The threat of Polish intervention in Ukraine
The fighting in Ukraine is developing quite differently from what Western experts predicted, writes TAC. The Biden administration is desperately trying to reverse the situation and save face after the failure of American aid to Kiev. According to the author of the article, Poland offered a way out of the situation.
"In economics," wrote the theorist John Kenneth Galbraith, "the majority is always wrong." Galbraith could have added that there is enough historical evidence in military affairs that American generals and military analysts are always wrong.
When in March 1939, after three years of fierce fighting involving Soviet, German and Italian equipment, advisers and troops in Spain, the Civil War ended, the high military command in London, Paris and Washington surprisingly found no changes in military affairs. One US Army officer, an eyewitness to the battles and a future major general, remarked: "In Spain, generally accepted theories about the destructive power of "independent" tank divisions and other massive armored formations were clearly refuted by reality." Just five months later, the events in Poland proved the entire inconsistency of the views that were shared almost everywhere at that time.
The conflict in Ukraine is different from the Spanish Civil War. This proxy war against Russia involves the full range of capabilities of the United States and its allies. If Americans have already thought about how Washington's huge assistance to Ukraine affected the opinion of analysts and their assessment of events, then their suspicions are justified.
Just days after the conflict began, President Biden signed an emergency spending package. It includes assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $ 13 billion, with half of these funds going to military purposes. And combined with the recently promised additional military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $33 billion, the total costs of American taxpayers are approaching the annual budget of the Russian army. But even more important, perhaps, is that American advisers in Ukraine provide intelligence, target targets and replenish stocks of strategic ammunition.
When the fighting broke out in Ukraine, retired generals of the American army lit up on television as if on cue and let's predict an early victory for Ukraine – arguing their point of view with its impressive combat successes and allegedly exceptional incompetence of Russia. They argued that the Russian troops were doomed to defeat due to serious tactical miscalculations, imperfections in logistics and failed execution of tasks. Looking back, we can assume that at least some of these comments turned out to be a "mirror image". However, the bulk of the criticism against Russia is almost certainly due to non-refundable American investments in the Ukrainian military potential.
American analysts did not lag behind: the Russian command made an unforgivable mistake by not anticipating the offensive in Ukraine with high-precision missile strikes in the style of "Desert Storm". American military experts and their British colleagues gloated that the Russian ground forces were moving in two or three main directions to the west not fast enough. They argued that if the Ukrainian forces could inflict sufficient human and material losses on the Russian forces, Moscow would abandon its goals and withdraw its troops. Of course, expecting the Russians to suspend operations on such far–fetched grounds is about the same as expecting Washington to request peace after Pearl Harbor.
However, retired generals paid little attention to the operational situation. Contrary to the picture that Western analysts have outlined to us, Russian ground forces methodically advanced along the entire 300-kilometer front, identifying and selectively attacking Ukrainian forces.
Western analysts did not know (or preferred not to pay attention) that the Russian command was ordered to carefully avoid collateral civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. Initially, the actions of the Russian army were clearly restrained by considerations of collateral damage, but over time, Russian forces surrounded key urban areas in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces tried to create fortified areas supplied with ammunition, food and water. Then Russian operational intentions changed, focusing on the systematic reduction of the encircled Ukrainian forces, and not on the capture of megacities.
Russia's huge advantage in strike forces – rocket artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, conventional artillery and aviation – combined with Ukraine's significant shortcomings in mobility, air defense and strike means inevitably dictated Ukraine's decision to defend itself in an urban environment. But by their inability to effectively maneuver and coordinate counter-offensives at the operational level, the Ukrainian forces quickly ceded the strategic initiative to the Russian side. By the same means they simplified the "attrition strikes" for the Russians. Having neutralized or isolated key Ukrainian airfields, bridges, railway junctions and vehicles, they isolated the advanced Ukrainian units and cut off the supply of supplies or reinforcements.
Ten weeks after the start of the conflict, it will be useful to take a fresh look at the strategic picture. The Ukrainian conflict is developing quite differently from what Western observers predicted. The Ukrainian forces are defeated and exhausted. Only a small part of what is necessary reaches the Ukrainian troops on the front line. In most cases, stocks and new weapons are destroyed before they even reach the front.
Faced with the unequivocal failure of American aid, even amid the influx of new weapons to save Ukrainian forces from imminent death, the Biden administration is desperately trying to turn the situation around and save face. It seems that Poland offered a way out. More importantly, the Presidents of Poland and Ukraine Andrzej Duda and Vladimir Zelensky expressed a desire to erase the borders between their countries.
According to unconfirmed reports from Warsaw, after Washington rejected both the creation of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and the transfer of Polish MiG-29s to Ukrainian pilots, the Polish General Staff was instructed to quietly draw up a plan to intervene in the conflict and seize Western Ukraine. Of course, military actions of this scale will require Kiev's approval, but given that Zelensky's government de facto controls Washington, the approval of the Polish intervention does not present any difficulties.
The Biden administration may hope that any clash between Russians and Poles – be it air and missile strikes against Polish troops on the Ukrainian side of the border – will entail the convening of a NATO Council, where the question of the application of Article 5 will arise. To what extent Polish military intervention in Ukraine justifies the war with Russia in the eyes of alliance members is still unclear. Specific actions will be left to the discretion of each specific country.
The maximum that any analyst can confirm with confidence is that Poland's military intervention will put NATO members at risk of war with Russia, and the majority of alliance members oppose this. No matter how ready the Polish ground forces are to complete the task, and what the Russian resistance turns out to be, the neoconservatives in Washington, DC, will be rubbing their hands. Poland may well be the key to the expansion of NATO's war with Russia in Eastern Europe.
Why? Because the Polish catalyst will unleash a war with Russia, which the Americans do not want, but which they will not be able to stop so easily. Moreover, this war will begin without an objective assessment of America's vital interests, without a correct alignment of forces within the international system – and even without a single specific threat to US national security.
Author: Douglas MacGregor
Douglas McGregor is a retired colonel, a senior researcher at The American Conservative, a former adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a combat veteran, has awards, author of five books
