On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:53:18 PM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
Наясно съм с епистемологията на публикацията, както с импакт фактора и
h- индекса на автора, за това предлагам на Ивайло да наблегне на текста
- има върху какво да мисли.
САЩ е свободна страна и всеки има право на лично мнение, но според проф.
Бренър до седмици ВСУ ще се разпадне и през зимата Русия ще стигне до
Днепър (предполагам иска да каже, че ще вземат всички територии на изток
от Днепър), та моя въпрос към теб е колко би заложил, че това ще се
случи? Защото аз бих заложил много, че няма да се случи.
Defeat
By Dr. Michael Brenner
The United States is being defeated in Ukraine. One could say that it
is facing defeat – or, more starkly, that it is staring defeat in the
face.
Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look
reality squarely in the eye. We prefer to look at the world through the
distorted lenses of our fantasies. We plunge forward on whatever path
we’ve chosen while averting our eyes from the topography that we are
trying to traverse. Our sole guiding light is the glow of a distant
mirage. That is our lodestone.
It is not that America is a stranger to defeat. We are very well
acquainted with it: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – in strategic
terms if not always military terms. To this broad category, we might
add Venezuela, Cuba, and Niger. That rich experience in frustrated
ambition has failed to liberate us from the deeply rooted habit of
eliding defeat.
Indeed, we have acquired a large inventory of methods for doing so.
…
Before examining them, let us specify what we mean by ‘defeat.’ Simply >> put, defeat is a failure to meet objectives – at tolerable cost. The
term also encompasses unintended, adverse second-order consequences.
First, hat were Washington’s objectives in sabotaging the Minsk peace
plan and cold-shouldering subsequent Russian proposals, in provoking
Russia by crossing clearly demarcated red lines, in pressing for
Ukraine’s membership in NATO; in installing missile batteries in Poland
and Rumania;
in transforming the Ukrainian army into a potent military force
deployed on the line-of-contact in the Donbas ready to invade or goad
Moscow into preemptive action? The aim was to either pin a humiliating
defeat on the Russian army or, at least, to inflict such heavy costs as
to cut the ground from under the Putin government. The crucial,
complementary dimension of the strategy was the imposition of economic
sanctions so onerous as to implode a vulnerable Russian economy.
Together, they would generate acute distress leading to the deposing of
Putin – whether by a cabal of opponents (disgruntled oligarchs as the
spearhead) or by mass protest. It was predicated on the fatally
ill-informed supposition that he was an absolute dictator running a
one-man show, The U.S. foresaw his replacement by a more pliable
government ready to become a willing but marginal presence on the
European stage and a non-player elsewhere. In the crude words of one
Moscow official, “a tenant-farmer on Uncle Sam’s global plantation.”
…
Third, ancillary benefits for the United States from a war over Ukraine
that would bring Russia low were a) to consolidate the Atlantic
alliance under Washington’s control, expand NATO and open an
unbridgeable abyss between Russia and the rest of Europe that would
endure for the foreseeable future; b) to that end, the termination of
the latter’s heavy reliance on energy resources from Russia; and c)
thereby, substituting higher-priced LNG and petroleum from the United
States that would seal the European partners’ status as dependent
economic vassals. If the last were a drag on their industry, so be it.
The grandiose goals stated in (1) and (2) manifestly have proven
unreachable -indeed, fanciful – a blunt truth not as yet absorbed by
American elites. Those in (3) are consolation prizes of diminished
value.
This outcome was determined in good part, albeit not at all entirely,
by the military failure in Ukraine. We now are about to enter the final
act.
Kiev’s vaunted counter-offense has gone nowhere – at an enormous cost
to the Ukrainian military. It has been bled white by massive losses of
manpower, by the destruction of the greater part of its armor, by the
ruin of vital infrastructure. The Western-trained elite brigades have
been mauled, and there no longer are any reserves to throw into the
battle.
Moreover, the flow of weapons and ammunition from the West has slowed
as American and European stocks are running low (e.g. 155mm artillery
shells). The shortage is being aggravated by newfound inhibitions about
sending Ukraine advanced weapons which have proven highly vulnerable to
Russian firepower. That holds especially for armor: German Leopards,
British Challengers, French AMX-10-RC tanks as well as Combat Fighting
Vehicles (CFV) like the American Bradleys and Strykers. Graphic images
of burnt-out hulks littering the Ukrainian steppe are not
advertisements for either Western military technology or foreign sales.
Hence, too, the slow-
walking of deliveries to Kiev of the promised Abrams and F-16s lest
they suffer the same fate.
The illusion of eventual success on the battlefield (with its envisaged
wearing down of Russia’s will and capacity) is founded on a mistaken
idea of how to measure winning and losing. American leaders, military
as well as civilian, are stuck to a model that emphasizes control of
territory.
Russian military thinking is different. Its emphasis is on the
destruction of the enemy’s forces, by whatever strategy is suited to
the prevailing conditions. Then, in command of the battlefield, they
can work their will.
The aggressive tactics of the Ukrainians entails the throwing of its
resources into combat in relentless campaigns to evict the Russians
from the Donbas and Crimea. Unable to achieve any breakthrough, they
invited themselves to a war of attrition much to their disadvantage. It
has been succeeded by this summer’s all-out last fling which has proven
suicidal.
They thereby played into the Russians’ hands. Hence, while attention is
fixed on who occupies this village or that on the Zaporizhhia front or
around Bakhmut, the real story is that Russia has been dismantling the
reconstituted Ukrainian army piece by piece.
…
In historical perspective, there are two instructive analogies. In the
last year of WW I, the German high command launched an audacious
campaign (Operation Michael) on the Western Front in March 1918 using a
number of innovative tactics (featuring commando squads, stormtroopers,
equipped with flame-throwers) to punch holes in allied lines. After
initial gains that brought them across the Marne, attended by very
heavy casualties, the offensive petered out and allowed the allies to
roll over their gravely depleted forces – leading to the final collapse
in November. More pertinent is the battle of Kursk in July 1943 wherein
the Nazis made a massive attempt to regain the initiative after the
disaster at Stalingrad. Again, after some noteworthy success in
breaching two Soviet defense lines they exhausted themselves short of
their objective. That battle opened the long, bloody road to Berlin.
Ukraine, today, has suffered huge losses of even greater (proportional)
magnitude, without achieving any significant territorial gains, unable
even to reach the first layer of the Surovikin Line. That will clear
the road to the Dnieper and beyond for the 600,000 strong Russian army
equipped with weaponry the equal of what we have given Ukraine. Hence,
Moscow is poised to exploit its decisive advantage to the point where
it can dictate terms to Kiev,
Washington, Brussels et al.
…
There is a new narrative that is scripted to stress these talking
points:
о It is Russia that has lost the contest because heroic Ukraine and a
steadfast West have prevented it from conquering, occupying and
reincorporating all of the country
о By contrast, Sweden and Finland formally have joined the American
camp by entering NATO. That complicates Moscow’s strategic plans by
forcing a dispersion of its forces across a wider front
о Russia has been politically isolated on the world scene (MB: that is
because North America, EU/NATO EUROPE, Japan, South Korea, Australia &
New Zealand have backed the Ukrainian cause. Not a single other country
has agreed to apply economic sanctions; the “world” does not include
China,
India, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia,
South Africa et al).
о The Western democracies have displayed unprecedented solidarity in
responding as one to the Russian threat
This narrative already has been given an airing in speeches by Blinken,
Sullivan. Austin and Nuland. Its target audience is the American
public;
nobody outside the Collective West buys it, though – whether Washington
has registered that fact of diplomatic life or not.
…
Americans have become masters in the art of memory management.
Think about the tragic shock of Vietnam. The country made a systematic
effort to forget – to forget everything about Vietnam. Understandably;
it was ugly – on every count. Textbooks in American history gave it
little space; teachers downplayed it; television soon disregarded it as
retro. We sought closure – we got it.
In a sense, the most noteworthy inheritance from the post-Vietnam
experience is the honing of methods to photoshop history. Vietnam was a
warm-up for dealing with the many unsavory episodes in the post-9/11
era.
That thorough, comprehensive cleansing has made palatable Presidential
mendacity, sustained deceit, mind-numbing incompetence, systemic
torture,
censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights and the perverting of
national public discourse – as it degenerated into a mix of propaganda
and vulgar trash-talking. The “War on Terror” in all its atrocious
aspects
Cultivated amnesia is a craft enormously facilitated by two broader
trends in American culture: the cult of ignorance whereby a
knowledge-free mind is esteemed as the ultimate freedom; and a public
ethic whereby the nation’s highest officials are given license to treat
the truth as a potter treats clay so long as they say and do things
that make us feel good. So, our strongest collective memory of
America’s wars of choice is the desirability – and ease – of forgetting
them. “The show must go on” is taken as our imperative. So it will be
when we look at a ruined Ukraine in the rear-view mirror.
…
Цялата публикация -> https://neutralitystudies.com/2023/10/defeat/
On Friday, October 20, 2023 at 1:07:28 PM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 07:39:53 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:
On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:53:18 PM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
Наясно съм с епистемологията на публикацията, както с импакт фактора
и h- индекса на автора, за това предлагам на Ивайло да наблегне на
текста - има върху какво да мисли.
САЩ е свободна страна и всеки има право на лично мнение, но според
проф. Бренър до седмици ВСУ ще се разпадне и през зимата Русия ще
стигне до Днепър (предполагам иска да каже, че ще вземат всички
територии на изток от Днепър), та моя въпрос към теб е колко би
заложил, че това ще се случи? Защото аз бих заложил много, че няма да
се случи.
Ха-ха, САЩ била свободна страна, но според професор Бренър … да не
цитирам повече. Би ли споделил каква е връзката между това, че сте
свободна страна и прогнозираното (според теб) от професора?
Връзката е, че професора може да изрази "дисидентско" мнение за войната
без да се страхува за живота и свободата си, както би било в Русия, но
не виждам особени причини защо трябва да се съгласим с него (когато е
направил очевидно абсурдни прогнози).
А и защо трябва да залагам? На теб, ако ти се залага, давай, има
достатъчно букмейкъри и по вашенско.
Защото, ако наистина вярваше в глупостите написани от него, не виждам
защо не би заложил на тяхната правота.
И само това ли успя да измислиш? Само това ли те впечатли от текста?
Да, само това. Изразил е мнение, с което не съм съгласен, и след това е
дал прогноза базирана на мнението, която намирам за нищожно малко
вероятна. Ти какво измисли?
Между другото, къде в текста професор Бренър прави подобна прогноза?
Не е съвсем ясно в текста даден от теб, но може да се чуе ясно в това
интервю дадено няколко дена след публикацията на есето:
https://youtu.be/qfxVKvKLzLo?t=81
Ukraine, today, has suffered huge losses of even greater (proportional)
magnitude, without achieving any significant territorial gains, unable
even to reach the first layer of the Surovikin Line. That will clear
the road to the Dnieper and beyond for the 600,000 strong Russian army
equipped with weaponry the equal of what we have given Ukraine. Hence,
Moscow is poised to exploit its decisive advantage to the point where
it can dictate terms to Kiev, Washington, Brussels et al.
Това не е прогноза, ако за него натякваш.
Пак ли „Я Солженицин не читал, но оссуждаю!“
Не, по-добре осведомен от теб и "оссуждаю!“
Връзката е, че професора може да изрази "дисидентско" мнение
за войната без да се страхува за живота и свободата си
On Friday, October 20, 2023 at 11:09:47 AM UTC-4, ИлиевBG wrote:
On Friday, October 20, 2023 at 5:39:55 PM UTC+3, Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:
On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:53:18 PM UTC-4, Nick wrote:
....
до седмици ВСУ ще се разпадне и през зимата Русия ще стигне до Днепър
(предполагам иска да каже, че ще вземат всички територии на изток от
Днепър), .....
Половината Киев е на изток от Днепър :)
Ето как се запътиха към Днепър: https://youtu.be/fbuNBEy2ItI
Загубите от вчера: 55 танка и 120 бронирани машини.
On Friday, October 20, 2023 at 1:50:18 PM UTC-4, chorbalan wrote:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2023 10:27:54 -0700 (PDT), Ivaylo Ivanov wrote:
Връзката е, че професора може да изрази "дисидентско" мнениеСамо за работата си. Мислиш ли че е малко?
за войната без да се страхува за живота и свободата си
Човека ми изглежда на дълбока пенсия. Но дори да беше действащ
професор не виждам как това есе щеше да му навреди на работата.
Приказваш глупости.
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