Tactical Adjustment

While the West scapegoats Trump and Putin rather make the required systemic adjustments to deal with crises of authority, the West is losing a war in Ukraine.  My last post was on the need for systemic adjustment -- i.e. the big picture over a long time span.  In this post, I focus on the current war which shows a fractal pattern of similarity in military tactics.  

Russia has gained a lot of land in the fighting, and is well on its way to achieving its goal of eliminating the neoNazi warriors in Ukraine and defanging the Ukrainian military.  It hasn't been easy, but after three months the direction of the war is clear.  The West, describing "Putin's humiliation" in being "defeated at Kyiv", is sadly oblivious.  Russia has demonstrated it's ability to adjust to the conditions on the ground.  That they pulled troops out of the Kyiv region and redeployed to gain the advantage in the east shows tactical military competence.  

On the other hand, Ukraine and their Western supporters seem to be stuck in a sunk cost fallacy.   After ridiculing "Putin" for his "humiliating defeat" around Kyiv, Zelensky has refused to make similar tactical adjustments, perhaps because he is focused on public relations more than battlefield success.  After all, the West seems to think that tactical withdrawal is a sign of humiliating weakness.  

Zelensky Vows "Full De-Occupation Of Entire Territory"

"We have already lost too many people to simply cede our territory," Zelensky said in a virtual address to an event hosted by Britain's Financial Times newspaper. He said neither is stalemate "an option" and that ultimately "We have to achieve a full deoccupation of our entire territory."

Ukraine could have kept all of its territory by implementing the Minsk accords before the war.  Now that they lost more land in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv oblasts, in addition to more losses in Donbas, and tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers along with military and economic infrastructure, Zelensky's response is to stay the course because of these losses.  The contrast with "Putin's humiliating withdrawal" from Kyiv is the perfect analogy to the larger Cold War.  The West is fixated with demonizing Trump and Putin as opposed to dealing with the systemic problems they represent. 

Meanwhile, Russia announced yesterday that their land bridge from Crimea through Donbas to Russia is up and running with restored rail service as well as highway traffic.  There are signs that NATO member Turkey is realizing that Russia is winning the war and adjusting accordingly with regard to their military and economic policies around the Black Sea.  The ruble has held its value, Russia's economy seems to be surviving the sanctions, China is aligned with Russia, and Putin is as popular as ever with Russians.  The "humiliating defeat" narrative is the West lying to itself so that it doesn't have to come to terms with the military and strategic defeat on the global stage.   

P.S. Every mainstream Western account of the war seemingly must include "Putin's humiliating defeat" at Kyiv.  Compare the Kyiv withdrawal with the surrender of "Zelensky's" forces at Azovstal.  Russia retreated and successfully redeployed.  None of their troops or equipment were lost.  In Mariupol, "Zelensky's" (in quotes because he's just the figurehead) forces hid in a basement for a month before meekly surrendering in the end to the Russian authorities.  Years of militant bluster were calmly dealt with by the Russians and the now the Ukrainian perpetrators are on trial.  Add in the predictable false charges of genocide and you have a picture of how utterly corrupted the West is at this point in time.  The humiliation is real, but it's not on Putin.

UPDATE 6/18/2022:  I just ran across a good article explaining the problem with Western decision-making, in comparison with Russia, with regard to the war in Ukraine:
Last Tango in Washington? 

First, the people who count at the head of governments are not pure thinking machines. Far from it. They are too often persons of narrow intelligence, of limited experience in high stakes games of power politics, who navigate by simplistic, outdated and parochial cognitive maps of the world. Their perspectives approximate montages composed of bits of ideology, bits of visceral emotion, bits of remembered but inappropriate precedents, bits of massaged public opinion data, and odds-and-ends plucked from New York Times op-ed pieces.

In addition, let’s remind ourselves that policy-formation and decision-making are group processes — especially in Washington and Brussels — encumbered by their own collective dynamics.  Finally, in Western capitals, governments operate in dual currencies: policy effectiveness and electoral politics. 

Consequently, there are two powerful, in-built tendencies that inflect the choices made: 1) inertial extension of existing attitudes and approaches; and 2) avoidance wherever possible of endangering a hard-won, often tenuous, consensus on a lowest common denominator basis.  

One thing we know with certainty: no fundamental change in thinking or action can occur without determination and decisiveness at the top... 

Russia has blunted everything thrown at them – to the shock of Western planners. Every assumption underpinning their scorched-earth assault on the Russian economy has proven mistaken. A dismal record of analytical error even by C.I.A. and think tank standards.

Off-the-charts forecasts on the country’s economy, and the global impact of sanctions, crippled Washington’s plan from the outset. Tactical initiatives of a military nature have proven equally futile; another 1,000 vintage Javelins with dead battery packs will not rescue the Ukrainian army in the Donbass.