Nov 28 - In February 2022, with courage and mostly hand-held weapons, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians turned back a Russian onslaught that everyone believed would see the country conquered in a matter of days. Then they liberated the city of Kharkiv and even made some progress in the Donetsk region that Putin's Little Green Men had occupied nine years earlier. Finally, in last fall's counteroffensive, the Ukrainians swept into the southern city of Kherson, which the Russians had seized in the first few weeks of the war.
But this year -- not so much. The war is now a slugfest, the two armies separated by a No Man's Land of mud, trenches, and minefields. At this game, Putin wins. He can send waves of soldiers -- most of them ethnic minorities and not Russians at all -- to die in hopeless charges, much as Stalin's troops did in the Second World War. Plenty more bodies where those came from!
Ukraine has a fifth of Russia's population, and as a free country it values its soldiers highly. As Francis Farrell writes in the Kyiv Independent today, Ukraine can't afford to fight a war of attrition: it will run out of troops long before Russia does. Simply put, Joe Biden dithered, and American military aid arrived three months, six months, or a year too late. And now it appears he will deliver the same sort of support to Israel.
Nov 26 - Dafna Elyakin (see below) and her eight-year-old sister were among the hostages released today in exchange for six Palestinian women and minors from Israeli jails. The girls' father, his partner, and a third child were murdered in the October 7 atrocity.
Nov 20 - This morning I stumbled upon a YouTube video about a Hamas tunnel, with first a drone and then Israeli soldiers exploring it. Before I came to my senses, it was time for mid-morning coffee, and I had devoted two hours to videos from the Israeli military, Pat Robertson's CBN, what was probably Al Jazeera, and London's Daily Mail:
War as clickbait! Soldiers with heavy packs and automatic weapons, wet with sweat and fear, offering their flesh to bullets from the enemy. I was lucky: I did my soldiering in an interlude of peace. Now I'm an old man and can only say: God bless the troops!
Nov 17 - On Wednesday, American businessfolk gave a standing ovation to Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator. I hope Mr Xi gives a bonus to the genius who ran the Flying Tigers game this fall. For the cost of a few dozen round-trip tickets and hotel rooms, he got two 14th Air Force veterans, their kin, and the grandly named Sino-American Aviation Heritage Society to come to China and set off a wonderfully timed barrage of favorable news stories to the worldwide media. Google regularly sends me a list of Flying Tigers references, and on just one day -- November 16 -- there were ten links along the line of "Flying Tigers veterans relive friendship between Chinese and American people during China tour" at Yahoo Finance.
As part of this months-long campaign, Chinese activists also held ceremonies and put up bilingual historical markers in Commerce, Texas, where Claire Chennault may have been born in 1893.
Well, his Flying Tiger lovefest certainly paid off for Mr Xi. I wonder who got the frequent-flier miles?
Nov 13 - It's hard, sometimes, to swallow what freedom of expression can ask of us.
Nov 8 - "I will tell you what I witnessed in Ukraine: when Ukrainians see American weapons systems, they applaud. Would you sell them out?" -- Timothy Snyder
Nov 4 - Fifteen years old and a captive of Hamas:
Blue skies! -- Daniel Ford. You can send humanitarian aid through
Razom for Ukraine (a tax-exempt
US-based charity). Or donate to the military through the National
Bank of Ukraine.
Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send
me an
email. Blue skies! -- Dan
Ford
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The essays (in more or less chronological order)
Was the Cold War an Inevitable Outcome of
World War 2?
The Clayton Theorem: Did George
Marshall Save the US from Economic Collapse?
To what extent is the US experience in
Iraq comparable to their experience in Vietnam?
'Not Right, but British': The Superpower
Role in the Falklands War
'But the Russians won, after all!: lessons
from the Chechen wars
China: O brave new hegemon!
That's what presidents are for! (Why is
'planning' not the same thing as 'strategy'?)
When Sun-tzu met Clausewitz: John Boyd, the
OODA Loop, and the invasion of Iraq
War sucks. Get over it. (on the
novelty of 'Hybrid war')
How would John Boyd have waged a
counterinsurgency?
Other good stuff to read
Finkel: The Good Soldiers
Arreguin-Toft: How the Weak Win Wars: A
Theory of Asymmetric Conflict
Luttwak: Strategy: The Logic of War and
Peace
Smith: The Utility of Force: The Art of
War in the Modern World
Galula: Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory
and Practice
van Creveld: The Transformation of
War
Bobbitt: 'Terror and Consent: The Wars
for the 21st Century'
Ricks: 'The Gamble: Petraeus and
the American Military Adventure in Iraq
Wright: 'The Looming Tower: The Road to
9/11'
Adams: 'The Army After Next: The First
Postindustrial Army'
Was John Boyd a new Sun Tzu?
(books about the OODA Loop)
A counterinsurgency reading list by John
Nagl
50 best books about terrorism, by Joshua
Sinai
more reviews of books about war as it has
developed since 1945