Andrei Martyanov, Losing Military Supremacy (2018) — a book review

18 September 2018

A reality warning — directed at American leadership

Andrei Martyanov's Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning makes a good companion to Guy Mettan's recent book analyzing the history of manufactured russophobia.

Caveat —my review barely plumbs the book's excellence

Do not let the few (following) extracts give you the idea that you fully appreciate the scope of Martyanov's many points and pieces of evidence.

There is virtually nothing in the 225 page text that one can skim, without missing something important to his arguments and their proofs.

Book's purpose

Martyanov — a Soviet-born military expert on Russian naval weapons, now working in the United States — picks up where Guy Mettan ends:

[T]he fragile mental of the American elites, especially after Donald Trump's victory, may force them to do the unthinkable and provoke a global military conflict. This must not be allowed to happen.

The main task today is to prevent by all means any possibility of this delusional, self-proclaimed exceptional nation [the United States] unleashing Armageddon because of frustration with its own weakness which was so suddenly and brutally exposed for the whole world to see [in Georgia, the Donbass and Syria].

Martyanov's theme boils down to four elements

I present these more clearly and succinctly than they appear in the book.

That is not an implied criticism of the author. His is a difficult subject. And he is dealing with an American audience that is hostile to history, strategic common sense, and cultural criticism.

Thematic element 1 — Americans do not know what war for survival is

The following extracts explain this idea:

The whole militarism cult in the US is built on a consistent mythologizing of American military history and her weapons based on a lack of serious knowledge among the American political and intellectual elites of precisely what real war is.

Russia's national history was and still remains a history filled with warfare. Russia's military history, especially that of the 19th and 20th centuries, dwarfs that of any other nation in the world.

Russians were constantly dealing with death and the horror of war, even in the deep rear, to say nothing of in the cities and villages at the front line or deep in the Nazi-occupied territories. Nazi atrocities . . . mass rape, torture and executions of Slavs and Jews became a norm . . . . Many major Soviet cities were utterly destroyed.

American culture simply doesn't know what fighting off an invader is like.

The whole notion of experiencing continental warfare's horrors . . . such as a massive destruction of property, starvation, massive dislocation, spread of diseases, rape, robbery, lawlessness — is completely alien to the overwhelming majority of the American public, including its military elite . . . .

Thematic element 2 — as a result of this experiential ignorance — American weapons systems are misguidedly expensive and, often, ineffective

As someone familiar with weapons design, implementation and use, Martyanov provides examples of our exaggerated sense of our weapons' effectiveness. He also addresses American leadership's unrealistic dismissal of Russian arms.

Martyanov explains the cultural difference this way:

The partial answer to some of these rather dismal failure of American military technology [— as the book sets out —] is that those weapons never had to be realistically effective since they were never used in actual defense of the United States.

Effectiveness, cost/effectiveness ratios and reliability were and remain defining characteristics of Russian weapons.

Thematic element 3 — American culture and economy have declined into unperceived weakness

This is one of the important messages in the book.

Perhaps I am biased in my prioritization. Allowing manufacturing and rare earths production, among other things, to flea our shores — have long been bases of my criticism of American leadership's lack of survival sense.

Of our (arguably inept) culture, Martyanov writes:

[T]he real issue lies . . . with the grotesque overvaluing of the US economy, much of which coming from "industries" which realistically do not define the actual power of a nation.

The whole notion of a nation being economically self-sufficient as was called for by mercantilists was sacrificed on the altar of free trade fundamentalism and the financial voodoo of the stock market. The financial balance sheet killed manufacturing skills required for true national greatness.

[I]t is useless to follow American economic data and indices, as they long ago stopped reflecting the real state of affairs in America and are so convoluted that is it not worth applying them for real analysis.

Modern America is ill . . . . Much more goes into success than mostly meaningless Wall Street economic indices and capitalization of the markets, let alone companies which produce nothing of value.

It is difficult to explain to people who consider iPhones' marketing gimmicks or another useless computer contraption in cars, or yet another wasteful feature on Facebook to be hi-tech.

Money is not a good measure of human accomplishment — the new smartphone and marijuana-addicted generation is not an indicator of any success just because they can afford yet another new model of some electronic toy, while being increasingly less educated, less knowledgeable and much less competent than the generation which preceded them.

Thematic element 4 — due to a combination of ignorance, belligerence and conceit — American analysts, strategists and leaders pursue strategically imbecilic policies

American leadership is useless because:

US elites have simply stopped producing any truly competent people . . . .

Most of these experts have never served a day in uniform, let alone in operational combat zones and are sometimes note even "book-smart", skipping most of the world's history and warfare experiences.

[I]t is . . . an axiom that the United States' current geopolitical position has been weakened tremendously tanks to those "experts" concentrated effort.

US policy makers and . . . its military leadership simply fail to grasp the consequences of their making a decision on the use of force based both on grossly-inflated threats while betting on the grossly-overrated capabilities of their own forces.

Nobody realistically threatens the existence of the United States, nobody plans to attack it unless attacked first, and that removes any pressures to be actually commensurate in the military sphere . . . .

[And what has American strategic ineptitude produced? How about this:]

May 9, 2015 marked the 70th [Russian] Anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. . . . [T]he procession marched in front of a podium where Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping . . . stood side by side.

Here, the worst nightmare of American geopolitical and foreign policy consensus was on display: the two most powerful Eurasian nations declaring full independence from the American vision of the world.

In sum — timely, perceptive and very worthwhile

Martyanov's book is about Americans' ignorance, rampaging hostility and cultural ineptitude.

His fear is that this unfortunate combination of traits is leading us toward a massive conflict with the Russian Federation.

He, Paul Craig Roberts and "the Saker" — all think that American and NATO expansion on Russia's borders — and the United States' unrepentant continuing provocativeness — will finally existentially threaten the Federation enough to provoke a deadly response.

Martyanov concludes that Russian conventional weapons — predominantly those involving advanced electronic warfare technology, cruise missiles, air defense, fighter jets and non-nuclear submarines — are enough to make our lives (and deaths) abroad, miserable.

And everyone agrees that Russia's (defensively operated) nuclear arms are sufficient to eliminate the United States.

Martyanov's conclusion is that ignorance-based American expansionism and threat escalation pose major problems. "They" (meaning other nations) are not out to get us.

My perspective focuses somewhat more on the evils generated by the US military industrial complex. Seeking perpetual profit, the Complex provokes international tumult all over the place. And because American national leadership is in the Complex's pocket, most of us do not recognize what is going on.

In a sense, reason and logic — which predominantly motivate Martyanov and most other writers on geopolitics — have nothing to do with the deadly conflicts the United States generates around the world. Greedy elites fuel these tumults to their benefit.

Thus the American leaders, whom Martyanov justly implies are foolish:

are operating not on the basis of reason — where mistakes can be rationally corrected

but on

foundations of greed and self-service — which reason, generally speaking, cannot touch.

This is why greed and avarice are considered to be deadly sins.

And that is why America's arguable deadly misbehavior around the world is more accurately traced to a morally rotten and selfish culture, than to errors of intellect and common sense.

This is (I think) what Martyanov means when he says, "Money is not a good measure of human accomplishment."

In my estimation, he probably should have pounded that lesson home more than he does.

The moral? — I recommend Losing Military Supremacy to anyone who values their existence

Wherever they live.

It is, however, probably too much too hope that the combination of Guy Mettan's Creating Russophobia and Martyanov's book will change enough minds to matter.

Meaningfully understanding both books requires a combination of open-mindedness, interest in culture and history — as well as a reality-based perspective.

Those qualities are notably absent among America's leaders. This, not surprisingly, is Andrei Martyanov's main point.

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Andrei Martyanov, Losing Military Supremacy (2018) — a book review