Western Propaganda About Russian Military Prowess Has Been a Lie
Western Propaganda About Russian Military Prowess Has Been a Lie
By
David Gottfried
Russia has a population, a military budget and an army that are many times greater than Ukraine’s. In terms of size, Russia is a mammoth and Ukraine is a mouse. Nevertheless, Ukraine is the creature that has roared like a lion.
Although Russia certainly has a less than sterling military record (I’ll chronicle its martial mediocrity in a moment), the West has seen Russia as a vast, virulent vector of military might. When Soviet science inaugurated Sputnik, and Soviet chimpanzees and then astronauts brought the red flag into outer space, America seemed as insane as the Founder of the Black Muslims who said that “an evil genius” from another planet had created the white race. (Malcom X may have been assassinated by soldiers of that Nut job.) At the time of Sputnik, America seemed to be on the verge of believing that the Soviets were in league with scientific savants from Saturn to outlaw Christmas, Mother’s Day and Girl Scout Cookies, and Hollywood was quick to make us mentally prepared for delusionally correct thought with science fiction movies in which spacemen were in league with all things sinister.
Even my childhood friends shivered at the imminence of a Russian attack as our television sets screamed about Russia all day long. We were apprised of Russian vehemence not only when our parents listened to the news, but by situation comedies such as “The Man from Uncle” and “Get Smart” and a cartoon sporting a sleek woman, named Natasha, who seemed as svelte as a stick of sinister but delicious black licorice, and her stout bulldog of a comrade, “Boris.” I knew a guy who had wet dreams over Natasha and wondered if he was the victim of a new form of subliminal, psychosexual warfare.
In fact, the Russians are as addled as my friend who was worried about his lust for a cartoon character. First, I will recount their errors in the current conflict with Ukraine. Then I will review some of their more seminal military failures in the past two hundred years.
In this war, Russia has allegedly been brutal (more about this in a moment), but it is finding it very difficult to seize and hold territory.
Russia has suffered from logistical failures so immense and, frankly, embarrassing that it sometimes suggests that the war has been choreographed by cyber-attacks, by the West, which have made the Russian military as disjointed as a patient with an auto immune disease. In an auto immune disease, a patient’s immune system attacks the patient’s body instead of attacking foreign invaders. In this war, whoever or whatever is managing the Russian military seems intent on defeating Russia. We have read of long convoys of Russian vehicles leading to Kiev, which are moving very slowly and are sometimes subject to traffic jams.
This is insane. Vehicles in a traffic jam cannot move and are sitting ducks for the enemy. World War Two, and more specifically the British attack on Italians in Taranto, the subsequent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Footnote 1), and the Six Day War, in which the Israelis destroyed the Egyptian airforce while it was on the ground, proved that when an army concentrates its assets in one spot, and makes those assets immobile, it invites the annihilation of those assets.
I have read that Russian vehicles broke down, on roads leading to Kiev, because of poor maintenance. How can they have overlooked something as vital as automotive maintenance. Car mechanics are everywhere. What the fuck is going on.
We have also been apprised that Russia has had difficulty maintaining its supply lines sending the necessities of battle to its troops. Of course, it can be difficult to supply front line troops when supply lines are long, as they were when Nazi Germany had to send supplies to Stalingrad, which was, I think, more than two thousand miles from Nazi Germany, but this shouldn’t be a problem for Russia as Russia, and Belarus, its de facto ally, are adjacent to Ukraine.
Russia has supposedly been very brutal and has attacked large numbers of civilians, but if this is true it is more than brutal; it is self-defeating. One would think that in all the years since the Wright Brothers introduced us to airplanes, we would have realized that killing lots of civilians does not win wars.
When the airplane was invented, military theorists were as excited as a teenager who had gotten the keys to the car. They boasted that by bombing large concentrations of a nation’s civilians, they would demoralize the citizens who would insist that their nation surrender.
However, it very often doesn’t work like that. Consider the following three examples:
The Air war, over Great Britain, in 1940: Britain had been a nation with lots of opposition to war. It was teeming with pacificists and a large constituency who favored appeasing fascists. After England was Bombed, it was more intent in fighting fascism than the most jingoist, fictional Texan in a cowboy movie starring John Wayne. Virginia Woolf, who had preached peace and pacificism, made Martha Mitchell, who had criticized Julia Child for cooking French food and had told her to cook Southern Fried Chicken (Because we’re in Vietnam this ain’t no time to be eating Frenchie), seem tame. The people of England came to together like five digits forming a fist.
German Military Production in World War Two. Allied bombing of Germany became more deadly and decisive as America manufactured more planes, allied air bases became closer and closer to Germany, and Germany’s ability to shoot down Allied planes was eviscerated. Nevertheless, German military production was greater in 1944 than it was in 1943. In 1944, the Allies attained air supremacy over the Third Reich. This enabled the allies to drop a tremendous amount of bomb tonnage on Germany. Although historians have given plenty of attention to German Generals who plotted to kill Hitler in 1944, most Germans has been irredeemably swept into the vortex of Mars and Valhalla and couldn’t dream of abandoning Der Fuhrer. Instead, they fought for Hitler with the inhuman, robotic intensity of bees slaving for a Queen Bee, and they fought harder and harder as the end approached. Indeed, Russia is estimated to have lost 100,000 men in the battle for Berlin. In other words, at the time Germany’s chances were nil, Germans fought so hard that they killed 100,000 Russians to defend one city. A rationale actor would have tried to run away. But Reason is as meaningful to a warrior as condom-use is for a crack addict.
North Vietnam. When Harrison Salisbury visited North Vietnam in December of 1966 and January 1967, he was amazed at the prevalence of guns. Everyone and his mother-in-Law had a gun. Some people found it odd for citizens to own guns, particularly as North Vietnam was a Communist country and hence supposedly filled with dissidents itching to rebel. Salisbury explained that North Vietnam was wholly united and that America had united them. American bombs kept them together. When they huddled under roaring B 52s (B 52’s yield a range of gruesome noises that make for an aural approximation of Hell. I read that one senior Soviet General, upon witnessing a B 52 attack in Vietnam, promptly shit his pants.), all tribal, religious and class differences melted away. Your buddies in the trench were your family. And no matter how corny is sounds, the Vietcong and the NVA – and children and old ladies and people already crippled by the war -- were ready to fight America to the end.
Russia ‘s military mediocrity today has many historical antecedents. When Napolean invaded Russia, his forces went so deep into the Russian heartland that he took Moscow. Russia fought for years in Afghanistan, all to no avail. (American did a lousy job there as well, but Russia made more of an effort as Afghanistan was adjacent to Russia) Russia was not able to conquer Finland in 1940. Before World War Two began, Hitler reputedly said that one must only push the door in and the whole of Russia would collapse. I hate to admit it, but Hitler was almost proved correct.
In the days immediately after the start of invasion, 3:00 A.M, June 22, 1941, when Nazi bombs fell on Odessa, enormous numbers of soldiers surrendered, caches of arms were taken, and vast tracts of territory were overrun. Minsk, the capital of Belarus, was taken in July of that year. In, I think, two or three months, Nazis reached Smolensk and were half the way to Moscow.
Of course, Nazi Germany got a lot of help from a lot of nations that are now part of NATO. Even if one supports the idea that the organization of NATO was a sensible Western reaction against alleged Russian aggressiveness, one must recognize that NATO’s moral stature has been sullied and become suspect by the inclusion of states that were once allies and friends of Hitler: Hungary and Rumania were allied with Hitler and helped Hitler kill 20 million Russians and 6 million Jews and are now part of NATO. Croatia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia aided Hitler, and although I am not sure if they are all part of NATO, they are working with NATO. Poland of course was conquered by Hitler but had first tried to curry favor with him by assisting Hitler in the demolition of free government of Prague.
In World War Two, Russia eventually rebounded, and its star shot up into the sky like a Roman candle unfettered and free. The Russian people were often uncommonly valorous, second to no one in bravery and gallantry and as heroic as any romanticized Western European knight who slaughtered for sport while fighting the crusades.
Finally, if G-d is on one side or another, and if G-d’s desires can be divined by watching the natural world, which G-D rules, then G-d is, I suppose, on Russia’s side because Russia has the Russian winter and the Russian Winter stopped the armies of Hitler, of Napolean and scads of Western Europeans. But as a great fan of Bob Dylan’s song “With G-d on Our Side,” I don’t think G-d is on anyone’s side.