Interesting thoughts. I thought, initially, you were going to make some connection between the Canadian Forces training methods - at the platoon level - for example, and the apparent success of the UA in holding off superior mechanized forces. Perhaps there's no connection and the war-fighting that's going on in the streets and towns of Ukraine is simply an artifact of better knowledge of local conditions and poor training on the Russian side. War is a complicated thing - almost never goes to plan.
To repeat James King's starting point above, this column is full of interesting thoughts.
I find that I am forced to think about things in a different fashion with this war. This column helps me put a framework on how I was flailing around (mentally, to be sure) trying to deal with those different things.
Thanks to the author for allowing me to better understand the absolute paucity of real, "true" (the definition of "truth" being questionable on all sides) information about this war - which I previously knew but did not have an adequate way of expressing it.
Thanks for these thoughts. Interestingly, some of them mirror those in a piece of poetry I wrote a couple of days ago from the perspective of a helpless civilian bystander on the other side of the world and observer of another kind of invasion happening right here in Canada: http://amazingsusan.com/2022/03/15/war-zones/
Can't follow this argument. Every war is an "everything" war. At least on the losing side. "It takes billions to win a war; to lose one, takes all you've got". The Middle East wars were certainly "everything" wars from the point of view of the other side, they were using every civilian resource, heavily using propaganda. The only way to see any war as military-only, planned, controlled, "operation" is to only watch the sanitized briefings that our side gave since Vietnam's "Five O'Clock Follies", sneered at for 55 years as rosy lies. (The Wars on Terror had awesome Five O'Clock Follies with giant TV screens.)
The only thing different about Ukraine from Iraq/Afghanistan is that this time, we're seeing the OTHER side of 'shock and awe'. Baghdad also had a lot of bombs hit civilians; we just weren't shown the footage, were were told that it was an unfortunate accident, and rare, our side using the most humanely accurate bombs.
The defending side uses every resource, causes maximum break-up of order, and this war, we're seeing their side. The messy, confusing one, with no Five O'Clock follies on how the precision planned operations went.
Hillier's version went no worse than the Col John Nagl "Counterinsurgency Manual" he did for Petraeus. They still lost.
Interesting thoughts. I thought, initially, you were going to make some connection between the Canadian Forces training methods - at the platoon level - for example, and the apparent success of the UA in holding off superior mechanized forces. Perhaps there's no connection and the war-fighting that's going on in the streets and towns of Ukraine is simply an artifact of better knowledge of local conditions and poor training on the Russian side. War is a complicated thing - almost never goes to plan.
To repeat James King's starting point above, this column is full of interesting thoughts.
I find that I am forced to think about things in a different fashion with this war. This column helps me put a framework on how I was flailing around (mentally, to be sure) trying to deal with those different things.
Thanks to the author for allowing me to better understand the absolute paucity of real, "true" (the definition of "truth" being questionable on all sides) information about this war - which I previously knew but did not have an adequate way of expressing it.
Always enjoy reading Andrew Potter.
Thanks for these thoughts. Interestingly, some of them mirror those in a piece of poetry I wrote a couple of days ago from the perspective of a helpless civilian bystander on the other side of the world and observer of another kind of invasion happening right here in Canada: http://amazingsusan.com/2022/03/15/war-zones/
Can't follow this argument. Every war is an "everything" war. At least on the losing side. "It takes billions to win a war; to lose one, takes all you've got". The Middle East wars were certainly "everything" wars from the point of view of the other side, they were using every civilian resource, heavily using propaganda. The only way to see any war as military-only, planned, controlled, "operation" is to only watch the sanitized briefings that our side gave since Vietnam's "Five O'Clock Follies", sneered at for 55 years as rosy lies. (The Wars on Terror had awesome Five O'Clock Follies with giant TV screens.)
The only thing different about Ukraine from Iraq/Afghanistan is that this time, we're seeing the OTHER side of 'shock and awe'. Baghdad also had a lot of bombs hit civilians; we just weren't shown the footage, were were told that it was an unfortunate accident, and rare, our side using the most humanely accurate bombs.
The defending side uses every resource, causes maximum break-up of order, and this war, we're seeing their side. The messy, confusing one, with no Five O'Clock follies on how the precision planned operations went.
Hillier's version went no worse than the Col John Nagl "Counterinsurgency Manual" he did for Petraeus. They still lost.