Strategy vs. Justification

Operation Desert Storm was the single most successful military campaign of the 20th century.

The F-15 is the single most successful fighter aeroplane ever developed, and may possibly be eclipsed by the F-35, which will inevitably replace both it and the A-10.

Neither of these things actually needed to happen. Desert Storm was launched on false pretenses, and joint strike fighters are not defensive weapon systems.

I have started to notice that most of the anti-state crowd seems to have its blinders on when it comes to the rare instances when governments actually get something right for a change. It is certainly a rare occurrence, and for the most part, any successes of government programs are entirely down to individuals being allowed to do what needs to be done, rather than rigid adherence to protocol and tradition. Bureaucracy is the enemy of progress.

This article is meant as my way of slapping some sense into my friends regarding the subject of warfare. By now, I hope that I’ve made my anti-war and even broader anti-military position quite clear. That being said, I can still understand why warfare happens, why the military is, given the current state of things, a necessary evil, and why the military does certain things. I can criticise the US Army all day long for abolishing essential basic training methods such as the shark attack, while at the same time telling people not to enlist in any branch, because then you’ll be complicit in gratuitous American imperialism… my criticism of which, along with my refusal to “stand with Ukraine” apparently makes me a Putin puppet, but hoo boy, do I have things to say about that, and I fully intend to when I am finally able. I am quite comfortable saying that the entire US government (including the military) is a criminal organisation, while also saying that not every government agent (including individual soldiers) is a sociopathic criminal or even blindly complicit in criminal activities.

War is hell, but it’s also fun, which is why we re-enact it, be it virtual or live-action, at full scale or in miniature. What we’re doing here, as wargamers, is studying history, looking at the actual events, discerning cause-and-effect, and empirically applying them to hypothetical scenarios. The effectiveness of weaponry, tactics, and strategy, are all well-known. However, all participation is voluntary, and no-one gets hurt (most of the time, anyway). Wargames are also practise for actual warfare, because as we all know, some people are inevitably going to violate the NAP, and the rest of us need to be ready for that.

The other issue, and this is far more pressing, is that the military luddites who style themselves as “reformists” are not your friends. It has been widely suggested that, under the guidance of the Fighter Plane Mafia, the Persian Gulf War could have dragged on for years, resulted in tens of thousands of coalition casualties, and possibly even been lost. On the same token, the reformists were the very same people predicting that it would be “Bush’s Vietnam,” because people like Pierre Sprey, James Burton, and even John Boyd had a long track record of projecting their own failures on to everyone else. The Persian Gulf War of 1991 was everything that a war should be: quick and decisive. However, a war that is a military success is the opposite of a financial success, and the cathedral is in the business of war to make money… by bilking it from the taxpayer, thus keeping them in a state of perpetual desperation.

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. – George Orwell, 1984

While piracy by another name is certainly one way to profit off of a war, it is far more profitable to be in the business of resupplying and rebuilding. We are seeing this now in Ukraine: the same people who keep Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a leash, thus escalating the Ukrainian Civil War, are the same people who are now pouring just enough weapons into the country to drag the conflict on indefinitely, and also pledging to help rebuild the country. BlackRock is behind literally all of it.

For the Russo-Ukrainian War, however, I think it should look like this:

No, the irony is not lost on me that the colours of the right are the same as those of the Ukrainian flag, despite that side being overwhelmingly pro-Russian. Also, LazerPig, if you ever read this, you have my permission to rip Bill Astore a new one for being a massive fanboy of Sprey and Spinney, and for hating on the F-111 Aardvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark so much. My beef with him has more to do with his WWII distoriography, economic illiteracy, knee-jerk authoritarian solutions to every single problem in society, constant back-peddling, and my most recent discovery, his use of sock puppets. Also, Bill, if you read this, don’t even try to lie to me about that last one, because I’m a bloody web developer, and identifying sock puppets doesn’t even require such a high level of internet-savviness!

Something that I failed to mention in my article about the situation in Ukraine is that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected on the promises of ending the cartoonish level of corruption in the government, kicking out the radical ethno-nationalists, and reaching a settlement with Donetsk and Lugansk, thus ending the eight-year civil war. He did none of those things, and instead allowed the war to escalate simply by refusing to come to the negotiating table. Unfortunately, because most people who have an opinion on the subject didn’t start paying attention until 2022, they assume that Russia invaded for no good reason, and Ukraine dindu nuffin, when reality is considerably more complicated than that. The problem, as I have noticed, is that people think Ukraine has a right to self-determination, but Donetsk and Lugansk evidently don’t, because, and I’m not making this up, “borders are sacred.” Really? Does this apply to immigration? Ha ha, thought not.

Unfortunately, the pro-war propagandists love to paint a simple picture of childish, black-and-white morality à la Star Wars, when the reality is and always has been more like Game of Thrones. While it is true that escalation is bad, and wars of aggression are bad, the invaders do not need to be the good guys for the defenders to be bad guys. I say it all the time about WWII: there were no good guys. Tommies, Yanks, Reds, Krauts, and Japs alike were all a bunch of fucking war criminals, and it’s not as if the Chinks, Poles, and Frogs were entirely innocent either. Have I triggered anyone with all those slurs? Good. Cope and seethe, bitch.

As for how this ends, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think the new borders have already been drawn. I say this because Russia sucks at invasions and always has, but is very good at waging defensive wars. Now that the fighting has largely died down for the winter, the Russian forces have the opportunity to dig in, and if western nations abandon Ukraine (which is in their best interest, since they can only bleed the taxpayers so much to pay for military aid), then Ukraine is screwed. As I already mentioned, it looks like Vladimir Putin will get exactly what he wants… what he really wants, not what he says he wants. To know what I mean, you have to think strategically. Without the Crimean ports of Kerch and Sevastopol, Russia has no ice-free deep-water ports. The Kerch Strait Bridge was never a viable means of transporting large amounts of goods from those ports to the Russian mainland, so a direct land connection must be made, hence the need to secure Zaporozh’ye and Kherson. Kharkiv is a distraction… always was. And yet, despite the absolute clown show that Gonzalo Lira’s roundtable usually is, the most comedically bizarre claim I ever heard came from LazerPig, who has been right about almost everything up until now.

In the aftermath of his “debate” against Gonzalo Lira (formerly known as Coach Red Pill, BTW), LazerPig said something truly beyond the pale: that Ukraine will win this war. If that comment was made just to further piss off Lira, I can let that slide. But if it’s serious, I have to wonder what he thinks victory will look like… Because if a Ukrainian victory means re-establishing the pre-2014 borders, that’s not going to happen. If a Ukrainian victory means completely pushing out the Russian Army and re-establishing the pre-2022 borders, that seems possible but highly unlikely. Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozh’ye and Kherson are technically already part of the Russian Federation (if you believe the results of the referenda, that is), and will most likely remain so. Considering that the whole “we must de-Nazify Ukraine” is nothing more than a propaganda mantra meant to rally the Russian people (which didn’t work, none of us believe the government, and nobody actually wants to fight in this damn war), the goal was never to take over all of Ukraine. However, it gets worse. LazerPig also made the claim that 87% of Ukrainians, including ethnic Russians, want the Russian Army to withdraw and just give up. Really? I guess everyone I’ve met from Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea must be part of the 13% then, because not one of them wants to go back to being under Ukrainian rule, not even after nine years of war and economic sanctions. If, however, that particular survey didn’t include Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea, I guess that’s an admission that those places aren’t Ukrainian. Honestly, IDK, IDC, IDGAS.

I’m sorry, I originally meant for this article to be a little broader in scope, rather than just another rant about Ukraine. Nonetheless, I’m not changing it. Dumbass westerners who only starting studying eastern European history in 2022 and think they know what’s going on in Russia but don’t even speak the language should STFU, regardless of whether they’re pro-Z or anti-Z (and if you don’t even know what that means, you definitely shouldn’t be opining on the subject). Anyway, I’m done, fuck off, I will see you again in a week. Byyeeeeeeeeeee!