Book note: The Russian art of war

THE RUSSIAN ART OF WAR: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat by Jacques Baud (2024)

I’ve long said that Ukraine and its NATO backers will lose the current war because Ukraine’s forces are outnumbered and outgunned.Jacques Baud, a former Swiss intelligence officer and UN consultant, said they also are being out-thought.

In this book, he outlined the history of the war, discussed the strategies of the contenders and compares their strengths in terms of troop strength, organization, strategy and tactics, economic strength and armaments.

He concluded that the Russians are more powerful than the anti-Russian alliance in terms of being able to win a war in this particular time in that particular place.
He also said that Russians are more realistic in terms of their strategy and goals.

The Ukrainian goal is to restore its 1991 boundaries. The U.S. goal is to weaken Russia so that it ceases to be a great power.

The Russian goal is to eliminate the possibility of surprise attack from forces close to its borders.

In order to achieve its goal, Russia is demilitarizing Ukraine by killing Ukrainian troops and destroying Ukrainian armaments on a war of attrition.

Russia is virtually killing off a generation of young Ukrainian men. It also is to an extent demilitarizing NATO nations by forcing them to deplete their arsenals to support Ukraine.

The U.S. seeks to weaken Russia by keeping Ukraine in the fight at whatever cost—to Ukraine. In order to do this, it is promoting a false narrative that says Ukraine has a fighting chance to win.

This narrative is the key to getting continued political support for continuing the flow of money and weapons to Ukraine. That is why there is such an effort to suppress information and argument that runs counter to the narrative.

Objective observers foresaw that Ukraine’s counter-offense last year was doomed from the beginning, but Ukraine launched it anyway in order to show its foreign arms suppliers that it was still in the fight.,

Baud wrote that Ukraine’s complaints about its supposed allies are fully justified. If Ukraine had been supplied at the beginning with all the types of weapons it eventually got, and if Ukrainian generals had been allowed to use their own judgment as to military strategy, Ukrainians would be in a better place than they are now.

The book contains a chart of the types of weapons that the USA and Germany declared they would never send to Ukraine for fear of widening the war, and then the dates these weapons were actually shipped to Ukraine.

If these weapons had been shipped to Ukraine at the outset of the war, and not in dribs and drabs at times Ukraine seemed on brink of defeat, Ukraine would have fared much better. It would have been able to incorporate these weapons in its military strategy. In particular, if Ukraine had had the F-16s at the beginning, it would not have had to launch its counteroffensives without air cover.

In modern war, defenders of a position are considered to have an advantage, which attackers can only overcome through superior numbers. But although Russia was the invader, Russia was able to adopt a defensive position and Ukraine was forced to attack with insufficient forces. Given a free hand, Ukrainian generals would not have made that mistake.

Ukraine’s only hope for victory now is to hold out until the Russians grow weary of war and seek peace, just as the USA eventually grew weary of trying to conquer Vietnam.

This is why Ukraine has resorted to assassinations, terrorism, bombings of civilian facilities and attacks on border areas of Russian. It is why North Americans and Europeans seek to exclude Russians from international and sporting events and from participation in the world economy.

It is psychological warfare, intended to make Russians feel isolated and vulnerable.

Baud said the attack on Russian morale isn’t working. It has only made the Russians more determined to win.

The overall story that Baud told is already familiar to me, buy there is a great impact in seeing all the  facts that have been denied, all the propaganda lies, all the changes in the official line, all the atrocities I’ve learned about over months and years assembled in one small volume.

I did learn some new things. One is the number of desertions from the Ukrainian army. The other is the extreme sophistication of the electronics in weapons on both sides, and the back and forth battle of improvements and countermeasures

I expect critics will say that I am mistaken about Russian and Ukrainian casualties and equipment losses, that the former are much greater and latter much lower than I and other war opponents say. I have two answers to that.

One is that all of Baud’s information is taken from Western sources – Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, the USA’s RAND Corp. and occasional admissions against interest in U.S. and Ukrainian news media.

The other is to cast your mind back as to what official sources were saying back then and what they are saying now. In the earliest days of the war, U.S. leaders and commentators were talking about using economic sanctions to Russia to its knees, driving Vladimir Putin from power and maybe breaking up Russia. Now they are talking about hanging in there so as to bring Russia back to the negotiating table.

Update 04/21/2024.

My friend Peter sent me a link to an article in French (you have to use Google translate if you don’t speak French) by a web site called Conspiracy Watch criticizing a previous book Jacque Baud wrote, which was about alleged Fake News.

Sur RT France, Jacques Baud coche toutes les cases du conspirationnisme géopolitique.

He says, “Apparently, he [Baud] believes the Sudanese government didn’t massacre anyone at Darfur, that the Syrian government never used chemical weapons, and that Putin never poisoned anyone.”

I don’t have an informed opinion on the massacre at Darfur, I understand the chemical weapons charges against the Syria government were all disproved, but I do agree the Russian government probably poisoned Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov.  I haven’t read Jacque Baud’s other books, so I don’t know exactly what he wrote on these topics.

I think The Russian Art of War is a persuasive book because Baud quotes authoritative Western sources for his assertions and because it fits what I already think I now about this topic. 

I could be wrong.  I’ve been wrong in the past.  Baud could be wrong.  But if you want to convince me, you’ll have to refute what he actually says in this book.

An e-mail pen pal named Haile sent me a link to a video about Russian deaths in World War Two.  

He wrote, “The Great Patriotic War was a defining event not only for the Soviets/Russians, but in the whole of human history.  It is within living memory.  The reason for the monumental loss and suffering endured by the Soviets/Russians is Western betrayal and aggression.  A key element of Russia’s strength is this bitter experience and its closeness.  It is the motivation for Russia’s premptive aggression.  It is not abstract. It is not exaggerated. In Russia’s case, it can be said without irony, that offense is the only defense.” 

I agree.  If you superimpose a map of Germany’s greatest advance during World War Two on a map of NATO with Ukraine and Georgia, you will understand President Putin’s red lines.

Tags: Jacques Baud, Russia and Ukraine, Russian Art of War, Ukraine and Russia