Washington has set Ukraine up for failure
"You're what the French call 'Les Incompetents'."
As the opening salvos of Ukraine’s long-awaited summer offensive rang out in Zaporizhzhia, General Miley and NATO were confident that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) would not only punch through to the Sea of Azov and split the Russian lines, but potentially even take Crimea.
Clearly, this is not what happened, the main thrust never even reached their initial waypoint of Tokmak.
As the guns fell silent, so did the many analysts who had made bold predictions of the Russian Army being swept aside by the new Western trained, armed - and indeed directed - Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Many of les incompétents, like Peter Zeihan, even rage-quit Twitter within a matter of days.
Don’t worry… like all addicts, those who had rage-quit Twitter/X, quickly returned.
How did the offensive fail? How have the best military planners and thinkers in the West, and arguably the world, gotten the War in Ukraine so wrong? Where do we go from here?
Truth be told, Ukraine was never going to win this war, and it was the systematic incompetence of Western military analysts which led to the needless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of brave Ukrainian boys with their whole lives ahead of them.1
Over the last few months, we’ve been told how Ukraine’s summer offensive failed for a dozen reasons, and certainly there is merit to each one. The main reason, they tell us, is that the US hasn’t been delivering enough equipment, what we do give Ukraine is given too slowly…. To be clear, the US and wider world have delivered an absurd amount of equipment to Ukraine, a titanic and historical effort has been made to snatch a stalemate out of the jaws of defeat.
NATO has delivered so much equipment to Ukraine that it is itself no longer in a state of readiness to wage war. It will take five years for the US to replace the munitions it has sent Ukraine. Even NATO’s largest European military, France, would run out of ammunition within a week of fighting.2 Germany is in even worse shape and would run out of ammunition in a couple of days.3
When these problems are raised publicly, our politicians make statements like “it will take Russia ten years to rebuild a modern army.” But is that true?
The Russian Army is bigger than it has been since the collapse of the USSR. Forty percent of their force is composed of highly motivated professional soldiers. Soldiers at the front are provided with new, state of the art weaponry. While the Western media likes to show photos of raw recruits in garrison carrying AKMs and claiming that Russia is running out of equipment, they ignore that many US Army soldiers in the same situation (Basic Training, National Guard, etc…) carry the M16A2 and not a modernized M4A1.
Meanwhile Russia is producing hundreds of modern tanks each quarter while modernizing mothballed tanks to send to the front. In 2023, Russia doubled its production of the fifth-generation stealth fighter, the Su-57.4 They’ve managed to do this, while waging an expensive war which has drained the military resources of the entire Western world (BlackRock is salivating), on a military budget which amounts to a fraction of the Pentagon’s budget.
Russia, in fact, is ending the year with a budget surplus of over two-hundred billion dollars. Before you say something stupid, like “that’s not that much,” check out the US numbers, and the debt to GDP ratio of both countries… I’ll wait…
…. Yeah…. That’s what I thought.
The Counter-Offensive Conundrum
The AFU had allocated three corps for the summer offensive. The spearhead of these forces was the nine NATO trained and equipped assault brigades, supported by a large contingent of existing brigades formed of draftees and territorial defense forces (TDF).
In theory, the NATO trained assault brigades would do the hard fighting. Once ground was taken, the lower quality TDF forces would move up and hold that territory while the assault brigades withdrew to rest and re-equip for the next push. As the assault brigades took casualties, they would take reinforcements from units of the TDF; this allows the assault brigades to maintain one hundred percent combat strength.
In theory, this sounds great. In reality it means that within a couple of weeks, seven out of ten soldiers in the assault brigades were poorly trained draftees with no combat experience.
The problem for the AFU was that, across no-man's-land were three Russian army groups. To be clear, each army group is composed of multiple corps; the AFU was attacking prepared positions with a three to one disadvantage. Strategic orthodoxy says that one needs, at an absolute minimum, a three to one advantage in personnel when attacking prepared defenses.
One might ask why would they do this?
The answer is simple: Western military analysts assured them that their Western equipment was so much more advanced than Russian technology, and Western tactics so superior that they would steamroll the Russian forces. The Ukrainians believed their own propaganda that Russian soldiers were unmotivated peasants being forced to fight by a Hitlerian tyrant and would run away the moment they even heard the word Bradley.5
Operations in Zaporizhzhia broke down within a matter of days.
The AFU’s advancing units were being picked off long before they even reached the first minefield. The moment they left for their final staging points, they were being picked off by Russian helicopters, artillery, and kamikaze drones; the minefields were merely the last straw. Not wanting to lose any more of their precious Western armor, Ukraine began to launch small-scale infantry assaults.
The Coping Begins
Anyone with half a brain could see that the offensive had stalled, but pop Western analysts, like David Axe, assured the public that Ukraine was simply changing tactics. Of course, when Russia switched from armored maneuvers to infantry assaults in Avdiivka, this same analyst claimed that they were forced to fight on foot, because Ukraine had blown up so many Russian tanks.
David ignores the clear differences.
Ukraine hardly reached the line of contact in Zaporizhzhia, they changed tactics in Zaporizhzhia because the majority of its available armored force was wiped out. Russia, by contrast, crossed the open field where tanks thrive, and were now entering a bombed-out city in which tanks are far less effective. In other words, the Russians shifted tactics in response to a change in terrain; Russian tanks continue to operate in the Avdiivka sector as they encircle the city to the north, south, and west.
This is typical of David’s analyses; we see it again in his praise of Ukraine’s forming of an “elite new mechanized brigade,” and mocking Russia’s forming of the 104th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division, claiming its “hasty” organization assures it is poorly trained. However, the 104th Guards VDV Division was primarily composed of various independent VDV formations already in existence.6
Meanwhile, this new Ukrainian armored brigade has no armored vehicles, and is made entirely of poorly trained conscripts; many of these conscripts are men in their sixties, teenagers - some taken from orphanages - and even pregnant women.
Even better is David’s praise of Ukraine’s Leopard I tanks. He claims that these 1970’s tanks will whoop Russia’s upgraded T-72B3, describing these theoretical encounters like they are Mortal Kombat style 1v1’s.
Anyone who could take such an “analysis” seriously is delusional.
We’ll skip the fact that tank on tank battles are incredibly rare in Ukraine… But David seems not to know that Ukraine’s primary tank is the 1960s vintage model T-62, not the Leopard 1. Ironically, he mocks Russia for giving DPR/ LPR units modernized T-62 which are far more capable than their AFU counterparts. If David believes Russia’s T-72B is outdated and incapable, what does that mean for AFU T-62s? In addition to Ukraine’s lower quality and quantity of tanks and APC/IFVs, the most plentiful vehicle used for troop transport in the AFU is (drum-roll please) the Toyota Hilux.
While the Hilux is certainly combat proven, being the chosen warhorse of the Taliban, ISIS, Hezbollah, the now defunct Afghan Army and National Police, it is not sufficient for the terrain and intensity of combat of this conflict.
Perhaps David’s greatest sin - and this error his colleagues commenting on Russian tanks certainly share - is missing what I alluded to early in the article about Russian arms production. Russia is still producing modern tanks which are more than a match for the Leopard II and Abrams, they’re just not sending the majority of them to Ukraine - those they send are meant to be used by specific units or specific actions. Instead, they’re refitting the thousands of mothballed tanks they have in storage and sending them to the front.
And why wouldn't they?
We are not seeing large tank on tank maneuvers in Ukraine in which T-72B3M, T-90 series, or T-1s would make a serious impact. A long paid off T-72 with some modern optics and extra armor welded on has a similar chance of surviving kamikaze drones and missiles as a more modern, expensive tank.
The sensible thing to do then in a war of attrition - which the Ukraine War most certainly is - would be to force your opponent to waste their limited resources smashing against old equipment. This allows Russia to continue its ambitious military modernization program in the midst of waging a large-scale war.
At the end of the day, our perpetuation and globalization of the conflict has empowered Russia and propelled them to the status of a world power.
I’m not rejoicing in this revelation by any means. I would have preferred Russia not rise to the status of a global power, especially in opposition to American power. But as we’ve discussed, we have no one to blame for it but ourselves.
Victory was Never an Option
The fact of the matter is that sending arms was never going to be enough for Ukraine to win because what Ukraine really needed was a new army.
Ukraine’s army was effectively destroyed during the Russian invasion, they were ready to surrender. We promised to build them a new army, which we did. We not only built them a new army but directed it in battle; the counter-offensive was planned largely by the headquarters of the US Army’s 18th Airborne Corps. As we have seen, even this was not enough.
Aside from sending in the US Army there is no solution which could have won Ukraine the war - and to be clear, this should absolutely not be on the table. NATO in Europe never had the equipment to fight Russia, and so a European taskforce to rescue Ukraine wasn’t practical even if the political will were to exist…
Newsflash: it's not.
Saving Face: US Middle Eastern Failures & the Neutering of NATO
Americans have long complained about Europe’s lack of commitment to its own defense, but they misattribute the role America has played.
When I rotated through Basic Training in 2007, I read the then highly influential “The Changing Face of War,” by Martin Van Crevard - one of the most respected military historians and analysts in the world. In this book, he argues that war was naturally evolving from large scale warfare to small scale police actions.
The US military firmly believed this, saying that Field Artillery - the King of Battle - would be completely phased out by close air support (CAS). These air assets were also said to make tanks obsolete.7
The Pentagon and think tank class were pushing the narrative that large scale conventional wars were a thing of the past, and maintaining large armored and artillery formations was a needless expense. Blinded by the presentism of the Global War on Terrorism and looking for an excuse to cut government expenditures, our NATO allies were more than willing to believe this narrative.
This resulted in a severe drop in defense spending in Europe, and a shift in focus to counterinsurgency (COIN), peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. The Dutch liquidated their last two tank battalions in 2011, cutting its total military personnel by one-sixth.8
Belgium followed suit in 2014. The British strongly considered doing the same on multiple occasions. All the while, NATO continued to move into Russia’s sphere of influence, ignoring its repeated appeals and warnings that this would lead to war.9
To those unfamiliar with military history, this may not seem like it was totally unreasonable. Afterall, we hadn’t had a real war in half a century, and technology has come so far that large scale warfare is absurdly expensive and deadly. But for anyone familiar with military history, especially the brass and think tank class, this is an unforgivable sin.
The overwhelming majority of wars in history have been low-intensity police actions with intermittent periods of large scale, high-intensity conflicts. This is an indisputable fact.
The British Army has, at least traditionally, understood this. For centuries they tailored their training, doctrine, and industry to support a small, highly professional, highly trained force capable both of resolving the political crises which lead to insurgencies within a sprawling empire and capable of rapid expansion to meet larger threats. By contrast, the US Army was purpose built for large scale conventional warfare. This lack of political training is largely why the US struggled in Iraq and Afghanistan. 10
When the supposedly invincible US military struggled to hold its own in a fairly run of the mill low-intensity conflict, US military analysts rushed to find some justification for their failures...
In the eyes of US analysts, it wasn’t that the US military wasn’t ready, or capable, of winning this run of the mill conflict, but that no one was ready because warfare itself was evolving. When questioned on this narrative, analysts could turn to men like Crevard and say, “well of course this is what's happening, see, Captain Jim said it 20 years ago!”
But why not just admit fault and improve force structure and training to meet such a threat in the future, without sacrificing conventional capabilities?11
The answer is simple: the overwhelming majority of Western analysts are yes men who are completely detached from the real world. Their primary aim is to spin whatever unfavorable information comes out of a conflict, because if they don’t toe the line on the approved narrative, they will be pushed out of the industry altogether. The US government has proven itself incapable of accepting fault for failures - especially when they’ve resulted in the deaths of American and allied soldiers - and so it relies on military analysts to spin defeat into victory.
Certainly, this doesn’t apply to every analyst, there are also those who simply lack the cognitive skills necessary to analyze the conflict and its potential outcomes.
The failures of military analysts to get the Ukraine War right, like their mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, are rooted in the inflexible institutional culture of the US military and its delusions of invincibility on the battlefield.
Another key issue is that our military analysts are blinded by an obsession with Wunderwaffe, with technology we can flaunt and the scope of the budget, believing that this alone will bring victory. When we speak of US military might, we never speak about American grit, ideological motivations, quality of training; we speak of advanced technologies and the absurd amount of money we throw at the military-industrial complex, the myth of the million-dollar soldier.
But as the performance of Western equipment in Ukraine has proven, our faith has been misplaced. All the excuses can’t explain away the fact that Russian technology has easily met the best of Western equipment sent to Ukraine.
The State of Affairs & Future of the Ukraine War
The counter offensive failed. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead. The Ukrainians are facing severe manpower shortages, with Zelensky asking for upwards of 500,000 new recruits. Ukrainians, however, aren’t going for it.
Things have reached such a level of desperation, that Zelensky is asking the West to deport male refugees of military age to be sent to the front line; some Western governments have actually agreed to do so.12
Worse still, Russia is making daily advances on every front. In December alone we’ve seen daily advances which nearly exceed the total advances made by the AFU during their summer offensive on at least a half dozen occasions.13 To be clear, this is not an organized Russian offensive. They are simply shaping the battlefield and keeping pressure on the now depleted AFU.
Winter 2022-2023, many were asking when the supposed Russian Winter Offensive would happen, and then, why it hadn’t.
My answer was clear: The Russians wouldn’t attack, because they knew the Ukrainians were preparing for their own offensive. To launch an offensive at that time, Russia risked wearing itself out and handing the newly rebuilt Ukrainian Army and opportunity to break through Russian lines.
Both sides faced this dilemma. But Ukraine, who is surviving off of foreign support, was under pressure to launch an offensive if it didn’t want its lifeline severed. Thus, it launched its offensive first.
Now, Ukraine’s offensive has petered out and substantially weakened it. Russia is now shaping the battlefield, cutting the supply lines to key points in the Ukrainian defenses, picking up road and railway junctions, all while not allowing the Ukrainians to rest and reorganize.
Not for nothing, Russia was never in a position to launch an offensive in late winter 2022-2023. Mobilization forces had not arrived in force yet and the Russians had no defensive fortifications to fall back on if their “offensive” failed. Had Ukraine struck Zaporizhzhia in February 2023, they might have pulled off a stunning victory. But instead, they got bogged down in Bakhmut. PMC Wagner’s assault on Bakhmut was little more than a diversionary tactic to give the Russian Army more time to reorganize. To Prigozhin’s credit, it worked, and Wagner’s commanders showed themselves to be masters of the modern battlefield.
But I digress….
The question now is what will the Russian Army do next? This is anyone’s guess. They could be waiting for a deep freeze and other favorable weather conditions to launch a major offensive, as was expected last year. It’s also possible that they could just continue to keep pressure on the Ukrainians, biting off chunks along the front and using up Ukraine’s precious reserves of men and material until the West cries’ uncle.
Personally, I think the latter is more likely, even if I think from the Russian perspective, it would be wise to strike hard and strike fast. Maybe that’s just the American in me. We like a good decisive victory.
I suspect Putin prefers to continue wearing down the AFU until the cost becomes too great for the West to bare and our notoriously short attention span diverts to newer, shinier problems. Then, Ukraine will be forced to negotiate. I think the terms for peace will be Ukrainian neutrality, disarming of Azov, Right Sector, Svoboda, C-14, etc… establishment of a UN monitored DMZ, and recognition for Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Lugansk.
War INC.
The death grip which the US Military-Industrial Complex has on our government is the root of the problem. As Senators Mitch McConnell and Tim Scott have said openly: the funding for Ukraine isn’t primarily going to Ukraine, but to US Arms manufacturers.
The main companies receiving these contracts are all subsidiaries of BlackRock. We know Ukraine can never pay these loans back, and part of the conditions of the loans is that they put up all state-owned industry for auction to multi-national corporations. This includes upwards of seventy percent of agricultural land in Ukraine… The very land which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian boys have died to defend… Who do you think is going to purchase those things?
Could it be the same multinational conglomerate producing all the weapons and who received the contract to rebuild Ukraine after the war?14
The US is the largest manufacturer of military equipment in the world. These factories and facilities are sprinkled across the US, providing jobs to millions of Americans. These companies have huge sway in Washington and are keen to remind members of Congress that a yes vote on Ukrainian - and Israeli - aid packages mean bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into their district. Further, Americans have near unlimited trust in the US Military establishment; criticism of the US Military is seen as treasonous.
But patriots should question and criticize every department of the state. To paraphrase the renowned Russian philosopher, the late Ivan Ilych, the difference between nationalism and patriotism is that a patriot is willing to criticize his nation’s mistakes and shortcomings so that it can improve, to call it to the high ideals it has proclaimed to the world. Nationalists, by contrast, are blind to their nation’s errors and stumble in the darkness of ignorance, leading their nation into catastrophe.
Conclusions
The Armed Forces of Ukraine have fought valiantly in brutal conditions against insurmountable odds, having done so while maintaining fairly high morale. The world has been captivated by their bravery and tenacity in battle, and they deserve not only our respect, but our mercy. The failures of the AFU are not their own, they are ours. The incompetence of the American think tank class, the greed of our military industrial complex, the short-sightedness of American politicians, have blindly led hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to slaughter.
We must hold the Military-Industrial complex responsible. This includes the Pentagon itself, the analysts of the think tank class, as well as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE, and other arms manufacturers who have been complicit in the CIA and State Department toppling of the lawfully elected government of Ukraine, and governments across Europe since the early 2000s.15 If we allow attention to be wholly diverted to Israel16 this will only allow the administration to quietly pull out, escaping accountability for the horrors they have unleashed in the Ukraine. This cannot be allowed to happen. They must be held accountable. Even more than this, we must hold ourselves accountable; both for zealously supporting a war we knew nothing about, and for allowing these horrors to be carried out in our name.
May our most-merciful God grant them paradise for the Hell they endured on earth. Memory Eternal.
Unfortunately, Ukraine hasn’t learned its lesson. Ukrainian Marines, preparing to make near-suicidal assaults on the east-bank of the Dnieper in Kherson for no meaningful strategic purpose, were told that the Russian soldiers were unmotivated cowards who would flee when they saw Ukrainian soldiers…
While David assures the American public that these VDV forces are incompetent, the Ukrainian soldiers who have fought them on the east bank of the Dnieper have said, “It’s not even a fight for survival, it’s a suicide mission.”
You can still see the remnants of this mentality in the desire to phase out anti-tank air assets such as the A-10 Warthog. This was a decision based upon the obsolescence of the tank. I would argue that, based on what we’ve seen in the Azeri-Armenian and Russo-Ukrainian Wars, this should be reconsidered.
John Nagl wrote a prophetic book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife about how the structure and culture of the American Military prevented it from quickly adapting to the needs of Counter Insurgency (COIN) operations in Vietnam - this was equally true in the later Global War on Terrorism - and contrasts this with the British experience in Malaya. This lack of institutional flexibility is the source of the problems the US military is facing today in adapting to the needs of modern warfare after so many years focused on COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What that would actually look like is a topic for a different time, but one which I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about.
Ukraine has regained roughly 350 square kilometers of land in 2023, Russia gained over 550 square kilometers. This is noteworthy since Russia had assumed a largely defensive posture, reaffirming my statements about shaping the battlefield.
See Color Revolutions in Ukraine: The Road to War Pt. I
This is not to minimize the horrors being carried out on the civilians of Gaza, for which the Israelis should be held to the same standards as Slobodan Milosevic was for events during the Yugoslav Wars.