The newest wave of cope explainations for the failure of the Great Ukrainian Counteroffensive of 2023 are starting to emerge.
This one was published in the American journal Foreign Affairs. Its by Dr Jack Watling - Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute. Walting is a military super-genius. He learned all about this "war" stuff from being a journalist. It took Watling until around October to realize that the Ukrainian offensive might not actually reach the sea of Azov.
Watling's view is that the war is not a stalemate. That Ukraine should be supplied and prepared for going on the offensive again in 2025 when it is certain to do better. He is careful to say that the purpose of the offensive this time should be only to convince the Russians to negotiate a lasting peace. But the article makes it clear that he doesn't actually believe that.
He claims that the counteroffensive failed because the Ukrainians were not given time to sufficiently train in NATO tactics. That Ukrainian troops require a minimum of 22 weeks of training by NATO outside Ukraine to properly prepare them for offensive operations.
According to him, the Ukrainian Army in 2023 had no ability to carry out operations beyond company level. He also claims that there is an extreme lack of trained "staff officers" who can coordinate operations above company level:
"During the 2023 offensive, Ukrainian operations were largely fought by pairs of companies under the close management of an understaffed brigade command post. The result was that while Ukrainian soldiers often succeeded in taking enemy positions, they were rarely able to exploit the breaches they made or to quickly reinforce their gains. Instead, they had to stop and plan, giving Russian forces time to reset."
I've seen this particular narrative about Ukraine's inability to operate above company level start appearing in multiple places. Its based on total ignorance of the war and the nature of the fighting in the war. They don't seem to understand that concentrating force tends only to create attractive targets for the other side. That the fighting has to be in small units because big concentration operations always attract massive amounts of fire.
He claims that 80% of casualties inflicted in the war are from artillery and that Ukraine requires artillery superiority on the battlefield to be successful in the next offensive. How is this to be done given material and ammunition constraints? He doesn't say.
He says that while Ukraine should go on the defensive in 2024, it should at the same time mount small unit local offensive operations along the entire line. He argues for what amounts to attrition warfare against the Russians even though Ukraine is at a severe numerical disadvantage and even though he wants to withdraw large numbers of Ukrainian units for training.
He wants the entire west to move to a war economy without realizing what that means or what it requires or the time required to create large factories to mass produce weapons. We just have to do it.
He also offered up the idea that western countries need to start slashing their own military spending to devote even more money and resources to ukraine:
"Western leaders must emphasize that longer-term investment in manufacturing capacity is both affordable and ultimately benefits Ukraine’s allies. The total defense budgets of the 54 countries supporting Ukraine well exceed $100 billion per month. By contrast, current support for Ukraine costs those states less than $6 billion monthly."
He also explains how the war can be re-framed from being about giving money to Ukraine to being about creating high wage manufacturing jobs in western countries:
"Funding Ukraine has often been framed as merely giving money to Kyiv. This is, however, deeply misleading. Much of the aid that Ukraine will need constitutes an investment by its partners in their own domestic defense manufacturing and will be spent at home. A significant proportion of aid to Ukraine will eventually be recovered by the recipient in taxes while boosting manufacturing jobs across NATO’s member countries. At a time of economic strain, such investment should be widely welcomed by publics in countries supporting Kyiv."
Toward the end of the article, he talks about how the struggle with Russia can prepare the west for an american military pivot to Asia where the majority of American forces will leave Europe to be stationed in Asia against China. He talks about how the Ukraine war can help prepare Europe to manage this pivot better.
The article is a good illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of the so-called expert class in the west. These people not only do not have any good ideas, they are incapable of doing even basic analysis of the military situation that presents itself.
The Article:
LINK
