This is bad. What other reason would an autocratic nut job like trump can qualified officers barely into their terms plus all the JAGs if not for political reasons. Make it easier to declare martial law when he feels it’s time to finally crush dissent and end representative democracy? Force the military to engage in some wild imperialist adventure? There are no transparent good reasons and plenty of opaque bad ones.
Good breakdown of Huntingdon and Jannowitz, been a while since I read both (and Cohen). One issue I find about these key civ-mil relations works is how they are very rooted in the US Army of the 50s even as they try to articulate a general theory. How relevant are their assumptions for the US Air Force today? How much might an officer in France or Japan (US allies and democracies) find those assumptions don't apply to the evolution of their nations and it's military?
This isn't to knock any of these works, they're all rather good, but rather a rallying call for people to be inspired by them, and for more to be written about what is a pretty important subject.
I actually think Janowitz’s theories hold up better than Huntington. I like Huntington because he does a good job laying out the historical development of professionalism in the US Military. Personally, I think Andrew Payne, Risa Brooks, and Peter Feaver are the best scholars on modern American civil-military relations but this article was a quick write so I didn’t really have time to talk about modern scholarship and theory.
I remember leaning towards Janowitz but finding Huntingdon easier to read. It's been a while since I was studying and regularly engaging with the literature, I did read a lot of Feaver's stuff.
I have subscribed, some really interesting stuff in your back catalogue I'm excited to go through.
You are dead wrong. DEI is unconstitutional and military officers swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. These officers executed DEI and even doubled down on it beyond what was ordered. Not one said these orders are illegal.
Their moral courage was lacking. The defense of “I was only following orders” died at Nuremberg. Gen Brown even decided that the percentage of white officers needed to be limited. He demonstrated that he was a racist with a chip on his shoulder for years.
In the highest level of the US military the option to retire on principle leads to a fairly comfortable retirement and not at the gallows. A General can turn to any superior and say: “ You deserve someone who can execute these orders without reservation and to the best of their ability. I am, in good conscience, not that person and submit to retire.”
Pundits often fall back on the myth that these officers had worked their way to the highest levels based on professional merit. DEI has permeated the military formally and informally for many, many years. Some advance by merit and some by political favor. Some are identified very early on as ambitious to the detriment of all other considerations.
A number of senior people have been retired precisely because they were űber political contrary to their oath. They reached the absolute pinnacle of their profession, deserved or undeserved, and can head into the next stage of their life comfortably. No tears for them. Batter up.
Further to Douglas C Rape’ comments, for at least two decades the military has allowed itself to become “civilianized”, the perceived fear was that the civilian population was traumatized by the evil men in green suits that carried weapons. Thus the military academies and professional military colleges such as the Naval War Collage took on a different tone. In addition those officers that found the time and ability to be sent to Harvard PMD courses or The Kennedy School of Government as example began to lose their contact with the reality of their profession. Which is to deter and attack and kill adversaries as deemed appropriate by the civilians running the government, who in principle are elected by the people. This post is nice and well written, but is emblematic of the problem any American must understand. Your professional military is not equipped at the most senior levels to tell you the truth. A. We are not ready for any kind of peer foe fight. B. We are under strength and need to reconstitute the military services with soldiers, sailors, air men/women and Marines who are fit, motivated and capable. With that goes the senior leadership role in making sure those in uniform live in healthy living conditions, have healthy food and can literally afford to be in the military as a profession. If a case in point need be made about how bad the senior leadership is, look no further than the Chief of Naval Operations, On her watch most recently, the USS Gettysburg freshly reconfigured with a $600 million dollar air defense system shot down a returning FA/18, missed the second plane aka the wingman and only with great luck the two man crew were not killed aboard the FA/18, that crashed into the Red Sea, That in a different era, like 20 years ago would have the CNO’s resignation on the Secretary of the Navy’s desk. Nope. Fast forward the USS Harry Truman CVN 78 collided with a merchant vessel, damaging it enough to require it to come off the line for repairs. That event 20 years would have had the CNO’s resignation on the SecNav’s desk. But, no. Nothing to see here, a fighter jet here and an aircraft carrier there, no regard to the fact the merchant vessel with a cargo of properly prepared fertilizer could get close enough to the CVN to blow it to kingdom come, and the CNO wasn’t going anywhere, until….the SecDef said enough, you’re incompetent so you’re done. It didn’t matter that she was a woman, or a man; in this case the CNO was just flatly incompetent and did not inspire the trust and confidence of her subordinates or that of her superiors. Out you go. More coming. Do not be surprised to see a bunch of full colonels and or Navy Captains filling 1 and 2 star posts and some 2 and 3 stars coming out of retirement to fill 3 and 4 star posts and an overall reduction in the number of flag officers in total in our armed services. Stuff is getting real and the fools along with their ships are going the way of quail.
I know there have been horrendous military blunders in both peace and war times, and I know ships' captains have sometimes been held responsible. But I don't recall a CNO resigning over such an incident, as you describe. Can you point us to an example?
Halsey got 4% of his fleet and 800 people killed in a hurricane because he was an idiot and he got promoted. Patton lost 500 men trying to rescue his own son-in-law 80 miles behind enemy lines and nothing happened, so no, a CNO would not resign because a carrier had a fender bender
I would direct any and all to senator Tom Cotton’s report on the status of the surface navy now several years old. Things have not gotten better. If you consider a CVN 1093 feet long with billions of dollars of equipment on board, a hot nuclear reactor, roughly 5,000 souls aboard colliding with a merchant vessel in and around contested waters a ‘fender bender” than indeed we are a lost navy. It was not the amount the damage physically rather the lack of discipline across the Navy and for that matter the services in general that are part of the problem. Either we have a military and military culture reporting to and following the lawful orders of the civilian commander in chief and upholding the oath of office or we are and have something different going on. Not wishing to just pick on the Navy, as a Marine Infantry Officer circa 1978-1982 watching the current Commandant of the Marine Corps and his immediate predecessor severely damage the USMC’s ability to carry out Title X statutory mandates, it is a shocking scene. Basically telling congress what missions the Corps will undertake and those which it will not, because these generals got a wild idea up their backside and want to do something different. After 5 years and divesting to invest in the new idea, they have absolutely nothing to show for it. It would not surprise the writer if DOGE and the SecDef and SecNav conclude that the best that can be done for the Country and Corps is to dissolve the Corps and move the assets to the Army and Air Force. Thus saving $38/$39 Billion a year.
My point was and is not that there direct examples of the CNO resigning over a typhoon or collision, it is their duty and the honor of their post and responsibility that should drive the decision to resign. Meaning, they cannot be on the bridge of every Naval vessel in the fleets (though some micromanaging Admirals try) it is saying I am the direct representative of our Navy and its not going in the right direction, we need a change. Don’t try staying CEO of a publicly traded company after post losing results a couple of losing quarters in a row. By the way, the SecNav doesn’t have to accept the resignation. No one wants to take responsibility, filthy black mold ridden living quarters, substandard chow, poor pay, not my job man say the men and women with the stars. If people don’t the enlisted and junior officers don’t see the hypocrisy and substandard leadership at the flag level guess again. New flash they are the ones doing the work. They want leaders with substance, not mushy bureaucrats that wear a uniform and are quasi civilian military “professionals.”
"Never mind that everything I said was completely wrong, my actual point is this other thing (that is also completely wrong)"
People like you are destroying this country by valuing image and vibes over substance. You're the enemy within, and a bona fide traitor to your country.
I haven't read any of the books you cited, nor have I ever served, so I'm certainly at a disadvantage in commenting. Nevertheless, perhaps the view of a civilian Trump supporter is worth considering.
The US military hasn't exactly covered itself in glory the past few decades, as it has ignominiously fled Afghanistan after 20 years, and left a smoldering crater of ruin and misery in Iraq, to the benefit of no-one besides Iran. The Congressionally unauthorized (ie illegal) war in Libya was no better, and in many ways worse, as is the current proxy war in Ukraine- largely fought, so far as I can see, so the former President's crack-head son could justify his well compensated stint as a board-member for a Ukrainian energy company despite having no energy or corporate experience, nor even speaking the language in which it's meetings were conducted. No worries on the latter, however, as he never attended any board meetings, so his inability to understand what was said was no obstacle. I only wish I was exaggerating.
Former joint chief-of-staff General Milley is widely reported to have engaged in Sedition during Trump's first term, although I guess we'll never know for sure since he was pre-emptively pardoned by the previous President, father of the aforementioned Burisma board-member.
None of the military branches have hit their recruiting goals in years, and the immediate reason appears to be that military families have lost faith in the service and have begun advising their young men not to serve.
There's more, of course, but the TLDR is that we have a broken military leadership, already politicized, and badly in need of reform. Claiming they deserve the benefit of the doubt is ridiculous. Maybe President Trump's reforms are rash and ill-considered, but I certainly can't justify deferring to a military that has failed so conspicuously for so long.
Stating you haven’t read anything (even tho I talk extensively about the books in the article?) or haven’t served. Than talking about Hunter Biden and Burisma in an article about American civil-military relations? Sorry I will not be considering your view lol
The degree to which many ‘woke’ vets feel the services have lost some of the post 9/11 social prestige they held and many Americans on the Right no longer defer to military expertise has driven a lot of them to look for psychological compensation in victory by Ukrainian proxy.
The problem with that is, if you want to take credit for Ukrainian victories like Kherson and Kharkov, you also own the defeats and mass casualty debacles NATO planners try to wash their hands of and claim the Ukrainians just incompetently executed. Kiev drafting 16 year old Banderajugend when they run out of men in 2026-27.
The U.S. military retreated from Afghanistan after President Trump (45) arranged and signed the surrender documents with the Taliban that he invited to Camp David. Earlier in his term that same President ordered the then Secretary of Defense Mattis to order the Army Rangers to retreat from their position surrounding ISIS - a position from which the Rangers were about to annihilate ISIS. Mattis’ professional advice was not to retreat and to finish the operation. He was overruled by the President, so he retired immediately, as did Trump’s hand-picked envoy to the Middle East. Since being saved from that near-extinction event ISIS has metastasized across the Near East and Africa. The President who claimed he would get America out of its wars did exactly what he bragged he would, with disastrous results for the world, the U.S. military, and Trump’s own public image around the world.
And now Trump 47 and his minions, including a National Guard major and second string political commentator, are going to manage a new alliance with a gangster nation that as recently as a few weeks ago was trying to sabotage the U.S. Seeing the new Secretary of State and his crew across the table from the Russian foreign minister was just the most pathetic bunch of rookie amateurs going up against a seasoned group of professionals. But this is what this President has ordered.
So you should go on bragging about your ignorance and your blind loyalty but don’t expect anybody except your fellow travelers to take you seriously.
Points for using a 1950s term for Soviet sympathizers from the last Cold War. I haven’t seen ‘fellow travelers’ in a long time.
But let me ask a question for those veterans rushing to buy into a 21st century Stab-in-the-Back Myth, that Ukraine like Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany could not possibly have lost a war of attrition even capitulation while still having troops on enemy soil, due to Germany’s army, economy and society being exhausted after four years of war, but is only losing because it’s been betrayed by subversive enemy agents far from the trenches?
It seems to have genuinely not occurred to veterans and former IC professionals in the BlueSky bubble and to many Substack ers fulminating about
Trump betraying allies that he like Nixon has been brought in to salvage whatever can be salvaged from a losing war that is costing not just us but our imcreasingly starved for affordable energy European allies dearly. Beyond that, believing that the casualty ratios must be lopsided against the country that’s admittedly out producing the whole of European NATO in artillery rounds something like 7 to 1 while dropping a 100+ FAB 250 to FAB 3000 glide bombs a day is faith based thinking, not rational analysis. ‘But the Ukrainians still hold in Sudzha Kursk!’ (prewar population 5,000) sure they do—until the Russians decide to just level the place with glide bombs. When the Germans surrendered in 1918 they still were occupying a chunk of France and in 1945 they still had troops in Norway and Northern Italy.
If failures including of whatever genius US and British generals not so secretly planned the spectacularly failed Ukrainian Summer Offensive driving Leo
2 panzers right into the thickest Russian minefield laid down since WW2 never get acknowledged, nothing gets fixed. If failures don’t get fixed and so many veterans go around believing friendly powers feel good propaganda because of partisan leanings or thinking that makes them more loyal than skeptics, well then civ-mil relations are not going to get better. And this is before we even discuss whether Zelensky has every incentive to keep the war going lest martial law be lifted and his own people vote or throw him out….
Besides the increasing desperation to buy whatever the Ukrainians and standing behind them, the British MoD’s 5 o clock follies are selling about laughably lopsided casualty ratios in Kiev’s favor while ignoring the grim reports about frontline Ukrainian battalions reduced to a few dozen survivors (in such notoriously pro Putin rags like the NYT and UK Guardian), there’s another issue: PME giving our soldiers and airmen literally no frame of reference for a 21st century war of attrition on a drone-saturated battlefield save for maybe WW1 107 years ago or vaguely Vietnam. Hence the obsession with inflating Russian body counts while lying to ourselves about the KIA/WIA and most
alarming desertion / refusal to follow orders to counterattack rate in the Army of UkroNam).
Hence all the vetbro joking about endless Russian incompetence (it’s not as if their grandfathers waged the largest land warfare campaign in the history of war) or the Russian Air Force never actually hitting any targets much less Ka52 gunship cams showing them incinerating
Bradleys from 7 miles away. No clearly if the Russian Air Force doesn’t enjoy total air dominance like the USAF had over Iraq at the end of Desert Storm then they’re clearly incompetent and have no SEAD capability to grind down what had been the 3rd most powerful
air defense network in the world inherited from the USSR and bolstered by round the clock NATO early warning / CISR.
By the way anyone asked how many US, UK and German Patriot operators have died in ‘car wrecks’ or from random
This is bad. What other reason would an autocratic nut job like trump can qualified officers barely into their terms plus all the JAGs if not for political reasons. Make it easier to declare martial law when he feels it’s time to finally crush dissent and end representative democracy? Force the military to engage in some wild imperialist adventure? There are no transparent good reasons and plenty of opaque bad ones.
Good breakdown of Huntingdon and Jannowitz, been a while since I read both (and Cohen). One issue I find about these key civ-mil relations works is how they are very rooted in the US Army of the 50s even as they try to articulate a general theory. How relevant are their assumptions for the US Air Force today? How much might an officer in France or Japan (US allies and democracies) find those assumptions don't apply to the evolution of their nations and it's military?
This isn't to knock any of these works, they're all rather good, but rather a rallying call for people to be inspired by them, and for more to be written about what is a pretty important subject.
I actually think Janowitz’s theories hold up better than Huntington. I like Huntington because he does a good job laying out the historical development of professionalism in the US Military. Personally, I think Andrew Payne, Risa Brooks, and Peter Feaver are the best scholars on modern American civil-military relations but this article was a quick write so I didn’t really have time to talk about modern scholarship and theory.
I remember leaning towards Janowitz but finding Huntingdon easier to read. It's been a while since I was studying and regularly engaging with the literature, I did read a lot of Feaver's stuff.
I have subscribed, some really interesting stuff in your back catalogue I'm excited to go through.
You are dead wrong. DEI is unconstitutional and military officers swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. These officers executed DEI and even doubled down on it beyond what was ordered. Not one said these orders are illegal.
Their moral courage was lacking. The defense of “I was only following orders” died at Nuremberg. Gen Brown even decided that the percentage of white officers needed to be limited. He demonstrated that he was a racist with a chip on his shoulder for years.
In the highest level of the US military the option to retire on principle leads to a fairly comfortable retirement and not at the gallows. A General can turn to any superior and say: “ You deserve someone who can execute these orders without reservation and to the best of their ability. I am, in good conscience, not that person and submit to retire.”
Pundits often fall back on the myth that these officers had worked their way to the highest levels based on professional merit. DEI has permeated the military formally and informally for many, many years. Some advance by merit and some by political favor. Some are identified very early on as ambitious to the detriment of all other considerations.
A number of senior people have been retired precisely because they were űber political contrary to their oath. They reached the absolute pinnacle of their profession, deserved or undeserved, and can head into the next stage of their life comfortably. No tears for them. Batter up.
To translate:
DEI = bad
hiring underqualified loyalists = good
Helpful note!
Any time you hear a fash says “DEI” just replace it with “n***er” and everything they say makes sense.
Well, that's a load of horseshit. When did you first start to hate America?
“If this trend toward politicizing the military continues unchecked…”
looks like it just got checked….
Further to Douglas C Rape’ comments, for at least two decades the military has allowed itself to become “civilianized”, the perceived fear was that the civilian population was traumatized by the evil men in green suits that carried weapons. Thus the military academies and professional military colleges such as the Naval War Collage took on a different tone. In addition those officers that found the time and ability to be sent to Harvard PMD courses or The Kennedy School of Government as example began to lose their contact with the reality of their profession. Which is to deter and attack and kill adversaries as deemed appropriate by the civilians running the government, who in principle are elected by the people. This post is nice and well written, but is emblematic of the problem any American must understand. Your professional military is not equipped at the most senior levels to tell you the truth. A. We are not ready for any kind of peer foe fight. B. We are under strength and need to reconstitute the military services with soldiers, sailors, air men/women and Marines who are fit, motivated and capable. With that goes the senior leadership role in making sure those in uniform live in healthy living conditions, have healthy food and can literally afford to be in the military as a profession. If a case in point need be made about how bad the senior leadership is, look no further than the Chief of Naval Operations, On her watch most recently, the USS Gettysburg freshly reconfigured with a $600 million dollar air defense system shot down a returning FA/18, missed the second plane aka the wingman and only with great luck the two man crew were not killed aboard the FA/18, that crashed into the Red Sea, That in a different era, like 20 years ago would have the CNO’s resignation on the Secretary of the Navy’s desk. Nope. Fast forward the USS Harry Truman CVN 78 collided with a merchant vessel, damaging it enough to require it to come off the line for repairs. That event 20 years would have had the CNO’s resignation on the SecNav’s desk. But, no. Nothing to see here, a fighter jet here and an aircraft carrier there, no regard to the fact the merchant vessel with a cargo of properly prepared fertilizer could get close enough to the CVN to blow it to kingdom come, and the CNO wasn’t going anywhere, until….the SecDef said enough, you’re incompetent so you’re done. It didn’t matter that she was a woman, or a man; in this case the CNO was just flatly incompetent and did not inspire the trust and confidence of her subordinates or that of her superiors. Out you go. More coming. Do not be surprised to see a bunch of full colonels and or Navy Captains filling 1 and 2 star posts and some 2 and 3 stars coming out of retirement to fill 3 and 4 star posts and an overall reduction in the number of flag officers in total in our armed services. Stuff is getting real and the fools along with their ships are going the way of quail.
I know there have been horrendous military blunders in both peace and war times, and I know ships' captains have sometimes been held responsible. But I don't recall a CNO resigning over such an incident, as you describe. Can you point us to an example?
Halsey got 4% of his fleet and 800 people killed in a hurricane because he was an idiot and he got promoted. Patton lost 500 men trying to rescue his own son-in-law 80 miles behind enemy lines and nothing happened, so no, a CNO would not resign because a carrier had a fender bender
And don’t even get me started on MacArthur
*Halsey sailed 3rd Fleet into two typhoons.
I would direct any and all to senator Tom Cotton’s report on the status of the surface navy now several years old. Things have not gotten better. If you consider a CVN 1093 feet long with billions of dollars of equipment on board, a hot nuclear reactor, roughly 5,000 souls aboard colliding with a merchant vessel in and around contested waters a ‘fender bender” than indeed we are a lost navy. It was not the amount the damage physically rather the lack of discipline across the Navy and for that matter the services in general that are part of the problem. Either we have a military and military culture reporting to and following the lawful orders of the civilian commander in chief and upholding the oath of office or we are and have something different going on. Not wishing to just pick on the Navy, as a Marine Infantry Officer circa 1978-1982 watching the current Commandant of the Marine Corps and his immediate predecessor severely damage the USMC’s ability to carry out Title X statutory mandates, it is a shocking scene. Basically telling congress what missions the Corps will undertake and those which it will not, because these generals got a wild idea up their backside and want to do something different. After 5 years and divesting to invest in the new idea, they have absolutely nothing to show for it. It would not surprise the writer if DOGE and the SecDef and SecNav conclude that the best that can be done for the Country and Corps is to dissolve the Corps and move the assets to the Army and Air Force. Thus saving $38/$39 Billion a year.
My point was and is not that there direct examples of the CNO resigning over a typhoon or collision, it is their duty and the honor of their post and responsibility that should drive the decision to resign. Meaning, they cannot be on the bridge of every Naval vessel in the fleets (though some micromanaging Admirals try) it is saying I am the direct representative of our Navy and its not going in the right direction, we need a change. Don’t try staying CEO of a publicly traded company after post losing results a couple of losing quarters in a row. By the way, the SecNav doesn’t have to accept the resignation. No one wants to take responsibility, filthy black mold ridden living quarters, substandard chow, poor pay, not my job man say the men and women with the stars. If people don’t the enlisted and junior officers don’t see the hypocrisy and substandard leadership at the flag level guess again. New flash they are the ones doing the work. They want leaders with substance, not mushy bureaucrats that wear a uniform and are quasi civilian military “professionals.”
"Never mind that everything I said was completely wrong, my actual point is this other thing (that is also completely wrong)"
People like you are destroying this country by valuing image and vibes over substance. You're the enemy within, and a bona fide traitor to your country.
I haven't read any of the books you cited, nor have I ever served, so I'm certainly at a disadvantage in commenting. Nevertheless, perhaps the view of a civilian Trump supporter is worth considering.
The US military hasn't exactly covered itself in glory the past few decades, as it has ignominiously fled Afghanistan after 20 years, and left a smoldering crater of ruin and misery in Iraq, to the benefit of no-one besides Iran. The Congressionally unauthorized (ie illegal) war in Libya was no better, and in many ways worse, as is the current proxy war in Ukraine- largely fought, so far as I can see, so the former President's crack-head son could justify his well compensated stint as a board-member for a Ukrainian energy company despite having no energy or corporate experience, nor even speaking the language in which it's meetings were conducted. No worries on the latter, however, as he never attended any board meetings, so his inability to understand what was said was no obstacle. I only wish I was exaggerating.
Former joint chief-of-staff General Milley is widely reported to have engaged in Sedition during Trump's first term, although I guess we'll never know for sure since he was pre-emptively pardoned by the previous President, father of the aforementioned Burisma board-member.
None of the military branches have hit their recruiting goals in years, and the immediate reason appears to be that military families have lost faith in the service and have begun advising their young men not to serve.
There's more, of course, but the TLDR is that we have a broken military leadership, already politicized, and badly in need of reform. Claiming they deserve the benefit of the doubt is ridiculous. Maybe President Trump's reforms are rash and ill-considered, but I certainly can't justify deferring to a military that has failed so conspicuously for so long.
Stating you haven’t read anything (even tho I talk extensively about the books in the article?) or haven’t served. Than talking about Hunter Biden and Burisma in an article about American civil-military relations? Sorry I will not be considering your view lol
Fair enough. The sentiment is mutual
Thanks! You should subscribe anyways!
The degree to which many ‘woke’ vets feel the services have lost some of the post 9/11 social prestige they held and many Americans on the Right no longer defer to military expertise has driven a lot of them to look for psychological compensation in victory by Ukrainian proxy.
The problem with that is, if you want to take credit for Ukrainian victories like Kherson and Kharkov, you also own the defeats and mass casualty debacles NATO planners try to wash their hands of and claim the Ukrainians just incompetently executed. Kiev drafting 16 year old Banderajugend when they run out of men in 2026-27.
The U.S. military retreated from Afghanistan after President Trump (45) arranged and signed the surrender documents with the Taliban that he invited to Camp David. Earlier in his term that same President ordered the then Secretary of Defense Mattis to order the Army Rangers to retreat from their position surrounding ISIS - a position from which the Rangers were about to annihilate ISIS. Mattis’ professional advice was not to retreat and to finish the operation. He was overruled by the President, so he retired immediately, as did Trump’s hand-picked envoy to the Middle East. Since being saved from that near-extinction event ISIS has metastasized across the Near East and Africa. The President who claimed he would get America out of its wars did exactly what he bragged he would, with disastrous results for the world, the U.S. military, and Trump’s own public image around the world.
And now Trump 47 and his minions, including a National Guard major and second string political commentator, are going to manage a new alliance with a gangster nation that as recently as a few weeks ago was trying to sabotage the U.S. Seeing the new Secretary of State and his crew across the table from the Russian foreign minister was just the most pathetic bunch of rookie amateurs going up against a seasoned group of professionals. But this is what this President has ordered.
So you should go on bragging about your ignorance and your blind loyalty but don’t expect anybody except your fellow travelers to take you seriously.
Points for using a 1950s term for Soviet sympathizers from the last Cold War. I haven’t seen ‘fellow travelers’ in a long time.
But let me ask a question for those veterans rushing to buy into a 21st century Stab-in-the-Back Myth, that Ukraine like Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany could not possibly have lost a war of attrition even capitulation while still having troops on enemy soil, due to Germany’s army, economy and society being exhausted after four years of war, but is only losing because it’s been betrayed by subversive enemy agents far from the trenches?
It seems to have genuinely not occurred to veterans and former IC professionals in the BlueSky bubble and to many Substack ers fulminating about
Trump betraying allies that he like Nixon has been brought in to salvage whatever can be salvaged from a losing war that is costing not just us but our imcreasingly starved for affordable energy European allies dearly. Beyond that, believing that the casualty ratios must be lopsided against the country that’s admittedly out producing the whole of European NATO in artillery rounds something like 7 to 1 while dropping a 100+ FAB 250 to FAB 3000 glide bombs a day is faith based thinking, not rational analysis. ‘But the Ukrainians still hold in Sudzha Kursk!’ (prewar population 5,000) sure they do—until the Russians decide to just level the place with glide bombs. When the Germans surrendered in 1918 they still were occupying a chunk of France and in 1945 they still had troops in Norway and Northern Italy.
If failures including of whatever genius US and British generals not so secretly planned the spectacularly failed Ukrainian Summer Offensive driving Leo
2 panzers right into the thickest Russian minefield laid down since WW2 never get acknowledged, nothing gets fixed. If failures don’t get fixed and so many veterans go around believing friendly powers feel good propaganda because of partisan leanings or thinking that makes them more loyal than skeptics, well then civ-mil relations are not going to get better. And this is before we even discuss whether Zelensky has every incentive to keep the war going lest martial law be lifted and his own people vote or throw him out….
Besides the increasing desperation to buy whatever the Ukrainians and standing behind them, the British MoD’s 5 o clock follies are selling about laughably lopsided casualty ratios in Kiev’s favor while ignoring the grim reports about frontline Ukrainian battalions reduced to a few dozen survivors (in such notoriously pro Putin rags like the NYT and UK Guardian), there’s another issue: PME giving our soldiers and airmen literally no frame of reference for a 21st century war of attrition on a drone-saturated battlefield save for maybe WW1 107 years ago or vaguely Vietnam. Hence the obsession with inflating Russian body counts while lying to ourselves about the KIA/WIA and most
alarming desertion / refusal to follow orders to counterattack rate in the Army of UkroNam).
Hence all the vetbro joking about endless Russian incompetence (it’s not as if their grandfathers waged the largest land warfare campaign in the history of war) or the Russian Air Force never actually hitting any targets much less Ka52 gunship cams showing them incinerating
Bradleys from 7 miles away. No clearly if the Russian Air Force doesn’t enjoy total air dominance like the USAF had over Iraq at the end of Desert Storm then they’re clearly incompetent and have no SEAD capability to grind down what had been the 3rd most powerful
air defense network in the world inherited from the USSR and bolstered by round the clock NATO early warning / CISR.
By the way anyone asked how many US, UK and German Patriot operators have died in ‘car wrecks’ or from random
‘heart attacks’ in the last year?
'the founder proposed'
Missing word, capitalization