Image via Big Serge Thought
The good folk at the Institute for the Study of War can’t understand why so many people think the U.S. is losing in Ukraine.
The skepticism comes from all directions and from people who otherwise have little in common with each other – Trump supporters and Troskyites, former high officials in the U.S. security establishment and lonely bloggers working in isolation from each other.
Is it because the U.S. actually is losing? No, they say, it can’t be. It must be because the Russians have super-powers in influencing public opinion.
Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West – and will likely lose – if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion.
The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion. Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so. If we lean in and surge, Russia loses.
The notion that the war is unwinnable because of Russia’s dominance is a Russian information operation, which gives us a glimpse of the Kremlin’s real strategy and only real hope of success.
The Kremlin must get the United States to the sidelines, allowing Russia to fight Ukraine in isolation and then proceed to Moscow’s next targets, which Russia will also seek to isolate. The Kremlin needs the United States to choose inaction and embrace the false inevitability that Russia will prevail in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s center of gravity is his ability to shape the will and decisions of the West, Ukraine, and Russia itself.
The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.
According to this way of looking at things, there is no armaments gap nor manpower gap between the contenders, only a propaganda and censorship gap. So the path to victory is to double down on suppressing “disinformation,” which is anything and everything that contradicts how “us” (a word that doesn’t include me) see the world.
But what is truth and what is disinformation?
The gross domestic product (GDP) includes all payments for goods and services in a particular nation over a particular period of time.
In the USA, our dysfunctional medical care system generates more GDP than the better functioning medical care systems of other nations. Bloated administrative overhead contributes to GDP. Much of GDP is generated by social problems, such as mental illness, not by a rising material standard of living.
Russia, on the other hand, is doing very well in producing tangible goods. As an example, Russia has overtaken the United States in wheat production. It is the world’s leader in nuclear power plant exports. Its economy is forecast to grow at a higher rate than the U.S. economy.
The United States has the world’s largest and most expensive military establishment. No other nation could afford to have bases in every continent, as the U.S. does. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force are by far the largest in the world.
But this is not decisive. Nuclear submarines can destroy surface ships. Missiles can destroy aircraft. Neither sea power nor air power is decisive in Ukraine. The U.S. military is not superior in terms of the weapons needed to win in Ukraine.
Last November an analyst who calls himself Big Serge noted that:
Ukraine is hemorrhaging viable manpower, due to a combination of high casualties, a flood of emigration as people flee a crumbling state, and endemic corruption which cripples the efficiency of the mobilization apparatus.
Add it all up and you get a growing manpower squeeze and looming shortages of munitions and equipment. This is what it looks like when an army is attrited.
At the same time that Ukrainian combat power is declining, Russia’s is climbing.
The Russian industrial sector has dramatically increased output despite western sanctions, leading to belated recognition that Russia is not going to conveniently run out of weapons, and indeed is comfortably out-producing the entire western bloc.
The Russian state is in the process of radically raising defense expenditures, which will pay further dividends in combat power as time goes on.
Meanwhile, on the manpower front, Russian force generation is stable (i.e., does not require an expanded mobilization), and the sudden realization that the Russian army does in fact have plenty of reserves left prominent members of the Commentariat arguing with each other on Twitter.
The Russian army is now poised to reap the benefits of its investments over the coming year. [snip]
One of the key elements of expanding Russian capabilities has been both the qualitative and quantitative improvement in new standoff systems.
Russia has successfully launched mass production of the Iranian-derived Shahed/Geran drone, and has an additional factory under construction.
Production of the Lancet loitering munition has risen exponentially, and a variety of improved variants are now entering use, with superior guidance, effective range, and swarming capabilities.
Russian production of FPV drones has risen significantly, with Ukrainian operators now fearing a snowballing Russian advantage.
All of this speaks to a Russian military with an expanding capacity to fling high explosives in greater numbers and accuracy at AFU personnel, equipment, and installations.
Meanwhile, on the ground, tank production continues to rise, with sanctions having little apparent impact on Russian armor availability.
In contrast to previous predictions that Russia would begin scraping the bottom of the barrel, pulling ever older tanks out of storage, Russian forces in Ukraine are fielding *newer* tanks, with the T-90 appearing on the battlefield in greater numbers.
And, despite repetitive western predictions that a new mobilization wave would be required in the face of supposedly horrific casualties, the Russian defense ministry has confidently said that its manpower reserves are stable, and a Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman recently said that they believe there are over 400,000 Russian troops in the theater (to which can be added the sizeable reserves that remain in Russia). [snip]
NATO has reached the limits of what it can give Ukraine out of surpluses.
In regards to artillery shells (the totem item in this war), for example, NATO allies have openly admitted that they have more or less run out, while the United States has been forced to redirect shell deliveries from Ukraine to Israel – a tacit admission that there are not enough on hand for both.
Meanwhile, new production of shells is behind schedule in both the United States and Europe. [snip]
A recent Rhenmetall order clocked in at $3500 per shell – an astonishing increase when one considers that as recently as 2021 the US Army was able to procure at a mere $820 per shell.
No wonder the head of NATO’s Military Committee complained that higher prices are defeating efforts to build up stockpiles.
Meanwhile, production is constrained by a lack of skilled workers and machine tools.
Nothing important has changed since November. Here is David P. Goldman writing in Asia Times:
Instead of collapsing, Russia has become the focal point for a reorganization of global supply chains and their financing, and its economy is growing, rather than shrinking by half, as President Biden promised in March 2022.
Ukraine is running out of soldiers and can’t agree on a new conscription law. One prominent military historian expostulated, “Everywhere you go in Ukraine you see young men hanging around and not in uniform! Ukraine refuses to go all in.”
Russia produces anywhere between four and seven times more artillery shells than Ukraine. Ukraine’s air defenses are exhausted as its old Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles have been fired and NATO’s stocks of Patriot missiles are dwindling.
Russia has an inexhaustible supply of Soviet-era large bombs fitted with cheap guidance systems, fired accurately at Ukrainian targets from Russian aircraft standing 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) off. With five times Ukraine’s population, Russia is winning the war of attrition.
Of course I don’t expect anyone to believe writers, especially anonymous writers, based on their mere assertions. But check out the links. Think about who’s been proved right so far.
Decide for yourself who is telling the truth and who is spreading misinformation. If I’m wrong, show me what facts I get wrong or overlook, or tell me what’s wrong with my reasoning.
Ukrainians do not deserve to die just so the U.S. military establishment can chip away at Russian strength. None of this is of any benefit to ordinary American citizens.
Image via Big Serge Thought.
LINKS
Denying Russia’s Only Strategy For Success by Nataliya Bugayova and Frederick W. Kagan with Kateryna Stepanenko for the Institute for the Study of War.
Letters from an American (03/29/2024) by Heather Cox Richardson. This post by an American historian elevates Russian disinformation to a grand theory of everything in American politics. She blames Russians for everything from Donald Trump’s ranking in public opinion polls to the Biden impeachment investigations.
Jacques Baud and the Russian Way of War by Simplicius the Thinker.
America has no Ukraine Plan B except more war by David P. Goldman for Asia Times.
Russo-Ukraine War: The Reckoning by Big Serge Thought.
Tags: Disinformation, Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine and Russia
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
Leave a comment