Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars (Paper, 1975) [pdf]
web.stanford.edu
web.stanford.edu
Tsar Nicholas starts an imperial war of aggression with Japan to obtain a warm-water port, while the Japanese Navy (supplied with last-generation ships from the British Navy) surprises the world and proves to be able to fight the Russians on the world stage.
Turns out that those old British ships were still pretty good, and the Japanese have learned how to use Western guns and tactics by the early 1900s (despite being a Samurai/Sword society just 40 years prior).
Russia expanded eastward. Japan expanded westward.
You're right that Japan ultimately was the one who started the attack though. But I'm also looking at Russia's expansion to seek a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean and connect it up with the Tran-Siberian railway.
Russia definitely was encroaching upon the East. But Japan also was encroaching upon the West, with the 1890s Sino-Japanese War. Soooooo... both are kind of imperialistic assholes on this event, now that I think of it.
Ukraine isn't that big and isn't developing like that right now and the Russian motivation is very different.
For example, early on in the invasion, we saw pictures of new highway signs, where the directions to different cities had been replaced with (in Russian), "Fuck Off", "Also Fuck Off", and "Fuck Off Back to Russia." Or, when a brewery switched to creating Molotov cocktails, they had already printed labels, with fun graphic design, an the title "Putin is a dickhead." That wasn't spontaneous. They had an entire portfolio of stuff like that, which they'd been planning for years.
Absolutely genius preparation by Ukraine.
Russia has been conducting a proxy war in Ukraine for years, trying to inspire ethnic Russians to revolt against their supposed Ukrainian oppressors. That ploy turned into a quagmire because even ethic Russians in Ukraine don't want to live under Russian control.
Russia is doomed in this fight. They've only secured about 20% of Eastern Ukraine, exposing the rot in the heart of the Russian military in the process. If they ever get as far as Western Ukraine, where they will face desperate ethnic Ukrainians armed to the teeth with advanced weapons, supported by supply lines to the Western world and informed by real time surveillance the Russians can only dream of, the Russian body count will be staggering; far beyond any level Putin can conceal or survive politically.
The awful truth is that this ends only after enough Russian men have been fed into the meat grinder and Putin is deposed. For Putin it's win or fall, and winning clearly isn't feasible.
To destroy large swaths of Ukraine, Russia needs to march its artillery, be it MLRS systems or 162mm Howitzers, within firing range of city areas. The Ukrainian forces have largely repelled these advances.
MLRS systems and 162mm Howitzers "only" have 30km range or so. Sure, Russia has longer-range systems, but they're clearly trying to get these cheaper artillery systems within firing range of Kyiv (and other cities).
The Ukrainians have pushed back and have stalled the progress. Keeping those systems at least 50km away from the Kyiv center will prevent the worst of attacks that Russia can afford to launch.
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Given what Russia is doing to Mariupol, its clear that they don't mind razing entire cities to the ground with these kinds of artillery strikes. The key for the Ukrainians moving forward are to keep the Russian line away from artillery strike range.
A NATO assessment last week concluded that Russia has already expended nearly all of the missiles (Kalibr cruise missiles and Iskander ballistic missiles) they had staged for the invasion. Since then they've used a couple hypersonic missiles, but those are fabulously expensive and thus not available in quantity. Russia won't be blowing up Soviet era apartment blocks with hundreds of those.
So yes, I think you are correct; if they're going to continue the missile attacks they'll need to use up Russia's reserve munitions. Otherwise, as you say, they have to turn to artillery.
Turns out Ukraine is pretty effective at artillery duels. The blasted Russian armor we see isn't all down to Javelins and NLAWs; they're directing artillery with UAVs to great effect.
Bottom line is, short of turning to nukes, Putin can't actually rubbleize all of Ukraine without a epic number of Russia casualties. They just don't have the munitions.
While estimates vary, I’ve seen none that indicates Russia isn't experiencing mind-boggling casualties for the major power in a modern major-power-on-one-side war as it is.
The US estimate put it at a large fraction of the total official Soviet losses over the whole decade-long campaign in Afghanistan that was sometimes referred to as the USSR’s Afghanistan and major contributor to the collapse of the regime, the Ukraine MOD estimates put it well over the Soviet Afghanistan toll.)
This is just getting started.
Many things described as modern “proxy wars” between major powers have been direct wars between a major power and an ally of an opposed major power (and many have involved direct conflict between major powers, though usually with at least one major power having deniability.) This was true of several of the major USA/USSR “proxy” conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan).
That plus not getting strong air supremacy.
You can avoid them flying low, but then you fall into the killing envelope of shoulder mounted anti-air weapons, which Ukraine also happens to have many.
Hell they’ve got a sizeable amount of the western front of Russia’s army surrounded and set for a strategic rout.
Rout == uncoordinated retreat, which seems to be happening on a regular basis right now. Russian morale is really, really bad.
Surrounded / Encirclement might really be happening. Its hard to tell for sure due to the fog of war, it could just be Ukrainian propaganda, but there's so much discussion about a Ukrainian counter-push in various parts of the country.
Rout == enemy escapes, with heavy losses due to disorganization. Its a win, but not as much of a win as "Surrounded/Encirlcement", which basically is a "surrender or die" situation.
Its clear that the Russians were trying to encircle Kyiv (and Mariupol with more success). But there seems to be whispers that the Ukrainians are successfully surrounding / encircling some Russian troops.
So, it leans heavily on Vietnam for its arguments as it was written before Afghanistan (a fail for the Russians and Allies).
What I'm getting is a combination of two factors in conventional asymmetrical conflict;
1) For the superior force, not winning is basically losing
2) There's a sort of "Overton window" for winning, after which you lose at home, politically.
Vietnam played out at home via television and newspapers. The US tried to avoid that mistake during Iraq-I by massively managing the news media and images. Iraq-I happened on CNN and was carefully scripted. Even now we're only just getting documentary accounts of how it really went over there, things that surprise even those who served.
Putin is trying that. But in the internet age I think it's failing.
Agreed, it seems to be talking about terrorism-style wars like Algeria and guerilla wars like Vietnam. The Ukraine war is far more conventional and both parties are a strong existing nation state.
There was no real hearts and minds in, say, Afghanistan. A real hearts and minds campaign would see at least as much on improving the quality of life as in destruction, yet in Afghanistan or Iraq, enough money was spent that the US could have provided every single family with a car, modern electronics, built a brand new house, and more - what was spent in Afghanistan was 350 000$ for each Afghan family!
And yet the average Afghan saw war, devastation, death, and famine. The level of material investment is so bad that, adjusted for inflation, the average Afghan was significantly richer during the Soviet-Afghan war as during U.S. occupation.
I can't see how you can come to the conclusion that real effort was spent on hearts and minds when so much money was spent on war when the living condition of the average Afghan only got worse.
If you want hearts and minds, you need to materially and significantly improve the life of whoever you are occupying at the bare minimum. You can't impoverish a population that's already massively impoverished and claim that you're doing hearts and minds.
GDP per capita of Afghanistan is ~500$/head, the vast majority don't have a salary at all.
It's staggering how much the war ended up costing in money, time, and lives.
Ukraine with most of the people dead may be an acceptable outcome to Putin. Mariupol with most of the people dead is happening right now.
I have zero sympathy to that rabid dog Putin. However your "most of the people dead" is total BS. Check the numbers on Wikipedia - casualties vs population [0].
There's no body count yet.
The siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg today) is the closest historical parallel.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-ne...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/23/first-thing-...
Trying does not count. Actual results do.
Siege of the Leningrad had lasted 900 days with the body count of 1.5 million people. Judging by the way things going in Ukraine this whole Putin's war should be over pretty soon and not to his liking.
Agent orange, Mỹ Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of maimed, displaced, financially ruined, starved (check heartwarming reply of Madeleine Albright in regards to 500,000 kids dead by starvation and desease). Well the list can go on and on.
I fail to see even a trace of "winning hearts and minds" approach here.
If you said no, that's when the pain started of course.
You can conquer people by force, but you can't occupy by force. Occupation only works with hearts and minds.
I lived enough that I made it to 2021 to see that even Israel starting to care about that, when they let people know what buildings they are targeting before launching the attack.
This is not a new thing in 2021. They have been calling families to evacuate their homes before the home's scheduled bombing for a long time (I think more than a decade now).
im sure after defeat it was comforting to consider it a small war, but it wasnt. vitenam had the full backing (albeit proxy) might of the soviet union. it killed or wounded nearly 200,000 US troops and at a surge point of 3.5 million enlisted troops spelled the precipitous decline of enlistment to less than half that number over the next five decades.
At the peak, there were about 550,000 US troops in Vietnam. In World War Two, they eventually fielded 10 million persons (https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/06/26/us-involvement-...).
So, if the political will had been there at home, they could have sent a lot more.
I also think what you describe in “Congress and Senate couldnt… made it equally untenable at home.” is precisely the argument this paper made: that war was lost in the USA, not in Vietnam.
That was why, as a teenager, I refused to consider any kind of military involvement. The whole Vietnam war appeared an abuse of the draft and the goodwill of people who joined voluntarily.
I still lean towards a belief that militaries should be all voluntary.
Then big-man draft-dodger Trump comes around and gets the Republican Nomination instead, all the while making fun of McCain's injuries as a POW.
People like to pretend they care about leaders who have gone into war zones and personally risked their lives. But the politics of the past decade have taught me that all of that is just more political bluster. There's no actual power to going into war and risking yourself as a leader, the people will forget by the next election.
Ultimately the administration needed Congressional backing, but the Pentagon reports directly to the president.
Military wise they are afraid to go in and out right kill and level cities which is how they normally wage war. It makes sense because they share a genetic history where they had no issue leveling separatist southern provinces when needed.