THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a masterful tome by Barbara Tuchman, exploring how civilized Europeans, in 1914, blundered into World War I.
The key moment in that disastrous descent into vast destruction, was when German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave the Austro-Hungarian Empire, carte blanche to attack Serbia.
Joe Biden has just given President Zelensky of Ukraine, permission to use American weapons on, not just Ukrainian soil to defend Ukraine, but use in attacking Russian forces, on Russian soil.
French President Macron has strongly suggested that NATO should send its soldiers, to fight Russian forces on Ukrainian soil.
The German government has given notice that it intends to increase the readiness of 900,000 reservists, in case of an European War.
The Guns of June, 2024.
The Russians have a history of beginning wars with spectacular failures ;then they engage in a war of attrition, grinding out victory over military geniuses, such as Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I of France and the collective military genius of the German Army, the Wehrmacht.
Vladimir Putin has just been re-elected President of Russia; as his forces have begun a grinding war of attrition against Ukraine.
So far, that attrition war has been successful. Russian troops are advancing all across the eastern front, closing in on the second largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv.
As a tell, that Russian forces no longer intend to fight the war with military dash, but with Russian expertise in attrition, Putin fired his long time Defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, a military man and replaced him with an economist, AN ECONOMIST.
“The timing of Shoigu’s exit is notable, coming off the back of several significant advances by Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has launched its most serious cross-border ground assault since Ukraine recaptured the northern Kharkiv region in the late summer of 2022. There have been several months of increased Russian air attacks on the city of Kharkiv amid a grinding advance in Donetsk in the east that has seen incremental but significant progress.
Shoigu had helmed the country’s defense ministry for 12 years and led the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian troops initially caught Kyiv by surprise but were soon beaten back, exposing the weaknesses of Moscow’s corruption-riddled military and its willingness to send waves of poorly trained and equipped soldiers into what Ukraine and Russian troops have both dubbed a “meat grinder.”….CNN.”
Putin also began the purge of corrupt military ranking officers, responsible for the failure of the initial Russian dash into Ukraine.
“Earlier this month, Major-General Ivan Popov, a former top commander in Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, and Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the Defence Ministry’s personnel directorate, were arrested on bribery charges.
In April, Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, was also arrested for alleged bribery. President Vladimir Putin later dismissed Shoigu as defence minister soon after his inauguration in May, replacing him with economist Andrei Belousov…..al jazeera.”.
This Blogger believes that the Republic should tread VERY CAREFULLY through the Guns of June, 2024.
If one watches MSNBC; one is constantly bombarded with the mantra that the American Military is the greatest on Earth.
That was then; this is now.
Joe Biden is basing his foreign policy on a supposed American military superiority; based on the following four pillars of American Military superiority.
1-The American Military is not as corrupt as the Russian Military.
“A retired four-star US Navy admiral has been arrested on allegations that he agreed to award a government contract to a company in exchange for a future job with the firm.
Adm Robert Burke, who served as vice-chief of naval operations until 2022, could face up to 30 years in jail if convicted on bribery charges, prosecutors say. …..Adm Burke - who oversaw naval operations in Europe, Russia and Africa from 2020-22 - is charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, and also with performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts from the US.
At the time of his retirement, Adm Burke was the second-highest ranking officer in the US Navy.….The two company executives - Yongchul "Charlie" Kim, 50, and Meghan Messenger, 47 - are charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery…..BBC.”
2-American Commanders are Better than Russian Commanders
“ In 2023, the American navy fired 16 commanding officers, including eight warship captains. Of the dismissals, 14 were “due to a loss of confidence” in their ability to command, and two were let go for medical issues unrelated to their performance, Six naval commanders have been fired in 2024..... Military.com”
Fired After 6 Months: Army Sacks Commander of Germany Unit Meant to Bolster NATO Against Russia
American warriors do not want to volunteer for a secular military, dedicated to defending transgender rights and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
“The Army’s recruiting crisis, the most substantial since the creation of the all-volunteer force 50 years ago, is a threat to U.S. national security and will require a “whole-of-nation effort” to be reversed, according to the authors of a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army.
In “ ’Be All You Can Be’—The U.S. Army’s Recruiting Transformation,” authors Lt. Col. Frank Dolberry, a former AUSA Army fellow, and Charles McEnany, an AUSA national security analyst, assert that because war is “fundamentally a clash of human wills,” the quality of the American soldier is critical to the nation’s ability to fight and win wars.
Among Americans ages 17 to 24, only 23% qualify to serve without a waiver due to obesity, drug use or inability to meet academic standards. Only 9% of people in this age group are even interested in serving, senior leaders have testified before Congress……What’s clear, they say, is that the challenge “poses a risk to U.S. national security and requires a whole-of-nation effort to be reversed.”
4- America’s Military technology is superior to Russia
“As Russian forces steadily advance in the Kharkiv region, it is becoming ever more clear that the Ukraine war has been a disaster for the U.S. defense machine, and not just because our aid has failed to save Ukraine from retreat and possible defeat. More importantly, the war has pitilessly exposed our defense system’s deep, underlying, faults.
Critics have long maintained that our obsession with technologically complex weapons inevitably yields unreliable systems produced in limited numbers because of their predictably high cost. They are furthermore likely to fail in combat because of the military’s lack of interest in adequate testing (lest realistic tests reveal serious shortcomings and thereby threaten the budget.) The unforgiving operational test provided by the Ukraine war has shown that the critics were absolutely right. Successive “game changing” systems - such as the Switchblade drone, the M-1 Abrams tank, Patriot air defense missiles, the M777 howitzer, the Excalibur guided 155 mm artillery round, the HIMARS precision missile, GPS-guided bombs, and Skydio drones endowed with artificial intelligence, were all dispatched to “the fight,” as the military like to call it, with fanfare and high expectations.
All were destined to fail for reasons rooted in the fundamental problems cited above. The $60,000 Switchblade drone, produced in limited numbers due to cost, proved useless against armored targets and was quickly discarded by Ukrainian troops in favor of $700 Chinese commercial models ordered online. The $10 million Abrams tank not only proved distressingly vulnerable to Russian attack drones but in any case broke down repeatedly and was soon withdrawn from combat, though not before the Russians put several out of action and captured at least one, which they took to Moscow and added to a display of Nato weaponry in a Moscow park that included an M777 howitzer and other items of NATO hardware.
The M777 cannon, though touted for its accuracy, has proved too delicate for the rough conditions of sustained combat, with barrels regularly wearing out and requiring replacement in Poland far from the front lines . Notoriously, its 155 mm ammunition has been in short supply. Thanks to the consolidation of the U.S. defense industry into a small number of monopolies, an ill-judged policy eagerly promoted since the Clinton Administration, U.S. domestic production of 155 mm shells is reliant on a single aging General Dynamics plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is struggling to meet its targets.
….Strikingly, many of the failures of U.S. weapons, including the HIMARS, in Ukraine have been due to their reliance on a highly vulnerable guidance system: GPS. The Russians, who have long devoted intense care and attention to electronic warfare, have proven increasingly adept at jamming GPS. This has been most witheringly expressed by Maria Berlinskaya, a pioneer in Ukraine’s use of drones and head of the country’s aerial reconnaissance support center, who recently stated that “most Western systems have proven to be [worthless]” thanks to Russian jamming…..responsible statecracft.
In conclusion, empirical evidence suggests that Joe Biden’s Military goes into the summer of 2024, corrupt, inefficient, shrinking and burdened with costly Potemkin Village weapon systems.
BEWARE OF THE GUNS OF JUNE.
Comments
Post a Comment