet usually won, even when the smaller fleet possessed technological advantages at the start of the conflict. A primary reason is that technological advantages were inevitably short-lived. In a war between equally competent technological near peers—absent a series of amazing strokes of luck—the larger fleet always won.

With the growing potential of a naval engagement between a shrinking U.S. fleet and a growing People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the three examples of technologically advanced but smaller fleets’ victories are not reassuring:

•  The Byzantine Empire’s naval forces versus Vikings, Slavs, Turks, and Arabs to about the year 1000 AD/CE. At that time, the Arabs learned to employ the equivalent of Greek fire.
• The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean versus Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire, and Indo-regional allies, 1500–1580.
• The British East India Company and various European nations versus Imperial China circa 1840–1900.

All other wars were won by superior numbers or, when between equal forces, superior strategy, or admiralship. Often all three qualities act together, because operating a large fleet generally facilitates more extensive training and is often an indicator that leaders are concerned with strategic requirements. In the Napoleonic wars, for example, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson may have been more brilliant—and braver—than his French and Spanish counterparts. His captains and crews were better trained. However, Great Britain dominated the war at sea because it had a larger fleet it could concentrate or disperse as conditions warranted. French warships were superior in the technology of ship design and construction, but ultimately, it was the large numbers of Royal Navy ships that prevented Napoleon from crossing the channel.

[SNIP]

In assessing the advantages of mass, it is important to recognize the vast difference between land and naval warfare. The dominant joint concept that there is a separation between maneuver warfare and attrition warfare—and that maneuver can substitute for attrition—is invalid in naval strategy. Maneuver is inherent in naval operations—just as it is in all the fluid mediums or domains: air, space, and cyberspace. Naval combat platforms themselves represent maneuver; there are no fixed locations in the ocean to defend, just as there are no fixed locations to defend in air, space, or cyberspace because the mediums themselves are in motion and they are domains that humans do not inhabit or can only inhabit for short periods of time.

This difference from land warfare can be most easily understood by observing that one cannot maneuver around or envelop an enemy fleet. There are no fixed lines to defend, breach, or avoid. There is no operational defensive. Therefore, attrition is the sole goal of naval warfare. As Hughes repeated throughout his years of research: attack effectively first.

[SNIP]

In expressing the reality of mass and operational competence in the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord St. Vincent stated in 1801, “I do not say the Frenchman [Napoleon] will not come. I only say he will not come by sea.” Applying St. Vincent’s logic to the findings of my research: I do not say that a smaller, technologically superior fleet could never defeat a much larger fleet, I only say that—with the possible the exception of three cases in the past 1,200 years—none has. Historical evidence shows that smaller fleets lose. In the “ends, ways, and means” formulation of strategy, mass (or numbers) is one of the most important “ways.”

And not to ignore land battles, back to Scott Ritter on Ukraine:

 The impressive Ukrainian military accomplishments that were facilitated through the provision of military aid by NATO came at a huge cost in lives and material. While the exact calculation of casualties suffered by either side is difficult to come by, there is widespread acknowledgement, even among the Ukrainian government, that Ukrainian losses have been heavy.

With the battle-lines currently stabilized, the question of where the war goes from here comes down to basic military math — in short, a causal relationship between two basic equations revolving around burn rates (how quickly losses are sustained) versus replenishment rates (how quickly such losses can be replaced.) The calculus bodes ill for Ukraine.

Neither NATO nor the United States appear able to sustain the quantity of weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine, which enabled the successful fall counteroffensives against the Russians.

This equipment has largely been destroyed, and despite Ukraine’s insistence on its need for more tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery and air defense, and while new military aid appears to be forthcoming, it will be late to the battle and in insufficient quantities to have a game-winning impact on the battlefield.

Likewise, the casualty rates sustained by Ukraine, which at times reach more than 1,000 men per day, far exceed its ability to mobilize and train replacements.

Russia, on the other hand, is in the process of finalizing a mobilization of more than 300,000 men who appear to be equipped with the most advanced weapons systems in the Russian arsenal.

When these forces arrive in full on the battlefield, sometime by the end of January, Ukraine will have no response. This harsh reality, when coupled with the annexation by Russia of more than 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and infrastructure damage approaching $1 trillion, bodes ill for the future of Ukraine.

American leaders are doing the political equivalent of smelling their own farts and telling the masses that it's lilac. Eventually someone is going to open a window and ask the gassy liar to leave the room. 

And in case anyone thinks that NATO can put the toothpaste back and get Russia to agree to "peace" again: