How Can I Help People Understand?
Or, how badly the world has under- AND over-estimated Russia.
Once again into the breach.
Imma gonna remind you that I’m not a military analyst, nor a military expert. But I have studied the world’s militaries, and warfare, and served my time. I’ve also seen the Soviet military up front and personal. I’ve studied their tactics and strategies. I’ve read the histories, or at least a fair amount over the decades.
I’ve also paid attention to what several writers here on Medium are telling us about the conflict in Ukraine. I read those very day, and while I’m not always in agreement about what some say about politics, I do trust what they say about what’s happening day to day in Ukraine. After all, I’m not there, they ARE.
In addition, there’s logic. Reality closely follows logic. Funny how that works, once you’ve got the facts, logic usually follows along.
Let me explain.
Take a look backwards. Start with WWII. My father-in-law fought in WWII as a German soldier, on the Eastern front. He spent some time in a Soviet POW camp, as did many of his fellow townsmen. Not a single one of them would relate to anyone in town what they experienced there. If anyone asked, the reply was some variation of, “Child, you don’t wanna know.”
What we DO know is that it was horrific. It was damn hard fought, and eventually the Soviets did manage to invade Germany and assist the Allies in squeezing Germany to death between them. But they didn’t do that alone. A good three quarters of the supplies, ammo, equipment, aircraft, etc., came to them through the Lend/Lease program from the western allies. Soviet production facilities were too busy relocating and hiding from German forces to manage a higher rate of production.
So, logically, by the end of the war, the vast majority of Soviet equipment, ammo, etc., was western in origin. This is the start of the Cold War. And this is where the West started to screw up in estimating Soviet intentions. We focused on their fortifying their borders in Germany, with obvious signs those were intended to keep their citizens IN. But what we overlooked was that the minefields on their side of those fences worked both ways.
We have completely overlooked the Russian past that has guided Russian governments for centuries. An Authoritarian structure, the revolutions in the 20th century did nothing to change any of that. Sure, they changed the NAMES, but the function? Still operated to deny the Russian people (and by extension, the others dominated by the Soviets) the majority of the wealth their poor economy produced. The fall of the Soviet USSR in the 90’s was no different, the current government is exactly the same, in fact, even worse.
But back to their military. For decades, we assumed that the USSR, which controlled a vast amount of territory, would be producing an equally vast military. But there were problems.
First, the majority of their soldiers weren’t educated white Russians. They were uneducated subjugated ethnic groups. Most of whom couldn’t even read. In today’s terms, cannon fodder, as demonstrated clearly in Ukraine.
Second, they had to design the equipment they needed to equip their militaries with. That takes time, and given the state of their education systems, much of that was poorly done. As has been demonstrated today in Ukraine as they trot out the old mothballed stuff that gets torn to pieces by Ukrainian forces utilizing more modern anti-tank weapons.
No, the truth was always that we overestimated them, both in their military capacities, and in their intentions. Oh, and those intentions?
Hey, if your own path to greatness is conquering your neighbors, the result of that is always going to be that you assume your neighbors are equally militaristic. You have to — to provide for a good defense, you can’t afford to underestimate your neighbors. So, the Russians, hence the Soviets also, automatically assumed the NATO alliance was secretly formed to invade and destroy the USSR.
That, and the relatively poor capabilities of their military, demonstrate clearly that we badly understood the Soviets and their goals. They weren’t building a military to invade US, they were doing it to prevent US from attacking THEM. That’s why they never invaded western Europe.
And so it goes today. Of course, Putin has changed that. He thinks he can rebuild the USSR, but in an oligarchic manner and structure — screw the fake Socialism. His problem is, by instituting an oligarchic system, he’s crippled his industry and his military severely. In fact, the Ukraine situation proves he crippled it fatally. You cannot build a military of any true strength if the majority of the funds you give it get stolen, and the other half is reduced by theft and corruption. The fake Socialist system of the USSR ameliorated much of that corruption — you had to be a Communist Party member to get those bennies. That system is now gone.
But western attempts to estimate Russian capabilities have been piggybacked onto those old Soviet over-estimations. We just assumed that Putin managed to keep the old Soviet military in hand.
But again, the Ukraine war has put the lie to that. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, assumed Ukraine would fall in days.
And yet, here we are, two years plus later, and Russia has lost almost every tank they had prior to the invasion, most of the other armored vehicles, a significant percentage of their Black Sea fleet, a growing number of aircraft, and so far, approaching 450,000 soldiers. And let’s not forget the amount of oil production killed off in the last two weeks, and the military production facilities they had damaged before that.
But I did mention that we also under-estimate Russia. That’s because they’ve always had an excellent psyops warfare system. A really top flight ability to manage to infiltrate opponents’ political systems to gain information and divide and create chaos in their politics.
They make the rest of the world look like elementary school kids by comparison. Really, they do. I mean when your entire system is based on corruption, you get REALLY good at corrupting others!
That’s why we need to change our approach to both the Russians and the Chinese, in part because the Chinese are similar in many ways. Both disrupt their opponents at home as much as possible, and the Chinese are really focused on the long game.
So, let’s stop panicking over a supposed Russian invasion of NATO. Ain’t gonna happen. They’ll create chaos and confusion there as they have here in the US, sure, but that’s at heart meant to keep us from attacking THEM. Putin may have delusions of grandeur, but in reality, he’ll never manage any of those goals. But he CAN make life miserable for the rest of us, if we don’t put a stop to his ability to do that.
And that’s going to take a concerted effort on the part of the free world to get the UN to make rules making what they’re doing internationally illegal. To give us weapons, internationally supportable legal weapons, to create sanctions and make other things happen until they’re forced to stop.
Even if that takes military action on our part to do that. And to do that, will necessitate us to rethink what we know about Russia and China and their capabilities.
And given the panic I read on Medium these days, that’s a tall order.
