June 10, 2023

There is an American military saying: “Professionals think of logistics. Amateurs think of strategy.” To that you can add, “And Russians think of neither.”

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Historically, Russia has been really bad at warfare. Czars and Communist dictators feared both a professional army and a well-armed citizen militia. So, they relied on conscript armies, shoved thoughtlessly into human wave attacks. When they did manage to win, it was as part of a coalition, where someone else actually won the big battles. In the Napoleonic Wars, it was Wellington’s coalition forces. In WWII, America provided everything to Stalin through Lend-Lease, and then annihilated the best of the Axis land, air, and sea forces. By mid-1942, the Soviets faced only inferior German armies, allies like Romania, or auxiliary units, like the Hiwi.  The Russians even managed to be the big losers of WWI, though they were technically on the winning side the entire war.

But Nicholas II and Rasputin must be chuckling now, somewhere in eternity, as the current Putin fiasco has exceeded them all. Putin’s strategy last February, to the extent he had one, was to land some men at the Kiev airport, have a bunch more drive to Kiev by road, then hold a giant victory parade. Apparently, he expected Ukraine to just roll over, as it did in 2014, when he took Crimea without a shot.

He also expected America and NATO to acquiesce, like Obama did in 2014, refusing lethal aid to Ukraine. Pres. Trump, of course, agreed to send weapons during his time in office, but also wanted some info on Biden corruption, which got him impeached for his trouble. Biden, of course, went back to Obama’s policy, holding up weapons shipments in 2021. Funny how this was not cause for his impeachment.

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So, you can’t fully blame Putin, especially after seeing Biden’s disgraceful exit from Afghanistan, from thinking he had an easy mark. What he didn’t count on, though, was what Don Rumsfeld called “New Europe.”

After the Cold War, NATO countries were happy to demobilize. The Germans especially, as one of their two major parties, the Social Democrats had long been compromised by the KGB, while the pro-American Christian Democrats came under the leadership of Angela Merkel, aka “Frau Dummkopf,” who was a likely Soviet asset. Germany’s military was left to decay.

But the Poles and their neighbors, the Baltic countries, saw things quite differently. The relative weakness of Russia the last few decades was an opportunity to join NATO, modernize their military, and prepare for the day when the Russians started being Russians again.

Poland is truly formidable now. Their military is superbly trained and equipped, having been blooded in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The transfer of Soviet military equipment to Ukraine was a two-way deal. As the Ukrainians get the easier-to-operate old stuff from Poland and other Eastern Europeans, the best new American equipment goes into Polish arsenals.

Poland is now rapidly expanding the size of its army. So are its neighbors in the Baltics, new NATO member Finland, and soon Sweden.

Of all the surprises of this war Putin has suffered, the biggest one must be that it didn’t matter that the American President was an incompetent jerk. The guy he really had to worry about was somebody named Mateusz Morawiecki. Thanks to Polish help over the last eight years, Ukraine was ready when the Russians attacked.