It seems that Poland has offered a way out of the near-stalemate in Ukraine. The presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenski, have expressed a desire to erase the borders between their countries. This came after the Polish General Staff drew up a plan to intervene in the conflict and take over western Ukraine. This is the main topic in the publication of former US military Douglas McGregor in The American Conservative, quoted by actualno.com.
McGregor was Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Germany, but the Senate blocked the proposal. And one of the main reasons was his unrestrained media language – for example, that during the refugee crisis he spoke openly about migrants coming from the Middle East in order to “Islamize Europe”.
But even more significant is how McGregor describes Germany’s policy of erasing its Nazi past in all spheres of society as a “disease state.” He was described in The Washington Post as a racist who was pro-Russian and opposed to the policies of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But as a military man, he has an impressive career and is considered a genius – suffice it to say, during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, he destroyed a squadron of armored vehicles at the head of a squadron of nearly 70 Iraqi tanks, with no casualties in the military he commanded. .
Here is what McGregor says now: “In economics, the majority is always wrong,” writes theorist John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith may add that there is ample historical evidence in military affairs that American generals and military analysts are always wrong.
When the Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939, after three years of fierce fighting involving Soviet, German and Italian equipment, advisers and troops, the military high command in London, Paris and Washington surprisingly saw no change in military affairs.
An officer in the U.S. military, an eyewitness to the battles and a future major general, said: “In Spain, generally accepted theories about the destructive power of” independent “armored divisions and other massive armored formations have been clearly refuted by reality.”
Only five months later, events in Poland confirmed these words and proved the groundlessness of the views that were then shared almost everywhere. The conflict in Ukraine is different from the Spanish Civil War.
This proxy war against Russia involves the full range of capabilities of the United States and its allies. If Americans have already thought about how Washington’s huge help for Ukraine has affected analysts’ views and assessments of events, then their suspicions are justified.
Just days after the conflict began, President Biden signed an emergency package. It includes $ 13 billion in aid to Ukraine, half of which goes to military purposes. And when combined with the recently promised $ 40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine (plus the Lend-Lease program), the total cost to US taxpayers is close to the annual budget of the Russian military.
But perhaps more importantly, US advisers in Ukraine are providing intelligence, targeting and replenishing strategic ammunition.
When hostilities broke out in Ukraine, as if on a signal, retired US Army generals appeared on television and predicted a quick victory for Ukraine – arguing its point with its impressive military successes and alleged Russian incompetence.
They claim that Russian troops are doomed to failure due to serious tactical errors, imperfect logistics and failure to complete tasks. Looking back, we can say that at least some of these comments turned out to be “smoke and fog”. Much of the criticism of Russia is almost certainly due to sinking US investment in Ukraine’s military capabilities.
American analysts did not lag behind: the Russian command made an unforgivable mistake by not overtaking the offensive in Ukraine with strikes of precision-guided missiles in the style of “Desert Storm”.
U.S. military experts and their British counterparts quickly ruled that Russia’s ground forces were not moving fast enough in two or three major westward directions. They argued that if Ukrainian forces managed to inflict enough human and material damage on Russian forces, then Moscow would abandon its goals and withdraw its troops.
Of course, the expectation of the Russians to stop operations for such imaginary reasons is almost the same as the expectation of Washington to seek peace after Pearl Harbor. However, the retired generals paid little attention to the operational situation. Contrary to the picture given to us by Western analysts, the Russian ground forces were methodically advancing along the entire 300-kilometer front, identifying and selectively attacking Ukrainian forces.
Western analysts did not know (or chose to ignore) that the Russian command was ordered to carefully avoid indirect civilian casualties and infrastructure damage.
Initially, Russian military action was clearly limited by side damage, but over time, Russian forces surrounded key urban areas in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces sought to establish fortified areas equipped with ammunition, food and water. Then Russia’s operational intentions changed, focusing on the systematic reduction of the besieged Ukrainian forces, rather than on the conquest of metropolitan areas.
Russia’s enormous superiority in strike forces – missile artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, conventional artillery and aviation – combined with Ukraine’s significant shortcomings in mobility, air defense and strike capabilities inevitably dictate Ukraine’s decision to defend itself in urban environments. But due to its inability to maneuver effectively and coordinate counter-offensives at the operational level, Ukrainian forces quickly backed down Russia’s strategic initiative.
In the same way, they forgave the “exhaustion blows” for the Russians. By neutralizing or isolating key Ukrainian airports, bridges, railway junctions and vehicles, they isolated Ukrainian front units and cut off supplies or reinforcements.
Ten weeks after the beginning of the conflict, it will be useful to look at the strategic picture in a new way. The Ukrainian conflict is not developing in the way that Western observers have predicted. Ukrainian forces look shaken and exhausted.
Only a small part of what is needed reaches the Ukrainian troops on the front line. In most cases, stockpiles and new weapons are destroyed before they even reach the front.
Faced with the unequivocal failure of US aid, even when new weapons are being used to save Ukrainian forces from certain doom, the Biden administration is desperate to turn the tide and save its image. Poland seems to have offered a way out.
More importantly, the presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenski, have expressed a desire to erase the borders between their countries. However, the words of Duda and Zelenski were officially in the sense that the border would fall one day in the future, as there are no borders in Schengen. On the day of Duda’s speech, a pact for military cooperation was signed between Poland and Ukraine.
According to unconfirmed reports from Warsaw, after Washington rejected both the creation of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and the transfer of Polish MiG-29s to Ukrainian pilots, the Polish General Staff was quietly instructed to draw up a plan to intervene in the conflict and capture Western Ukraine.
Of course, military action of this magnitude will require Kyiv’s approval, but given the de facto control of Zelensky’s government in Washington, it is not a problem to approve Polish intervention.
The Biden administration can hope that any clash between Russians and Poles – be it air and missile strikes against Polish troops on the Ukrainian side of the border – will trigger a NATO Council meeting where Article 5 will be used. be left to the discretion of each individual country. The most that any analyst can confidently confirm is that Poland’s military intervention would put NATO members at risk of war with Russia, which most members of the Alliance oppose.
No matter how ready the Polish ground forces are to carry out the task and whatever the Russian resistance turns out to be, the neoconservatives in Washington will rub their hands. Poland could be the key to expanding NATO’s war with Russia in Eastern Europe. Why?
Because the Polish catalyst will start a war with Russia, which the Americans do not want, but which they simply cannot stop. Moreover, this war will begin without an objective assessment of America’s vital interests, without the proper alignment of forces within the international system – and even without a specific threat to US national security.
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