Liberty Bristles

The other day, Dima (The Military Summary Channel), took a stab at defining the war in Ukraine. He proposed that if we were to label 2023 as the year of the Greatest Ukrainian (failed) Counteroffensive, that maybe 2024 will become known as the year of the F-16, or the year of the Patriot defense system, or maybe the year of F-16 versus Mig 31. He frames the war as having become a competition over air superiority, that air superiority is the defining aspect. Maybe, I dunno. I’m wondering about the maps he and other mappers use. They have a zillion little black lines on them. I haven’t figured out who-all made those lines, but they reflect (with unknown inaccuracy) the locations of field fortifications. Some of the fortifications are visible as trenches in overhead photography, most of are not. Dima very often talks about the process of ‘digging in” and consolidating positions by digging in deeper. All the digging is in response to what-all is flying around above. The ultimate score remains on the ground level, though. Either people can walk around on the surface doing useful things or they cannot. I like my own theorizing; go figure. This war features a lot of aspects into which I invested lots of words in my longer writing. The underground plane of war one of them. “Air superiority” to include drones and helicopters. Large machines. All that. The many aspects are held together by reconsidering risk distances and aggregate tactics on a broad scale. The war in Ukraine highlights incessant localized efforts to outflank and envelope. Observers highlight artillery one day, FPV drones the next, field fortifications the next, prospects of air-to air combat, then the use of larger building-busting munitions, and on. So maybe go back to the maps and look at the little black lines. They seem a bit chaotic. No Maginot Line. But besides vertical depth, they have horizontal depth, at least in eastern Ukraine. They doubtless follow topographic factors, some geologic factors, some past human diggings including urban developments, and other influence we don’t think of, but the web they produce is a huge defensive structure. It has helped the Ukrainians slow down the Russians, just as a similar web helped the Russians defeat the Greatest Ukrainian Counteroffensive in 2023. The Russians enjoy great superiority in materiel of all kinds, but ground is ground and distance is distance. Go look at the ground defenses. The Russians grind on, strategy and tactics, tactics and strategy. They have made those words cooperate, not compete. They are slowly breaching the web of Ukrainian ground fortifications, a web that is not continuous west. When they do breach that complex wall, the little negotiating power Ukrainians have left will go up poof. The best time to negotiate is right now. Which brings me to JD Vance. I’m happy with the selection. He strikes me as a way, way better natural strategist than a Blinken, Noland, Stoltenberg, or…oooof, an Austin. Vance apparently intuits, correctly, that if the “West” would like Ukrainian nationals to have a homeland, it will have to be much smaller than was Soviet Ukraine, or not be at all. There is no need for it join NATO — the need for NATO itself a real question.

On the Long Prompts page, I’ll put a conversation I recently had with ChatGPT about the press. I’m pretty sure, after donning a small hat over my little Constitutional Scholar brain thing, that “of the press” refers to a category of freedom that we all enjoy as individuals. It does not recognize some collective identity of humans. The later (recognition of “the press” as a group of persons) did not congeal jurisprudentially until well into the 20^th Century, and then just barely. I bring this up because I was idly drawn to a headline about ‘Citizen Journalism,’ and ended up at the Wikipedia page on said notion. Sad that we have the term Citizen Journalist, as it serves to highlight the existence of a supposedly professional press. Heck, it’s sad that we have the term ‘journalist.” I’m a fan of The Citizen Free Press aggregator site, as I’m sure many of you are. “Citizen.” “Free.”  “Press.”  Nice. Journalist? Not so nice. In order to exercise the freedoms to explore, discover, question, and opine (especially about things political), nobody but nobody needs to have heard anything in any course with “journalism” in its title. Nobody at CNN or who works for the AP or UPI, or any of those organizations, has any enhanced freedom of speech or of the press beyond what you and I have. What they enjoy is a strength in resources that gained them some additional access to government. In this Internet age, it is no longer needed that government give favored access to specific organizations due to the latter having greater broadcast capacity on some electromagnetic bandwidths. Our access to the Internet enables us to delete “press” as a category of people with any special jurisprudential standing at all. We best do that. Too many organizations have turned the words “press” and “journalist” into synonyms for “propaganda” and “partisan” — anti-American at that.

Annoying as hell, the passive voice as an impunity finesse might seem like one of those tiny constant bothers, like the Do Not Disturb tag constantly falling off the room lever. It is not a good thing, but it can be a tell. We know not to comment much right after shocking events, what with the normal errors and falsehoods of early reports. Still, a headline aggregated in Citizen Free Press citing the New York Post just really chapped my cheek. Secret Service blames local police, says it was tasked with securing properties surrounding Trump’s Pa. rally (nypost.com) The offending expression appears a few times. For instance, “The Secret Service blamed local police for failing to secure the rooftop from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, insisting it was outside of the perimeter the federal agency was tasked with protecting.” The whole excuse seems ludicrous on its surface, but the sad tell is the “was tasked” part. Who the heck makes these was tasked things? How does a reporter let a spokesperson get away with such? Secret Service tasks just fall off the doorknob now.

OK, today, Geoff Demarest made an idle comment on the Willy OAM site Russian Troops Tunnel Under UA Lines – CRITICAL Area Under THREAT – Ukraine War Map Update News (youtube.com) Here is what he posted:

“Great job, again, Willy. Significant comment at the end. We too often talk about what little experience some army or other has. NATO countries don’t have that much experience in the kind of war being waged by the Russians, and we have not been doing all that well strategically in the experiences we have had lately. I hate going full-on boring pedant, but I suggest politely that for your part you maybe, kinda be a tad more economical in your use of “attritional war” as though that were a best-fit for this thing. We are the ones who seem to think attrition can be a core winning strategy. The classic strategists don’t suggest that as a winning way overall. Another commenter here suggested to me that any strategic pundit could outline attritional warfare doctrine to me. I don’t think they could. Iam not convinced there is such doctrine. Look again. Attrition is an activity, a way, a means, a thing to do, of course. Plenty of writers (Liddel Hart comes to mind) have railed against reliance or faith in attrition strategies (WWI, mostly), but a “doctrine” of “attrition war?” We might have an electronic warfare field manual or a special warfare manual. Do we have an attrition warfare manual. Is there a chapter I missed on a whole warfare? A ‘doctrine’ of attrition war would outline where, when, how and with what — as the winning leg. [Gosh, maybe you’re right. Maybe some clutch of Victoria Nulands planned this somewhere using one of their master’s theses] The Russians are busy weakening Ukrainian strength in all ways, sure, but the Russian battlefield strategy is one of aggregate tactics to take and hold ground. Their strategic objective is not to weaken the enemy (although of course that is an intermediate goal; in what war is it not?). Theirs is to take ground. Gliding our strategic conversation away from ‘attrition’ and back toward ‘battlefield maneuver’ would be consequential in that it might help us realize that we will not take ground in Russia as a counter. Even our getting lost Ukrainian ground back militarily looks to be costly in the extreme. NATO (or Ukraine, whatever) is slowly losing and is likely to lose more ground, slowly perhaps. But continuing to slowly lose ground in a war of maneuver (in part because of some notion about attrition) is not a wise long-term strategy, is it? What do attritionistas think is ultimately being attrited? Ukrainian resolve? Russian resolve? American attention-span? Ukrainian economic capacity? The Ukrainian army? European resolve? All that maybe yes, but what most importantly is being attrited, and we need to admit it sooner than later, is the size of Ukraine! The Russians are waging a multi-form war, a war by all means of struggle, a war that includes guerrilla actions (including inside NATO), economic actions, diplomatic actions, infrastructure and war capacity attrition, and battlefield maneuver. Our intoning ‘attrition’ all the time makes it seem as though if we just hang in there, the Ruskies will ultimately give up. Hear what Arthur Connan Doyle said of the Boer War. “The deepest instincts of the nation told it must fight and win, or forever abdicate its position in the world.” He was speaking of the British. We do not have a deep instinct about Ukraine. We don’t even have a shallow one. A Russian correspondent or novelist, on the other hand, could repeat Conan Doyle’s quote today with perfect apropos. By the way, we might label the Boer War one of attrition in that the British decided upon wearing the Boers out, including by capturing their families. Maneuver? The Boers could maneuver. The winners get to put the type-label on a war, and the British do not refer to the Boer War as a war of great British maneuver superiority. Maybe I’m wrong, but my bet is that the Russians will come up with something more glorious than a ‘war of attrition.'”

Geoff might be wrong about attrition war doctrine. Maybe there is such a thing. Much larger things have escaped his notice. If you know of something regarding attrition warfare doctrine, please inform. I think there is a book by a fellow named Carter, I think. Not sure if it counts as doctrine. Maybe.

Hope you all had a happy, celebratory, hopeful 4th of July. We sang America the Beautiful in church last weekend and it was poignant more than I can remember it ever being. At Ace of Spades HQ, WeirdDave had “asked AI to generate the most AMERICAN image ever.” Go check it out Ace of Spades HQ (mu.nu) So I thought I’d imitate. I asked Chat GPT to generate an image combining themes from America the Beautiful and from the Pledge of Allegiance. Not bad, Americana-wise. It’s not easy to ask it to make small adjustments without it making an unrequested bunch of its own, so I was stuck with the downtown skyline on the to of the peak, but city on a hill whatever.

Willy OAM, who has a popular website discussing the Ukraine war, often say something like, “According to attrition warfare doctrine…” Could anyone out there remind me where such doctrine is written down or who is the supposed attrition warfare guru? I’m uncertain there really is such a thing, or if there is, it is pretty thin gruel. Yes, attrition is a method generally mixed with other ways of going about battles, campaigns, wars and so on, but a whole doctrine on ‘attrition warfare’? Educate me. For some reason I ignored it, missed it, dismissed it. I dunno. Even the greatest living military strategy theorist (the current GLMST) can suffer gaps. Don’t want that. Please speak up.

Even the dullest ends-ways-means strategerist admits the basic wisdom of balancing one’s capacity to fight with whatever he wants to do and how. There is no separate section on capacity to fight in On Multiform War, but maybe in the 2025 update. It’s efficient for the purpose of discussion to divide war-making capacity into four broad categories – capacity to create lethal mass; capacity to visit that lethal mass on the enemy; capacity to create influential ideas; and capacity to deliver those ideas to the right audiences. I usually don’t count resolve (morale, will, diligence) as a separate category. I prefer to keep that quantity aside as the psychological motor of the other four categories. No big deal, we could make resolve the fifth category, and we could even add deterring the other guy’s capacities as a sixth. Secrecy and spying might be a useful seventh category. With all that as a preface, let’s consider what Arthur Conan Doyle said of British resolve during the Boer War: “The deepest instincts of the nation told it must fight and win, or forever abdicate its position in the world.” Seems applicable. What do I really know about Russian resolve as to the war in Ukraine? Meh. You could easily have better information and insight. My just reading what Putin has to say is a sorely slim slice of input. Still, it seems that for Russia — that is, Russia the nation, the Russians of Russia writ large — losing the war is not an option; whereas for the nascent inchoate nation of Ukraine, losing sooner than later might be the preferred solution. (No, I don’t presume to speak for the Ukrainian nation any more than for the Russian.) What is the NATO level of resolve? It feels sketchy to even lend NATO enough person status as to assign it a level of unified will. As for battlefield morale, some units on the Ukraine side have excellent morale and discipline. Many do not. (Sadly, among the ones that do are some straight up Nazis. Odd that.) Russian battlefield morale has improved generally. So… looking at capacities overall, the Russian side can create more lethal mass and can move that mass. It has excellent spying capacity. Moreover, the Russians appear to have greater resolve at every level. As for ideas and the ability to deliver them to the right audiences, is there really any NATO advantage? What seems to be the NATO plan, execution now impending – is a summer offensive surge against the Russian lines.  It does not appear balanced with capacity, unless the ends are quite limited. The Russians have to see that. They know the means do not exist to kick them out entirely.