The Entire West’s Military Is Weak

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This is a post by one of the best commentators that I know on the Consciousness of Sheep site from 22 June 2019.
The WWII battle you probably haven’t heard of
I grew up thinking the West had defeated the Nazis, but I have learned differently over the years. This article supports the early paragraph of today’s post.

Ian (and, I guess, Altandmain) : “The UK was not prepared for WW1. It also suffered from that problem in WW2. The reason is because it was focused on imperialist colonial wars.”

This is a digression about history, not the present or near-future of the West’s militaries. But that statement about the UK’s military fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the British empire and the quite limited role the British army always had in it.

As compared to, say, France and Prussia, the British army was never much more than a glorified gendarmerie maintained specifically for — yes — fighting imperialist colonial wars even at the height of British 19th century hegemony.

And it was quite unpopular within the UK itself, since the general population saw it as an instrument for their repression after events like Peterloo.

By contrast, the navy were popularly seen as heroes and the instruments of British supremacy. Britain saw itself as a maritime empire — to an extent that may be hard for other cultures now to appreciate–with forex, Pitt the Younger, prime minister under George III, pushing through a national policy of spending 50 percent of British GDP at the 18th century’s end on ship-building.

So a Royal Navy ship of the line in the 19th century’s first half was arguably the most advanced technological artifact of its time and that — alongside the Industrial Revolution — was seen as the basis for the empire. After all, the UK was an island and if there was a foreign threat the Royal Navy would see it off before it arrived on English shores, as it had with the Spanish and Napoleon.

Consequently, you have this situation where the hegemonic power of the 19th century, the UK, is an island nation that’s not fundamentally interested in fighting land wars within Europe itself, nor in having a large land army. This had pros and cons.

The pros: the multipolar international order that arose after the Congress of Vienna, where as long as no threat like Napoleon arose on the continental mainland, the hegemonic power wasn’t interested in fighting wars there; likewise, as a maritime empire, the UK could spend 3 percent of its GDP and have the Royal Navy shut down the transatlantic slave trade.

The cons: Things weren’t so great if you were Indian or Chinese, where the hegemon was doing its main looting, pillaging, and wealth-extraction.

@Tallifer:

Who is going to invade Canada? Canada has no need for a navy to project power with.

On one hand if the US and its weasel colonies are weak why are the Russians and the Chinese so afraid of them? These western nations give material support to Nazi Ukrainians that get large numbers of heroic Russian liberators killed every day. Yet the Russians take no actions that effectively retaliate for these atrocities. The Chinese also seem to be taking a position in which they can plausibly deny being a beligerent in the Ukraine conflict.
One the other hand the US and its weasels go out of their way to cheerlead for Ukraine and yet do not give them the material support that they need to actually have a reasonable chance to defeat the Russians. But is it plausible that this two faced western behavior is actually carried out due to fear of the Russians and Chinese?
On the other hand after number 15 there is number 16, is it possible that reports about how far behind Russia the west is in artillary shell production is a flat out lie?
After all despite having a much larger military the Russians have not made any better progress in attaching the Ukrianians now than the Ukrainians did this past summer.
Even if the Ukrainian military front collapses tommorrow it does not prove that the west is not matching or could not very quickly match Russian production.
Then there is also the factor of things that are being worked on by MIC scientists (of both sides) that we have no hint of. But those in high levels will of course know. They may be counting on some kind of new technology. But it is also possible that their hopes are built on a sand foundation because the sceintists have told a big fish story to get funding for their program.
The bottom line is until the two sides cross swords no one has any real idea which side is relatively weaker than the other.
The only thing that we do know is that the Russians, and the Palestinians, and the Iranians, and Venezuelans have a just cause where as the soldiers of western armies do not. On one hand knowing that they are fighting for a just cause will make the Russians, Palestinian, Iranian, and Venezuelan soldiers less likely to surrender. On the other hand the soldiers of western armies could be either to ignorant to understand that they are fighting for an unjust cause or they may not care. Plenty of western mercenaries have been fighting in Ukraine proving that they have either no brains or no ethics. So whose cause is just and whose is not may not count for much in the end anyways.
When the Russians install me as the dictator of the EU I will agree that the western militaries are weak. After that admission I will have a bunch of people burned alive while hanging from bridges and then have their corpses feed to dogs. After that I will resign because I know that at this pint in history humanity can no longer be saved.

Mark Level

Bidenflation

Why “Bidenflation”, when it was Trumpist and neoliberal policies that set the stage for the recent inflation surge?

One of the most frustrating things about crediting praise/blame for economic policies is that the administration(s) down the road take the credit for good policies enacted previous to them (which they may be trying to undo), or get the blame for bad policies enacted before them. There is almost a 4-year delay between when policies are enacted and when we start seeing their true impacts. The fundamental cause of persistent inflation in the US dates back to the 1970s, when the Nixon/Ford admins largely stopped anti-trust actions and allowed for oligopolies to start controlling large segments of the economy.

What is it about the Trump economy that you most admire? The tax cuts for the useless rich? The continuing bailouts for the rich? The raising of taxes on the poors? What “good” or progressive thing do you see there? And how did any of these prevent inflation?

They aren’t used to fighting in an environment without total US air and artillery supremacy.

This is something that has been noted by critics of the US military dating back to the 1970s, against a “Fulda Gap” push into Germany by Warsaw Pact forces. The assumption was that NATO forces would enjoy not just air superiority, but the same kind of air supremacy they had enjoyed in WWII (where Allied soldiers were told if they saw a plane in the sky, not to shoot at it ‘because it would almost certainly be one of ours’).

The US military industrial complex is not built around weapons made for best combat effectiveness, but corporate profit maximization of companies like Lockheed Martin.

And likewise, the same assumptions of WWII. Like, why are all NATO MBTs 70+ tons? Their Russian counterparts have a 50-ton max limit, because the Russians realize that 50 tons is the maximum weight most bridges can support without additional reinforcement. In WWII, while German Tiger I (56 tons) and Tiger II (73 tons) tanks would often be stuck on one side of a bridge, after all the other tanks and vehicles had crossed and be forced to wait for their engineers to come up to reinforce the bridge, Soviet IS-2 heavy tanks (46 tons) could cross along with all the lighter tanks and other vehicles with few problems.

This dynamic still holds today; I read a Quora post on a former British NATO soldier who observed a 70-plus ton Chieftain tank try to cross and unsupported bridge and the bridge collapsed under it. So apparently NATO/US forces think that they’ll have engineer services on-call anytime they need it, like they did in WWII.

As for the expensive weapon systems and cost overruns, as I have said, we are spending near-WWII levels in inflation-adjusted dollars for a military the fraction in size and power of what we had in WWII. Yes, there is an economic motive behind this, but you can’t also ignore the political dynamic. Defenders of the Empire want to drive up military-industrial complex profits, NOT to save money, because the military-industrial complex in turn will both fund their reelection campaigns plus provide for friendly Congresscritters a lucrative retirement. It’s a win-win for them, and a theft from ‘from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed’, as Eisenhower put it.

“unprepared” is not a term that gets at the practical and moral incompetence of our foreign policy establishment. teh stupid burns as we used to say.

the WWII allies actually accomplished something great: an institutional framework backed by economic circumstances and controlled proliferation of nuclear weapons that made full-scale war largely unnecessary at least in the developed world. the U.S. has not had to fight a peer — well, good. leave it alone. could we do that? apparently not.

until very recently, most Russians did not think they needed much of a military. they had reduced mandatory service from two-years to one. their vast inventory of Soviet equipment was aging out, replacement tanks and ships and missiles promised but slow to actualize. all the West needed to do was to respect Russian interests and viewpoints, and negotiate in good faith. that was it.

The USA is a global Empire now with a mercenary military. It replaced the British one – a continuation of its naval empire. To complement it, money became the sole source of value — power. 95% of the population is worthless since the triumph of the oligarchs at the turn of the century.

To keep things going basically the Imperialists forgot the past, earlier lessons, and fervently believe the corporate-state propaganda. Anything that makes a profit is exploited despite the costs, collateral damage, and loss of life. The US fought two land wars in Asia, Korea to a stalemate and the second, Vietnam, as a newly formed world empire, a loss. Then after the energy crises fought the Gulf wars in the Middle-East, was kicked out of land-locked Afghanistan, and is barely hanging on in Syria and Iraq. The record is dismal and the homeland is becoming unstable. In Ukraine and recently Gaza, the endless wars exploded into the Third World War.

When the pay to the soldiers stops so do the overseas wars. Halting Ukraine funding is the bridgehead. Due to the divide and conquer politics in the USA, unless democracy is restored, the conflict between the ten or so ethnic groups, the Imperial Blob trying to keep the trappings of power, and a nuclear armed military, will splinter North America apart.

@Purple Library Guy,

Once China is indisputably strong enough to be a credible protector, Canada could place itself under Chinese protection. Then the United States might be too afraid to invade.

( I personally think a much more likely sort of invasion from South of the Border would be a mixed rabble of climate refugees . . . a hundred million Americans, 50 million Mexicans, 50 million Caribbeans, 20 or so Central Americans, etc.; looking for food, water and non-lethal temperatures. Would an All Canadian Guerilla Force be designable for that kind of ” Camp of the Saints” type invasion surge?)

Russian military policy in Ukraine is to no longer push, unless a real opportunity presents itself.

Russian forces stand where they are to be a meat grinder for the Ukrainian military, which has to push the Russians out.

Russians deplete the Ukrainian forces much faster than the Ukrainian forces deplete the Russians, who already outnumber the Ukrainians.

Eventually, Ukraine is weakened to the point where the Russian forces can just walk in and take whatever they want.

It isn’t war, it is slaughter.

Eventually the Ukrainians might catch on and overthrow the US puppet government.

With the Republicans marching to Trump’s drum, the Ukrainians might be charging Russian positions with sticks and stones but spring.

And if Ukraine still stands when Trump is installed in January 2024, he’ll simply hand over what’s left to his good buddy Pootie-Poot and that will be all she wrote.

It’s entirely possible for the Ukrainian front to collapse sooner. No idea what they’ve actually got left at this point in men and materiel. But they’d have to seriously collapse for Putin to take advantage of what could be a ploy.

Time and numbers… and Trump and the Republicans.. are on his side.

Dear AltandMain,
You wrote,
I did discuss this in my original post, but if the ruling class in the West panics because their conventional forces prove weak, the world as we know it could end in a nuclear war.

It’s why the Russians have been so careful about escalation management. Their goal is to achieve their objectives and to avoid a nuclear conflict.

Ok, so for so good. AltandMaine, You also provided plenty of links that show that the west is behind in artillary ammunition production.

And you have asserted that the Russians are not interested in timelines but interested in saving Russian lives.

Therefore in summary, maybe the main fear among the leadership of the Russians and Chinese is that the US leadership will push the nuclear button if they feel that they are being dethrowned. But when you get right down to the Chinese and Russians MUST eventually push the west to this point and find out what happens. WW3 its not going to be over until one side or the other prevails or both are destroyed.

The counternarrative that has developed on this site to the US narrative is the the Russians are fighting a war of attrition until Ukraine collapses at some point in the future. The thing is ending the war now is a very effective way to save lives as well. There is really no way of knowing by dragging on the war indefinately whether lives are being saved or not. One thing that we do know is that Russians are dying. Very few Americans, English, Germans or Poles are dying.

As for the narrative on the artillary aspect of the war. There is a very disturbing unspoken implication in the counter US narrative on how the war is going. That is that the Russian artillary corp is incompentent. Becuase despite their overwhelming advantages when the Russians attack they have no more success than when the Ukrainians attack. Oh wait I forgot these failed attacks are failures by design. Because the Russians want to avoid provoking the west to the point that they may acutally push the nuclear button. AND this is also very important, because the Russians want to kill the Ukrainian soldiers on the front rather than capture them on the front.
This whole counter US narrative on how the war is going in the Ukraine seems to me like a lot of excuse making to hide Russian some sort of unspoken Russian military weakness that prevents them from wiinning the war in the Ukraine. The Weeb Union site on Youtube recently had the best explination yet that I have heard for why neither side can make much headway in an offensive operation. It is because both side can effectively jam the radio communications of the advancing attacking forces making combined arms coordination very difficult if not impossible. If that is true it means that in this important aspect of the war the two sides are stalemated, at least for now.

Of course I do not believe the western media reports on how the war in the Ukraine is going either. The Ukraine national infrastructure and its people are clearly being destroyed as part of a lost and unjust cause. Western behavior under the circumstances has also been very odd.

In summary I think that neither of the two competing narratives can be trusted to have much truth in them at all. They are both a bunch of bullshit. The motives for both sides spinning the stories in the way that they do allude me for now.

Both sides obviously knew going in to this conflict that there was a very obvious risk of a nuclear war if one side or the other lost. Therefore fear of a nuclear war does not really seem to me to be an honest explination for the behavior of either side. Unless one side or the other knows that its strategic nuclear deterence has been comprimised.

On the even larger scale that at least in public there is so much hostility between the US and China is flat out bizzare. China is continental power that the US could never hope to defeat in a land battle in China. The US is a naval power that no matter now many ships that the Chinese build over few decades will not dethrown the US as king of the seas because the US has decades of experience operating a blue water navy that the chinese do not. It is true that new technology could quickly change things. But the new technology joker could change things in a positive way for either side.

Finally all of this speculation is just for entertainment purposes anyways. Because what is not speculation is the physics of the earth’s energy imbalance. What difference does it make how many artillery shells the west produces or how many ships that the Chinese produce when they are both on the story as the old World Trade Center on the 11th of September 2001 and it is a few minutes past 9 am on that day.

A military that can not feed itself is in no need of shells or ships.

Altandmain:

Now it’s coming apart. For the past 2 years, Western MSM fed their citizens a diet of “Russia is going to run out of chips” or “Russia is going to run out of missiles or ammo” or “Russia is doing desperate tactics”. It’s all coming apart now.

Ah, the “light is at the end of the tunnel”, in Vietnam War-speak.

I’ve always been leery of most Ukraine War battlefield reports, as they have come to resemble the “glorious victories” of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in WWII, which (usually, post 1943) exaggerated many-fold actual Soviet losses. During most of the Cold War, these German claims were taken as gospel truth, leading to the myth of Soviet ineptitude and callousness towards the lives of their own men. It’s only been within the last 20-25 years, as the Soviet archives have come out, that we now see the German claims were part exaggeration, and part propaganda, and that the Soviets neither lost as heavily as claimed nor were so callous about losing men (in fact, given the demographic squeeze by the end of WWII, men were the one thing they couldn’t afford to lose).

We won’t know the actual, factual history of this war in some time, but the fact that the “winning” Ukrainians who are supposedly fighting off the Russkies with one hand behind their backs keep bleating “we need more of everything!!!” doesn’t look good for Ukraine. At least it’s an inconsistent narrative, similar to the “winning” Nazi generals of WWII who said the same things.

Lastly, there is an Israel/Hamas-like facet of this conflict. Yes, the Russians invaded, just like Hamas launched the attack of October 7th. Or, just like Native Americans would attack white settlers. But in all three instances, there were trails of broken promises and broken agreements leading up to the attack and the supposed “victim” was the actual strategic aggressor.

I will say that it’s not a walkover. The Russians cannot advance fast against Ukrainian defences. At least, not without losing a LOT of troops and armoured vehicles. But they CAN advance SLOW against Ukrainian defences while still inflicting far more casualties than they take. The lopsided advantage in artillery and air power allows this. At this point they also have some advantage in drones, both quality and quantity, and this is likely to increase.

And this is the basic difference. On any given bit of front line, there are five possible scenarios: Ukraine advances fast, Ukraine advances slow, line does not move, Russia advances slow, Russia advances fast. Out of these five:

Ukraine is not capable of the first unless Russia for some reason decides to do a withdrawal; this has happened a couple of times. When it does happen, Ukraine will bleed deep as it advances and Russia will lose hardly anything.

Ukraine can do the second if it masses a lot of reserves at one point in the line. It loses masses and masses of troops and materiel when it does this, while Russia loses far, far less.

The no movement scenario has the lowest casualties on both sides, but that low level lopsidedly favours Russia.

Russians can advance slowly while taking not too many casualties and inflicting quite a lot, by pushing just enough to figure out where the resistance is coming from and then crushing it with artillery, bombs and drones before trying again. This does not always give forward progress, but it does some of the time, and when it doesn’t it still creates casualties. This scenario gives a less lopsided casualty ratio than the previous ones, but attrition still dramatically favours Russia, and the magnitude is higher, which matters.

Russians may not be able to advance fast against Ukrainian opposition. The Ukrainians hang pretty tough on the defence, and it may simply not be feasible. But if they could do it, it would be a massive meatgrinder; we see hints of what that would be like sometimes when the Russians get impatient and push kind of hard at a major objective. It would be the only scenario where Russian casualties get significantly higher than Ukrainian ones. So, the Russians mostly don’t try it, and so far never in a big way.

So of the five scenarios, four result in lopsided attrition in favour of Russia, because Russia has so much more standoff weaponry. It’s not really surprising if the Russians don’t do the one option that would mess them up.

All that said, IMO things are just starting to speed up. As I watch day to day, what I’m seeing is that it seems like lately Ukraine can’t quite manage adequate defences over the whole line–they have to leave a few spots a bit sparse on troops. And, the Russians are starting to spot the sparse places and finding they can push there. So like, Ukraine have rushed lots of defenders to Avdiivka and have been able to really slow down the Russian advance there, and Russia hasn’t been able to do much about that. But, this has left a few other areas more vulnerable to Russian pushes. This is happening IMO because attrition has left Ukraine without enough reserves. If they had enough people and stuff left, they’d have been able to reinforce Avdiivka with reserves, but they have instead been forced to pull units from elsewhere on the line. I expect this problem to accelerate as attrition continues; once you’ve been whittled down to where your forces are stretched, every loss worsens the situation.

This is much less an issue of western militaries being “weak” than it is an issue that military force is an extremely limited tool. If you don’t live or intend to end up living where you are waging war, 99 times out of 100 you’re not going to prevail – and if somehow you do, you’re going to find that the cost of the thing makes it the most pyrrhic of victories.

Stripped down to the fundamentals, there are only three things one can achieve with military force:
1) kill people,
2) break things, and
3) credibly threaten to kill people and break things.

That the third is *vastly* more useful than the first two tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the utility of the tool and its limitations. This is particularly true when looking at how western military forces have come to mainly be used over the past couple of decades. It is absolutely the norm for expeditionary forces (i.e., modern Western forces) to be outlasted by their opponents, to spend significant blood and treasure but end up slapping some lipstick on the pig, calling it good and redeploying. There isn’t some forgotten past where “non-weak” western armies routinely fought successful counterinsurgencies – the norm is to lose, usually over a pretty short timeframe.

Western forces would do a lot better in force-on-force confrontations, at least tactically, but it really doesn’t matter much. Any direct major power conflict is going to either escalate until there’s a credible threat of strategic (i.e., nuclear) conflict or end up with forces occupying territory they don’t live in (see above for how that goes). Bottom line, making some sort of morality tale out of this – “Make the West Great Again!” – says more about worldview than it does about military or political reality.

NR

For the people moaning about how “The United States is going to nuke the world!” in these comments, I invite you to look up which world power has actually threatened the use of nuclear weapons within the past year.

Fair point, but you can’t go on just public proclamations about the threat to use nukes. Heck, “going nuclear” first was the very foundation of US defense policy of the 1950s, and in our wargames against the former USSR we did actually practice first-strikes (a point that Putin and the Russians haven’t forgotten).

@StewartM

“I’ve always been leery of most Ukraine War battlefield reports, as they have come to resemble the “glorious victories” of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in WWII, which (usually, post 1943) exaggerated many-fold actual Soviet losses. During most of the Cold War, these German claims were taken as gospel truth, leading to the myth of Soviet ineptitude and callousness towards the lives of their own men. It’s only been within the last 20-25 years, as the Soviet archives have come out, that we now see the German claims were part exaggeration, and part propaganda, and that the Soviets neither lost as heavily as claimed nor were so callous about losing men (in fact, given the demographic squeeze by the end of WWII, men were the one thing they couldn’t afford to lose)”

There also was a veritable cottage industry in the US and West Germany of attempting to rehabilitate the Wehrmacht, of insisting that Soviet victories only could have been the result of brute force and callousness so unlike the noble knights of Nazi Germany, fighting valiantly and skillfully for a cause that they had no idea was evil.

Plenty of German generals were happy to go along with the charade.

Therefore in summary, maybe the main fear among the leadership of the Russians and Chinese is that the US leadership will push the nuclear button if they feel that they are being dethrowned. But when you get right down to the Chinese and Russians MUST eventually push the west to this point and find out what happens. WW3 its not going to be over until one side or the other prevails or both are destroyed.

Incorrect. Given how rapid China’s growth has been, the Chinese merely have to stall for time. China would eventually overtake the US in terms of economics, technology, and widen its industrial manufacturing supremacy.

The ideal outcome then is that the US recognizes that a Cold War is counterproductive, either because an out of mainstream politician is elected (imagine someone more anti-war than Trump) or the US experiences its 1991 moment.

The counternarrative that has developed on this site to the US narrative is the the Russians are fighting a war of attrition until Ukraine collapses at some point in the future. The thing is ending the war now is a very effective way to save lives as well.

This would be as crazy as the USSR stopping the war after the Battle of Kursk in 1943 or the Allies after landing in Italy and defeating the Axis in North Africa. Nazism could not co-exist peacefully with the USSR nor the Allies. If they sued for peace, Hitler would have re-armed and attacked again.

Note how the Western world is pushing for a “freeze” now. THeir goal is to “Freeze the conflict”, then re-arm Ukraine (Western stockpiles are depleted), and then attack Russia. The Banderist neo-Nazi ideology that dominates Ukraine simply cannot co-exist with Russia. They persecuted and shelled the Russian speaking minority for years before the war.

The truth is the West doesn’t care about Ukraine at all. They just used Ukraine as a useful idiot to wage a proxy war against Russia. Their ultimate goal is to break up Russia.

https://archive.ph/KoF1N

Of course, this isn’t for the good of Russians or any “decolonization” – their goal is to rape, loot, pillage Russia and to put a puppet like Boris Yeltsin back any more than the decision to invade Iraq was for the “freedom” of the Iraqi people.

An empire always has to lie when they are trying to steal their enemy’s resources. That’s what this is really about.

In summary I think that neither of the two competing narratives can be trusted to have much truth in them at all. They are both a bunch of bullshit. The motives for both sides spinning the stories in the way that they do allude me for now.

Thus far, although not perfect, things have mostly been truthful on the Russian and Chinese side.

The West has outright lied about things like Russia running out of ammunition and at times has tried to frame the RUssians for war crimes. A good example of this is Bucha, which was done by the Ukrainians and then they tried to frame the Russians.

These are informative posts and comments. With corporate media full of lies and misinformation, reality has disappeared. The Imperial Blob becomes incensed when its national secrets are released that approximate the truth.

After Vietnam, half a century ago, I spent a little over a year stateside stationed with the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment that was a reinforcement unit for prepositioned armor if the Warsaw Pack ever came storming through Fulda Gap. We stayed in the barracks and pulled duty for six and half days a week. Enough money was scraped together to take the M-60 tanks and M113 personnel carriers out of motor pool for one day. I rode on the top of one as the commander and driver told me not to touch anything. It was gospel that we had about a week to live if deployed. But, this may have been enough time to delay the invasion so the sane could avoid a nuclear war. After the Soviet Union fell, the 3rd Calvary was redeployed to fight in Gulf War I, Iraq and Afghanistan.

NATO is not unlike one of the global WWI Empire’s military. It is no longer needed, but to get funding, it instigated and participated in endless wars that culminated with Russian Ukraine War in 2014 that prodded Russia to invade in February 2022 and started World War Three that two months ago expanded into Gaza.

It is heretical, but there are many similarities between the Russian and American Empires. They were sort of allies in the 19th century and together they won WWII. Today both are plutocracies. They are not democracies or monarchies. Each has mercenary armies although Russia’s does have conscripts. Both are capable of bone-headed decisions based on beliefs not reality. But, together with China, are they sane enough to avoid destroying the Northern Hemisphere?

Both military industrial complexes are getting richer the longer the wars lasts and their factories remain intact. But continuing a war that has already killed or maimed half a million soldiers on both sides that cannot be won in any meaningful way is insane. “US intelligence says Russia had 360,000 ground troops before the war and has suffered 315,000 killed and wounded.” This is just as crazy as privatizing public health systems and prolonging a pandemic that has killed over seven million humans worldwide so pharmaceutical companies can continue to profit.

Unless peace is given a chance by the signing a UN armistice and building new DMZs and governments by and for the people restored, these wars will destroy human civilization.

Altandmain:

Sure, Israel. And also Russia (I had the time a bit wrong, it was actually slightly more than a year ago, but the point stands).

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-medvedev-warns-west-that-nuclear-threat-is-not-bluff-2022-09-27/

Russia, not the United States, is the world power that has been threatening to use nukes.

The War of Narratives is mildly interesting, but it is conducted necessarily with large dollops of bias and misinformation: omissions more than admissions.

I have been a news junkie all my life, a reader of encyclopedias and statistical almanacs. It is my subjective belief that there is substantially less verifiable information available about matters of public concern now than in the past and certainly the objectively factual occupies a smaller part of the foundation of public discourse than in the past. The sheer volume of communication reduces anyone’s capacity to process incoming information to distinguish signal from noise. There is a lot more noise now even if signal is not actually diminished in some quantifiable sense.

Narrative is an economizing device — it is a way of summarizing, compressing a lot of information. If you can reduce the story to white hats and black hats, you know who to hate without wasting your beautiful mind on complicating details. And if the critical details are lies to begin with, you have saved on research costs, which are often huge.

Israel went straight to beheaded babies and I have no doubt that many committed Zionists have registered no updates or retractions. I saw V-P Harris echo Russiagate the other day on teepee. The Covid vaccines were not very effective, but does everyone know that? What people know that ain’t so rules our world in many realms.

I am an idealist enough to think a narrative to be considered “true” ought to reconcile with facts. Abstract generalizations ought to be founded on facts. Labels should accurately identify ingredients. But, I think that is a minority view at best. I do not say that as a declaration of superiority, only as an observation. And not an observation about people’s moral commitments. I think people are so starved for reliable information and sound argument that “true narrative” is simply impossible for most on most subjects of public concern.

I am worn down by the effort necessary to sort out the “meaning” of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine. The temptation to simply root for one side is strong.

The narrative of the collapse of the American imperium certainly accounts for a lot, imo, in the broad strokes. But those committed to Putin as Hitler of the month probably feel similarly.

@NR

By this logic, the US has threatened nuclear weapons too.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/neocons-pushing-for-nuclear-war-now/

Mr Trump too while he was President also threatened nuclear weapons.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/trump-tweet-says-he-has-bigger-nuclear-button-than-kim-jong-un.html

But regardless, posturing isn’t the issue. The far bigger issues are:

1. The nation’s nuclear policy
2. The relative strength of the 2 nation’s conventional forces

Issue 1

In the first issue, the US has resisted passing a “no first use policy”.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/no-first-use-explained

Russia currently has a no first use. Even look at Medvendev’s quote from the article you linked.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-medvedev-warns-west-that-nuclear-threat-is-not-bluff-2022-09-27/

“Let’s imagine that Russia is forced to use the most fearsome weapon against the Ukrainian regime which had committed a large-scale act of aggression that is dangerous for the very existence of our state,” Medvedev said in a post on Telegram.

Medvedev’s remarks quoted the exact terminology of one of the conditions of Russia’s nuclear strike doctrine: “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”.

If the West does not make an existential threat against the Russians, there is no need to worry. If the US was faced with an existential crisis in a similar manner to the hypothetical that Medvedev is posting, then the US would certainly launch nuclear weapons. So no, even the linked you linked would make it seem that the US is far more likely to launch first.

“I have to remind you again – for those deaf ears who hear only themselves. Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary,” Medvedev said, adding that it would do so “in predetermined cases” and in strict compliance with state policy.

Reuters journalism has been remarkably poor in covering the Russian SMO, but even here, note that Russia will only use nuclear weapons if necessary and that it will only do so in compliance with its policy. Keep in mind that this is coming from a “hawk” in Russia (Putin by comparison is a “dove”). At no point, even in the article you linked did Russia threaten to use nuclear weapons if either the other side didn’t nuke Russia first, or its very existence was not threatened.

By contrast, US has no policy of “no first use”, meaning it can launch a first strike, even if its existence is not under threat or outright nuke someone as an unprovoked act of aggression. By contrast, Russia does have a policy of no first use, meaning it won’t use nuclear weapons, unless it’s very existence is under threat.

Issue 2

Another danger is that the Western world is in a situation where the US has the weaker conventional military forces, as I’ve made clear throughout the post. This was during the Cold War as well, during the “Fulda Gap” scenario – NATO forces would be overrun in West Germany by the Warsaw Pact and they would use nuclear weapons at that point, having lost the conventional fight against the USSR.

Nuclear weapons are mainly a deterrence because if a nation’s conventional forces lose a war, that’s when the very existence of a nation or government would be under the kind of threat that nuclear weapons would be used.

Hence, my point that it’s far more likely that the US is going to use nuclear weapons.

During most of the Cold War, these German claims were taken as gospel truth, leading to the myth of Soviet ineptitude and callousness towards the lives of their own men.

As Feral Finster points out,

There also was a veritable cottage industry in the US and West Germany of attempting to rehabilitate the Wehrmacht, of insisting that Soviet victories only could have been the result of brute force and callousness so unlike the noble knights of Nazi Germany, fighting valiantly and skillfully for a cause that they had no idea was evil.

There is a useful Wikipedia article titled, “German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war” that provides a summary outline.

The Soviets did lose vast Armies in the early phases of the war, but the very high rates of fatality are due to a Nazi policy of extermination. The strategic implication for the Soviets of this policy was not lost on Stalin or his generals or the Soviet population generally. If the Soviets were willing to fight “desperately” it is not because of their own callousness — it was because they expected no mercy or self-restraint from the Germans.

It is worth staring at the reality of war as a method and means of persuasion.

To me, one of the most distressing things about the War in Ukraine is that — if you believe as I do, that the War was provoked by the West and the vain arrogance of its hypocritical insistence that it pursues “a rules-based order” — the war itself makes reversing and correcting that provocation, that error in policy, impossible. The war mongers have everyone locked into never correcting the mistake. One mistake must follow another. The only question allowed is just how vain and destructive subsequent mistakes have to be. Milley seemed to be suggesting the other day that American and European troops would have to be committed to the fight, if sensible people prevail and American and European support for Ukraine’s participation slackens.

The idea that the U.S. and N.A.T.O. should admit they were wrong and reverse sanctions and negotiate some future for Ukraine that doesn’t involve perpetual irredentism is simply unimaginable.

Western policy has been driven in part by the machinations of the greedy Military Industrial Complex, but among those machinations has been funding the cottage industry of foreign policy think tanks and academic centers that second, third or fourth generation immigrants from Eastern Europe built up in the U.S. Masha Gessen, Anne Applebaum, Crystia Freeland, Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, the Vindmans, the Kagans, Fiona Hill have found that ready funding convenient for pursuing “careers in public service” where they hijacked U.S. foreign policy for the Blob.

Altandmain:

By this logic, the US has threatened nuclear weapons too.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/neocons-pushing-for-nuclear-war-now/

Okay, I clicked on that link and it leads to someone saying this:

The most notorious Washington Neocon, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and his equal Neocon on the Democratic side, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), have introduced a Resolution in the Senate in hopes of justifying World War III stating that if Russia, or one of its Proxy Belarus just as Ukraine is our Proxy, detonates a Tactical nuclear bomb inside Ukraine, or if something happens to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant causing radiation leakage, then they want to use nuclear weapons and are saying they will completely annihilate Russia.

So the claim is that Senators Graham and Blumenthal introduced a resolution to the U.S. Senate saying that they want to use nuclear weapons in response to Russian nukes or leakage of radiation. So then I went and looked up the actual resolution, and surprise surprise, it doesn’t say what this guy is claiming it says.

Here is the full text of the actual resolution:

https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c6b346b8-036d-48ca-9a85-ed46f37e978b/nato-article-v-response.pdf

After two pages of justifications at the beginning, the resolution states the following:

Resolved, that the Senate–

(1) agrees that the deployment of the Russian Federation’s tactical nuclear weapons within the Republic of Belarus is a threat to Ukraine and NATO member states;

(2) views the use of any tactical nuclear weapon by the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, or their proxies, or the destruction of a nuclear facility, dispersing radioactive contaminates into NATO territory causing significant harm to human life, as an attack on NATO requiring an immediate response, including the implementation of Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty (ed. note–Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty says nothing about nuclear weapons); and

(3) urges the current administration to consult with NATO leaders and other European partners to develop a comprehensive response to minimize the threat to civilians and coordinate a diplomatic and military response commensurate with the situation.

Notice anything missing there? I do–any mention of the United States using nuclear weapons. I also don’t believe this resolution was even adopted by the Senate–I can’t find any indication that it was. But even if it was, again, no mention of the United States using nukes.

As to your point about Trump, he certainly did tweet about “having a big nuclear button,” but as I’m sure you’re aware, Trump is not the U.S. President anymore and has no power to launch any nukes. So what he said in the past has no relevance to the possibility of the U.S. launching nukes today. If Trump were to become president again, this point would be relevant, but as it stands right now Trump had has chance to use nukes and (thankfully) did not. Hopefully he won’t get another.

So my initial point stands–Russia has recently threatened the use of nuclear weapons and the United States has not.

@NR

Notice anything missing there? I do–any mention of the United States using nuclear weapons. I also don’t believe this resolution was even adopted by the Senate–I can’t find any indication that it was. But even if it was, again, no mention of the United States using nukes.

The chances of everyone here dying are far more likely from the US.

You haven’t assessed the big elephant in the room. The US doesnt have a “no first use policy”. The US has considered the US of nuclear weapons far more than any other nation – an example the US under Eisenhower seriously considered doing so due the Korean War.

Russia does. Dimitry Medvedev may be a firebrand, but even in his quite, he has indicated that they will only use nuclear weapons in accordance with their policies. Russia will only launch if its existence is threatened or if the other side uses nukes first.

In other words, no first strike from Russia. The US by contrast does have a policy of first strike.

More alarmingly, as an act of desperation, there are Think Tanks calling for the US to send tactical nukes to Ukraine. That could quickly escalate into nuclear war between the US vs Russia.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/can-biden-deter-a-russia-nuclear-attack-on-ukraine-yes-if-he-gives-ukraine-tactical-nukes/

The Think Tank is wrong about the Russians. The Russians are not going to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Why would they? They’ve won the conventional war. In other words, it’s trying to justify a hypothetical non existent scenario for the US to give nuclear weapons to Ukraine.

The danger here is that these think tanks / lobby groups have a lot of influence on US policy. They’ve lost the conventional war.
The legislation that Lindsay Graham and his Democratic colleague introduced is of similar dishonesty. The winning side has no incentive to use nuclear weapons. But it will give a dangerous excuse to the US to arm Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

The big elephants are:

1. Lack of a US no first use policy whereas Russia and China have them
2. The declining US conventional superiority and loss of a major conflict resulting in a strategic defeat

The bottom line is that the US is far more likely to use nuclesr weapons. They’ve clearly lose the Ukraine conflict and are clearly worried about the loss of US hegemony.

My big worries are a nuclear accident like Able Archer or that the US simply nukes the world as an act of spite, preferring a destroyed world over one the US loses hegemony over.

Trump is not the U.S. President anymore and has no power to launch any nukes. So what he said in the past has no relevance to the possibility of the U.S. launching nukes today. If Trump were to become president again, this point would be relevant,

That’s a very difficult position to justify. Trump is no doubt the leading Republican candidate for 2024 and he is out polling Biden.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/2024-polls-trump-biden-election-b2462077.html

So there’s that to consider. You also seem to be making the assumption that the US is never going to be governed by anyone who is going to launch nukes in a first strike.

First there’s the neoconservatives who are getting increasingly desperate, but also, as the Liberal ruling class continues to lose legitimacy in the US, we will see more out of mainstream candidates win. This could mean less political stability.

The best outcome here is the current regime in Washington faces a moment like the USSR did in 1991 and then a newer, more competent government takes over without fear of nuclear weapons being used.

@Altandmain

I would be worried about the difference between large-scale “conventional” and counterinsurgency conflicts if I thought there was a real chance that force-on-force conflict with near peers would happen. I don’t see it – all near peers that we might potentially end up fighting are nuclear powers. By definition, that means no one has escalation dominance, meaning that direct conventional conflict on any meaningful scale is useless. As that sage WOPR taught us, “the only winning move is not to play” – and the grown-ups get this.

You’re spending considerable effort articulating an argument that, as I said, tells me more about worldview than it does any military reality. We are simply not going to go directly toe to toe with near-peers and in my view the only reason why this belief is pushed with a straight face by anyone with a functioning neural net is justify procurement and ensure career viability within big Army/Navy/Air Force/Space Force/Whatever-stupid-name-Force-seems-sexy-to-POTUS-this-week. If we took procurement seriously and actually structured forces to counter real threats (as opposed to what those with vested interests *wish* threats were), a whole lot of folks who take the sacrament of military force being a) most efficiently manifested by massed conventional forces, and b) a central tool of statecraft would have to find something else less fun to do.

I just saw former US Navy, Russian based Independent Journalist Patrick Lancaster on a you tube video. On the video a clip was played in which we see Joesef Goebells Biden castrating congressional Republicans for holding up funding for the Ukraine. Biden claims that this will lead to US forces fighting Russian forces on the ground in Europe because Russia will not stop at Ukraine.
The magnificient Patrick Lancaster says that this is just typical Washington scare mongering. I only wish that were true. Unfortunately Russia, nor anywhere else in the world will ever be safe until the current leaderships of NATO and the United States are destroyed. The US with its NATO and Pacific allies are VERY VERY powerful. The US and its allies have unoquivically demonstrated their eternal hostility to an independent Russia and China during the past 10 years to such a degree that even someone with a room temperature IQ can understand it. Those with more discernment can see that this policy of antagonism towards Russia and China goes back centuries.
There for this US led powerblock is a threat to Russia and China and the world that needs to be liquidated with all possible prejudice, as soon as possible. This powerblock is certianly not going to dissolve by itself with out putting Russian and Chinese boots on the ground in Berlin, Paris, Tokoyo, Seoul, Canberra, London, and Washington DC., Atlanta, Topeka, Boise, and 47 other state capitols.
That means the Russian leadership can not be satisified with the liberation of the Ukraine. That means what Biden said is actually a self fullfilling prophecy. If Biden really wants to avoid a showdown between Russian and US troops he and all the Generals in the US military need to committ suicide by burning themselves alive.
But of course they are not going to do that because they are convinced that they will win. They would not be so convinced that they will win unless they had reasons to believe that they will win.
From my own perspective it appears to me that the west has many short term advantages over the axis of resistance. From my perspective there is no longer a long term outlook for planet earth. Therefore playing a long game appears to me to be pointless.
The only thing that humanity can achieve at this point is to use a small window of opportunity to get revenge for decades of bad faith leadership committed by a vast criminal conspiracy of powerful western figures. THU76THU76THU&/

@Carborundum

You’re spending considerable effort articulating an argument that, as I said, tells me more about worldview than it does any military reality.

I’d have to disagree, as you might expect. For one, nobody has explained why my “worldview”, as you put it, does not match the military reality.

We are simply not going to go directly toe to toe with near-peers and in my view the only reason why this belief is pushed with a straight face by anyone with a functioning neural net is justify procurement and ensure career viability

I’d argue the way the neocons behave, conventional war between major powers is far more likely – very few people leading up to WW1 understood the dangers, but to us it’s obvious that Europe was a powderkeg.

Today, it’s obvious to us why WW1 happened. Back then, it surprised a lot of people.

If we took procurement seriously and actually structured forces to counter real threats (as opposed to what those with vested interests *wish* threats were), a whole lot of folks who take the sacrament of military force being a) most efficiently manifested by massed conventional forces, and b) a central tool of statecraft would have to find something else less fun to do.

I don’t think it’s “less fun” to focus on other things – such as development of national infrastructure and improving the quality of life of one’s citizens.

If the US had a better government, namely one that served ordinary people and was not corrupted by the wealthy, then yes, it would be a different world indeed. There would be fewer conflicts and the world would be focused on economic development.

@Altandmain

To give you some examples, you have asserted at various points in the thread a) that the point of various military conflicts is to steal resources and b) defence procurement is designed mainly to funnel profit to military industry. All I can say is my experience has taught me very much the opposite. The last couple of wars I’ve watched actually kicked the living shit out of resource production and where capacity has been rebuilt (in many instances it hasn’t), the outputs have really conspicuously failed to show up in imperial coffers. Similarly, the defence industry continues to be a really shitty business (come for the volatility, stay for the consolidation-driven destruction of equity). If our military decision making is being driven by these factors, then even by current woeful norms it’s been a pretty epic goat rope.

I get why these types of constructions make sense to folks. I almost wish they were true – then things would make sense. Unfortunately, in my worldview the reality is that our decisions are made for reasons that are much more stupid and reflexive than this. When I say things like the sacrament of military force, I am not joking in the least. A lot of this boils down to the guy with the most fantastic hammer (the US and US forces) trying to make every problem a nail and all the other lesser carpenters (the EU, UKCANAUSNZ) milling about following suit as their various interests and lesser hammers permit. The pols, who are about as functionally dumb a group as has ever existed (to be clear, not so much because they are *personally* dumb as because they devote an incredibly high percentage of their attention to fundraising and re-election and a minuscule fraction to actually governing) are all making their decisions based on polling overnights, in a political milieu that is far too deferential to the generals, admirals and SES and gives waaaay too much credence to their expertise. As a thought exercise, when exactly would your average flag officer say that military force isn’t viable / doesn’t have a key role?

@StewartM

As I know it, the roots of current thinking trace back to the AirLand Battle concepts of the 70s and 80s. (The lessons are classic enough that I’m sure there’s actually another genesis, but this is where it comes from for my generation.) Essentially, everyone realized that in any major conventional conflict with the Warsaw Pact, we were going to be fighting massively out-numbered and increasingly on native terrain. To counter, we were going to rely on maneuver, decentralized decision-making and precision fires / action at depth. As the tech progressed (and experience amassed through actual conflict) and was shown to be increasingly effective, the mental and financial investment in the strategy only intensified.

You cogently ask why we’re so invested in this given that forces optimized for this strategy have consistently been unable to prevail in irregular conflict, which is the most common mode experienced over the past couple of decades. My view is that the costs of fighting large scale irregular conflicts are so high and the likelihood of prevailing so low that we should avoid them almost entirely (limited engagements, yes, but trying to own the space for long periods absolutely not). Even the US can’t afford a force manned at the required levels and there’s no way that the established institutions of big Army and political consensus are going to hand things over to neo-imperial SF-style approaches (which is what would actually, potentially, make sense). Given that, I think the point is moot.