Decisions Clouded by the Fog of Misdirection, Misinformation and Ideology

By Rich Kozlovich

 

 

 

What I'm going to say here isn't going to be pleasing to many of my readers, and even some friends, and while I hope Ukraine wins, Putin's actions are predicated on what's called "revanche", which means regaining lost territory, not European conquest as some are claiming.

 

Ukraine is huge, and Russia doesn't have the man power to safely occupy a resistant Ukraine population let alone Europe.  Russia has seven defensive gaps they feel they have to maintain, and as of ten years ago they only had enough manpower to man three of them and two were around Ukraine, and that all important 15 to 50 age group has serious issues with drugs, AIDS, drug resistant TB and alcohol.

 

All of Europe is facing a huge demographic problem and that includes Ukraine and Russia, and at current rates of growth ethnic Russians will be a minority in their own country by 2040. Putin needed their grain and their population, not the rest of Europe.  At this point he can't even control the former Soviet Union Central Asian nations, who as a result of the Ukraine fiasco are again trying to form an economic bloc of self interest. 

 

My view on this is we have no skin in this game.  This is another problem created by stupid socialist European leaders, who largely brought all this onto themselves.  And after 120 years of our bailing them out with massive amounts of American blood and dollars, I think it's high time they take responsibility for their decisions and either fix this or not, but we need to stay home, and stop borrowing tens of billions of dollars to give to Ukraine, one of the most corrupt governments on the planet, and who knows where that money is going.  

 

No matter what happens, Europe is doomed financially as well as Russia, and their financial collapse is going to take down China, who is the real enemy, not only to the U.S., but the entire world.

 

As far as I can tell Russia has no competent generals, and appointing a general to be in charge of the entire operation who is known for his brutality won't overcome the bad training, bad equipment, bad planning, bad intelligence, and with morale in the toilet, this potential, and probable, next phase of Russian brutality isn't going to be any more effective than it was for them in Afghanistan.  Regarding Afghanistan, one Russian general said any nation can be tamed if you're willing to be brutal enough.  Well, we know how well that worked for them in Afghanistan.  

 

The Russians aren't really good at war, and their petty small victories are examples of how bad they are, and haven't been since they were defeated in the Russo/Japanese War of 1904, and for the same reasons.  Corruption and incompetence in high places.  Wait a minute, didn't they win WWII?  Yes, but that's actually an example of how bad they are.  Why?

 

Zhukov and the rest only won because we supplied them with massive amounts of materiel and the Dodge truck to move it around.  Germany was fighting on too many fronts, and the Russian general staff threw away the lives of their soldiers en masse, which they could replace, which Germany couldn't.  If Hitler had waited until England had fallen by concentrating all his efforts to destroy them, Russia would have been lost when Germany finally attacked Russia. Even then, during the first summer offensive they almost did it, while still fighting England, which restricted their use of air power and manpower.  But declaring war on the U.S. doomed Hitler, not Russian military expertise, and now Putin's "friends" and "allies" are pausing, and for good reason. 

 

Putin made himself the "core" of their nation's political structure, a modern brutal Stalin or secular Czar, and there's no peaceful off ramp from that for Putin.  Also, while I would like to see Ukraine win, there's no win for them as their demographic structure is a mess as well as their infrastructure, none of which will return to where it was, and .....China is the real enemy, as bad as Putin is, by comparison to the potential damage China is capable of, Putin is merely a nuisance to world peace by comparison. 

 

There's where we have skin in the game, not Ukraine.

 

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