US Recklessness May Backfire against the Russian Federation's Aggression in Ukraine — History Hints that their Small Dog May Be Rabidly Tougher than Our Big One on its Home Turf

© 2015 Peter Free

 

05 February 2015

 

 

Theme — our strategy with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin may be about to become reckless

 

Ignorance of history may bite us, if the United States decides to arm Ukraine in that nation’s efforts to fend off the pro-Russian insurgency and the Federation’s military infiltration on its behalf.

 

My guess is that President Putin is not going to react as docilely, as complacently arrogant American leaders think he will. In Putin’s strategic position, I certainly would not. There are times when kicking an overreaching adversary (the U.S.) in the metaphorical scrotum is satisfying.

 

Keep in mind that, from the Russian perspective, the United States and NATO initiated the current conflict by encroaching on the Federation’s historical sphere of influence.

 

 

My cautionary argument depends on three principles

 

These are:

 

 

(1) History usually describes cultural mentality.

 

(2) Understanding an adversary’s perspective is necessary to achieving strategic victory, at least under circumstances in which the dominant power decides that all-out war is not advisable.

 

(3) And — when one mistakes both history and is incompetent in detecting an opponent’s strategic and tactical thinking, costly defeat looms.

 

 

The historical component — what Stalingrad should have told us about Russians

 

Russians are indefatigably courageous and self-sacrificing in defense of what they think of as theirs. The Battle of Stalingrad symbolizes this.

 

The 72nd anniversary of the siege’s end was 3 days ago. The Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad made the Third Reich’s downfall inevitable. There is no corresponding day on the Western side, not even D-Day, that can legitimately claim the same:

 

 

In that one battle, the Soviet military probably lost about 1.1 to 1.2 million lives.  Germany, and its Axis partners, lost between 500,000 and 850,000.  In contrast, 406,000 Americans fell during the whole war, worldwide.

 

Twenty-two to 28 million Soviets died during World War II. Americans have no remotely comparable experience with such levels of combat related death:

 

 

Such sacrifices, as Churchill said, tore the guts out of the German war machine. More than 90% of German losses were suffered on the eastern front, including 10 million military casualties.

 

All other theatres were a sideshow compared with the gigantic battles in Russia. At the time it was clear that the second world war was primarily a Soviet-German war. During the cold war, however, the western narrative of the struggle against Hitler was rewritten to minimise the Soviet contribution and to exaggerate an Anglo-American crusade to make Europe safe for democracy.

 

© 2003 Geoffrey Roberts, Victory on the Volga, The Guardian (28 February 2003)

 

President Putin knows how much Russians bled. He resents Western minimizations of the meaning of what happened on the Eastern Front. Pertinent to his probable 2015 strategy in Ukraine, he knows that his dog has its historically demonstrated heart.

 

 

Point Two — Putin’s perspective is probably not a Western one

 

Going back centuries, Russian outlook is not the “play nice and give us all your money” Western one.

 

With regard specifically to Ukraine, Walter Russell Mead thinks that President Putin does not agree with the three “core values of the Davoisie," which are:

 

 

[T]he rise of a liberal capitalist and more or less democratic and law-based international order is both inevitable and irreversible.

 

[T]he Davos elite—the financiers, politicians, intellectuals, haute journalists and technocrats who manage the great enterprises, institutions and polities of the contemporary world—know what they are doing and are competent to manage the system they represent.

 

[N]o serious alternative perspective to the Davos perspective really exists . . . .

 

© 2015 Walter Russell Mead, Putin’s World, The American Interest (27 January 2015) (extracts)

 

Mead (and I) think that President Putin recognizes some weaknesses in our Western approach to dealing with him and the Ukraine situation. Germany is not influential enough to keep Europe on a monolithic track in regard to Russia. And the United States is not skilled at the Great Powers hegemony game that Putin is playing:

 

 

Putin thinks that the Germans aren’t wise enough to rule Europe well, strong enough to rule it by force, or rich enough to rule it through economics and that Washington doesn’t understand that or, if it does, that Washington itself is too distracted or too weak to care.

 

He understands that Berlin’s leadership of the continent has lost legitimacy across the south, and further he believes that Berlin is too shortsighted and constrained to undertake the kind of policy that could still save the euro and the EU.

 

EU bureaucrats and German diplomats don’t think culture matters as they build a multicultural and cosmopolitan New Europe . . . . Putin thinks they are wrong, and when he looks at current conditions in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy and Spain he sees the full confirmation of his theory.

 

Europe, he believes, is not a country–and even if it were, it is not a German country.

 

The key to Putin’s thinking is that he is betting less on Russian strength than on German and therefore Western weakness.

 

Putin believes that Germany . . . is unwilling to fight.

 

The United States, meanwhile, is from this Russian perspective strategically clueless and largely out of the game.

 

© 2015 Walter Russell Mead, Putin’s World, The American Interest (27 January 2015) (extracts)

 

 

Point Three — the error of underestimating Russian determination and Federation strategy

 

In Putin’s shoes, I would be perfectly willing to start a land war with NATO in Ukraine. With Germany probably reluctant to fight, the United States would have to carry NATO’s combat load. There is nothing in recent American history that says our public would be willing to endure the losses that would arise. Putin already knows that his people probably would. They did it with the Nazis and earlier with Napoleon.

 

If Putin guesses wrong about US resolve, he can drag nukes in. It is no accident that he mentioned the Federation’s nuclear superpower status on a couple of occasions recently. The Obama Administration and our military may have been remiss in not evaluating this implied threat properly.

 

Cornered and humiliated people sometimes do not mind getting blown up, provided that they can take their attacker down in the process. Decades of American imperialistic arrogance have been a burr under the Russian saddle.

 

 

The moral? — Maybe the Federation is tougher and more determined than we think

 

Russians are almost certainly angrier and more willing to bleed than we anticipate. It is not just a wide swath of the Islamic world that is tired of American-sponsored meddling.

 

Blatantly arming Ukrainian forces may not be such a great idea. Coy subterfuge may be preferable, even if the United States insists on continuing to mess with Russia’s sphere of self-defensive influence.

 

As usual, only the Military Industrial Complex is assured of profit, no matter our chosen direction. Unless, of course, we nuke ourselves back a few civilizational stages. If I were Putin, I might not mind such a despairing outcome. At least, in his mind, those arrogantly greedy Americans would have received a terminally bloody nose.

 

Exhibiting cautious common sense on our side, it seems to me, is in order. But, given the last five decades of American history, that is probably an oxymoron.