Like all megalomaniacs with political power – whether Russian or American – Putin is bound by certain laws of warfare. And like almost every commander-in-chief and general in both countries he ignores the most basic paradigms that determine victory or defeat. Power mongering, ethnocentric target fixation by both American leaders and Putin guarantee defeat. Putin focused on what he wanted rather than conducting a rational risk / benefit and target analysis. He’s certainly not alone in this. American presidents are renowned for thinking throwing enough human beings, money and (apparently) disposable weaponry can overcome any opposition. It can’t.
Despite what defense contractor CEOs (like Cheney) and their pocketed politicians avow, regardless of the type of threat, might doesn’t guarantee victory. Neither does technology (McNamara). It didn’t work with the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese, the Taliban, the Mujahideen, the IRA, or the American patriots of 1776.
And it won’t work against the Christian, American patriots of 2024.
I knew Bush’s war on terrorism was doomed the moment he sent conventional troops en masse into Afghanistan – doubly so into Iraq. I knew for the same reason we lost in Vietnam. I knew because I read military history. I knew because I understand the first paradigm of war.
I knew Putin’s invasion into Ukraine was doomed from the first Russian stepping foot across the border. Everything I saw after that confirmed my assessment. Putin was doomed in Ukraine for the same reason he failed in Afghanistan – for the same reason the United States failed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. The only U.S. president that had any sense of reality about invading any of these countries was President George H.W. Bush. When asked why he didn’t authorize Schwartzkopf to pursue Iraqi troops all the way to Baghdad during Desert Storm, he said “Because I knew it was a bitterly divided country.” His son’s failure to seek counsel from his more sagacious (and infinitely more intelligent) father doomed thousands of American troops to another Vietnam – two Vietnams!
I wish the same Dante’ damnation for Bush, Jr. that Johnson is probably experiencing now.
Putin’s façade of infallibility was shattered with the recent Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory and the capture of Kursk – a major city. He was unnerved when his Special Forces mutinied and moved on Moscow. He was able to contain that with still loyal Kremlin leadership. But there is a limit even to that loyalty.
Putin is in the most vulnerable position of his lifetime tenure as president of Russia because – like every leader in the world – his power; his influence, his authority is delicately balanced by the perceived legitimacy of the population over whom he rules. It is the Sword of Damocles having over every rulers’ heads. Just ask Czar Nicholas. Ask the Shah of Iran. Ask Vietnamese president Diem. Ask Machiavelli. Ask any ruler who has been overthrown by revolution.
The perceived legitimacy of the population is the key factor in determining victory or defeat in any war. The concept was identified by Sir Robert K. Thompson during his participation in the post-WW II colonial wars for national liberation of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Thompson attempted to educate and deter Westmoreland from Westy’s and McNamara’s World War II “bomb-them-into-the-Stone Age” body-count strategy but gave up and went back to England in disgust. The grossly mishandled Vietnamese “Strategic Hamlet” relocation program was an egregious aberration of Thompson’s success relocating the Malaysian population.
Putin’s tenure is the most tentative it’s ever been because he failed to correctly assess the nationalist fervor of the Ukrainian population. Like the Viet Cong, the Ukrainian people will never, never, stop fighting for their freedom (see: Rand Corp. study on Vietnam – the one Daniel Ellsberg tried to convince Congress with).
But Putin also failed to correctly assess his own Russian population’s attitude about being forced into another failed invasion. This reticence was evident in the slow progress the columns of Russian troops were making into Ukraine. There are thousands of Russian parents who lost sons in Afghanistan. There are thousands of Russian youth who lost dads, brothers or uncles in Afghanistan. In a country where bullshit is an art form, you can only bullshit a Russian for a certain length of time before he says “enough!”
The Ukrainian invasion of Russia and the occupation of a major Russian city has blown Putin’s perceived legitimacy of his population to smithereens. The fact that he had to use forced conscripts and mercenaries to sustain his invasion of Ukraine was telling. They are now throwing down their arms and surrendering en masse to Ukrainian troops. Its possible they view Ukrainian troops as the real liberators.
Like Hans Christian Andersen’s fable The Emperor’s New Clothes, Putin’ nakedness has been revealed. I believe the Russian people (and their representatives in the Kremlin) are ready to tell Putin “enough!”
See also:
Sir Robert K. Thompson; Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaysia and Vietnam; Studies in International Security #10, 1966.
Mao Tse-tung; On Guerrilla Warfare; 1937
Jerome Ch’en; Mao and the Chinese Revolution; 1965
Sun Tzu; The Art of War, (between 475 and 221 BCE); with a 1963 translation foreword by B.H. Liddel-Hart (author of The Indirect Approach): “Civilization might have been spared much of the damage suffered in the world wars of this century if the influence of Clausewitz’s monumental tomes On War had been blended with and balanced by a knowledge of Sun Tzu’s exposition “The Art of War.”
Col. Qiao Liang and Col. Wang Xiangsui; Unrestricted Warfare; 1999
Julian Paget: Counter-Insurgency Operations: Techniques of Guerrilla Warfare; 1967
David Galula; Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice; 1964
Che’ Guevara; On Guerrilla Warfare, 1961
Carlos Marighella; The Mini Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, June 1969
George K. Tanham; Communist Revolutionary Warfare: The Vietminh in Indochina, 1961
John S. Pustay; Counterinsurgency Warfare; 1965
Richard H. Sanger; Insurgent Era; 1967
John J. McKuen; The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War: A Psycho-Politico-Military Strategy of Counter-Insurgency (with a foreword by Sir Robert K. Thompson); 1966
U.S.M.C.; Small Wars Manual, 1940
Frank Kitson; Low Intensity Operations and Bunch of Five; 1977
General Grivas; On Guerrilla Warfare, 1962
Robert Taber; War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare, 2002
John A. Nagl; Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; 2002
Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC; The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century; 2004
…..to name just a few…..
