Persistent Delusion Among the American and NATO Defense Establishment

by Larry Johnson

There are three recent articles I want to make sure you have read because they reveal the delusion that continues to afflict U.S. military leaders, pundits and the establishment media.
 
First up is US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who provided some surprising candor during a speech in late January to a Swedish defense conference but failed to comprehend what he was saying:

The heavy casualties and massive ammunition consumption seen during the war in Ukraine has top NATO commanders worried. . . .
 
“The scale of this war is out of proportion with all of our recent thinking,” said Cavoli, who is also head of US European Command. “But it is real and we must contend with it.”
 
One lesson is the importance of an adequate defense industrial base capable of providing the necessary equipment and supplies to satisfy the voracious appetite of large-scale, high-intensity warfare. The US, Russia, and Europe are already scrambling to ramp up production of artillery shells after letting their munitions stockpiles and factories run down after the Cold War.
 
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/ukraine-war-scale-out-of-proportion-with-nato-planning-cavoli-2023-2

Yes. Having an adequate defense industrial base is critical. The West no longer has one and, assuming it found the will and resources to recreate one, we are talking years. Does Cavoli not grasp this reality?

Even then, it became clear that NATO — which has expanded from 12 founding members to 30 members today — was dependent on US support. In Libya, for example, NATO air forces ran short of precision-guided bombs after the first month.
 
That Moscow is buying artillery shells from North Korea suggests that Russia’s military is no shape to fight NATO and Ukraine. However, NATO’s frantic attempts to scrounge up weapons and ammunition for Ukraine shows the alliance doesn’t have much depth to its arsenals.
 
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/ukraine-war-scale-out-of-proportion-with-nato-planning-cavoli-2023-2

If the Supreme US Commander in Europe does not understand that Russia is not running out of shells or missiles, is he ignorant or is his staff hiding battlefield facts from him? I do congratulate Cavoli on his No Shit Analysis moment when he admits that NATO has no strategic depth. But he is engaging in major hopium by repeating the nonsense that Russia is in no shape to fight NATO. Errors in judgment like that get people killed.
 
Next is a ridiculous piece by Andrew A. Michta, Ukraine Can Achieve a Strategic Win over Russia. The West Must Step Up. Michta has quite a pedigree:

Andrew A. Michta is the dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and a new Contributing Editor for 1945. He is the former Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College and former Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. You can follow him on Twitter: @AndrewMichta. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Michta is one more piece of evidence supporting Andrei Martyanov’s trenchant criticism of the pseudo-intellectuals that pander to the Defense establishment. It is a pity that Sigmund Freud is not around to do some much needed psycho analysis on the Neo Con community. People like Michta display a form of schizophrenia in their articles. Consider the following:

In the wake of the mass destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure and the flight of its citizens (an estimated 9 million Ukrainian refugees have passed through Poland alone), a fight with an enemy commanding approximately four times Ukraine’s population can only end one way.
 
So Ukraine needs forces to allow it to break out of the current stalemate, check the Russian advance, and maneuver to achieve a decisive victory on the battlefield. It needs to fight on its own terms. To do this it needs modern Western main battle tanks and long-range fires – in greater numbers than promised so far, and, most importantly, aircraft.

Yep. More Cow Bell. Michta correctly notes that Ukraine is outnumbered and outgunned. So what is his wise recommendation for doing a turn around? Send in more battle tanks, long-range fires and combat aircraft that Russia has demonstrated the ability to destroy. Yeah, that makes sense.
 
Michta, a professional leech who guzzles at the tit of the Defense industry, offers a solution that is certain to warm the hearts of the corporate chiefs at General Dynamics, Lockheed, Raytheon and many others. Happy Days are here again. We need more billions to stop the Rooskies.

Unless the United States and its European allies make urgently needed decisions to invest in their defense industry, it may become impossible to supply Ukraine in the long run—even if the political will remains. Simply put, looking at the rates at which weapons and munitions are being consumed in this war, the West needs to move its defense industry away from the “just-in-time,” low-volume paradigm of the past thirty years to a “just-in-case” approach, whereby it amasses the quantities of weapons and munitions needed to sustain a protracted fight with a near-peer adversary. . . .
 
But the West should consider another possibility: Given the right equipment, the Ukrainian army could defeat the Russian military within the next six months, setting in motion forces in Russia that could implode Putin’s regime. In Russian history, military defeats have usually been accompanied by internal fracturing—including the 1905 revolution that followed Russia’s defeat by Japan, the February and Bolshevik revolutions in 1917 in the wake of Russia’s defeat by Germany, and the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union following its rout in Afghanistan. . . .

I could tolerate this nonsense if it was written by a 24 year old grad student with no memory of the Cold War and no understanding of Russia’s history of dealing with foreign invaders, but Michta is experienced. The Ukrainian Army has not defeated the Russians in a set piece battle since the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation. Urkaine, with the full help of NATO, was unable to mount an offensive to rescue its trapped forces in Mariupol. A similar catastrophe for Ukraine is unfolding right now in Donetsk along the defense line that stretches from Bakhmut to Seversk in the north.

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