Feb 17, 2022 06:39 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 17, 2022 06:53 PM by C C.)
History tells us why NATO needs the Ukraine
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/n...e/#slide-1
EXCERPTS: As a result of a series of decisions made during the Clinton, Bush, and, especially, Obama administrations, NATO has virtually disarmed itself. At the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United States had some 500,000 troops stationed in Western Europe. Now, we have 30,000, with practically no tanks. The British have removed virtually all their forces from the continent. Germany — which is showing itself increasingly unreliable in any case — has cut its army from twelve divisions down to four. The cold fact of the matter is that the only serious NATO ground force east of the Rhine is the Polish Army, which has 180,000 active-duty servicemen. It’s not enough.
But then there is Ukraine, which has 450,000 active-duty servicemen, more than all NATO forces east of the Rhine combined. If properly armed, and backed up by Anglo-American air and sea power, they could be formidable, and consequently, very valuable.
We need to be realistic. Nuclear deterrence is dead. During the Cold War, we were able to deter a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany by threatening nuclear war if they tried it. But no one believes that the United States would do anything like that today. If Russia moves into the Baltic States or even Poland, the United States is not about the push the thermonuclear-war button, and Putin knows that. Consequently, the only way to be able to deter war is to be strong enough to defeat a conventional attack by non-nuclear means. That requires an army.
Again, we are in a pre-war situation, and we need to honestly assess our strengths and weaknesses.
[...] For a sober assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Americans as soldiers in serious land warfare, readers would be well-advised to put aside the feel-good books of Steven Ambrose and the like and investigate the findings of more analytical works, such as Max Hastings’s Armageddon or T. R. Fehrenbach’s classic This Kind of War. Put simply, it’s not our game. And those works refer to the Second World War and Korea. Our current tolerance for casualties is far less.
Today, as in World War II, our strength lies in our technological arms. We have marked naval and space superiority, and our air force is the best as well — although our excessive aircraft costs raise questions about our ability to replace losses in any prolonged conflict against a capable adversary. But on the ground, we are simply not there, and we are never going to be there in either the numbers or commitment required to hold the line in Europe.
The folly of allowing Ukraine to be defeated may be usefully compared to the most famous past Western strategic leadership failure, which of course are the mistakes of the 1938-40 period. In making these comparisons, I am not attempting to draw an equivalence between Putin and Hitler or Biden and Chamberlain. While I despise Vladimir Putin, I would be the first to concede that he is a much nicer man than Adolf Hitler. His goals are different too. Hitler’s goal was territorial conquest followed by genocide. Putin just wants to restore the Soviet empire. As for Chamberlain and Biden, readers are welcome to sort out the similarities and differences for themselves. But while the actors may be different, they are playing the same roles in a similar drama.
So, putting aside issues of the motives for various actions, let’s consider the consequences: As a result of the 1938 Munich Pact and their decision to remaining passive while the Nazis defeated Poland, the Western allies allowed first 35 Czech divisions, and then 39 Polish divisions and 16 brigades to be deleted from their order of battle. By comparison, the entire French Army defending the Third Republic in 1940 was 94 divisions, aided by ten divisions of the British Expeditionary Force. Facing the Nazis alone, they lost.
The lesson if history is this: If you need to repel an invasion, it’s a terrible idea to allow the equivalent of 82 allied divisions to be eliminated. In the current situation, the foolishness of allowing Ukraine to be defeated should be even more apparent, because unlike the Anglo-French allies of 1940, NATO doesn’t have 104 divisions.
So what should we do now? (MORE - missing details)
The Ugly Truth About Gandhi
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Gfj5f0GVLZ0
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/n...e/#slide-1
EXCERPTS: As a result of a series of decisions made during the Clinton, Bush, and, especially, Obama administrations, NATO has virtually disarmed itself. At the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United States had some 500,000 troops stationed in Western Europe. Now, we have 30,000, with practically no tanks. The British have removed virtually all their forces from the continent. Germany — which is showing itself increasingly unreliable in any case — has cut its army from twelve divisions down to four. The cold fact of the matter is that the only serious NATO ground force east of the Rhine is the Polish Army, which has 180,000 active-duty servicemen. It’s not enough.
But then there is Ukraine, which has 450,000 active-duty servicemen, more than all NATO forces east of the Rhine combined. If properly armed, and backed up by Anglo-American air and sea power, they could be formidable, and consequently, very valuable.
We need to be realistic. Nuclear deterrence is dead. During the Cold War, we were able to deter a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany by threatening nuclear war if they tried it. But no one believes that the United States would do anything like that today. If Russia moves into the Baltic States or even Poland, the United States is not about the push the thermonuclear-war button, and Putin knows that. Consequently, the only way to be able to deter war is to be strong enough to defeat a conventional attack by non-nuclear means. That requires an army.
Again, we are in a pre-war situation, and we need to honestly assess our strengths and weaknesses.
[...] For a sober assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Americans as soldiers in serious land warfare, readers would be well-advised to put aside the feel-good books of Steven Ambrose and the like and investigate the findings of more analytical works, such as Max Hastings’s Armageddon or T. R. Fehrenbach’s classic This Kind of War. Put simply, it’s not our game. And those works refer to the Second World War and Korea. Our current tolerance for casualties is far less.
Today, as in World War II, our strength lies in our technological arms. We have marked naval and space superiority, and our air force is the best as well — although our excessive aircraft costs raise questions about our ability to replace losses in any prolonged conflict against a capable adversary. But on the ground, we are simply not there, and we are never going to be there in either the numbers or commitment required to hold the line in Europe.
The folly of allowing Ukraine to be defeated may be usefully compared to the most famous past Western strategic leadership failure, which of course are the mistakes of the 1938-40 period. In making these comparisons, I am not attempting to draw an equivalence between Putin and Hitler or Biden and Chamberlain. While I despise Vladimir Putin, I would be the first to concede that he is a much nicer man than Adolf Hitler. His goals are different too. Hitler’s goal was territorial conquest followed by genocide. Putin just wants to restore the Soviet empire. As for Chamberlain and Biden, readers are welcome to sort out the similarities and differences for themselves. But while the actors may be different, they are playing the same roles in a similar drama.
So, putting aside issues of the motives for various actions, let’s consider the consequences: As a result of the 1938 Munich Pact and their decision to remaining passive while the Nazis defeated Poland, the Western allies allowed first 35 Czech divisions, and then 39 Polish divisions and 16 brigades to be deleted from their order of battle. By comparison, the entire French Army defending the Third Republic in 1940 was 94 divisions, aided by ten divisions of the British Expeditionary Force. Facing the Nazis alone, they lost.
The lesson if history is this: If you need to repel an invasion, it’s a terrible idea to allow the equivalent of 82 allied divisions to be eliminated. In the current situation, the foolishness of allowing Ukraine to be defeated should be even more apparent, because unlike the Anglo-French allies of 1940, NATO doesn’t have 104 divisions.
So what should we do now? (MORE - missing details)
The Ugly Truth About Gandhi