The funny part is that anybody who's actually played a strategy game like StarCraft would've understood why Russia was bound to win. If we're using gaming terms, then what NATO does is basically a rush. You try to do a quick overwhelming attack, and hope that you destroy enough of the opponent's infrastructure so that they can't recover and continue fighting. However, when a rush fails, then it quickly turns into a logistics game where each side tries to secure resources and establish production. Whoever ends up being able to do logistics better wins the long game. This is basically where we are with Ukraine now.
Amusingly, RUSI just published a great paper explaining this dynamic, I'm guessing Jens didn't read it :)
before a war starts, everyone has dreams of the initial rush succeeding spectacularly, because it's an incredibly bloodless and quick way to finish a war.
thing is, sane people also plan for the rush failing, and how to win after that.
fascists will instead go "if the rush fails, we've got nothing. so the rush better not fail"
nazi logisticians told the nazi army in ww2 that they basically if they didnt win before winter, they had no chance of winning. this was calculated before barbarossa. it was a very unpopular point of view at the time, so the report gut buried.
the nazis then decided to go ahead anyway, with no contingency for the failure of the initial offensive.
mere will is not enough to triumph, but these types will never face this fact.
Exactly, the fact that the west didn't have any plan B is the most shocking thing about the whole war for me. Like yeah it's great if your initial strategy works and you get an easy win, but you gotta have some contingencies for when things go wrong. Seems like politics trumped logic both with the nazis and the west today.
and they're still not ramping up armament production. they've had what, 2 years to figure out that this is an attritional war and they're STILL stuck at "but surely you can turn dollar bills directly into artillery shells if you wish hard enough".
for fuck's sake, it's artillery shells, not a mars mission. we know how to make them. we know how to crank them out. they can build amazon warehouses quickly, but somehow couldnt build 92 armament factories in all this time?!
That's the neat part: [I'm slowly getting convinced—they certainly are acting as if they can't—that] because of all the de-industrialization they don't.
eh, there are probably still a bunch of retired workers who could be tempted back for a nice salary. they could teach the newbies how to make this stuff.
and you could get so many actually motivated smart workers if you dropped a plant and offered good salaries for manufacturing work. a lot of these production line improvements tend to come from motivated line workers trying to crank more out.
i dont think the problems are really about know-how. yeah, it's a bottleneck, so you cant just ramp up production in 6 months, but again, they've had at least 2 years. more if you realize that they've been anticipating this war for like a decade.
the main problem is that this political/economic system simply no longer has a button for you know, reality-based intervention by the state. so they're left with pushing the two remaining buttons they have. unfortunately, you cant outsource or austerity your way out of this problem.
The eastern front of WW2 is a case study in this too. The nazis had early success in their rush, but ultimately failed to get the caucasus oil fields, and their advance ground to a halt.
As the USSR finally started to push the nazis back, they were tempted / feinted into doing the same encirclements that the nazis had been doing to them and having success with. Problem is, that any time you do these encirclements, you leave other areas exposed and weak, and if your enemy sees it coming and knows how to regroup quickly, they can avoid the trap, and attack you at your new weak points. Eventually the USSR learned to advance the front line slow and steady, and not to take the bait. They were even tempted to do the same for Berlin, but years of experience taught them to play the long-resource game, and advance the line steadily.
Yup, and now we're seeing exact same strategy being applied in Ukraine. Russia is systematically pushing across the whole front. They're not chasing PR victories or quick territorial gains. They're just grinding down the Ukrainian army till it breaks.
The funny part is that anybody who's actually played a strategy game like StarCraft would've understood why Russia was bound to win. If we're using gaming terms, then what NATO does is basically a rush. You try to do a quick overwhelming attack, and hope that you destroy enough of the opponent's infrastructure so that they can't recover and continue fighting. However, when a rush fails, then it quickly turns into a logistics game where each side tries to secure resources and establish production. Whoever ends up being able to do logistics better wins the long game. This is basically where we are with Ukraine now.
Amusingly, RUSI just published a great paper explaining this dynamic, I'm guessing Jens didn't read it :)
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine
before a war starts, everyone has dreams of the initial rush succeeding spectacularly, because it's an incredibly bloodless and quick way to finish a war.
thing is, sane people also plan for the rush failing, and how to win after that.
fascists will instead go "if the rush fails, we've got nothing. so the rush better not fail"
nazi logisticians told the nazi army in ww2 that they basically if they didnt win before winter, they had no chance of winning. this was calculated before barbarossa. it was a very unpopular point of view at the time, so the report gut buried.
the nazis then decided to go ahead anyway, with no contingency for the failure of the initial offensive.
mere will is not enough to triumph, but these types will never face this fact.
Exactly, the fact that the west didn't have any plan B is the most shocking thing about the whole war for me. Like yeah it's great if your initial strategy works and you get an easy win, but you gotta have some contingencies for when things go wrong. Seems like politics trumped logic both with the nazis and the west today.
and they're still not ramping up armament production. they've had what, 2 years to figure out that this is an attritional war and they're STILL stuck at "but surely you can turn dollar bills directly into artillery shells if you wish hard enough".
for fuck's sake, it's artillery shells, not a mars mission. we know how to make them. we know how to crank them out. they can build amazon warehouses quickly, but somehow couldnt build 92 armament factories in all this time?!
just all around brain geniuses, all of them.
That's the neat part: [I'm slowly getting convinced—they certainly are acting as if they can't—that] because of all the de-industrialization they don't.
eh, there are probably still a bunch of retired workers who could be tempted back for a nice salary. they could teach the newbies how to make this stuff.
and you could get so many actually motivated smart workers if you dropped a plant and offered good salaries for manufacturing work. a lot of these production line improvements tend to come from motivated line workers trying to crank more out.
i dont think the problems are really about know-how. yeah, it's a bottleneck, so you cant just ramp up production in 6 months, but again, they've had at least 2 years. more if you realize that they've been anticipating this war for like a decade.
the main problem is that this political/economic system simply no longer has a button for you know, reality-based intervention by the state. so they're left with pushing the two remaining buttons they have. unfortunately, you cant outsource or austerity your way out of this problem.
I'm entirely with you, and it was just joking.
The eastern front of WW2 is a case study in this too. The nazis had early success in their rush, but ultimately failed to get the caucasus oil fields, and their advance ground to a halt.
As the USSR finally started to push the nazis back, they were tempted / feinted into doing the same encirclements that the nazis had been doing to them and having success with. Problem is, that any time you do these encirclements, you leave other areas exposed and weak, and if your enemy sees it coming and knows how to regroup quickly, they can avoid the trap, and attack you at your new weak points. Eventually the USSR learned to advance the front line slow and steady, and not to take the bait. They were even tempted to do the same for Berlin, but years of experience taught them to play the long-resource game, and advance the line steadily.
Yup, and now we're seeing exact same strategy being applied in Ukraine. Russia is systematically pushing across the whole front. They're not chasing PR victories or quick territorial gains. They're just grinding down the Ukrainian army till it breaks.
Obviously we need to bring Tastosis in for their expert analysis/play-by-play. They'd definitely be better than most western media at this point.
Sorry I watch too much Starcraft, it's a weakness.
:)