Winning without Territory: Russia’s Focus on Destroying the Enemy Army

Thread via Will Schryver

Russia Has Been Winning This War All Along — And Winning it Big

I’ve written extensively on this question since it became apparent the Russians had eviscerated the original AFU by late spring 2022.

One of my earliest articles explains in detail:

From the moment in early April when Russian forces on the perimeter of Kiev began to withdraw to new positions in eastern Ukraine, western war propagandists have been trumpeting what they characterized as Russia’s “humiliating defeat”. As one who recognized as early as February 28th that the Russian army was executing a strategic feint in and around the Ukrainian capital, I could only shake my head and laugh at the cluelessness of most of the so-called “experts” who have attempted to sell this interpretation of events to hopelessly ignorant western audiences.

I am reminded of how, during the US Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was ceaselessly frustrated with his early cadre of generals.

Much as the vast majority of current western military “experts” have been fixated on conquering “territory” as a measure of progress, or the lack thereof, Lincoln’s early generals were illogically focused on the objective of “taking Richmond” – the capital of the Confederacy. This obsession dominated the strategic focus of the Union high command for most of the war.

Lincoln, on the other hand – notwithstanding there is no evidence he ever read von Clausewitz – intuitively and correctly understood that it was not a city, nor any piece of territory, per se, that was the objective upon which his West Point-trained generals should focus.

Rather, he repeatedly (and vainly) urged his generals to come to understand it was the destruction of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, that constituted the only valid objective of their actions.

A few weeks after I published that seminal blog post, the legendary USMC general, Paul K. Van Riper (with a few others) published in the Marine Corps Gazette a highly controversial analysis of the war which affirmed most of what I had written in July.

In 2002, Van Riper was the “Red Team” commander of the biggest military exercise in Pentagon history, code-named “Millennium Challenge”, which war-gamed a conflict with Iran in the Persian Gulf. The “Blue Team” force was destroyed in a matter of hours.

In late 2022, war historian Dr. Michael Vlahos (@Michalis_Vlahos) interviewed Col. Douglas Macgregor in relation to the destruction of AFU Version 2, which NATO had assembled to replace Ukraine’s original army.

This is *ESSENTIAL* viewing.

Part 1

 
Part 2

 
Part 3

 
Those who have closely followed me will recognize in Macgregor’s analysis numerous confirmations of my own observations dating back to the beginning – particularly my constant mantra that:

THE OBJECT OF WAR IS *NOT* TO SEIZE/HOLD TERRITORY, BUT TO DESTROY THE ENEMY ARMY.

Destroying the enemy army is PRECISELY what the Russians have done in this war – not once, but twice!

Now we are about to find out how well the NATO-constructed AFU Version 3 will fare against a Russian military that is – by far – at its peak of strength.

To outfit AFU v.3, the US/NATO has literally drained all their surplus stocks of equipment and ammunition, and are now depleting their active inventories. Germany and the Baltics are quite literally “demilitarized”; they have virtually no war-making capacity remaining.

And while Russia has ramped up its military / industrial capacity to Cold War levels, the US and NATO countries have no such “surge capacity”. Russia expends 2x – 4x more artillery rounds EVERY SINGLE DAY than the US can produce in a month!

As I originally wrote in my July 10, 2022 article Wunderwaffe Du Jour:

“The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.”

The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare.

And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.

This titillates the biases of American exceptionalists in general, and is a particularly seductive fantasy of the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult drones propagandizing for filthy lucre at the countless armaments-industry-funded “think tanks” in Washington and London.

But the notion that the rapidly declining empire can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy band for one final farewell tour is a singularly delusional vanity.

You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique.

And there is simply no way this domestic US industry can expeditiously expand its production. It would literally take years – probably a full decade – for the US to expand its military production to a seriously potent industrial scale.

It is also essential to understand that Russia has fought this entire war with one hand tied behind its back. Its strategy has long been predicated on the understanding that it may very well have to face direct NATO intervention in the conflict.

Once it became clear the Russians had no intention to launch a winter offensive, I’ve steadily come to believe they concluded no later than summer 2022 that they must prioritize preparations to face a possible direct NATO intervention in this war.

I am increasingly persuaded the introduction of the American “wunderwaffen” (M-777 and HIMARS) has overridingly influenced Russian prosecution of this war — not on account of these particular systems’ battlefield efficacy, but by what they symbolized:

The US having “raised the stakes” in this fashion, the war was instantly transformed into an escalatory duel.

And that realization has, in my estimation, strongly influenced everything we have seen the Russians do since then.

It must also be understood that the US/NATO and its Ukrainian proxies have, since the beginning, been engaged in a disinformation war that has been predicated on the axiom that “If you can’t win a real war, win an imaginary one.”

This is, BY FAR, the most propagandized war in human history. Beginning even before the war commenced, the western intel apparatus has flooded the media with constant disinformation. Virtually everything the majority of the western public believes about this war is a lie.

The plain and demonstrable truth is that Russia has been winning this war all along – and winning it *decisively* while yet utilizing an extraordinary economy of force and inflicting the most disproportionate casualty ratio of any major war in modern times.