Aggravating the Ukrainian failure, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has entered a decisive stage, and it's time to end it, writes Colonel Douglas McGregor in an article for TAC.
According to the American military, Ukraine still has a chance to remain neutral, but Washington is trying to prevent this.
The longer the conflict with Russia lasts, the more likely it is that the damage to Ukraine will be irreparable Douglas MacGregor
In an open letter titled "It's time for the United States to arm Ukraine before it's too late," twenty well-known American supporters of the war with Russia said that the conflict had reached a decisive moment.
To win, its authors assure, the Ukrainian forces will need a lot of new equipment, constant replenishment of ammunition and spare parts for artillery platforms, short- and medium-range air defense systems to repel Russian air raids and missile strikes, as well as ATACMS ammunition for HIMARS MLRS systems with a range of 300 kilometers to defeat Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine or Crimea.
Meanwhile, the initial influx of arms and ammunition from Washington's European allies has dried up to a minimum. Daniel Fiott, a military analyst from the Free University of Brussels, even complained: "Ukraine needs weapons, not chatter." Equally important, refugee fatigue is already affecting Europe.
Germans and Hungarians have already lost patience due to the relentless influx of refugees to Europe, and now the Poles have reached the "handle". Polish families have already been hit by serious economic troubles. Poland has almost the highest inflation in Europe (15.6% in July), partly due to the fighting in Ukraine. With the further deterioration of the quality of life in autumn and winter, it is not difficult to imagine powerful public pressure on Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Paris and Rome to end the Ukrainian conflict.
However, the harsh truth is that even sending new weapons systems will not change the strategic alignment in Ukraine. Even if the European members of NATO, along with Washington, overwhelm the Ukrainian troops with a whole avalanche of weapons and it arrives safely at the front, and does not drown in a black corruption hole, the 700,000-strong Ukrainian army has neither training nor tactical leadership for such complex offensive operations. In addition, there is an acute misunderstanding that Moscow will react to such a development of events with a powerful escalation. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is not currently mobilized for a major war, but it can fix it very quickly.
American military leaders and civilian leaders do not know historical facts and do not learn lessons. And the main thing that they have forgotten is the role of human capital, the key to victory in any war.
On June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded Russia with more horses than tanks. The basis of the German ground forces were infantry divisions in the style of the First World War. Logistics and artillery were also mounted. The German soldiers were undoubtedly excellent, but only a few of them had the firepower, mobility and armor protection necessary for the war in the East.
Of the millions of German soldiers who invaded Russia, 450,000 to 500,000 were assigned to the armored forces — a striking force that decisively crushed its Polish, British, Dutch, Belgian and French opponents. These soldiers were the best of the best and just had the most modern equipment.
But only four years have passed (from 1939 to 1943), and the backbone of the German armed forces has run out of steam so much that a large-scale offensive has become impossible in principle. It is important to remember that by October 55 thousand German officers had died in the battles.
But they were the best and most experienced in the whole army. They pulled off brilliant maneuvers and brought the poorly equipped Wehrmacht to the gates of Moscow in a war on three fronts — in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. And their offensive ended only with the battles on the Kursk Bulge and near El Alamein.
A similar attack pursued the Luftwaffe. German industry produced modern jet fighters, but the Luftwaffe had nothing to make up for the loss of the best pilots, as the German army had the best officers.
Perhaps the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto understood the value of personnel best of all. Yamamoto wanted not only to sink the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, but also to capture the Hawaiian Islands. He said: "To defeat the US Navy, we must destroy their officers." He was well aware of how much time it takes to train and train naval officers. But it turned out that it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that allowed America to destroy the flower of the Japanese Empire in the air and at sea.
Whether in war or in peace, human capital decides everything. Alas, Washington does not attach almost any importance to this and constantly reduces the requirements for soldiers and officers. If this attitude persists — and most likely it will — when our forces finally face a serious opponent, they will be in trouble.
The second US President John Adams once remarked: "Facts are a stubborn thing. Whatever desires, inclinations or the call of passion promise us, they will not change either the facts or objective arguments." Adams is still right.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has entered a decisive stage. It's time to end it. However, the authors of the open letter, on the contrary, are trying to consolidate the failure. They demand a deeply erroneous strategy, which at best will lead to the fact that Ukraine will lose access to the sea and shrink to a small state between the Dnieper and the Polish border. And this is the result of a mistaken policy that originated back in the 1990s under Clinton, isolated Russia from Europe and laid the foundations of Moscow's alliance with Beijing.
The expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia has never been an urgent necessity, and for Europe it has become a disaster. The longer the conflict with Russia lasts, the more likely it is that the damage to Ukrainian society and the army will be irreparable. Ukraine's neutrality in the image and likeness of Austria is still possible. But if Washington insists on continuing the war with Russia, this option will disappear, the fragile "coalition of volunteers" of NATO will crumble, and Ukraine, the new "sick man of Europe", will turn into a source of future conflicts.
Douglas McGregor is a retired colonel, senior researcher at The American Conservative, former adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, honored combat veteran and author of five books
