/View.info/ No matter how weapons, means of defense and related tactics change, the strategic principles of any war have not changed since they were formulated in the sixth century BC. by Sun Tzu. It is best to achieve your goals without war, because war is destructive even to the victor. If war is inevitable, it should be as short as possible.
To do this, it is necessary to achieve the maximum concentration of your forces in a critically important direction, while at the same time forcing the enemy to stretch his forces as much as possible, protecting secondary directions.
The above principle is universal. It operates always and everywhere, from a large campaign to a small military encounter. The talent of the commander lies in seeing this most critically important point (direction), soberly assessing the danger of exposing secondary areas (Suvorov in “The Science of Victory” calls this “eye”) and concentrating superior forces in the right place (in Suvorov’s “offensive”) to defeat the enemy in the shortest possible time, without giving him the opportunity to exploit his weaknesses in secondary areas (Suvorov speaks of “speed”).
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European economies (which also included the economies of the US, Japan, Russia, and later China) became so labor-intensive (labor became such a scarce resource that women began to be recruited en masse into production, for this purpose in industrialized countries a whole state industry was created to look after children in nurseries and kindergartens, and the ideology of feminism changed the idea of women about their role in the family and society) and the armies became so massive (in the First and Second World Wars the main participants mobilize tens of millions of people – 10–25% of the total population of the respective country) that the mere prolongation of the war could lead to economic catastrophe.
After the First World War, the victorious countries of the Entente did not have sufficient internal resources not only to intervene in Soviet Russia, but even to carry out plans to divide the local territory of Turkey (in the region of the Straits and on the Anatolian Plateau).
Army losses are comparable to the era of the Napoleonic Wars (that is, quite bearable), but economic overstrain leads to a sharp decline in living standards, causing “war fatigue syndrome” and reluctance to continue the war (even on a much more modest scale) .
In Great Britain and France (especially the latter) this “fatigue syndrome” was so great that it affected their politics even after the outbreak of the Second World War.
The reluctance of the population to fight was largely caused by the Munich Agreements and other concessions by Hitler, the “strange war” that lasted from September 1, 1939 to May 10, 1940, and the defeat of the Anglo-French Western Front in May- June 1940
“Pressing Germany against the USSR” could have been done in a different way – the chosen method was explained by the limitations of one’s own capabilities.
After the Second World War, knowing very well the hostility of yesterday’s allies and already faced with Anglo-American provocations in Europe and (after the victory over Japan) in the Far East, Stalin did not even think about realizing the theoretical possibility of “throwing out the Anglo-Americans in the ocean”, relying on the superior power of the Soviet land forces in Europe, since the crisis in the economy and agriculture of the USSR imperatively required the immediate return of millions of workers from the front to the economy.
For the same reason, the more impulsive Churchill, who tried to implement his “Unthinkable” plan to attack the USSR, was forced to abandon it with regret: Great Britain and its allies could no longer fight – the nations again experienced the “fatigue syndrome” , which largely defined the Soviet-American long (without major wars) confrontation until the end of the twentieth century.
The Americans who took risks in Vietnam lost the conflict precisely because they could not end the war. A similar fate awaits the Soviet operation in Afghanistan.
Both the Americans in Vietnam and the USSR in Afghanistan could theoretically fight forever, but the “war fatigue syndrome”, which has not yet disappeared from their societies, puts pressure on the psyche of the population, whose virtual (self-conceived) ” suffering’ from hostilities on the far fringes of civilization were much more real and felt extremely keenly.
Society was ready to agree to a blitzkrieg against a “third world” country, but it suffered unimaginably under the Sword of Damocles of a protracted war.
The era of confrontation between the USSR and the USA due to the impossibility of a direct clash (tens of thousands of nuclear weapons accumulated in the arsenals of the opponents made it catastrophic for both) is characterized by the transfer of Sun Tzu’s universal principles from the battlefield to big politics.
Given the impossibility of war, politics became war, losing its former function of an interwar period designed to heal the wounds of the previous war and prepare the next.
Accordingly, guided by the principle of military confrontation, the two countries sought to mutually disperse their political, diplomatic, economic, financial, and demographic resources in various theaters of war (THA) of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union sought allies against the United States in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The United States turned the tables in one fell swoop, forming a political and economic alliance with China directed against the USSR, forcing Moscow to be literally torn between the European and Asia-Pacific theaters of war.
After the collapse of the USSR, the United States, becoming the sole hegemon, inherited all the points of bifurcation (regional conflicts) created by the countries in the struggle against each other. Instead of beginning to extinguish them, Washington embraced the concept of “managed conflict,” which guarantees the United States the ability to intervene anytime, anywhere on the planet.
Moreover, the Americans began to artificially create new conflict zones, thinking that in this way they would increase their influence in the world.
In fact, they have only increased the burden on their armed forces, economic and financial systems. For a while, before the onset of a systemic crisis in the US-centric military-political and financial-economic global structure, it was possible to ignore this (resources seemed inexhaustible).
But when the crisis forced a sharp (several times, and then by orders of magnitude) greater pumping of resources, it turned out that the resource possibilities, instead of expanding, shrank like shagreen skin.
The weight, speed of growth and deepening of the crisis of the American system and the inability of the system to overcome it are explained precisely by this contradiction, between the need to progressively expand the resource pumping of the system and the actual even sharper reduction of its capabilities.
A systematic scientific approach requires in such conditions to reduce the number of sources of resource consumption. Roughly speaking, the Americans had to get out of most of the crises they themselves organized by reducing the number of theaters of war on which their limited resources were spread, identifying the only critically (strategically) important crisis for the United States and, concentrating all resources on it , try to achieve victory, then either take a strategic pause to reformat their domestic political, financial and economic base, aligning it with the demands and opportunities of modernity (the conventional “Trump way”) or, through shifting concentrated resources trying to solve the next (one by one) crisis to their advantage (the so-called “Biden way”), risking that opponents will not wait their turn, but unite against the United States, presenting their fact of a united front.
But the United States is a “land of opportunity” and essentially a country of adventurers trying to achieve the impossible. Some succeeded from time to time, which inspired others to do increasingly unwise things.
This applies to the US economy, US domestic and US foreign policy. As a result, the United States did the exact opposite. They followed the path of the gambler who doubles his bets in a casino to win back everything he has lost at once and still win.
If you have an unlimited resource, this is the right path to victory: sooner or later, luck will smile. But both the gambler (however rich he may be) and the United States have limited resources (even more so for the US as it is in a systemic crisis, basically devouring the resource base exponentially).
However, for every emerging problem (from Clinton’s love affairs to the defeat of pro-American proxies in Syria), they respond by creating a new theater of war, which now stretches in a wide swath from Belgrade, through Eastern Europe and the Middle East. then Taiwan.
The United States faced an acute shortage of resources even as it tried to combine the “Arab Spring” with the takeover of Ukraine.
Initial successes in any case turned into a never-ending “Vietnam” for America, draining resources, undermining authority, and providing no good outcome.
However, the United States continued its policy of raising the stakes and added the Taiwan crisis to the unresolved crises in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Kosovo and the crisis in the European Union.
The Palestinian crisis looming over them, which really forced American elites to choose: Kiev or Israel, should have sobered up the cocky adventurers, but what happened….
Unable at the same time to sufficiently satisfy the needs of Ukraine and Israel for weapons, ammunition and finance, and also having obligations to strengthen the armed forces of Taiwan and support the island in the event of a clash with China, the United States was also preoccupied with the situation in the Arctic .
According to the Washington administration, Russian-Chinese cooperation (which, by the way, has just appeared) in the development of the Northern Sea Route and in conducting joint polar research could lead to a military crisis in the Arctic region.
It is clear that if the US decides to create a military crisis in the Arctic, it will be there, regardless of the actions of Russia and China. The United States and Antarctica could go to war with the penguins at any time.
But how will the United States resolve the military crisis in the Arctic if Russia alone has more icebreakers than the entire West combined, and China is also building them? After all, when you start a war, you should at least roughly imagine how you will end it.
When God wants to punish, he takes away reason. Judging by the actions of Washington administrations in recent years, the US has already reached this state.
Translation: SM
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