It is in some ways remarkable that there is still no commonly agreed method on quantifying and ranking national military power.
There is one such for economics, for instance. It is called the GDP. You can make somewhat different arguments on relative economic size or living standards based on various ways of measuring GDP – e.g., the eternal debates over whether nominal or PPP is best – but it does make these discussions factually “grounded” in a way that military discussions (at least as they are carried out in the popular press and comments sections) are not. This may even extend to some extent to the US military itself. For instance, here is a short quote from an article by Adrian Bonenberger, who spent 7 years as an infantry officer in the US Army:
This is the greatest risk we face for World War III. Not that Russia defeats Ukraine and moves toward Poland and Estonia, but that Ukraine wipes out the Russians currently in Ukraine, and Putin is forced to take some drastic action to prevent further losses. After all, why should Ukraine not feel entitled to take some of Russia’s territory in return for their lost Crimea? And who will be there to stop them, save demoralized and confused Russian conscripts?
The chances of that happening in the foreseeable future are precisely zero, so awesome is the current size of the military gap between Russia and Ukraine (it approximately doubled from a factor of 4.5 in 1992 at the time of the Soviet collapse, to a peak of 9 by 2013). Even cursory examinations of force structure would confirm it; just the Russian Southern Military District by itself is considerably more powerful than the entire Ukrainian military. Tall tales of Donetsk airport “cyborgs” mowing down thousands of elite Pskov paratroopers to the contrary, on the one occasion in the Donbass War that the Ukrainian military engaged directly with the Russian military resulted in a resounding defeat for the Ukraiians at Ilovaysk – and that despite the Russian military having to maintain plausible deniability and thus forego the use of its fancier toys.
Nor will this situation change cardinally in the future, as the graph to the right shows (which incidentally is based on some very “optimistic” assumptions about Ukraine’s ability to remain solvent and maintain military spending at 5% of GDP). The idea that Ukraine will be able to militarily reconquer the LDNR so long as Russia provides it with support, to say nothing of actually seizing chunks of territory from Russia itself, is too absurd for further commentary.
This is just one limited example of flawed military commentary in the popular press. Literally hundreds of other examples can be thought of, from ‘Murica patriots who literally believe it is 1,000 times stronger than any other “military or combination of militaries,” to the Russia stronk! types and neocons who are in strange agreement that Russia is currently establishing a “hegemony” over the Middle East with its small-scale Syrian air intervention (which if Washington really wanted to could put to a forcible end within 24 hours).
Anyhow, I don’t claim to be any sort of military expert. If you asked me to compare the EW capabilities of the F/A-18A versus the Su-30MKI, I would draw up a total blank. That said, I have read a fair bit about military history and military theory, so I think I can contribute in a small way to uplifting the level of the popular discourse by introducing some rigor to it by way of the Comprehensive Military Power concept, a sort of military analogue of GDP that is both additive (so that alliances can be compared) and consistent across time (so that historical comparisons can be made and even what-if scenarios of the Modern Poland vs. Nazi Germany type).
But first, I would like to criticize or introduce caveats to some other popularly accepted ways of making sweeping large-scale military comparisons.
Existing Attempts to Quantify Military Power
Military Budgets
This is by far the most common and intuitive method of making comparisons. It is objective and commonsensical: All other things equal, the more you spend on your military, the better it will be.
As historians like Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers pointed out, in the longterm, it is almost invariably the countries with the biggest economic potential who end coming out ahead in superpower struggles. With a bigger economy, you can have a bigger military budget with less overall strain (since once you go much about 5% of GDP military spending, your overall economy tends to start becoming distorted).
But military effectiveness depends a lot more than just the amount of dollars that are pumped into it. It also depends on domestic price levels (e.g., salaries for equivalent-quality Chinese soldiers will be much less than for American soldiers); the presence or absence of a domestic military-industrial complex (e.g., compare Saudi Arabia buying US equipment at international prices versus the ability of a country like Russia with its own MIC to produce its own advanced equipment at much lower costs); the aggregate of former spending, accounting for things such as what percentage of it “stayed on” in the form of military capital (which itself is continually adjusted for depreciation); and what US military theorist Trevor Dupuy called “combat effectiveness value,” that is, the relative effectiveness with which a military can use its existing manpower and capital stocks to win engagements and wrack up good K/D ratios, and which itself depends on a myriad of factors beyond just money such as generalship, esprit de corps, etc.
As we shall soon see, while consideration of the above factors does not (for now) change the fundamental fact of US military dominance, but it does move the focus away from overly simplistic rhetoric of the type that “the US spends as much on its military as the next 10 countries/20 countries/rest of the world combined” with the unspoken assumption being that actual military power is a mere extension of dollar spending on it.
Global Firepower and other Popular Indices
This is the best known popular online index of military power available. Unfortunately, its methodology is secret so far as I’m aware, and its scaling is strange and obviously non-additive. Nor is it very intuitive. For instance, the gap between the US and Russia seems to be similar to that between the UK and France. This is almost flat out impossible. French and British military power, much like economies and demography, are remarkably similar. There is no way that even the proportional gap between them is as big as that between the US and Russia, which does have a very formidable military but is currently in the midst of rebuilding it from the post-Soviet stagnation.
Likewise for this recent ranking from Credit Suisse.
There is the Composite Index of National Capability, which uses military expenditure, military personnel, energy consumption, iron and steel production, urban population, and total population as inputs to develop an index of “national capability.” This was developed in the US during the 1960s, a time when the use of such inputs would have been logical due to memories of the World Wars, which were won by mass conscript armies and steel foundries that produced the means to churn out thousands of guns, tanks, and artillery pieces.
But is it still relevant to today’s world? Suffice to say that it is a pretty sure thing that iron and steel production will not be a limiting factor in any plausible Great Power war either now, nor would it have been even by the 1970s. The fact that China now produces almost ten times as much steel as the US will have vastly less significance than Germany producing 17.6 million tons of steel in 1913 to 4.8 million tons by Russia in 1913. Indeed, the very fact that China overtook the US on the CINC around 2000 discredits it as a viable index of modern military power or even national capability.
The blogger and political scientist Phil Arena has a better version of the CINC which he calls “M” that is a much better proxy of military power. It is still flawed but has the major advantage of being very simple and possessing face validity.
Chinese geopolitical think tanks have developed the concept of Comprehensive National Power, which attempts to measure all facets of national power (2015 rankings to the right).
The Chinese are obsessed with not repeating what they see as the mistakes of the Soviet Union – e.g., distorting its economy through massive military overspending – so they actually tend to deemphasize the military aspect from such comparisons in favor of financial and soft power influence.
This is, of course, perfectly valid – so long as an American CVBG doesn’t show up on your coast, at any rate – but this is going beyond the scope of what this post is about, i.e. strictly military comparisons.
Technical Discussions
On the Internet, most of the more informed military discussions tend to be about the superiority of one or another weaponsd platform over another. Who would win in a Leopard 2A7 vs. M1A2 Abrams vs. T-14 Armata slugfest? (I have no idea) Does the fact that Indian fighter pilots in Su-30MKI’s beat British Typhoons in a recent exercise mean that Russia is stronk and the RAF sucks? (No, because dogfighting isn’t the same thing as BVR combat) Will the F-35 program reinforce US air dominance or does it constitute the most spectacular military boondoggle thus far? (Somewhere in between most likely)
I don’t put much stock in these discussions. First off, a lot of the real details are classified, so real life performance can often differ from theory (and war games). Argentinian Mirages were supposed to outperform British Harriers in 1982, whereas the final “score” ended up about 10:0. These discussions frequently discount cost considerations. This is the classic Tiger vs. T-34 phenonenon: Crudely speaking, the former might be a match for 5 of the latter, but that isn’t so useful when you can have ten T-34s for the price of one Tiger (which will in any case break down due to its overengineering and have to be abandoned for lack of spare parts). But the crucial question of cost rarely enters these fanboyish arguments. Third, good militaries are supposed to act as tightly coordinated wholes, so the impact of any one platform – be it substantially above or below performance expectations – isn’t that relevant in the overall scheme of things. The French had substantially more and BETTER tanks in 1940, but that didn’t end up doing them much good, because their tanks had far less coordination due to a paucity of radios (which all Panzers were equipped with) and they were spread out all over the place, making it impossible to use them as the armored spearheads they were supposed to be. If you don’t have the appropriate doctrine for them, your fancy toys aren’t very useful.
This can apply even to really old, well-established tech. For instance, Liveleak and YouTube are full of videos in which Syrian Arab Army tanks in dense urban areas trundle about in the open without infantry support, making them easy targets for jihadist RPGs. You would think they’d have learned to stop doing it after four years and counting of defeats, but apparently not. They are lucky in the sense that while their jihadist opponents might be much more enthusiastic, they are also at least just as incompetent. Those videos are likewise full of Allah Akbaring in the middle of firefights and firing without aiming.
Professional Military Ratings
They are hard to dig up, but I have found a few examples of these.
For instance, from Ian Morris’ The Measure of Civilization – companion book to his more famous Why the West Rules – he cites war games designer James Dunnigan, who gave the following scores for land and sea power:
While the naval scores look feasible enough, the land scores are clearly incredible. Suffice to say that if that was true then Russian land power would not only be significantly lower than India’s (which sources a lot of its tech from Russia) and Israel’s (which is a respectable Power but nowhere near the very top leagues), it would also be less as a percentage of US land power than its naval power is as a percentage of US naval power. Considering the US relative focus on sea power, which Russia as a primarily land power does not share, this is just logically impossible.
In 2010, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released the following estimates of military power for 2010. Especially considering that Chinese analysts are not particularly given to nationalistic bombast, this looks to be about credible.
It shows that China and Russia are each at about a third of US military power, while France and the UK in return are a third of that of China and Russia. This tallies well with my CMP estimates.
Finally, it is also worth pointing out that according to one discussion I’ve had with a professional British military analyst – who must for obvious reasons remain anonymous – these figures all substantially understate Russian military power. In particular, he argues that “Russian ground capabilities would be a very close second to US ones,” which if so implies that Russia’s aggregate score – that is, including the naval component – on any such comparison would be closer to half that of the US than a third (although he strongly questions the utility of such quantification in general). He also has a very dim opinion of Chinese military power. I find it difficult to agree with many of his points, especially since even just the US Army is substantially bigger than Russia’s Ground Forces, and surely has a significantly higher combat effectiveness value on average. This would make it hard to square with his (80%-90%?) evaluation of Russia’s ground capabilities relative to the US. But as a professional, this opinion is worth mentioning at least as a FWIW.
A lot of great work has been done on detailed, startlingly accurate modeling of military engagements – starting all the way back from the war games of the Prussian General Staff in the mid-19th century, and culminating in complex computer models that query huge databases of past military engagements to find optimal strategies that are used by modern militaries today.
However, apart from the small detail that they tend to be classified, they are all focused on the tactical or operational level, not the strategic one. I.e., they don’t measure comprehensive military power.
Comprehensive Military Power
To compile my rating, it has to satisfy several prerequisites:
- It has to make sense at a fundamental level (face validity)
- It has to be both additive and historically consistent, so that cross-country comparisons across time and space can be made
- It has to be fairly simple conceptually and use openly available data
Nuclear war power is a totally different kettle of fish and is entirely excluded. This is an index exclusively of conventional military power.
The solution I settled down is a “translation” of the GDP concept from economics into the military sphere.
Where:
- CMP is comprehensive (national) military power;
- L is “labor” aka military manpower, or Army personnel numbers;
- K is “capital” aka military capital, aka the stock of equipment a military possesses i.e. tanks, guns, bulletproof vests, fortifications, etc.
- CE is the “total factor productivity,” or how effectively L and K are used, and is a proxy for combat effectiveness value. This is a multiple of the technology level (T); of Troop Quality (Q); and of a cultural factor (C). Explanations below.
- alpha is set = 0.5. This implies that a force with twice as many troops should be about equivalent to a force with twice as much military capital, everything else being equal. Is this a good assumption? Perhaps I underestimate labor slightly in terms of ground forces. But it would also massively overestimate labor in terms of its contributions to naval power. Clearly, having twice as many warships is preferable to having twice as many sailors (all else equal). I think 0.5 is a good compromise, but if you have good arguments for other figures, I would be happy to hear them.
Manpower
The only comprehensive data I could find that goes back to 1989 is the World Bank’s figures for total armed forces personnel. This includes paramilitary forces, which rarely match up to the quality of the conventional forces, but in the absence of figures just for active duty personnel I had to go with those figures.
I made adjustments only for two countries, India and North Korea. India because it has a huge paramilitary component that virtually trebled the size of its military, so I specifically used the figures for its active duty personnel. North Korea because its paramilitary component is likewise unreasonably huge, plus actual academic demographic estimates of its military size indicate that it is at 700,000 troops and has long ceased to be a million man army.
As we can see on the graph to the right, the number of military personnel in all the Great Powers has been steadily going down since the end of the Cold War. Partly this has been to a general trend of military downsizing – most pronounced in Russia/USSR – but also due to the continuing devaluation of raw manpower in favor of more automated systems.
Military Capital
Military capital is the tools – tanks, artillery, airframes, etc. – that militaries use to deal out damage.
I found some historical figures for the 1950-1990 period (the 2000 and 2010 numbers are future projections, and as such useless) from a 1989 RAND report, Long-Term Economic and Military Trends, 1950-2010.
I got additional rough figures for East Germany and the Koreas from other sources. In addition, I recall reading that Israel’s total military capital in the 1980s was approximately equal to that of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, which enabled me to make a rough estimate of its military capital stock (unfortunately I can no longer locate this report).
I proxied other countries’ military capital stocks by reference to the averages of the respective groups they belonged to (e.g. Cold War NATO, Eastern European Socialist Bloc, Developing Nations, Asian Boomers, etc). This might seem like a very rough and imprecise way of going about things, but that is not actually the case – at least so far as estimates of military potential by, say, the 2010s, are concerned – because a big chunk of that initial military capital stock in 1990 would have depreciated by then.
This takes us to the precise way in which military capital stock figures were generated for the post-1990s period.
First off, I made the blanket assumption that 25% of military spending everywhere is devoted to procurement. This is pretty weak, but considering that there are major uncertainties over the size of military budgets in countries as big as China – to say nothing of individual components of that budget – trying to individually estimate the share of procurement spending across many countries would have been an extremely time-consuming and utterly pointless endevour. In any case, swings of 5% or even 10% points up or down would not have had absolutely cardinal effects, since the main factor here is total military spending, for which we have relatively reliable figures for the 1988-2014 period from SIPRI. This military spending data was adjusted to take into account yearly international price level differences.
Second, military capital depreciates. A tank built in 2005 will be worth considerably less today. Moreover, this depreciation rate varies across both historical time and particular militaries due to their different force structures, maintenance standards, etc. Over the course of twenty years, the majority of the then existing military capital would have depreciated. But some military capital can linger on for a very long time. The Tupolev Tu-95s were first built in the 1950s and continue to serve to this day. Is this because impoverished Russians can’t design or build anything newer and are forced to continue flying obsolete rustbuckets? Field this question to the USAF, which likewise built the first Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses in the 1950s and plans to keep them in service until 2045. The avionics get updated, of course, but an airframe can last a long time.
The picture to the right is of the author at the USS Midway (CV-41) aircraft carrier, commissioned in 1945 and serving the entire length of the Cold War to be decommissioned in 1992 and transformed into a museum.
How fast does military capital depreciate? There is a huge range of estimates, and for the above reasons, no exactitude can be hoped for in any case. Some estimates of yearly military capital depreciation I’ve encountered include: 6.3%; 3.5%-5%; 10%; 8%-10%; 3.5%-6%. I ended up using a simple 5% throughout.
Using 1990 as an anchor, the military capital calculations consisted of an addition of 25% of current military spending (inflation adjusted) and the subtraction of 5% of the existing accumulated military capital stock.
Combat Effectiveness
This crucial factor consists of a multiple of three components: Technology; Troop Quality; and Cultural Modifier.
Technology
Military technology is advancing at a continuous pace. Ian Morris in The Measure of Civilization cites an estimate that the weapons systems of 2000 have 50-100x as much mobility, resilience, and destructive potential as those of 1900, whereas those of 1900 are 5x as capable as those of 1800. This is an ongoing process that finds expression today in things such as drones, swarms, cyberwar, and even more exotic possibilities like railguns and DEWs. It will also accelerate or decelerate depending on the underlying rate of overall technological growth and the percentage of R&D that will be devoted to military competition in the years ahead. Furthermore, depending on their nation’s developmental level and international relations, some militaries will be systemically more technologically advanced than others.
To proxy this, I first compiled an estimate of the rate of technological military progress over the past century (see right). I didn’t try to be particularly detailed, since that is probably a futile endevour. Four broad historical periods can be made out, though:
- The 1900-1935 period saw a modest degree of both technological and doctrinal progress. In the former sphere, you had of course the appearance of the first rudimentary armor and air forces. You also had major matching doctrinal developments, such as the Hutier tactics that eventually broke the stalemate on the Western Front in World War 1, and would later wield great influence over the proper employment of armor. Outside Germany, however, these innovations were not readily accepted. Overall, yearly growth of perhaps 3%.
- The 1935-1975 period saw blisteringly fast progress. To get a sense of the scale of the change, consider that the mid-1930s began with aircraft like the Spitfire and Messerschmitt Bf 109 replacing old wood and fabric models, culminating in the F-15 and Su-27 by the 1970s – both planes that in their modernized versions continue to form the backbones of the US and Russian Air Forces. The later part of this period also saw the development of the Revolution in Military Affairs, spearheaded by Marshall Nikolay Ogarkov in the USSR in the 1970s and most intensively adapted by the US after the 1980s. Overall, yearly growth of perhaps 7%.
- The 1985-2015 saw a slowing down of military technological growth. To be sure, it still continues, predominantly in the fields of networking and IT, but you no longer have the major leaps every decade that you had in the previous period. Overall, yearly growth of perhaps 5% in 1975-1985, and 3% thereafter.
- The 2015-2050 period lies in the future, so any propositions are largely guesswork. But assuming no fundamentally new paradigms are developed, no computer superintelligences, no technological singularities, the yearly rate of growth might continue to be around 3%.
Using the year 2000 as an anchor, military technology of previous and future years is adjusted based on the above schema. It is further adjusted based on each individual military’s closeness to the military technology frontier, as represented by leading industrial countries such as the US.
- Technological frontier – The US, its closest allies (e.g. Israel and the Five Eyes), and NATO/allied countries that are economically well developed and possess substantial military-industrial complexes of their own (e.g. France, Germany, Japan). This does not necessarily mean that all their weapons systems are top notch. It just means that mere money is the only major obstacle in attaining such a state. If Germany right this moment decided to become stronk! and build itself a fifth generation fighter, and financed that project properly, there’s no real doubt over its theoretical capacity to do so. The extent to which countries do or do not do this is proxied by their accumulation of military capital.
- Lag of 5 years – Small NATO countries, close NATO clients, and the USSR and modern Russia as well as Russia’s closest allies and small rich countries like Singapore that devote a lot of attention to their militaries. Assigning a lag of a mere 5 years to Russia might be controversial, considering the poor reputation of Russian technology – largely a result of it being used by incompetent countries like Syria and Iraq against competent countries like Israel and the US – but all in all I do not think it unrealistic. There might indeed be a lag of 5 or even 10 years in individual spheres such as drones or fighter aircraft, but for every one of those there is a sphere where Russia is on the leading edge, such as tanks, anti-aircraft, and diesel subs.
- Lag of 10 years – China, India, most middle income countries and buyers of Western and Russian “monkey model” equipment – China is fast closing the gap and will soon reduce its lag to 5 years, but for now this is probably accurate. In particular, it continues to fail at building reliable high performance fighter jet engines that have long been mastered in the West and Russia.
- Lag of 15 years – So-called “rogue” regimes that have been heavily sanctioned by the West and are not in a position to innovate most of their own hi-tech equipment, such as Iran, as well as the more impoverished Third World tinpot countries.
Troop Quality
Spending more money per soldier will almost inevitably improve overall quality. Brighter, more motivated people will be incentivized to show up in the first place. More time can be devoted to training, using more bullets and flying time. Full time cooks and cleaners can be hired so that soldiers don’t have to waste time doing things irrelevant to their profession.
I made Troop Quality equal to per soldier spending times 4 in the last year, plus per soldier spending times 2 in the year before that, plus per soldier spending times 1 three years back. This loosely reflects the idea that it is the most recent spending that will have the most effect.
I then took the cube root of this figure to account for diminishing returns. After all, doubling spending on a soldier can hardly be expected to double his combat effectiveness. But a 25% increase is quite reasonable.
Cultural Factors
In both the World Wars, as Trevor Dupuy recounts in his books such as A Genius for War, the Germans consistently had a 25% combat effectiveness advantage over the Allies – the French, the British, and the Americans – and in individual engagements, they inflicted 50% more casualties adjusted for personnel numbers, equipment, local geography, and offensive/defensive status. Over the Russians, their combat effectiveness advantage was more along the lines of 100%+. (Incidentally, this, and not the Hollywood myth of “two soldiers per rifle,” is what accounted for the high Soviet:German casualty ratios. Even a cursory perusal of WW2 war production statistics, in which the USSR outproduced Germany in virtually all weapons categories, would confirm this. The Germans were just a lot better at fighting, while the Soviets were a lot worse – possibly because the 1940s USSR was still in many respects a Third World country).
As such, I gave Germany a 25% across the board advantage in combat effectiveness. (Is this still valid? Dupuy, after all, argues that the key factor that explained German overperformance was the quality of their General Staff, which they no longer really have. However, I don’t fully buy that argument. Many countries as early as the aftermath of the Prussian victories in the 1860s-70s adopted the General Staff structure, but failed to recreate German-style military efficiency. So I suspect this is more of a permanent cultural or even sociobiological factor).
I also gave a 25% across the board advantage to a few other countries that have displayed unusually impressive military “feats” in their history, such as Finland (Winter War), Israel (the Arab Wars), Mongolia (that Ghengis guy), Switzerland (Swiss pikemen), etc.
I took 25% off countries that I deemed to be “Southern” (the Latin, African, Arab, and Indian subcontinent peoples) to account for the traditional stereotype of them being generally inferior soldiers to “northerners.” However, I did not extend this to Turks, Greeks, and Armenians/Israelis, who have somewhat better military reputations. I also took another 25% off from countries that I perceived to have excessive levels of clannishness in their societies, since clannishness is – as I discussed at length previously – antithetical to being a good soldier as part of the army of a nation-state. The net effect of this is to reduce the default combat effectiveness of Arabs to 50%, which is in fact somewhat similar to the ratios they displayed in their wars with Israel. There is no such clannishness “hit” as concerns Arabs who fight for clan (e.g. the Syrian National Defense Forces) or for God (e.g. Al Nusra, Islamic State) but these types of military structures are not any good at conventionally fighting actually competent militaries who know how to wage combined arms warfare.
Putting it All Together
The result is the Comprehensive Military Power index. It is of course a largely theoretical figure, so further specific adjustments will be necessary to take into account aspects like geography, the land/sea division, etc. Nonetheless, at least in the sense that militaries aim to expend their resources in a way that maximizes their power – a sort of military version of the efficient markets hypothesis – Comprehensive Military Power should be at least a useful proxy of their results.
Here are the top 15 militaries of 2015 according to the Comprehensive Military Power index (you may find the full list at the bottom of this post).
In the default CMP, i.e. the second column, the US score in 2000 = 100. In the third column, the US score in 2015 has been normed to 100.
| Rank | Country | CMP 2015 | CMP 2015 (US=100) |
| 1 | United States | 197.35 | 100.00 |
| 2 | China, P. R. | 83.45 | 42.28 |
| 3 | Russia | 65.96 | 33.42 |
| 4 | India | 30.71 | 15.56 |
| 5 | Germany | 23.87 | 12.09 |
| 6 | France | 23.31 | 11.81 |
| 7 | United Kingdom | 19.38 | 9.82 |
| 8 | Japan | 18.65 | 9.45 |
| 9 | Korea, South | 16.50 | 8.36 |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | 13.68 | 6.93 |
| 11 | Turkey | 12.44 | 6.30 |
| 12 | Italy | 11.95 | 6.06 |
| 13 | Brazil | 11.91 | 6.04 |
| 14 | Iran | 10.40 | 5.27 |
| 15 | Israel | 9.65 | 4.89 |
A Few Comments on How CMP Will Translate into Real Battle Results
Conventional modern combat follows the classic Lanchester model, in which the damage your army inflicts over time is a function of the size of your army (see graphic illustration right, via Wiki). Likewise for the enemy.
As such, assuming equal damage rates (as proxied by combat effectiveness), even a small initial advantage can soon translate into crushing victories and defeats – see the first diagram on the right. It is these considerations that underlie Clausewitzian concepts such as the principles of The Offensive, Maneuver, Mass, and Economy of Forces. These principles were intuited by the Great Captains of yore (Alexander, Napoleon, etc) and have been formalized in Military Theory 101 in modern days.
The method for quick but generally reliable predictions of failure or success in prospective military operations, which can be performed by the layman, is a consideration of the share of the national CMP and the gross size of that CMP that the respective combatants can realistically allocate to the sphere of combat operations.
Let us consider a few examples:
The Gulf War
According to my database, the US had a CMP of 92.2 versus 2.1 for the Iraq of Saddam Hussein in 1990. This includes the standard -50% adjustment for Muslim Arabs, which as per usual was justified for this war.
The US concentrated something like 25% of its global military power to this campaign. In tandem with its coalition allies, that made for a regional CMP concentration of up to 30, that is – for all his tanks – a multiple of almost 15:1 relative to Saddam’s forces.
Saddam wouldn’t have stood a chance, even had he been a talented military leader, which he was not. He failed to do anything to disrupt the US buildup, and exercised a rigid, paranoid style of control that quelled lower-level military initiative.
The Syrian Conflict
The Syrian state and the Islamic State both have around 1.7 points on the CMP. I suspect FSA/Al Nusra is a bit lower, maybe around 1. No wonder it’s been a long stalemate… until, perhaps, the Russian airstrikes.
Timely reminder of what I wrote about them:
This is where the Russian Air Force can hopefully make a big difference. Even the fighters already in place will allow the Syrians to effectively double their number of sorties, and Russian fighter pilots are much more skilled and have more modern armaments than their Syrian counterparts. Effectively, this translates to a tripling or quadrupling of Syrian air power that can be concentrated in support of SAA ground operations. Air power can seriously degrade the combat power of enemy formations that do not have adequate AA counters to it (that describes both the FSA/Al Nusra and ISIS). Whereas a front might have once been in equilibrium, due to roughly matching combat power on either side, a sustained air campaign could begin to systemically swing the advantage over to the SAA and eventually enable the reconquista of Syrian territorities currently under renegade Islamist control.
The War in Donbass
In 2014, the fledgling Novorossiyan state as of the August fighting had a CMP of about 0.9, relative to Ukraine’s 6.9. This is a difference of almost 8:1. Thus, when the Ukrainian Army began to fight seriously – for all its manifold problems logistics, morale, and generalship problems – it made progress and would have almost certainly ended up strangling Novorossiya in its cradle. But thanks to the “Northern Wind” and the limited Russian intervention at Ilovaysk, this was not to be.
Both sides have continued to build up their forces, and as of mid-2015, the CMP of Novorossiya was approximately 2.1 to Ukraine’s 8.1 – now a ratio of less than 4:1. Considering that Ukraine cannot realistically commit a huge percentage of its forces to attacking Novorossiya, a military solution to the conflict is for the time being out of the question, as even Poroshenko has been forced to belatedly acknowledge. While Ukraine might be able to make gains, Russia would be able to bolster Novorossiya just as fast. That said, under current spending plans, Ukraine’s CMP should almost double by 2020 – assuming it doesnt’t go bankrupt and is able to maintain military spending at 5% of GDP – which would give it an almost tenfold advantage if Novorossiya stands still in the meantime. (Which, with Russia apparently losing attention, might well happen).
Finally, it also gives the lie to Ukrainian claims which are uncritically repeated in the Western press that they faced down and defeated the Russian Army inflicting thousands of casualties on the Muscovite aggressor. There was in fact just a single intervention at Ilovaysk; Russian military KIA is almost certainly below a hundred for the entire conflict; and unlike the Ukrainians, they were forced to engage while using only a fraction of their capabilities so as to maintain plausible deniability. In effect, they had to forego their vast military capital advantage, and instead rely on superior combat effectiveness. The fact that that they easily trounced Kiev’s forces regardless is incidental testament to Russia’s complete military superiority over Ukraine.
A Confrontation with NATO in the Baltics
Assume the crazier neocons take over the reins and smash Russia’s Latakia airbase to pieces (there’s nothing Russia will be able to do to stop that).
Now Brzezinski might not formally be a neocon, but frankly neocon ideas so dominate US interventionist discourse that we might as well call them all neocons. Here is what the neocon Brzezinsky had to say on this:
“In these rapidly unfolding circumstances the U.S. has only one real option if it is to protect its wider stakes in the region: to convey to Moscow the demand that it cease and desist from military actions that directly affect American assets,” he said.
“The Russian naval and air presences in Syria are vulnerable, isolated geographically from their homeland,” Brzezinski noted. “They could be ‘disarmed’ if they persist in provoking the US.”
Here is another, bona fide neocon, Noah Rothman, pretending to be in anguish over the threat of World War 3 while rationalizing and implicitly calling for the US to attack Russian forces in Syria who are there at the request of its legitimate government:
Washington is faced with a terrible choice: Withdraw unceremoniously and invite further Russian aggression or deter Moscow’s military activities abroad through the credible threat of force. The Pentagon is preparing for the latter course.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the Pentagon was readying a set of options for the president should he choose to protect Washington-supported rebel groups on the ground in Syria from air attack by Russian forces. The details of such a plan remain a secret, but they would necessarily include putting U.S. air assets in close proximity to Russian forces, triggering an international incident with the expectation – or perhaps the hope – that Russia would climb down from the crisis it has ignited. “At worst, if Russia bombs rebels trained by the U.S. and American fighter jets intercede to protect the Syrians, the exchange could trigger an all-out confrontation with Russia — a potential disaster the administration would like to avoid,” Fox News reported.
Both suggestions if carried through would actually be straightforward acts of war.
Assume that Putin doesn’t back down and try to make amends with his “partners,” which is not entirely impossible, but instead decides to up the ante by confronting NATO in the Baltics. What happens?
I would imagine the conventional answer is that Putin gets smashed and the Russian hordes get sent back fleeing to Eurasia.
The CMP concept, however – not to mention Pentagon war games – suggest NATO wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Russia’s CMP is a third of that of the US, and a fifth of NATO’s. However, a great percentage of it is already concentrated at its western borders. The Balts themselves collectively have less than 1 in CMP, compared to Russia’s 66. There is no way that NATO will be able to mass in sufficient force to have any short at defending the Baltics. Should they attempt to do so anyway, they will merely be destroyed piecemeal with minimal damage on Russian forces. The only hope of reversal would be either fullscale mobilization across NATO (not going to happen no matter how shrill the neocons get), or draconian economic sanctions (which is what will happen).
However, I don’t expect any of the neocons to pay any particular attention to such matters, because they have an idee fixe – e.g., American triumphalism, Israel firstism, Russophobia – and have no interest, desire, or incentive to deviate an iota away from it.
The Future Global Military Balance
In tandem with various assumptions about future economic growth and the share of spending that will be devoted to the military, we can make rough projections of future military power.
But first…
Cold War History
In short, a CMP analysis shows:
- US superiority in the 1950-1975 period, Soviet superiority thereafter until its collapse. (Yes, the US was roughly twice as powerful as the USSR in 1945. However, it went below the Soviet lower following postwar demobilization. During the Korean War it sprang back up again and the permanent military-industrial complex was there to stay).
- NATO vs. Warsaw Pact approximate parity on land, and continuous NATO dominance on the high seas. Of course the Warsaw Pact did have a preponderate in forces stationed in Europe proper. This was why Cold War military strategy was mainly about keeping the Warsaw Pact at bay long enough for American reinforcements to make their way to West Germany.
- A clear period of US military supremacy from 1992 until today. But China is gaining fast.
All this has face validity.
Future Superpower CMP
As concerns the Chinese-US military balance, the purely naval component is more important than the aggregate one, since the likeliest clash will be over some Pacific island or other.
Calculating separate CMPS for land and sea is unrealistic. However, one can make reasonable estimates of the share of national CMP that is land based vs naval based. In the US, for instance, I would estimate that the Navy and Marines (sea), and the Army and Air Force (land), each account for about half of its CMP. In the USSR, this split was more like 25%:75%. China during the Cold War was even more exclusively land-based, not possessing a blue water fleet at all. However, this is now changing fast. The Army is getting downsized, while as early as 2020 the PLAN will begin to resemble a smaller version of the USN.
Naval Power
Assuming that:
- The Chinese naval share of CMP grows steadily from about 30% in 2010 to 50% by 2050.
- The US naval share of CMP grows from 55% in 2010 and 2020, to 60% by 2020 and thereafter.
- Chinese military spending increases by 10% during the rest of the 2010s (as before), by 7% in the 2020s, by 5% in the 2030s, and by 3% in the 2040s.
- US military spending remains constant until 2020, then resumes growing at 3% a year.
- China will move from a 10 year technological lag in 2010 to a 5 year technological lag by 2020, and remain there until 2050 (i.e. will not become technologically leading edge).
Here is what the US/China naval comparison will look like in the years ahead under these non too demanding assumptions, which involve China continuing to converge rapidly with developed world living standards (like South Korea with a lag period of 20 years) and maintaining military spending at about ~2-2.5% of GDP, while the US grows at around 3% and keeps military spending at around 3% of GDP.
Under these conditions, China will overtake the US in overall military terms in land military power during the early 2020s, in overall military power in the early 2030s, and in naval military power by the early 2040s.
I view that as being historically plausible. Germany committed to major naval buildup at 1888, when its total GDP was still considerably smaller than Britain’s. Twenty five years later, the Imperial German Navy had emerged from obscurity to become half the strength of the Royal Navy. But Germany also had to maintain an Army capable of fighting a two front war, and its GDP never far outpaced Britain’s because their total populations were so close (65 million to 47 million in 1913). In contrast, China has a relatively secure rear with Russia, which it is slowly overshadowing in land military power anyway; its GDP is already bigger than the US in purchasing power parity adjusted terms; and its population is more than four times as large as America’s. Should it merely converge to Korea’s level of GDP per capita relative to the US, its aggregate economic size will be three time greater than America’s.
As such, China’s naval ascendancy by the mid-21st century is entirely plausible.
George Friedman of Stratfor claims that carrier operations are so complex that only Americans can really understand them (I am not even simplying his arguments all that much), but he also claims that China will break apart in the 2020s and Poland and Mexico will be superpowers this century, so take his forecasts with a grain of salt.
Comprehensive Military Power
In global terms, there will be four military powers, with Russia and a rising India coming in behind the American and Chinese behemoths.
The article is becoming too long for stating the assumptions behind Russia’s and India’s trajectory in any great detail; perhaps I will leave that for a later post (more on that below).
There will also continue to be a number of middling powers, such as France, the UK, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, but none of them are likely to go far beyond 10% of the US CMP. This is, of course, all assuming no major wars, mobilizations, unexpectedly sharp increases in military spending, superintelligence takeoffs, etc.
Further Applications of CMP
I spent quite a bit of time developing the CMP and intend to milk it for all it’s worth in future blog posts. So please feel free to suggest:
- Further “grand strategic” future scenarios with differing assumptions about military spending as share of GDP and GDP growth for different countries and potential alliances.
- Individual conflict analysis based on the CMP (e.g. India vs. Pakistan, the two Koreas, Azerbaijan vs. Armenia), as well as CMP based analyses of regional military balances e.g. Europe, Middle East, etc.
- Historical what-if and sci-fi scenarios, such as, Could the Warsaw Pact have conquered Western Europe? Could 1940 Nazi Germany take on 2015 Poland? Would a global UN military of 2015 be able to defeat the Wolfenstein: New World Order of 1960, or would Wilhem Strasse’s Panzerhunds rip us all apart with Teutonic ease??? Feel free to make them as wacky as you like!
Make these suggestions here and/or at my ask.fm account.
Comprehensive Military Power 2015
In the default CMP, i.e. the second column, the US score in 2000 = 100. In the third column, the US score in 2015 has been normed to 100.
| Rank | Country | CMP 2015 | CMP 2015 (US=100) |
| 1 | United States | 197.35 | 100.00 |
| 2 | China, P. R. | 83.45 | 42.28 |
| 3 | Russia | 65.96 | 33.42 |
| 4 | India | 30.71 | 15.56 |
| 5 | Germany | 23.87 | 12.09 |
| 6 | France | 23.31 | 11.81 |
| 7 | United Kingdom | 19.38 | 9.82 |
| 8 | Japan | 18.65 | 9.45 |
| 9 | Korea, South | 16.50 | 8.36 |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | 13.68 | 6.93 |
| 11 | Turkey | 12.44 | 6.30 |
| 12 | Italy | 11.95 | 6.06 |
| 13 | Brazil | 11.91 | 6.04 |
| 14 | Iran | 10.40 | 5.27 |
| 15 | Israel | 9.65 | 4.89 |
| 16 | Ukraine | 8.10 | 4.10 |
| 17 | Taiwan | 7.36 | 3.73 |
| 18 | Pakistan | 6.76 | 3.43 |
| 19 | Australia | 6.74 | 3.42 |
| 20 | Canada | 6.68 | 3.38 |
| 21 | Poland | 6.37 | 3.23 |
| 22 | Colombia | 4.86 | 2.46 |
| 23 | Spain | 4.81 | 2.44 |
| 24 | Indonesia | 4.69 | 2.38 |
| 25 | Singapore | 4.41 | 2.23 |
| 26 | Vietnam | 4.28 | 2.17 |
| 27 | Korea, North | 4.18 | 2.12 |
| 28 | Thailand | 3.75 | 1.90 |
| 29 | Egypt | 3.73 | 1.89 |
| 30 | Greece | 3.69 | 1.87 |
| 31 | Netherlands | 3.51 | 1.78 |
| 32 | Myanmar | 3.16 | 1.60 |
| 33 | United Arab Emirates | 3.11 | 1.58 |
| 34 | Algeria | 2.98 | 1.51 |
| 35 | Mexico | 2.72 | 1.38 |
| 36 | Romania | 2.45 | 1.24 |
| 37 | Azerbaijan | 2.42 | 1.23 |
| 38 | Malaysia | 2.36 | 1.20 |
| 39 | Iraq | 2.27 | 1.15 |
| 40 | South Africa | 2.26 | 1.15 |
| 41 | Kazakhstan | 2.25 | 1.14 |
| 42 | Novorossiya | 2.08 | 1.06 |
| 43 | Belarus | 2.05 | 1.04 |
| 44 | Oman | 2.02 | 1.02 |
| 45 | Belgium | 2.02 | 1.02 |
| 46 | Argentina | 1.98 | 1.00 |
| 47 | Philippines | 1.88 | 0.95 |
| 48 | Czech Rep. | 1.83 | 0.93 |
| 49 | Switzerland | 1.78 | 0.90 |
| 50 | Portugal | 1.74 | 0.88 |
| 51 | Sweden | 1.72 | 0.87 |
| 52 | Chile | 1.72 | 0.87 |
| 53 | Syria | 1.69 | 0.86 |
| 54 | Islamic State | 1.67 | 0.84 |
| 55 | Norway | 1.62 | 0.82 |
| 56 | Venezuela | 1.57 | 0.79 |
| 57 | Angola | 1.56 | 0.79 |
| 58 | Kuwait | 1.54 | 0.78 |
| 59 | Sri Lanka | 1.48 | 0.75 |
| 60 | Austria | 1.42 | 0.72 |
| 61 | Lebanon | 1.32 | 0.67 |
| 62 | Uzbekistan | 1.32 | 0.67 |
| 63 | Hungary | 1.31 | 0.66 |
| 64 | Finland | 1.28 | 0.65 |
| 65 | Nigeria | 1.25 | 0.64 |
| 66 | Denmark | 1.17 | 0.59 |
| 67 | Morocco | 1.17 | 0.59 |
| 68 | Bulgaria | 1.16 | 0.59 |
| 69 | Serbia | 1.08 | 0.55 |
| 70 | Peru | 1.03 | 0.52 |
| 71 | Bangladesh | 1.03 | 0.52 |
| 72 | Croatia | 0.89 | 0.45 |
| 73 | Ecuador | 0.86 | 0.43 |
| 74 | Armenia | 0.81 | 0.41 |
| 75 | New Zealand | 0.80 | 0.40 |
| 76 | Sudan | 0.80 | 0.40 |
| 77 | Yemen | 0.79 | 0.40 |
| 78 | Eritrea | 0.78 | 0.39 |
| 79 | Slovak Rep. | 0.71 | 0.36 |
| 80 | Georgia | 0.64 | 0.32 |
| 81 | Jordan | 0.56 | 0.29 |
| 82 | Afghanistan | 0.53 | 0.27 |
| 83 | Qatar | 0.48 | 0.24 |
| 84 | Libya | 0.42 | 0.21 |
| 85 | Ireland | 0.41 | 0.21 |
| 86 | Kenya | 0.39 | 0.20 |
| 87 | Lithuania | 0.38 | 0.19 |
| 88 | Kyrgyzstan | 0.38 | 0.19 |
| 89 | Ethiopia | 0.36 | 0.18 |
| 90 | Turkmenistan | 0.36 | 0.18 |
| 91 | Nepal | 0.35 | 0.18 |
| 92 | Bosnia-Herzegovina | 0.33 | 0.16 |
| 93 | Slovenia | 0.31 | 0.16 |
| 94 | Tunisia | 0.29 | 0.15 |
| 95 | Uruguay | 0.29 | 0.14 |
| 96 | Chad | 0.28 | 0.14 |
| 97 | Bahrain | 0.27 | 0.14 |
| 98 | Cyprus | 0.27 | 0.14 |
| 99 | Bolivia | 0.26 | 0.13 |
| 100 | Estonia | 0.22 | 0.11 |
| 101 | Latvia | 0.21 | 0.11 |
| 102 | Dominican Rep. | 0.20 | 0.10 |
| 103 | Uganda | 0.19 | 0.10 |
| 104 | Tanzania | 0.19 | 0.10 |
| 105 | Cambodia | 0.19 | 0.10 |
| 106 | Zambia | 0.19 | 0.10 |
| 107 | Côte d’Ivoire | 0.19 | 0.09 |
| 108 | Zimbabwe | 0.18 | 0.09 |
| 109 | Botswana | 0.18 | 0.09 |
| 110 | Namibia | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| 111 | Cameroon | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| 112 | Guatemala | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| 113 | Paraguay | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| 114 | El Salvador | 0.17 | 0.09 |
| 115 | Albania | 0.17 | 0.08 |
| 116 | Mongolia | 0.16 | 0.08 |
| 117 | Macedonia, FYR | 0.16 | 0.08 |
| 118 | Congo, Dem. Rep. | 0.16 | 0.08 |
| 119 | Congo | 0.15 | 0.08 |
| 120 | Brunei | 0.15 | 0.08 |
| 121 | Tajikistan | 0.14 | 0.07 |
| 122 | Cuba | 0.13 | 0.07 |
| 123 | Ghana | 0.11 | 0.06 |
| 124 | Senegal | 0.11 | 0.05 |
| 125 | Laos | 0.10 | 0.05 |
| 126 | Honduras | 0.10 | 0.05 |
| 127 | Moldova | 0.09 | 0.05 |
| 128 | Gabon | 0.09 | 0.04 |
| 129 | Rwanda | 0.09 | 0.04 |
| 130 | Luxembourg | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 131 | Montenegro | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 132 | Mali | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 133 | Guinea | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 134 | Somalia | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 135 | Madagascar | 0.08 | 0.04 |
| 136 | Burkina Faso | 0.07 | 0.04 |
| 137 | Panama | 0.07 | 0.04 |
| 138 | Burundi | 0.07 | 0.03 |
| 139 | Mozambique | 0.06 | 0.03 |
| 140 | Equatorial Guinea | 0.06 | 0.03 |
| 141 | Nicaragua | 0.06 | 0.03 |
| 142 | Jamaica | 0.05 | 0.03 |
| 143 | Trinidad & Tobago | 0.05 | 0.02 |
| 144 | Benin | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| 145 | Togo | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| 146 | Niger | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| 147 | Swaziland | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| 148 | Malawi | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| 149 | Djibouti | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| 150 | Lesotho | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| 151 | Malta | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| 152 | Papua New Guinea | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| 153 | Fiji | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| 154 | Sierra Leone | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| 155 | Central African Rep. | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| 156 | Guyana | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| 157 | Guinea-Bissau | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| 158 | Mauritius | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| 159 | Liberia | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| 160 | Gambia | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| 161 | Iceland | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| 162 | Belize | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| 163 | Seychelles | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| 164 | Cape Verde | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| 165 | Haiti | 0.00 | 0.00 |
[which if Washington really wanted to could put to a forcible end within 24 hours]
The USS Theodore Roosevelt says hi! (or would, if it wasn’t too busy running away)
This post is a pretty extravagant attempt to combine incompatible forms of data into a single index. One ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them! It’s like the new school of baseball statistics exponentiated.
Saudi Arabia still at no. 10? Really? Really?
Certainly that whole state would collapse into a Syria-like mess if even a minimally competent/battle-hardened Arab army gave it a poke. Those people make Egyptians (who at least have their planning of the Yom Kippur war to their credit) or Jordanians look like Germans. Saudi sans oil would be even worse than Yemen, considering that region at least has some history of pre-European civilisation. There are things no amount of money can buy.
…
[for Ron Unz]: Does this site honestly need an “agree/disagree” feature? All it will do will cause readers to pre-judge comments and colour opinion prior and after to reading them. This site should be above encouraging the herd-mentality found on “social media”.
Military power is tied to geography. I don’t know how you’d factor this into a chart, but it’s crucial. The French and British armies both performed badly against the German army in 1940. The outcome was fatal for France but not for Britain, because of the English Channel. Russia’s geography is not as providential as either Britain’s or America’s, but the country’s sheer size means it can’t really be encircled the way Germany and Poland have both been in the past.
Israel is powerful within its own region, especially when defending its own territory. It would probably prevail against any regional Arab or Muslim army trying to invade it directly. On the other hand, it was forced out of Lebanon.
I’m not sure how much the rise of India really matters in terms of, say, a future US-China contest. It feels as if India’s geography effectively quarantines the country off from the decisive areas of conflict.
Also, remember wars are often won by diplomacy, above all by having the right allies. Japan’s war aims in WW2 were hopelessly confused, but the alliance with Germany didn’t solve any of the country’s crucial natural resource problems, and Germany was simply too far away to be able to offer direct military help. I don’t know if a Stalin-Hirohito pact would have been politically possible, but strategically it would have made a lot more sense.
As always, anything by AK is worth serious thought. One comment for your further consideration.
You have to figure out a way to account for what a country is trying to do with its military. The US, for example is very interventionist — arguably more so than any other country. Russia, for example is more defensive.
So if the US/NATO decided to attack Russia, I think I would put my money on Russia. I think I would too if it decided to seize the Baltics. On the other hand, I wouldn’t bet on Russia taking Western Europe and holding a victory parade in Paris. And certainly not invading Mexico and attacking the USA.
When you take this into account, a tiny missile boat in the Caspian suddenly has an effect on a mighty carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf. But I don’t think I’d bet much on the Russian Navy’s chances against the USN in the South Pacific.
I think disregarding nukes is a mistake. But I want to make a couple points on the conventional side of things. Russia has significantly more tanks than the US, and significantly more artillery pieces (both self-propelled howitzers and MLRS.) These systems, with competent infantry and logistical support, represent by far the most threatening and effective conventional forces on the planet. Naval and air systems don’t come remotely close. The volume of ordinance, and the accuracy with which it can be delivered, is incomparable – the survivability is even less comparable. In terms of artillery, Russian systems make American systems look frankly laughable. Things are less clear-cut when it comes to tanks, but autoloading Russian tanks can clearly provide much greater volume of fire, and Russian tanks are far more mobile and fuel-efficient than their American counterparts.
Another important issue in modern times is long range missile (cruise or ballistic) capabilities, and defensive ability against those threats. They represent an astounding ability to get a large volume of ordinance wherever you want it, at lightning speed. In both areas Russia fields systems that have no Western analogues, and in great numbers. In addition Russia’s emphasis on land forces puts it on the best ground when it comes to these threats – the air and the ocean’s surface present much more friendly environments for such systems.
I understand the objection to raising such considerations, but I think an analysis devoid of attention to technical detail is basically worthless. From 2000 to 2015 American military power doubled? What? What justification is there for this assertion? Militaries are, at the end of the day, tools for getting ordinance from point a to point b, and preventing the enemy’s military getting to their ‘point b.’ It is true that the side with more firepower does not always win, but it’s what you’re working with. It’s analogous to weight class in boxing, or ‘army supply’ in Starcraft. The best rough measure of how powerful a military is, is how much ordinance they can hurl at enemy positions. The second most important factor is how much ordinance they can absorb without collapsing. Neither area has undergone any sort of revolution in the past 15 years, on either side.
Stephen Biddle used dyadic technological advantage calculations when calculating military technological advantage. No indexing will ever reflect the actual state of the affairs in the military field. Technological and economic dimensions of strategies are very important but social dimension–even more so. No index can reflect it. Napoleon tried, though, by producing his dictum on regiments fighting as divisions and vice-versa. And then comes this tricky issue of the national military school and operational art.
America is truly the indispensable nation if you want to get ordinance around the world. That is, if they want to stop you then they can with ease. No-one comes close. That is why I think it’s fair to say their military power has doubled.
Also they can be more clinical in how they deliver ordinance, both in their target acquisition and destruction.
Germany seems to be ranked much too highly here. Currently, it is probably weaker than Turkey.
An article about the state of Germany’s military:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/pulling-germanys-military-back-the-brink-13852
Poland should be higher (it certainly isn’t lower than Ukraine). But, excellent article as usual.
Not really, unless you’re talking about countries much weaker than Russia or China. A blockade is extremely difficult to enforce against peer competitors in the modern age – anti-ship missiles are effective and far cheaper than ships.
The US navy has not become much more powerful since 2000.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/oct/23/size-us-navy-changed-1917
Certainly it has not doubled in combat effectiveness. There’s an argument to be made that it has significantly declined.
The US does not have a monopoly on guided bombs, though it is true that their air power is far greater than any other nation’s. That’s not decisive, or even particularly relevant, against a country like Russia. Even during the Gulf War the decisive blows had to be struck with land forces, not from the sky. This with months of preparation and a much smaller and incompetent opponent, with antediluvian air defense systems.
If we’re talking ground forces, Russian tanks are equipped with gun-launched laser guided missiles, which afford them with unmatched accuracy at long range. That compounds the aforementioned advantages in numbers, mobility, logistical requirements, and fire rate.
the US Army is substantially bigger than Russia’s Ground Forces, and surely has a significantly higher combat effectiveness value on average.
American organizations and societal structures tend to be more hierarchical and to have a broader distribution of talent and effectiveness than those of most countries, including Russia. It’s my impression that at the purely human level (skills, motivation, fighting spirit) US special forces are extremely good, the Marines are good and regular Army units are underwhelming. It’s a pyramid. And because of American demographics and societal setup American pyramids of ability tend to be steeper than those of most countries.
This is true in education, culture, business and lots of other areas. I suspect that many people overestimate how effective the US military would be in a large-scale war because all of America’s recent wars have been small-scale. The US has been able to use the top of its military ability pyramid disproportionately in them. You can’t do that in a large-scale war.
Obama doesn’t like using US ground troops in neocon adventures, probably for the same reason that Colin Powell was against the second Iraq War behind closed doors: what’s in it for Blacks? And I agree with them – absolutely nothing.
Whoever succeeds Obama – be it Hillary, Jeb or Rubio – will most likely increase the use of US ground troops in the Middle East. But the size of the bloody mess there has grown so much since 2004. Syria, Lybia and Yemen have been added to it. More countries may be added in the future.
As the amount of territory to be held by US troops increases, the average quality of those troops will fall precipitously. Which will lead to much higher casualties than the ones seen during the second Iraq War.
I hope I’m wrong in these predictions.
This is so important you need to give it a name and an acronym, a brand.
Maybe the Military Power Index (MPI). Maybe the Karlin Military Power Index. Something as memorable as the other rankings (like the Failed States Index) floating about out there.
Have you thought of measuring the military power to unconventional armies like Hezbollah, Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, and the like? I say this because state-to-state wars have become more and more infrequent, most wars being insurgencies.
For example, the Nigerian Army is at a fairly respectable 65th on the Index, but seems to have been ineffective against Boko Haram until they hired some South African (and maybe Russian?) mercenaries.
Maybe that could be a subject for a second Index.
Scuttlebut from Afghanistan has it that the Germans are useless.
The Spanish and the French, on the other hand, are reported to be rough, tough and as competent as they come.
It may be time to reconsider the hard northerner/soft latin trope, provided these rumors are true of course.
I’m not totally convinced the Israelis are that good at war. Their enemies so far have always been weak themselves, and even in wars where they were fighting several countries (e.g. 1948 war) the total number of troops of the combined Arab armies was still smaller than the entire Israeli army.
Just curious, how efficient at war and fighting do you think the Chechens are? If hypothetically it were the Chechens that Zionism had territorial disputes with instead of Palestinians, what would be different? Would Israel be able to occupy Chechen territories like they can with Palestinian territories?
He also has a very dim opinion of Chinese military power.
Did he explain why?
He’s probably right about the Germans. The French were always unfairly underrated by the Americans and Brits. Verdun was the Stalingrad of World War I.
From what I’ve heard, NATO has only four real militaries: USA, UK, France, and Turkey. Poland is trying hard to catch up, and may approach Turkey in 5 years or so.
I would be really interested in an analysis of the tipping point, based on your CMP, at which you would project China as the clear winner in a war to conquer Taiwan against full fledged US opposition.
This was a long article. I can’t say that I read it all. But did Mr. Karly miss a very important and fundamental factor when judging military power by each individual country? The factor is this: alliances, formal and otherwise.
This is why his assertion that Iran is more powerful than Israel is ludicrous. Not only is Israel a nuclear power, but Israel commands unrivaled access to Washington, Brussels, Paris, London and Frankfurt. Plus, there’s NATO, which can be a very handy tool of Washington when needed. Khadafy learned this lesson the hard way.
Military power cannot be separated from diplomatic and cultural power. Isolated Iran knows this all too well.
Two points come to my mind.
Corruption
.
Corruption, this is less obvious but absolutely critical imo.
A. Political corruption by which i mean having a political elite who are bought by oligarchs and don’t care about the future of their country / nation. If the elite aren’t interested then the budget will be the bare minimum necessary and will allow B to happen.
B. Procurement corruption, where large amounts of the budget go into big vastly over priced pork projects. (A) can be about this too but it can just as easily happen at the civil service level. Here large chunks of the military budget doesn’t effectively go to the military; it goes to the suppliers. (Combined with A, minimum budget, the seepage caused by B means the military will have a shortage of every small thing they need from spare parts down to and including ammunition.
C. Troop level corruption, officers and men simply selling their equipment.
.
To my mind the corruption component is probably the second most important after economic power to the extent that my first stab at a CMI (comparative military index) would be
(population size * economic power) / corruption
and the big difference i’d have with your scores is i think the West’s economic power is going down and corruption up, both dramatically.
.
Some examples
Washington’s full spectrum dominance policy includes their NATO allies and despite the spin the policy is to weaken them militarily as much as possible. Turkey has resisted this more than most because of the prominent role of the army.
The EU political elite want to downgrade their national armies to make scrapping them a fait accompli so they can build an EU army at some point in the future.
The US political elite is clearly bought but they are bought by people who want the US to have a strong military however that isn’t preventing procurement corruption on a massive scale.
Procurement corruption in the western countries is now rife because the political elites aren’t interested.
Troop corruption is still low.
.
What these add up to is a huge drop in western capacity relative to everyone else because most other countries have always been like this (but with massive troop level corruption as well).
When Libya started people would say look at this huge list of planes, scary, scary but anyone who knew how it goes knew almost none of those planes would work beyond three days. Half of them would never fly in the first place because they’d had parts stripped to sell and there wouldn’t be spares for the other half because they would have been stolen so they’d only fly once and then need to be cannibalized.
It’s like that almost everywhere.
.
So relatively speaking
political elite vs political elite
– I’d say Russia and China are significantly ahead
procurement corruption
– I can only guess at the level in Russia and China now but whatever it is the gap has been closing
troop corruption
– I can only guess but my guess would be Russia is better on this metric than it used to be and China is bad to very bad so as of now I’d guess the West still has the edge there but as the fish rots from the head it’s only a matter of time before western decline closes that gap too.
.
If the CMI was
(population size * economic power) / corruption
then if economic power was
(population size * average IQ) / corruption
maybe the whole equation really boils down to
(population size * average IQ) / corruption (but with a time lag)
i.e. a population of size x, average IQ y and corruption index z will develop an economic power of (xy)/z in n1 years (if it’s not prevented in some way) and a comparative military power index of (xy)/z in n2 years after that (if it’s not prevented in some way)
as long as the corruption index includes the political elite’s loyalty to their own nation.
The last part is critical imo as one nation might have a high corruption index and a loyal elite while another might have a low corruption index and a disloyal elite but I think both cases end up the same.
.
so say country A went from
pop size 20
average IQ 10
corruption 10
to
pop size 20
average IQ 10
corruption 5
then over time it’s CMI would go from 20 to 40
whereas say country B went from
pop size 20
average IQ 10
corruption 2
to
pop size 30
average IQ 8
corruption 4
then over time it’s CMI would go from 100 to 60
and the ratio of A:B would go from 5:1 to 3:2
.
TL;DR
apols for long ramble but interesting topic
Good, well researched article. Learned a lot.
Which is why America would just sink Russia’s ships…you don’t have to be there physically to deny an area, you just use your weapons systems and that way America can deny their enemies movement all around the globe.
Yet Russia would not even be able to get those tanks to Syria if America were committed to stopping them, nevermind somewhere tricky like Australia or Mexico.
To be honest, modern infantry anti-tank weapons like Javelin, attack helicopters like Apache, and other guided weapons systems mean that large armoured formations are easy targets even if Russia were somehow capable of deploying them anywhere but her own region.
The simple truth is that no-one can project power globally except America. The last time anyone did was Britain in the Falklands and that was a stretch.
That is why Russia and China are regional powers and America is the sole global power.
Your Combat Effectiveness scores are not backed up by data. I have a few suggestions for incorporating these datasets:
As would anyone be under their originally very strict rules of engagement – it is very difficult to be effective when the only force you can use is for immediate self-defence.
They could not even request an upgrade…essentially they had no more right to use lethal force than any civilian in pretty much any country.
I think that this is true, but it is for political reasons. I’ve worked with French and German officers and the latter come across much more favourably.
GNP equates with “power projection” capability, while GDP-PPP equates with homeland-defence capability. Militaries with lots of ships & planes are good at power projection, while lots of soldiers is good for homeland defence. Then add the human factor – training, motivation, IQ etc.
In terms of conventional forces, from what I’ve seen I’d guesstimate the USA is currently around four times more powerful than Russia – more in naval, about that in air, less in ground forces. The US is geared more to projection, Russia more to homeland defence, but both are relatively balanced compared to eg the UK (biased to projection) or China (biased to defence). US conventional forces are at just about the level where if nuclear weapons vanished the USA might just about be able to conquer Russia, but well within the margin of uncertainty. Conversely US conventional forces could not conquer China, with its strong bias to homeland defence, but could conquer any other single nation relatively easily. Conquest is different from successful occupation, of course. Neither Russia nor China could conquer the other.
India has ‘human capital’ issues – though much stronger than Pakistan, she has a human capital deficit (real soldiers are few, high IQ types are few) and is not really comparable to high-latitude countries like Russia, China & USA where most of the male population can be trained to fight and the median IQs are 100+. While she is defence-biased and could obviously defend against a UK or French invasion, there is a large gap with China. It is quite likely that sans nukes China could conquer India if for some crazy reason she really wished to do so, while India could definitely not conquer China.
‘ This is the classic Tiger vs. T-34 phenonenon: Crudely speaking, the former might be a match for 5 of the latter, but that isn’t so useful when you can have ten T-34s for the price of one Tiger (which will in any case break down due to its overengineering and have to be abandoned for lack of spare parts)’
If you say so! :
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2013/01/tank-strength-and-losses-eastern-front.html
Things were a bit more complicated weren’t they?
Your numbers overall look very plausible. I suspect that errors in one area tend to be cancelled by errors in another, giving overall reasonable accuracy.
On the face of it the idea that 2 Arab soldiers = 1 Western soldier (US/UK/France) or 0.75 elite Western (German, Israeli) soldier looks surprising to me. I’d have expected a much higher ration – I think of Lucullus’ Roman army defeating Mithradates of Pontus while outnumbered 20:1. But this is an ‘all else equal’ multiplier assuming equivalent equipment, tech, training etc. It seems plausible at least for Egypt, if not for the Gulf Arabs.
I do think the personnel issue becomes major when you put Saudi Arabia ahead of Turkey(!) and Iran. None of these nations act as if SA is the superior power, and that really doesn’t pass the smell test. Turkey may well be ahead of Iran – similar personnel, superior tech – but there is a point at which tech & spending cannot compensate for personnel inferiority.
“China will overtake the US in overall military terms in land military power during the early 2020s, in overall military power in the early 2030s, and in naval military power by the early 2040s.”
Awhile back I guesstimated a 50-year lag between overtaking on GDP-PPP and overtaking as global superpower, given that China is not dedicated to overtaking the USA, that the USA is dedicated to maintaining global superiority, and looking back at the similar US-UK experience 1890-1940. So I was thinking around 2060. 2030s-40s seems early to me, even if the capability is there. I’d expect Chinese military growth to slacken from the 2020s, once they feel fairly secure. If the USA becomes (even) more aggressive then your chart becomes plausible.
[Turkey may well be ahead of Iran – similar personnel, superior tech]
I don’t know what “superior tech” means, but Iran has certainly made several scientific and engineering advances which Turkey has not, while if history means anything, the Turkish infantryman is better.
[I think of Lucullus’ Roman army defeating Mithradates of Pontus while outnumbered 20:1.]
The vast armies of antiquity existed only on paper.
All of my historically derived prejudices say that you’re right but they also say that Saudis are a bunch of camel herders scattered across the desert. I suspect that the other regional powers also see them in this way but things can change and oil is a great lubricant.
A really good ranking system illuminates areas that contradict common thought and predicts future surprises. Perhaps Saudi Arabia’s highly effective bombing campaign in Yemen is one of those surprises?
Interesting information, thanks.
[Perhaps Saudi Arabia’s highly effective bombing campaign in Yemen is one of those surprises?]
Holy smoke, are you stupider than the beasts of the field?
Interesting read, though I’m a bit confused as to how this applies in reality.
Take Israel versus Canada. The latter has several hundred times more area, about triple the population and is strategically located surrounded by ocean and ice. Excluding nukes, Israel attacking Canada would be a ridiculous attempt for obvious reasons. Canada could focus attacks on strategical resources like water, and starve out Israel within a year. So although I understand the logic behind ranking Israel higher than Canada – does it really mean Israel is “stronger” than Canada by any realistic measure?
And how could a relatively isolated nation like Russia ever fully project its military might? Even a small-scale operation right outside its borders in Ukraine, ended up very costly because of other, non-military factors. That’s some sort of mix between economic, diplomatic and intelligence disadvantage out-weighing any conventional military advantage.
I think it is Sir Max Hastings who angers his American readers with his criticism of US infantry in WWII resulting in their reliance on Elite Units, even more than armies usually have to anyway.
I think belief in the cause and fanaticism has a big effect on combat performance. Cromwell said “I HAD RATHER HAVE A PLAIN RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN THAT KNOWS WHAT HE FIGHTS FOR, AND LOVES WHAT HE KNOWS, THAN THAT WHICH YOU CALL A GENTLEMAN AND IS NOTHING ELSE.” The New Model Army was, rightly, seen as the most terrifying army in Europe at the time, soldiers were actively encouraged to study Protestantism and political ideals. Similarly the Napoleonic Armies were man for man superior to every continental European army, fired by patriotism and revolutionary zeal.
Even the US can’t project power if they don’t have a friendly country to base in and for the logistics to run through, eg. the build up to the first Gulf War.
I also think tech is becoming more important, you need the IQ level for the grunts to operate a lot of it.
China could seize Taiwan against US opposition today. Mostly because the US cannot effectively project its seapower that close to China. The days of a carrier task force sailing along the Taiwan straight are long gone.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/19688-israelis-call-for-arms-for-assad-to-save-regime
Iran is the target of neocons, (Senate Republicans were opposed to the deal) and the US getting heavily involved in Syria would make any future US attack on Iran unlikely. The war in Syria is basically a slow attrition of the Assad regime which neither Israel or Russia wants to fall. Russia has had to support Assad because he simply does not have the people. He is leading a regime that had an unrest that was met with the shooting of demonstrators by an army in which 80% of officers were Alawite- (they are 14 % of the population). Torturing people at the behest of Uncle Sam (US secret renditions were mainly to Syria) does not make Assad the legitimate government.
“Brzezinski might not formally be a neocon” He is not any kind of neocon – RT: US won’t follow Israel ‘like a stupid mule’ – Brzezinski .
Before the Sauds intervened the Houthis were rapidly advancing throughout Yemen but since then they have been slowly retreating.
It may be awful and inhumane but the Saudi air campaign looks pretty effective.
Some people believe that anybody who for whatever reason is opposed to Russia must be a neocon.
I don’t doubt that the German army is pretty useless nowadays…but is the French army in general really that great? Wasn’t there a rather embarrassing incident in Afghanistan where quite a few French soldiers got killed in an ambush for which they were woefully unprepared and ill-equipped?
Some people for whatever reason think that the defining feature of a neocon is unwavering and unconditional support for Israel.
Yet it need not be a feature, for example, Christopher Hitchens:
‘What Christopher meant, rather, was that Zionism was a “stupid, messianic, superstitious idea,” as well as a tragedy, in that it resulted in the displacement and ongoing travail of the Palestinians.’
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/despite-criticism-of-israel-hitchens-was-ardent-foe-of-anti-semitism-1.402015?v=5AD239D645CFC51BC2FDFB91A6D49C11
The point is that neocons were the teeth arm of modern liberalism. If microaggressions are traumatic, gay parades are an inviolable right and liberal democracy is a panacea then the neocons were rigorous in taking those supposed truths to their logical conclusion.
What this also means is that their failure in Iraq and Afghanistan means that their assumptions were wrong.
So the two sides of mainstream discourse are both liberal. It’s just that the nominally liberal side can’t take their assumptions to the correct conclusion while the neocon side can’t work backwards from their mistakes in order to appropriately question their assumptions.
The French had an excellent operation in Mali, complete with parachute jumps. They have also had a lot of success in other North African countries although their involvement is somewhat shady, and their combat elements seem to have been limited to special forces and similar.
yawn…who cares? We need to severely cut the budget of the military and the spy agencies…bring the troops home and put them on the border…
Lists such as these make for interesting discussions but in reality there are so many imponderables involved that unless there’s an actual war it can’t be known in advance how things end up playing out. It’s a matter of who fights for what and where. China and Russia apparently can defend their near abroad, as China did in the Korean war. The US is a world-wide interventionist and tries to project it’s power everywhere it sees fit. Take a look at the US program of building the Ford class of super-carriers, which are generations ahead of the old ones, and the intentions of the US becomes very clear: the US plans to continue to intervene everywhere and to be dominant.
Does the US deserve it’s #1 ranking? How has it fared in controlling Afghanistan? Much is made of it’s elite forces such as Seal Team 6 but who do they operate against except for third-world tribesmen? War movies aside the US has historically never fought wars against competent first worlders but rather against lesser armed third-worlders: Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. In the two world wars the US moved in at the last moment against the defeated and depleted Germans to scoop up what they could. They can throw a lot of bombs around though, that’s a certainty.
Adding up weapons can be misleading. The South Vietnamese army had quite a lot of weaponry bequeathed to them yet folded up rather quickly without the Americans around. Iran’s military was in complete disarray when Iraq invaded. Hardly a year after the overthrow of the Shah the country was unsettled, the officer class pretty much gone and they were unable to obtain spare parts for their equipment, they still prevailed over the Iraqis and went on the offensive. This was the result of their sheer will. The Germans, Russians, French and British have all shown great capability in the past. But is the current young generation the same as their grandparents or have they wearied of war and want the good life, preferring to leave it to a small number of elite types who like that sort of thing? Probably.
There are ‘wars’ and there are ‘conflicts’. For example the 1982 ‘conflict’ between Britain and Argentina was short, sharp and educational but not strategically important as ‘homelands’ were not involved. OTOH, the 1973 Yom Kippur war was the last time nation states went to ‘all out’ war.
It makes a big difference as to what is at stake. Israel, e.g., could destroy Hezbollah and or Hamas in pretty short order if it was a strategic necessity to do so. As a practical and tactical matter it refrains from doing it because the benefit is outweighed by the political and human price it would pay for doing so.
Syria is a ‘conflict’ that may evolve into a ‘war’ even if today it doesn’t even rise to the level of Vietnam but it has a Vietnam war element to it. The US poured hundreds of thousands of troops into the effort and, if the US military could always prevail over North Vietnam in any particular battle, it couldn’t win the war because of the geographic and demographic reality of its position.
Russia and Iran will probably face those same realities in Syria. They can keep Assad in power just like the US could keep Thieu in power only as long as it was prepared to prop his regime up. The moment that support waned Thieu was doomed as the internal politico-military balance was just not in favor of the Saigon regime. That applies today to Syria as it is an Arab Sunni state and nothing Iran or Russia can reasonably do will change that.
@Deduction
Simple enough. Only problem is, Russia would retaliate by ‘just’ sinking America’s ships. And America has a lot more invested in ships than Russia.
Both Russia and the US have long ranged strike capabilities. The difference is that US assets are hideously vulnerable to even a small scale usage of such capabilities, while Russian assets can hide behind a peerless multilayered air defense system.
Far from it. Even under ideal circumstances, armor isn’t easy to deal with, and the circumstances US infantry and aircraft would be under in a war with Russia are simply horrific.
The simple truth is that that’s nonsense. The US has to work far afield in order to work in the places of interest. Eurasian powers do not, but would be perfectly capable of doing so if they had to, as long as they were unopposed by a major player. That caveat applies to anyone crossing an ocean in the nuclear age, including the mighty USN, whose surface assets would have a lifetime measured in hours if faced with a concerted Russian effort to destroy them.
Non-submersible naval assets are struck with a dual strategic and technical weakness. They operate in a flat desert, easily located by many powerful modern surveillance tools. Even without nukes, it is quite impossible for them to survive advanced attack. On the strategic side, it is impossible to credibly threaten a nuclear exchange over non-nuclear non-domestic assets. “Oh, we lost a carrier battle group? Well, might as well throw in Los Angeles and Boston and New York and all the rest – no point living anymore..” <- not gonna happen, and not a credible threat.
The
power projection, between real players, is done by submarines that can wipe out many cities with their nuclear payload, and land-based systems that can do the same. Note that the important stuff is hidden underwater, and if on land either heavily hardened or mobile. Not floating on the bloody ocean, trivially located by any number of tools and equally trivial to destroy.
Arguably, today Russia is actually in a stronger military position relative to the USA, than was the USSR from 1945 to the early 70s (or than China is today), due to having strategic nuclear parity.
Even though China is a nuclear power with dozens of warheads capable of reaching the USA, it’s common for US politicians and military leaders to threaten military action against China to protect Taiwan, or even over some small artificial islands. During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy was able to establish an illegal blockade and force Khrushchev into a humiliating public capitulation, because the USA at that time had overwhelming strategic nuclear superiority. Yet even the most lunatic neocon warhawks like McCain have completely ruled out any military intervention in Ukraine. Having a large conventional advantage over Russia doesn’t do the USA much good if fear of escalation to a nuclear conflict it can’t win, prevents the USA from using it.
As counter-argument to this, there is the fact that several GOP presidential candidates (and Clinton on the Democratic side) have claimed they would establish a no-fly zone over at least part of Syria, even if that meant shooting down Russian planes. This could just be campaign bluster though, which they know they’d never have to follow through on, since as president they could always “reluctantly” defer to a congressuional refusal to grant authorization.
The Houthis were never advancing “throughout Yemen”. They were raiding into the west of the former PDRY, always unsympathetic territory for them, and retreated not because of bombing but because of a ground force inserted into those provinces by the invaders. Bombing of their own strongholds has had no discernible effect on their actions or capabilities.
Educate yourself, my man, educate yourself.
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – Thomas Sowell
Good points. But Brzezinski is a Polish nobleman with (understandable) issues concerning Russia and the Soviets, rather than a neocon.
Anatoly,
A very clever use of the Cobb-Douglass type of production function to model CMP. Aggregation and Indexation are always prone to over-simplification, yet I would say that this is as sensible and well-specified a model of military power as any I have seen. The only shortcoming (which you have actually pointed out), is that this model (its parameter and specification) is unstable to technological change. Which of course translates to the relative non-robustness of the long-term projections you offer.
Great article overall.
The pool of young men is a factor. In 1940 Germany outnumbered France in the call up class of 19 year olds almost 2:1. The decisiveness of the political leadership is a very important factor in military effectiveness, and radical leadership is often the result of a youth bulge.
A conflict with the US would be global and Russia could not hope to win, and that is why they are moving very cautiously in Ukraine and Syria .
It’s not just a question of Russia and China going up; the US/West is going down.
You didn’t count the Vikings. What about the VIKINGS!?!?
Nice job trying to make military powers ojectively measurable!
Field research from WW II has confirmed that battle win is the function of bullet firing rate/density. So on average, side with more ammo and higher rate of firing win. Objectively measurement is the core of scientific analysis.
Suggestion
1. Quite a few of the components in CMP is still subjective. Need to find way coverting them into something objectively measurable.
2. Combat effectiveness should include g factor into equation. When every thing equal (number, firepower, tech ect), troop with higher IQ should win.
https://youtu.be/PBJk7nsJECM
If you understand Chinese (or have Chinese friend to interpret) at 25:00 of this documentary, Chinese sodiers considered to hold the line and willing to die as duty of sodiers with no excuse. Also a squat leader was able to take advantage combat terrain and create 200 kills on enemy with zero self casualty, which is g factor in combat.
3. Personality factor:Obedience!. you wonder why African warlords prefer child soldiers over adult? In military, nothing is more important than obedient to commanders. Following orders is very important in military activitis. A military battle is not mob fight. That is why military training of new recruits is about breaking down individual ego first then building sodiers into absolute obedient order following fighting maching.
https://youtu.be/Qii0zwYCZI8
Start at 8:00
These German sodiers in training were example to become obedient order followers. In culture with emphasis on obedience like Japan, their soldiers are naturally superior in this regard, which likely to fight to until last man.
Numbers do seem to provide comfort and a sense of security that one “knows” something. And this is true in many areas. But is war a realm where this is true? Yes and no. For the quantitative things like logistics, firepower, etc., etc., etc. this is so. But war is also a realm of psychology and art and imagination and above all will, which are not quantifiable.
The above list of CMP ratings show the US at 197.35 (love those fractions, such precision, such certainty). Afghanistan is 0.53 (is that the western installed government or the opposition?). The CMP would suggest that the Afghans/Taliban will lose. Yet the Taliban are still there and still show life, and I expect will eventually win the war. How is this possible when the ratio is 197.35 to .53?
Remember Napoleon’s rough dictum: that in war “the moral is to the physical as three is to one”. The illusion of certainty can lead to folly.
I like the index so far. The methodology makes sense at a glance.
Maybe we could look at different matchups because individual militaries have their own strengths and weaknesses, depending on their mission and orientation. For example, Russian air defence systems would strongly counter airpower, which Americans have heavily depended on.
It’d probably be helpful if you could publicly post your estimates for the individual factors (troop quality, cultural factor, technology, etc.). In terms of military capital depreciation, that also could vary a lot–I’m sure many post-Soviet states experienced a much higher rate of depreciation during the 90s.
I’m not sure that the alpha is a universal constant, either. American power has a much stronger emphasis on naval power, where personnel numbers are indeed much less useful than the capital involved, as you stated. Dynamically fiddling with this opens a whole new can of worms, though.
The 1973 Yom Kippur war was a conflict that stopped short of degenerating into an all out war as the Arab forces did not manage to advance deep into Israeli held territory (the Egyptians willingly chose not to advance beyond their bridgeheads that were only a few miles deep East of the canal, while the Syrians were stopped well within the Golan heights); the Israeli counter attack on both fronts was close to turn this conflict into an all out war when they threatened the Egyptian homeland following the crossing of the canal as well as the Syrian capital; A cease fire followed. Neither the Egyptians nor the Israelis had the capacity or will to invade each other’s homelands as their supply lines across the Sinai would have been overstretched and the armies were also probably too weak for all out war that far from their bases anyway; the Syrians must have thought otherwise but that must have stemmed from believing that the Egyptians were sharing the same goals; the SAA was too poorly motivated, trained and organised to carry out anything beyond a limited operation, also it isn’t sure whether the Israelis would have tried to occupy Damscus if the cease fire did not come into being, surely if they did, they wouldn’t have advanced much beyond it as Syria is too large and populous a land to be occupied by Israel; that would have led to a situation not unlike that of Beyrouth in 1982.
If we consider Kuwait and Iraq as nation states (which is definitely a matter of opinion, not fact but for different reasons in the two cases), the August 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf war can be seen as a war; the latter involved the build-up of a massive force headed by the US against a relatively strong third world army (that had previously faught an eight year war with a three times larger and more populous neighbour, motivated by a form of revolutionary fundamentalism); in that war, massive air and land firepower was used by the US (and to a much lesser extent its allies) to destroy said third world army and make Iraq defenceless and open to an easy invasion that for some reason was prematurely stopped only to be easily completed twelve years later.
Saigon’s fate was quite similar to that of the communist Afghan regime; when extricating themselves from the conflict, the Soviets made sure to provide ample weaponry to their allies (including hundreds of Scud missiles that the Najibullah’s regime did not shy from using, making the Afghan war the single biggest instance of ballistic missile use since the V2 offensive in WW2) as well as to try to arrange a national reconciliation. All that in vain as a regime that is propped cannot stand on its own after the departure of its patrons. Nevertheless, the situation in Syria might be different as both Afghan communists and South Vietnamese puppets were of the same ethnic (and religious) background as their opponents who were more numerous and determined than they as well as backed by neighbouring countries and the opposing superpower; in Syria, the Alawite regime is fighting the Sunni fundamentalists, the Alawites cannot surrender or blend into the population with only some at the top being punnished by the new victors, they fight for survival as they face a very real prospect of extermination if defeated; that makes their motivation much stronger than that of regimes promoting an alien form of ideology or the interests of some foreign power.
“Yet the Taliban are still there and still show life, and I expect will eventually win the war. How is this possible when the ratio is 197.35 to .53?”
This is a case where a population’s cultural factor has two values: one for small scale conflict and one for large scale conflict.
Clan-based combatants like the Taliban might have a cultural factor of 100 fighting at home in their own valley, maybe 10 fighting in the same way (small unit tactics) in similar terrain somewhere else and 1 fighting in a national army.
(Personally I’d say corruption would cover this as their corruption index would vary with scale also being sky high when dealing with anyone outside their valley but practically zero among close kin.)
Anatoly,
I like what you’ve tried to do here and you have taken things a step forward from Global Firepower by attempting to incorporate some factors they ignore like troop quality and technological differences. However, you made a lot of arbitrary decisions and assumptions that have ended up giving you some very flawed results. Work on fixing and improving your CMP model before you rush forward to apply it everywhere.
Saudi Arabia higher than Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Pakistan? LOL!
Sure, they bought a bunch of expensive aircraft. But there is a world of difference between a collection of aircraft and an Air Force. Israel has an Air Force, Pakistan has an Air Force, Iran had an Air Force and still has the institutional knowledge and skills, just not the materiel anymore. Saudi Arabia has a collection of aircraft that it relies entirely on foreign contractors to maintain, flown by amateurish, untested pilots.
The Saudi ground forces are a joke as well. The officer corps is arrogant, ignorant, lazy, and undisciplined, the soldiers soft and unmotivated. Parade ground army at its finest. Turks, Israelis, Pakistanis, and Iranians would all make mincemeat of it in actual combat.
Singapore higher than Vietnam, North Korea, and Egypt? LOL!
Singapore spends a ton of money on its troops, has the best equipment, they’re highly disciplined, etc. Match one brigade of Singaporeans up against one brigade from any of these countries, or one naval squadron against another, and I have every confidence the Singaporeans would thrash them.
I would have grave doubts about the one brigade from Singapore defeating ten brigades from any of the above. Singapore’s air force and navy would also have only a handful of ports and airfields in close proximity to one another to operate from, targets that even a low-tech enemy with no air superiority could still bombard with ballistic missiles or raid with special forces.
Mexico higher than South Africa or Sweden? LOL!
These countries have military-industrial complexes. South Africa makes a full range of armored fighting vehicles and artillery. Sweden builds cutting-edge fighters and naval vessels. Mexico makes small arms, jeeps, and coast guard boats. Mexican military has never had the professionalism of either, the combat experience of the South Africans, or the experience of planning for defense against Soviet Russia like Sweden.
Ukraine above Taiwan, Pakistan, and Australia? LOL!
Ukraine’s mechanized forces are woeful to a degree that would make even Saddam cringe. Ukrainian logistics are a joke on par with Nigeria’s. They have a ton of leftover Soviet equipment, they have leftover Soviet military industry, yet both have been so neglected and underfunded that the whole structure is rotten. Awful leadership from the high command on down to the units in the field, morale is terrible, nothing works as it’s supposed to.
Azerbaijan above South Africa? LOL!
Portugal above Syria? LOL!
Uzbekistan above Finland? Gonna guess LOL!
Eritrea ten places above Ethiopia? LOL!
The Eritreans are tough bastards and fielded strong infantry against them, but the Ethiopian infantry are pretty tough themselves. Ethiopia has a population dozens of times larger and could just pummel them into submission with human wave attacks, they also have more tanks, artillery, and aircraft. Ethiopia should be ahead with a slight edge.
Libya above Ethiopia? LOL!
Libyan armed forces were a joke even when Gaddafi was running the show and Libya was a coherent state with a big stockpile of Soviet arms. They lost a war to Chad, got a whole expeditionary force with tanks, armored vehicles, and air support destroyed, actually destroyed in pitched battle, by Chadian irregulars with pickup truck technicals.
Ethiopia on the other hand has been fielding 100,000-strong armies with guns since the days of Adowa. Ethiopians are fighters, Libyans are runners. Simple as that. Now that Gaddafi’s gone, the whole state has imploded, the arsenal’s been dispersed among the clans and half the continent, and Ethiopia could roll through and occupy the whole place were it geographically situated to. They’ve occupied Eritrea and Somalia in the past and those people are way tougher and better guerrillas than Libyans.
Lithuania ahead of Ethiopia? LOL!!!
Let’s see how long Lithuania’s toy army would last on deployment to Somalia.
Cuba at #122 behind the likes of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Botswana, Cameroon, Zambia, and Congo? LOL!!!!!
Sure, the funding’s dried up since the Soviet Union broke apart, the equipment has fallen apart, the conscription’s been scaled way back. But this is a military that received half a century of Russian training and advising and had decades of experience in expeditionary deployments in Africa and the Middle East.
You’re comparing that against the likes of what? The first half of those are toy militaries, the second are militias in uniform, only good for harassing the citizens and useless against any serious and armed oppposition.
Cuba should be about thirty spots higher.
Clearly, you need to put a lot more thought into how you’re calculating for the institutional and cultural factors, it’s great that you’ve attempted to include them since no one else does, but the means by which you’ve attempted to account for them are totally inadequate and in some cases just bizarre.
What relevance does the experience of Genghis Khan have to the modern Mongolian army? If you’re giving them a bonus for that, might as well give the Italians one for the Roman army then too, and the Dutch for their Golden Age navy, and the Spanish for the tercio and the Armada. Scrap that as well as the bonus you gave to the Germans. The Wehrmacht is gone. NATO and the Soviets drilled the Germans into their own schools of warfare.
If you want to start using this metric for all these other projects, stop and take the thing a little more seriously. Address these problems first. Your assessment still puts way too much weight on equipment and spending and not enough on the institutional factors and quality of manpower – hence why you’ve overrated powers like Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Libya and underrated others like Cuba, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and South Africa.
I totally agree with you as it is known that in our day and age Carrier Strike Groups and Expeditionary Strike Groups are ultimate tools to project power and bring destruction upon…third world countries and other weak opponents that do not possess nuclear weapons and/or serious anti-ship capabilities (such as the Soviet/Russian missiles named after types of stones).
Likewise, infantry antitank weapons and attack helicopters can successfully be fielded against opponents that for some reason do not have effective defence against them such as tanks on their own (Vukovar in 1991, storm of Grozny in 1994-1995 and often actions by the Syrian Arab Army today) or total lack of anti aircraft defence (Gulf war); excessive amount of lethality against tanks would have discontinued their design and production by major powers when in fact new, more efficient models are made together with support weapons and doctrines of use.
As to how I’d go about creating a chart like this, I really think military power needs to be separated into two different ratings – one for national defense and one for power projection.
A national defense chart would be an indicator for how well the country could resist a foreign invasion. As a standard metric, you could ask how well it could withstand a full-scale invasion by American armed forces since they are the world’s most powerful for overseas invasions.
Russia, China, and India would obviously top the list. And it would likely see Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Brazil, and North Korea ending up higher on the chart than Great Britain, France, and Germany, with their well-equipped but undersized defense forces.
The European military powers would fare much better on the power projection rankings, on the other hand, and America would have an overwhelming advantage over China and Russia here that it would not have on the national defense chart. A power projection chart ought to measure more than just number of amphibious warships and transport aircraft, however.
The Iranian Qods Force, for example, is a tool of power projection that gives Iran an asset many other nations in its weight class do not have. So too is a military-industrial complex like that of Sweden, Israel, Iran, or North Korea, or a stockpile of surplus weaponry like Ukraine or Libya once had, which offers the potential to influence a conflict that that country could never otherwise get its forces into. And so is the ability of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or even Qatar to plague their foes with jihadis.
http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/07/09/working-with-the-french-army/
French Army is the real deal. Canadian and Australian as well.
Also makes note of the Italians being widely believed to have paid off the Taliban not to attack them, and the Germans having a reputation as being frustrated over the rules of engagement and their chain of command, which held them back from fighting properly.
The US could send planes to Guam as a staging point for support of Taiwan. I don’t see how the Chinese Air Force would be able to establish superiority in the sky against American F-22s.
Blast the runways with ballistic missiles, deny them airfields to operate from.
Hard to quantify these things, but the Chechens are much better at fighting than the Palestinians. The cost of the occupations would have run far higher.
As to the Israelis, the analysis offered here of the errors that led to the Liberty attack are pretty damning of their military’s shoddy staff work.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=53920&msgnum=173799&batchsize=10&batchtype=Next
So this is a predictor of outcomes of conventional conflicts, not general measure of a country’s ability to project power.
While I agree that Ukraine was overrated on that chart and said so, Ukrainian troops have shown that they do not run like Arabs do, and there has been substantial and ongoing improvement. Ukraine in 2014 was a special situation, like Russia in late 1917 and early 1918 (when a few 10,000 Czechoslaovak POWs, or Latvian riflemen, could shift the entire country’s balance of power). That is increasingly being ameliorated in Ukraine.
Military power and its utility depend heavily on what war where with what consequences. Washington has far greater military power than does North Korea, but the likelihood that bombing the North would result in a peninsular, and perhaps nuclear, war to which Washington could not quicklyget troops in numbers —the 28K already there aren’t going to stop the North—means that an all-out very long national effort would be necessary to win. Assuming that the North does not have nukes. Result: military superiority means nothing there.
Similarly, whether Washington in some sense has superiority over Russia doesn’t mean mulch when Russia is right next to the Ukraine and could overrun it and have it heavily fortified before Washington could get there. Washington has huge naval superiority over China but if anti-ship ballistic missiles can take out carriers, that superiority doesn’t mean much close to China. Washington had immense superiority over Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Viet Nam, Laos, etc. but….
Finally, don’t bet on the superiority of American troops over Russian etc. The US today is not the US that fought Japan or the Viet Cong. Softer psychologically, more obese, etc.
None of these measures seems to recognize that wars are almost always fought in coalitions and that some contests are for all practical purposes unthinkable. Israel will not directly engage North Korea in ground combat. Germany is not going to war with France.
It is more useful to compare the U.S. or some other country in question, and its sure allies, against potential opponents of that country.
Probably true. If the state ever recovers enough to start funding its military properly, there could be a rebound much as there has been in Russia since the 1990s disaster.
He’s not a neocon, but he has something important in common with them – he says that he’s primarily motivated by America’s interests, yet this isn’t true. I would guess that a truly pro-American regime in Washington would at least consider an alliance with Russia against China.
@Vendetta
The Ukraine is totally broke.
It does not have much of an economy left.
Ukraine has the neocons to thank for that.
Deduction:
“Some people for whatever reason think that the defining feature of a neocon is unwavering and unconditional support for Israel.”
Huh?? That is bc IT IS. Neoconservatism is a zionist jewish political and intellectual movement with very, very close ties to the most extreme nationalist and religious fanatics in Israel.
Even msm have basically admitted this.
And even Brzezinski’s understanding of Polish interests is short-sighted. On its present course Poland will be inundated by third-worlders within the next 20 years. If the current wave of “refugees” doesn’t reach it, one of the next 20 waves will.
To be quite honest, I think this article is totally flawed in terms of methodology and understanding of war.
As others, such as Vendetta have noted:
“I like what you’ve tried to do here and you have taken things a step forward from Global Firepower by attempting to incorporate some factors they ignore like troop quality and technological differences. However, you made a lot of arbitrary decisions and assumptions that have ended up giving you some very flawed results.”
Exactly.
To his credit, the author admits not being a military expert.
He certainly does a much better job than the many who claim to be(in the West, generally), but in fact produce nothing more than crude propaganda.
Since we are dealing in hypotheticals . Would you please explain why Russia might consider an alliance with the U.S.A against the P.R.C? I realize that the Soviet Union was once the bogey-man that PRC propagandists wanted Chinese people to stay awake worrying about, and that there were some border spats back in the 70s. The 70s, however, were the 70s and Russia is not the Soviet Union.
I do not understand why Russia would feel the need for allies against China. Especially since China is itself an ally.
unit472 wrote:
“Israel, e.g., could destroy Hezbollah and or Hamas in pretty short order if it was a strategic necessity to do so. As a practical and tactical matter it refrains from doing it because the benefit is outweighed by the political and human price it would pay for doing so.”
Pure wishful thinking on your end.
Short of deploying nukes, israels cowardly conventional forces would likely be defeated again against Hezbollah in a mano-a-mano war, like the one in 06.
This is why Israel has been doing is best to destroy Syria and why it works closely in support of various Waahabi terrorists in Syria and Lebanon.
Even against Hamas and the other palestinian militants in Gaza, I’m not so sure they would win.
Israel did not go deep into Gaza in 2014 for fear it would suffer thousands of casualties.
Against Hezbollah they were totally defeated in 06.
Even more painful was the fact the fighting was done by only some 3-5000 hezb, mostly second tier fighters, the more elite elements kept as reserve. Hezbollah did not even feel the need to call up its reservists. This while being badly outnumbered and even more so outgunned. The idf was not even able to secure border villages.
Don’t take it from me, let’s hear what former British MI6 analyst, Alastair Crooke, had to say about the fighting in Lebanon, 06;
US Colonel and war veteran, Pat Lang, wrote re the highly overated idf:
Former zionist terrorist and israeli soldier, Uri Avnery had this to say about the last israeli attack on Gaza;
AFTER 29 DAYS of fighting (until now), who has won?
This article is a fail.
The only way you could do an index like this is if you were very narrow in scope. Like focusing only on technology. Or focusing on naval power.
As mentioned yourself, military prowess is highly contextual. Who is attacking? Who is defending? What is the terrain? What are the stakes involved? The reason why this is so important is that any competent people will immediately try to neutralize an enemies advantage. This is why rice farmers in Vietnam and goat herders in Afgansitan can go toe to toe with a super power much more powerful than them. They will just bypass their enemies strengths.
Enemy has a strong Air Force? Build tunnels and focus on hit and run attacks that will disperse before an airplane can arrive. Enemy has drones? Good for them, let’s see the enemy try and hold land.
Having a strong military has more to do with iq, a common non-tribal culture, and a desire to win than it does with all the things you mentioned. The AK47 was the great equalizer that enabled any people who could work together to be a formidable army.
That’s why no matter how much tech Saudi Arabia has they will never be a strong military. They may be able to bomb lesser powers from up high, but once the fight turns to the ground the pampered Saudi will just spray bullets in the air.
I think if you were going to do a ranking like this, you should just rely on your gut and intuition. Not some mathematical model. I don’t care how many Indians there are or what your model says, I will never take an Indian army seriously unless they are fighting other SE Asians like Bangledeshis.
India should be near the bottom of your rankings, while people who have more mettle like South Africans and Vietnamese should be higher.
Not true, for the following reasons:
Unlike Germany, where there is widespread support for taking in refugees, Poles do not want them. Poles don’t feel guilt for anything, nor as in the case of non-German western Europeans do they feel any guilt about colonialism.
Refugees themselves do not want to go to Poland. Germany, right next door, offers much higher incomes. Poles are very stingy with social services – not much welfare for refugees in Poland. And there are no established refugee communities to help newcomers feel at home. They will be, for them, in a cultural desert in Poland. A refugee coming to Poland will get a lower income, less opportunity to get hired, less welfare opportunities, more unfriendly/proudly Christian local environment, and won’t have a network of compatriots to help him get started. He wouldn’t want to go to Poland when right next to it is a country that offers all the thing the refugee would want. Even if he were sent to Poland, he would probably just cross the border.
Poland may fill its quote with “refugees” from Ukraine.
Correct, although the two are close enough that its’ probably not hard for him to sincerely believe it.
Why? Russia offers what US already has – natural resources. China offers a lot of trade. Russia makes trouble (Middle East, Venezuela, Ukraine) , China much less so. Objectively Russia is a more decent country than China, but in terms of pure interest choosing Russia over China wouldn’t make much sense.
Ukraine’s reserves are up to $12.7 billion, from a low of $5.6 billion in February 2015:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/foreign-exchange-reserves
Ukraine’s rate of economic decline has slowed after reaching its high point in early 2015, and will probably stop at the end of this year, with slight growth next year. Moreover it’s decline has been uneven. The economy has completely collapsed in the war-torn, bombed out Donbas (who would be surprised by that?) but has actually grown in some of the western provinces. Chart of economic change, by oblast:
http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2008/vvp/vrp/vrp2008_u.htm
As for neocons – they didn’t make Yanukovich reviled.
Why? Russia offers what US already has – natural resources. China offers a lot of trade.
Every American patriot is deeply bothered by America’s deindustrialization. This is true of French, British, Ruissian, etc. patriots as well. Calls for reindustrialization, for imposing high tariffs on Chinese goods in order to stimulate domestic production was a key component of the messages of Perot and Buchanan, and I think Trump has made such noises too. It’s natural for any patriot of any country to resent the destruction of that country’s industrial base. Any pro-American regime in Washington would be anti-China for at least that reason.
I don’t fully agree with that.
First off, not all West Europeans are motivated by historical guilt. Sweden didn’t do much at all in recent history, but it is famously the most affirmatively enthusiastic about Third World immigration.
Second, the initial waves of immigration happened back when Germany resembled Poland socially somewhat. The initial Gastarbeiters came in the 50s/60s under the understanding – shared by both Right and Left – that they would all go back eventually:
That of course never happened.
Finally, the popular opinion of Poles is one thing, the attitudes of their rulers (as everywhere else) is another matter and in fact the one that truly matters.
Poles do not want them.
That can change. Poland exists within the Western information space. I think I remember Anatoly tweeting about surveys that showed Poland and Russia starting with the same, low, level of support for gay marriage and then going in opposite directions in recent years on that issue. In other words, the popularity of gay marriage is going up in Poland and down in Russia. The leftist package of ideas is promoted within the Western information space. Population replacement is as much a part of that package as gay marriage.
Poles don’t feel guilt for anything, nor as in the case of non-German western Europeans do they feel any guilt about colonialism.
Poland’s history of imperialism in what’s now the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will not be held against it because the Western information space is anti-Russian, but there are countries in Europe that honestly lack any history of imperialism, and which are still being filled up with third-worlders: Switzerland, Finalnd, Ireland. The soundness of justifications is irrelevant for propaganda purposes. The only things that determine the outcome are the propagandists’ goals and their market share withing the information space.
An argument can be made that since millions of Poles have been immigrants in North and South America, in France, etc., it’s immoral for them to refuse third-world immigrants to Poland. I’m sure that the Irish are being told that right this minute. But if that argument wasn’t available in Poland’s case, others could be made up. Propaganda doesn’t need to have any logic in it to be successful.
“Poles are very stingy with social services”
An EU program could be established that would pay immigrants to Eastern Europe out of the EU’s budget. Didn’t Anatoly recently quote Soros proposing something like that? When there’s a will, there’s a way.
“He wouldn’t want to go to Poland when right next to it is a country that offers all the thing the refugee would want.”
As German cities get more filled up with third-worlders, Polish cities will become more attractive to them.
You are right about Sweden, of course.
As for Germany – yes – but at that time Germany was the only game in town. Germany didn’t have a wealthier, more-friendly neighbor for Turks to move to instead. Moreover, Poles don’t even want guests from the Muslim countries.
Poland has signed this agreement but the structural problems (weak welfare system, low payment to refugees, hostile local population, no native Arab community they can join) that will keep Arab migrants from coming to Poland – or staying there if they are sent there – remain. Sounds like a piece of helpful diplomacy, good PR for the western allies, with no actual consequences.
Poland is around .2% Muslim. This won’t change anytime soon.
Your statement about information space would make sense if Poles were on the same schedule as Germany. but because Germany’s refugee inundation will occur a decade or more before Poland’s could possibly occur, Poles will get a chance to see for themselves what will happen in Germany. If accepting refugees becomes a disaster in Western Europe, propaganda will not be able to hide this from Poles, who often visit Germany next-door, and who often have family living in Germany.
As for gay marriage support, at most modest increase in support:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_of_same-sex_unions_in_Poland#Support_for_LGBT_rights_in_Poland
Only one tracking poll listed. Support for civil unions peaked in 2005 and then declined. Support for gay marriage declined and then grew but is still back to where it was 2001. Opposition to gay adoption remains steady, and higher than it had been in 2001.
I suspect that Russian opposition to gay rights is an anti-Western thing, not an issue of morality. Russia was traditionally less homophobic than the West. Until 20-30 years ago gays were often seen as evil, disgusting perverts in the USA. In Russia they were generally pitied or ignored. Homophobia in Russia has grown as relations with the West have deteriorated. If the West were homophobic, I suspect Russians would be pro-gay, would celebrate Tchaikovsky’s orientation, and would rub their pro-gay attitudes (or at least their tolerant indifference) in Westerners’ faces.
Russia was traditionally less homophobic than the West.
Only during the early Bolshevik period.
“Until 20-30 years ago gays were often seen as evil, disgusting perverts in the USA.”
I think that the “evil, disgusting perverts” attitude disappeared from mainstream US youth culture in the late 60s and early 70s.
If the West were homophobic, I suspect Russians would be pro-gay
No. Putin is genuinely socially conservative. In a moderate live-and-let-live way of course. But he’s still much more socially conservative than any Western head of state. It’s both late-Soviet upbringing and his personal emotional makeup. Socially liberal people rarely choose to become intelligence officers or officers of any other sort, or have life-long love affairs with the martial arts.
“Your statement about information space would make sense if Poles were on the same schedule as Germany. but because Germany’s refugee inundation will occur a decade or more before Poland’s could possibly occur, Poles will get a chance to see for themselves what will happen in Germany.”
Sweden was inundated decades after England, France and Germany. All Swedes know English. Most must have had a good idea of British and US realities. This didn’t help Sweden. Some regions of the US were inundated with local and/or foreign NAMs decades after others. New York, Chicago, etc. during and right after WWII, Minnesota and Indiana just a decade or two ago. Indianans knew what was happening in New York, Detroit, etc. all along. This sort of stuff never stops anything.
[Only during the early Bolshevik period.]
Not even then. There was a period when it wasn’t a criminal offence, sure, but it had been not a criminal offence under the Napoleonic Code and its descendants for far longer by then, and public opinion nevertheless rejected it everywhere and always. Chicherin’s predilections were known to his colleagues, but he never dared to flaunt them even in the narrowest of circles.
The idea that somehow Russians only disapprove of faggotry because Americans boost it is one of the most absurd ever propounded, even in this comment section.
Wrong. Traditional Russian attitudes towards homosexuality were “don’t ask/don’t tell.” This was much less homophobic than traditional American attitudes, which probably retained some Puritan moralism.
I couldn’t find polls from the 80s, but here, in 1998:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2012/05/18/russian-attitudes-towards-gays-are-still-really-negative/
35% of Russians believed homosexuality was immorality; 33% that it was a sickness or the result of trauma; 18% that it was a legitimate sexual orientation. Concomitantly, the most favored approach to homosexuality was to heal them. A compassionate approach. Was this much different than, say, 1988 or 1978? I’m not sure, but I know one Russian gay who was a student in the USA in the early 90s and he said he felt more homophobia in the USA than in Russia. Personal behavior as long as it wasn’t publicly flaunted, was much more tolerated in Russia.
I couldn’t find a similar question in the USA, but in general American homophobia reached its high point in 1987:
http://www.norc.org/PDFs/2011%20GSS%20Reports/GSS_Public%20Attitudes%20Toward%20Homosexuality_Sept2011.pdf
That year, 75% of Americans felt homosexual relations were always wrong and another 4% that they were almost always wrong. Only 11.4% felt they weren’t wrong at all (I suppose this can be compared to the 18% of Russians in 1998 who believed homosexuality was a legitimate orientation?). Not much changed in the USA until the early 1990s. American attitudes shifted dramatically sometime between 1991 and 1993.
My statement was too strong. More likely, Russia would be proudly tolerant and live-let-live about the issue, if the West hadn’t become very pro-gay and hadn’t tried to push pro-homosexuality onto Russia. And I wasn’t discussing Putin, who is probably a moral cynic and not at all genuinely socially conservative. I’m a friend with one FSB officer, and my wife has had classmates who joined the intelligence services. In general, they are highly intelligent but not exactly paragons of virtue. Moral cynicism was a very common trait for them.
Poland is much more exposed to Germany, than Sweden is to England. Poles often travel, live and work in Germany, or have close relatives who do. You have too much faith in the power of propaganda. Propaganda is effective with respect to phenomena that are distant. So Vermonters, in a state that is about 96% white or Asian, can be taught an unrealistic appraisal of events in Detroit or New York. In contrast, rural people from Michigan, in the same state as Detroit, tend to be rightwing about this. Americans can be taught that 9-11 was Saddam’s fault, or Swedes in the 1980s (when Sweden was quite homogeneous and most foreigners were Finns) that refugees are great and need help. People from Moscow can be taught that Galicians have low IQs and are violent savages. Etc. But it is much harder to change reality that people witness personally.
Glossy says:
*
It’s natural for any patriot of any country to resent the destruction of that country’s industrial base. Any pro-American regime in Washington would be anti-China for at least that reason.*
for the sake of humanity, i suggest a world coalition force to attack the unitedsnake.
I think that Putin wanted Russia to recover from the 1990s disatser WHILE retaining a good relationship with the West. He gradually realized that this was impossible – the West could only be friends with a poor, looted-out, humiliated Russia, never with one that’s trying to recover its strength and/or standard of living. Once he realized this, he began to reorient Russia towards China.
There are people in Russia who think that the West was always a bad influence. Putin isn’t one of them. I bet his opinion of Peter I and Catherine II is positive, for exampls. He’s not opposed to the West in principle, just to its current leadership.
Airfields can be repaired very quickly.
F-22 is a hangar queen that needs hours and hours of specialized maintenance, reapplication of coating, etc.
Blasting the hangars more so than putting holes in the ground will make it very difficult to keep these aircraft operating in theater.
Force them to base farther away and they’ll have a lower sortie rate, slower response time, bottleneck imposed by vulnerable tanker aircraft, etc.
If they stay in the EU then it will change dramatically and soon. The EU clearly want to turn all the national populations into minorities for divide and rule purposes so Polish politicians will be bought like those further West.
.
Comparing countries in the list as if they were adjacent is probably a useful double check.
.
Indians in the British Army in India were fine
(population * IQ) / corruption index.
.
The quote goes something like “nations don’t have friends; they have interests” which ought to apply to enemies also so people in Washington ought not to be so viscerally anti-Russia (or anywhere else) but neocons clearly are. However I think there is more than one reason for it: Israel-First is one but also historical animosity (e.g. Brezhinski) or general “full spectrum dominance” ideology.
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The people procuring, designing and building planes in the 50s and 60s were people who came out of the war years and still had the war mentality of wanting the best for their side. Since then it’s gradually become about making the most money for the suppliers.
I’m not sure how valuable it is (some of the criticisms leveled at it – like Saudi Arabia’s clearly too high rankings – look justified to me, others – like the supposedly too low ranking of South Africa – don’t), but it was interesting, to say the least.
I agree with the comments above about corruption: that needs to be taken into account, and the result should be noticeably lower estimates of China’s military power.
I meant that Turkey has access to current Western military equipment, while Iran is embargoed. As for people, Iran may have a larger smart fraction than Turkey, Turkey’s elite may be relatively smaller but smarter (they compare well with most Mediterranean European elites IME – closer to Italy than to Greece). But the nations seem pretty similar in my experience – a smart educated minority and an uneducated but not moronic majority. Basically they're middling 90-IQ nations (normed to UK=100), smarter than the countries south of them, less smart than the countries north of them.
This all makes perfect sense. But I still cannot quite fathom why, if forced to choose between alienating the West or China, Putin or indeed any Russian leader in the forseeable future would choose to alienate China.
I am not trying to be obtuse, but you did write that a pro-American regime in Washington ought to give serious thought to an alliance with Russia against China. You made it perfectly clear why patriots in Washington should want allies against China, in a reply to another reader. But I hope you could explain why you think patriots in the Moscow would want allies against China.
The generic term “West” vis-a-vis Russia is somewhat a misnomer, although I have used it too.
In this context “West” is actually Leo Straussian Neocon infected US: its brain has been taken over by the creature, and its body does what the creature commands it do.
Against its (American) interests and its will.
Germany has no issue with Russia.
Neither does France.
Both want to do commerce with Russia and China (via Russia).
For centuries England has worked hard to thwart any economic and military union of Continental powers.
Fearful the island nation would be isolated and starve to death.
Now the US has taken the mantle of Anglo-American Empire and is doing its best to thwart Germany and France getting too close to Russia.
Both countries suffer economically from Anglo-American meddling, but the leaders have either been blackmailed into compliance or bought off.
For example, there was absolutely no economic benefit to France in cancelling the Mistral orders, but Hollande was somehow forced to do it.
Same with Germany: German industry has lost $billions in Russian business due to US inspired sanctions, but they are somehow forced to go along with it.
UK+US are terrified that Germany, France, Russia, and China will form a Eurasian economic union. That will spell the end of Anglo-American world domination.
Bad news of US+UK Empire: so they pull all stops to thwart it.
Time will tell.
glossy the partiot [sic]
for the sake of humanity, the world community need to form
a coalition against the usa.
hmm,
i’ve a perfectly legit, non offensive post deleted ;-(
How much should we de-rate the US Military for it’s Diversity is Strength stance?
For example, how many pregnancies are there aboard US Navy Vessels?
Also, when the shit hits the fan, will those diverse different groups trust each other and fight together? Black troops in the US army have mutinied before … during WWII in Australia for example and there are suggestions that aboard a US aircraft carrier …
perhaps a system glitch ?
lets try again…
real patriots get beaten up, rots in jail, fighting the real enemy.
sainthoward.blogspot.com/2014/12/putting-saints-in-jail.html
sheeples bleat at discussion forum at whoever is currently on
the official enemy list.
hey grossy the patriot,
u’r behind time , the china slave labor gravy train is going bust cuz the locals demand a minimum pay these days, your 1% is looking out for the next sweat shop, i heard its india.
are u gonna pivot to india now hehehe
p.s.
while your real enemy, the 1% laughs the the way to the bank,
hehehe
I think that Putin would give a lot in return for a normalization of Russia’s relationship with the West. Of course that’s not on offer. The choice actually before him is 1) Gorby-like capitulation followed by 1990s-style looting and the further break-up of the country 2) Cold War II. And he’s wisely chosen Cold War II.
But if the West offered a normalization that included the end of color revolutions in the former Soviet republics, the end of Western support for the Kiev junta, Moscow “liberals” and Islamist extremists in the Caucasus, the end of sanctions and of demonization in the Western media, then supporting the US in a hypothetical conflict with China would be a tiny, tiny price to pay. A bargain. What could it involve? Trade wars, steering former Soviet republics away from an economic relationship with China, a refusal to share mil tech know-how with the PRC. Reindustrialization, the gradual replacement of Chinese consumer products with domestic ones is as much in Russian as in Western interests.
The more apt quote is Clausewitz, ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means.’
And America does not have the political or cultural understanding to achieve her aims.
Nevermind that the Taliban’s aim ‘to government most of Afghanistan with a religiously inspired iron fist’ and America’s aim ‘to turn Afghans into Swedes in one generation while avoiding bad headlines’ are not exactly the same difficulty.
In a long post of motivated reasoning, this is the winner.
I have had lots conversations that flow along these lines but about Americans. Some hick doesn’t like his compatriots, another runs his mouth and some snooty East Coaster declares that Mexicans are harder workers and Blacks are more civilised. The conversationalist then combines these comments with his blatant prejudices to form what to him is a perfect argument, but to anyone else it just looks like a bunch of gossip strung together by hate.
Are Israelis useless? Check. Do they love human suffering? Check? Are they cowards? Check! And without a single positive or even neutral quality? Check and check.
Well done you have written sorry low quality propaganda.
Now I understand. Thanks for taking the time to gratify my curiosity.
A whole lot of propaganda. While you perform that chest thumping routine, understand that the Givati and Golani brigades when they fight in the North are essentially fighting under constraints: as if with a hand tied behind. Hezbollah units are interspersed, and Israelis have to avoid harming the U.N. forces in the area. Do a bit of actual, objective reading.
Go lighter on the propaganda, won’t you? While you perform that chest thumping routine, understand that the Givati and Golani brigades when they fight in the North are essentially doing so under constraints: as if with a hand tied behind since Hezbollah units are interspersed, and Israelis under strict orders to avoid harming the U.N. forces in the area, heavily scrutinised by the International media during their operations and importantly, under a cost-benefit analysis they are unwilling to take heavy losses for little gain. Should the optimisation problem change, you might be surprised next time.
a sampling of three patriots wish from ich ,the saker
1]
WE THE PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY DEMAND THE FOLLOWING;
1 Complete withdrawal of all US military in the Middle East and the Ukraine.
2 Complete withdrawal of all anti-terror laws created under false pretenses.
3 The US Constitution restored in full immediately.
4 An Independent Inquiry into the entire 9/11 hoax.
5 The immediate arrest of all persons involved with the hijacking of the US.
6 Charges up to and including Treason for the above including Independent criminal trials
7 The immediate dismantling of CIA, FEMA, NSA and related institutions.
8 The immediate arrest of Obama, Bush, Rumsfeld etc
2]
It makes perfect sense for Russia , China, Europe, and Africa to trade amongst themselves and place sanctions on the US until it pays reparations for all its war crimes
3]
thanks Saker and South Front..so this does mean ‘political solution’ is about USA…
Grotesque that these problems are only to be solved politically with USA because USA is the aggressor in both cases – Syria and Yemen.
Oh God forgive us for creating this monster of a nation…please may we get this monster back in a cage before it wrecks the planet we all live on
hear, hear !
our patriot glossy here want an anti chinese union with russia,
lol !
i think this patriot is a one percenter, hehehehe
Since the quality of reporting on that conflict is very poor, I really have no way of knowing who is right. Nonetheless your tone was needlessly abrasive considering that my point was that an energetic bombing campaign from a position of air superiority and conducted without regards to human suffering would be effective is hardly controversial.
I have no dog in that fight although I rather sympathise with the Houthis, but you appear to have a side, and as with all sides in Middle Eastern conflicts I have no doubt that you’ll pursue ithis in the starkest black and white terms, which makes my participation in your monologue pointless.
It’s funny that you identify as an American patriot but English is clearly your second language.
Fair enough. I served in the Army not the Navy and I’m clearly out of my depth. I think that you were broadly right and that I was broadly wrong lol.
when did i say im a yank ?
language aside, what do u think of glossy the patriot ?
p.s.
from what i gathered, my english language actually compare
very favorably with some native speakers, hehehe
I never claimed to be a patriot of any country. I described what US patriots tend to want. But that’s just an observation.
[that an energetic bombing campaign from a position of air superiority and conducted without regards to human suffering would be effective is hardly controversial.]
Anyone who has the most cursory acquaintance with military history knows that the question “effective at what?” is highly controversial.
You’re changing the topic. The topic is not whether the air campaign is a solution for the Saudis, but whether the Saudis are capable of running a proper air campaign; which they clearly are.
I’ll leave the bigger debate over whether an air campaign designed to attrit the enemy and break the will of their population through targeted starvation is a clever strategy for another time. Although I suspect that punitive measures do generally work as Ghengis Khan never lost an insurgency.
You continue to set imposing standards for incoherence, factual deficiency and inability to reason.
We started this discussion by disagreeing on whether Saudi Arabia has a quality military or not.
I used their bombing campaign in Yemen as evidence to support that they may.
The key criteria for evaluating my argument in this context is whether that bombing campaign is reasonably well run or not.
It clearly is, so this thread of the discussion is over.
I did allow you to divert me earlier into the separate question of whether air campaigns are effective, and I am willing to continue on that thread, but it is not relevant to the original discussion point on which you continue to be so graceless.
@”deduction” in reply to 5371
“We started this discussion by disagreeing on whether Saudi Arabia has a quality military or not.”
It DOES NOT.
“deduction”:
“I used their bombing campaign in Yemen as evidence to support that they may.”
Such a silly statement shows clearly you have zero understanding of what you are talking about.
Either that or you are just another propagandist.
BTW, Mr.”deduction”(what a handle you chose eh!), back to the highly overated israeli military.
You may dislike what i presented about them, but the info comes from US, British and Israeli sources.
Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years. He is a highly decorated veteran of several of America’s overseas conflicts(OF CHOICE) including the war in Vietnam. He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S. Army and served in that region for many years.
He is no dove. Rather, it would be more accurate to describe the man as an American firster who believes that force solves lots of things and that American Exceptionalism is the natural order of things.
He knows the IDF. “I associated with and/or conducted liaison with The Israel Defense Force (IDF) for many years. This activity occurred as part of my regular duties as a US Army officer and later as a civilian executive of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Since my retirement from US government service I have had many occasions to visit Israel and to watch the IDF in action against various groups of Palestinians all over the West Bank.”
What was it that he wrote about them? Again for you and Sam Shama;
What about Shama’s shameful l-y-i-n-g about his beloved idf cowards fighting under “constraints”!!! Buahahhahaha, man, have you no shame??(pun intended).
The idf carpet bombed Lebanon in the 06 war, to such an extent, that even the zamericans, themselves not shy of using massive firepower(their entire doctrine is based around it), became aghast with the israeli campaign!!
Let’s hear what the former high ranking MI6 intel officer, Alastair Crooke, had to say on the israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 06, as per what USAF officers who followed the war told him:
Not surprising. Col Pat Lang wrote of his visits to the West Bank:
Ha, Such restraint! This is what the israelis have proven to be good at, time and again, murdering civilians.
But back to the war in Lebanon in 06, from Alastair, this bit is priceless;
The following bit provides such a beautiful glimpse into how the tail(Israel) wags the dog(ZUSA):
7 Red flags for ???
Poster engages in ‘splitting.’
Content is mostly cut and paste hearsay or even just emotional responses.
Post content is only incidentally on the subject matter.
Post is mostly (obsessively) pre-prepared.
Poster takes all disagreement intensely personally.
The poster projects their own negative characteristics onto others.
So the question is, what are these red flags for? And how many should you need to be diagnosed as such?
Hold on. My BS-detector is going off.
So, good sir, explain to me Hezbollahs victory (military victory) on the ground against the IDF in 2006?
You know, the ones who declared they were going to “destroy Hezbollah” and then days later added “…or at least his missile firing capabilities” (failed on both counts).
Hezbollah is everything that is considered “negative” in a modern military (by the authors standards). They are Arabs, Muslim, unconventional, and undermanned/under equipped YET seemed to do just fine putting a hurt on the unlimited supported, US-backed, air-dominating, technologically-advanced, numerically superior Israel (who expended their ENTIRE inventory of smart-munitions in the first 10 days of the conflict and fired more artillery than the entire 1973 war).
The Hezbollah military victories on the ground don’t include the ‘fourth-generation of modern warfare’ component of social networking and politics of negotiating a ceasefire.
Or explain the NVA and their successful war against the US in Vietnam? You know…. that small little country that not only fought the Americans but France and the Chinese as well.
I guess the WILL to fight doesn’t factor into your equation?
It’s a funny thing you mention Clausewitz, the man who said:
“War Is Merely the Continuation of Politics by Other Means”
What’s the point of this scoring system if its not going to measure RESULTS. I mean last I checked the most efficient organizations are RESULT-ORIENTED ORGANIZATIONS.
As for trying to gauge this historically, the only time period relates to today (militarily, again) is the days just before World War 1. The world today has so much high-tech weaponry, much of which has never been fired in anger (combat situation).
The same applied prior to WW1 with all that fancy high-end equipment (for that period) just waiting to be used (biplanes, submarines, radio communications, motorized vehicles, chemical weapons, tanks later on, breech-loaded weaponry, etc. etc. etc.).
That’s the problem with all these “scoring” systems. They’re all BS. Regardless of how much thought and effort are put into it. It’s called the the FOG OF WAR for a reason. War is too complex, on nearly all levels, to just simply quantify into a numerical value.
This article is what I like to call the “American Thinking of War”. The oversimplification of clearly complex matters.
When Hezbollah shows itself capable of occupying the north of Israel for 22 years or even just crossing the border en masse at will, then I’ll concede that your point is as strong as you think it is.
Doctrinally, you require a 10:1 force ratio to attack an enemy in a built up area. That ratio is a great leveller.
Urban war fighting significantly favors the defender – and I’d say doubly (or more) so when the defenders are from clannish cultures – so maybe counter intuitively the cultures who are the worst at large-scale warfare will often be the best at this kind of warfare.
But although this kind of war, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Chechens etc, is a special case it still ought to be explainable by an accurate model.
Which means an accurate model needs a factor that can vary between close to zero and a very large number within the same population.
I’d use corruption index as a proxy because 1) clannish populations among their own people on their own turf will have a very low corruption index and 2) clannish people among their own people on their own turf fight really well – or at least very tenaciously.
(Used as a denominator so when corruption index is very low the fighting ability tends to infinity and where corruption index is very high fighting ability tends to zero.)
The first step to do what you want is just to combine Karlin’s measure with force ratios.
So if Saudi Arabia invades Iran you have to times Iran’s combat power by 3 as the force ratio required for conventional warfare over an open country is 3:1. If Saudi Arabia somehow wins and then decides to occupy the cities and towns rather than starve them out or whatever then you times Iran’s power by 10 as that would require Saudi Arabia to operate in built up areas.
I’ve never heard of anyone trying to estimate the force ratio you would need to occupy a foreign country, impose your ideology on them and yet constrain yourself to relatively humane means, but 1000:1 seems to work when combined with the score system here!
I hope you are right, however the Irish experience is not encouraging. Virtually every family in Ireland has had at least one member, usually more than one, who has worked and lived in English inner cities and the US, especially Boston, a city infamous for its racial issues between Irish-Americans and blacks. They’ve had half a century of knowledge and often personal experience with diversity, especially blacks, and yet here we are in 2015. Only 15 years ago Dublin was as white as Lublin yet today it’s looking a lot like London.
There is combat (or war-fighting) doctrine which, generally, identifies forces, their structure and the way they fight.
The issue of ratios, within or without “built up areas”, is not “doctrinal” issue–it is mostly the issue of Operational Art (such as used as separate subset of Military Art in Russia) or, as it was long known in the “Western” world–small strategy. There is NO pre-set ratio other than modern Operational Planning, which, among many other things calculates required force (in Russian–Naryad Sil) and it is not necessarily 10:1 or even 5:1.
If you want to comment on the subject–start with acquaintance with Model Based Operational Planning here
http://www.dodccrp.org/events/6th_ICCRTS/Tracks/Papers/Track3/054_tr3.pdf
or..sadly I cannot attach here number of papers, including introduction to the effectiveness criteria (usually probabilities) and calculation of force as it is taught in any serious military academy. Today, CICS and Combat Computer Networks (i.e.such as COAST software) deal with these issues but operational officers still have to know the process and math behind it through and through.
In general, this thread is one hell of an amusing reading, especially in regards to military history;-)
I don’t see how famous, beaten to death and abused, Clausewitzian dictum, however genius, is relevant here. Here is a corollary (mine, I hope so, but will not be surprised if I inadvertently stole it)–Politics is continuation of the war by other means(c). But I would suggest to read all of Vom Kriege and, especially, with the foreword by Anatol Rappaport (Penguin Classics edition) Pelican Edition (yes, it is IN Penguin Classics edition;-) Worth it.
You sound knowledgeable and highly educated on this subject, but then again I was taught these force ratios at a military academy and an infantry officers’ school; I have also read about them in the doctrine.
I can’t remember exactly where but a quick Google turned up the following link, and it broadly agrees with what I remember.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=11568
Also, when you say an Ops Officer needs to know the stuff you are talking about, do you mean civilian Operational Analysts? Because no offense to those guys, they’re very smart and offer useful advice, but having worked on the staff in a higher formation I know who makes the decisions and who influences those decisions and it isn’t really them.
And if you mean real Ops Officers then I really have no clue where you get your ideas from…I don’t think any of them know any maths through and through haha, I certainly don’t.
It’s relevant to the question of why ISAF failed in Afghanistan and the coalition failed in Iraq.
When we had military aims we almost never lost, but politically and culturally we didn’t have a clue, and so we failed regardless.
I clicked the link. Sinn Fein. That’s the old IRA front. Mind. Blowing. OMG. And it’s real. Benny Hill could have done a sketch like that.
While looking this up I learned that Sinn Fein means “we ourselves” in Gaelic. So let me get this straight, they blew up Irish Protestants, that foreign horde, so that they could do this.
It is called the social dimension of strategy. Michael Howard wrote a fascinating piece “The Forgotten Dimensions Of Strategy”, well, in 1984. You may find it on net or, if you are really interested, in “The Art And Practice Of Military Strategy” from National Defense University, 1984 edition. But I would also suggest Richard Pipes’ “seminal” piece “Why The Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight And Win A Nuclear War”. While Pipes, as usual, delivers truck loads of BS in this piece about Russia, he provides, strangely, some lucid accounts of American attitudes to war. Continental Warfare shaped the history, naval one–shaped the map. However, no Russian paratroop or armored division threatens Boston or Chicago (other than in Hollywood’s perverted wet dreams)and that is where the difference is. Just to give you some heads up–Leningrad, during the 900-days siege in WW II, lost more people than US lost in all of its wars combined. Should give some perspective, I hope. US “elites” and nation, in general, are NOT conditioned by war. This simple fact has enormous geopolitical ramifications.
No, I mean officers, like graduates of military academies and, what is more important, graduates of Army (or Navy) War Colleges in the US or Academy of General Staff (or Service Academies (War Colleges)–Navy, Air Force etc.) in Russia. Modern operational planning today is a complex of measures which includes both computer modelling and analysis of intelligence (both human and signal). In the end, we all arrive to Colonel Boyd’s OODA Loop, which crowns all of it. It is a very long discussion, of course, and there is no uniform answer to it but it all starts with knowing the subject and proper focus. But then, of course, comes culture (as in behavioral matrix) and that is where really interesting things start to happen.
Well, I was educated in these issues in one very interesting institution back in USSR. Let’s put it this way–I take a keen interest in the doctrinal issues.
Keep on posting. You’ve shared some very interesting things so far.
I can not post here things which require substantive illustrations and I am too lazy and busy to describe them in words;-) I had free couple of hours today–I posted.
In the last census (2011) Ireland was still only 1.5% Asian and .9% from Africa (with 1.42% self-identifying as black).. There were about twice as many Poles as there were Africans and Asians combined.
According to the wiki page about blacks in Ireland, the country does deport people fairly aggressively.
I wouldn’t be too surprised. Sinn Fein was always mixed up with Marxists, PLO, etc.
Don’t know credible this website is but you might be interested in this link:
http://conservative-headlines.com/2009/01/sinn-fein-leader-gerry-adams-calls-for-more-african-immigration-to-ireland/
If the CMP had its numbers right then force ratios would be a constant i.e. they’d apply equally in both directions.
This is a cultural value.
I am late to the party here, but, as a former military historian and an analyst, have a few ideas to offer on this article.
This is a very interesting and, I might say, a valiant effort, but one that I believe is misguided.
Power is a psychological creature while force is material in nature. In other words, power is the ability one party to compel another to his will, which is a consequence of psychological defeat and submission. Force, on the other hand, is an expression of physical imposition of that will.
This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but there is a crucial difference between the two. The use of power often begets greater power. To put crudely, if you scare someone to hand over his wallet to you, the next victim might become even more frightened and may hand over his wallet before you try to scare him.
The use of force, on the other hand, always consumes it (all or in part). In the above crude example, if you shoot the first victim, you may have achieved the same aim as using power, but unlike in the former, you used up – consumed – a bullet. Maybe you have more bullets or maybe that was your last bullet. The fact is that force was used and consumed, because force is material in nature (even if you punched the victim, you used up your energy stored in your body, which you must now replenish somehow).
So, power is real and it exists, but it is impossible to quantify. A better title for this article would be “Comprehensive Military Force.”
It makes perfect sense to aggregate economic activity. Something like a gross national product or the gross domestic product is simply an attempt at a sum of all the economic activity within a given locality that takes places, that allows observers to estimate the totality, i.e. measuring the size of a given pie.
Force, military force in this case, does not exist in a vacuum. It is designed to be inflicted upon an opposition in order to create destruction, through which, it is hoped, physical and psychological submission of the target would ensue. As such, the measure of the force is highly dependent on the opposition in question, and cannot be measured in and of itself.
Because force is oppositional in nature, force must be applied over a specific time period on a specific geographic location (whereas power, being psychological, can be projected across time and space without limit so long as there is communication). This means that any measure of force is useless without consideration of the specific a) timeframe, b) place (the three dimensions), and c) nature of the opponent.
A fighter jet and an attack submarine cannot fight each other. Again each other, only the common a) timeframe might obtain. Their measurable output of force against each other is meaningless because they lack common framework of place and opponent (type of force projection, in this case, air-to-air missile vs. torpedo).
All force has to be projected to bear physical result. The theoretical ability of “stored” force, therefore, is not useful to measure. It is much more useful for real life comparison to compare force that can be projected toward an enemy across time and space spectrum.
Almost all modern military force practices combined arms, precisely because of the above reasons. Nazi Germany pioneered the use of combined arms (tanks, mechanized infantry, motorized artillery, sappers, signal units, close air support, all working in concert to overcome opposition in its variety) in early World War II and demonstrated that something “magical” happens when military force is applied in a particular combination. Multi-purpose force can overwhelm single-purpose force in the physical sense. More importantly, multi-purpose force, by overwhelming single-purpose force, one-by-one, can create and sustain psychological dislocation that can lead to collapse on the part of the opponent (this is the nexus of force and power).
As such, any discussion of force lacks much utility without considering the particular combination of force capability that exists in a given country incorporated with analyses of points 2 and 3 (specific time, space, and opposition).
Until a fully independent artificial intelligence can be developed (may that day never come!), all force output is a product of human decision and ability. These break down into roughly three categories: a) will, b) doctrine/planning, c) competence in execution.
Without an analysis that combines these, the crucial human element in force output cannot be measured. Is the given country’s leadership and population willing to engage in force exchange and suffer damage? Does its force planners have an appropriate doctrine of the use of force (whether strategic, operational or tactical)? Are the operators of the force competently trained and are able to execute the doctrine/planning? And what about the opponents.
Although peacetime analysts spend most of their time poring over the data on weapons platforms and their capabilities, at the end of the day, people matter the most (noted American military theorist John Boyd, of the OODA loop fame, used to say, “people first, ideas second, hardware third).
Highly trained competent executors, guided by top notch planners and appropriate doctrine, working under leaders of indomitable and intelligent will can defeat, and have defeated even with obsolete equipment, opponents with superior material advantages time and time again. Napoleon is said to have uttered “moral is physical as three is to one” (against, power-force). He should have also uttered “people are to arms as five is to one” (unfortunately, he is also known for saying “God is on the side of bigger battalions” to which I suppose one can drag up Voltaire’s quote “God is not on the side of bigger battalions but on the side of those that shoot best”).
The difficulty of measuring the true output of military force of a given nation is that such an index has to accommodate these highly complex, variable, and specific contexts and components. Aggregating “stored” output of military force in the manner of GDP or GDP, therefore, is not particularly useful exercise in the real world and only offers less than crude measures of comparison amongst nations that usually degenerate into the proverbial dick size contest between nationalists.
Much more useful would be wargaming or scenario-based analyses that pit particular national forces against each other in specific contexts.
Finally, I have a comment on a very specific part of the article:
Martin van Creveld has done probably the best comprehensive study on this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Power-Performance-1939-1945-Contributions/dp/0313091579
Van Creveld covers much in that book, including social factors, doctrinal differences, recruitment practices, issues of cohesion and morale, etc.
Someone commented above that Germans benefitted from superior obedience. This is very much incorrect. One of the ingredients of the early German success during World War II was that the Germans allowed a great deal of flexibility among junior officers. Contrary to their reputation as having Prussian Kadavergehorsam (zombie-like obedience), German superiors in fact encouraged and expected flexible, mission-oriented autonomy based on “recon-pull” in their juniors, the so-called Auftragstaktik (as opposed to Befehlstaktik or “command-push” employed by the Allies), all the while being able to maintain the unity of purpose.
Given the inevitable inaccuracies that develop over communication lines and changing local conditions of the battlefield, men who are trained and then allowed to observe, evaluate, and make appropriate decisions without referring to superior guidance tend to excel over those who “wait for the orders,” and are able to unravel the OODA loop of the former.
“…and are able to unravel the OODA loop of the former.” Sorry, I meant “latter,” not “former” here.
Now this is something I was taught unlike computer modelling, auftragstaktik.
And what good were those 22 years? After 22 years they retreated. That’s not results-oriented. That’s 22 years down the drain to achieve NOTHING. One might even say its the OPPOSITE of results-oriented.
Seriously…. so this “uber-capable” military, which has a really high score in some obscure military-scoring system, spent 22 years deploying a force in a region to achieve nothing against a force that has a fraction of a decimal of a point in the same scoring system.
Good to know military thinking has devolved to such a degree. “Just do anything, even if it achieves nothing”. What are you people? Turkish intelligence?
If anything the 22 year deployment gave Hezbollah experience in fighting a Western-style army. We saw in 2006 Israels inability to even stop the rockets. And its inability to handle 5 guys from Hamas using a tunnel to attack an army outpost in Israel during the last Gaza War. (I’m sure Hezbollah has tunnels into Israel, do these factor in the scoring system?)
I know the author is excluding nuclear weapons but just to highlight the difference between RESULT-ORIENTED thinking and “just do something, even if it achieves nothing” mentality.
During the Cold War the US had plans to nuke the USSR by striking cities, towns, military bases and missile silos. This plan however doesn’t predict the effect against hardened Soviet bunkers and tunnels, or how effective it will be in striking Soviet units spread throughout the Soviet Union. etc. etc. etc. (American oversimplification of war)
USSR on the other hand was targeting oceans (to create tsunamis), fault lines (to simulate super-earthquakes), and dormant super volcanoes (like Yellowstone) to create Armageddon on earth. Why? To kill as many people as possible. (Real war)
Now…. which one do you think is more focused on RESULTS?
Stochastic and Deterministic modelling. Deterministic has in its foundation Osipov-Lanchester’s differential equations which evolved, obviously, into much more complex things such as Augmented Salvo equations and other means of determining most important tactical and operational coefficients. Stochastic, well, that is where mathematical, tactical and operational acumen of CO plays a huge role (Naval War College published a very good Newport Paper #10, Chaos Theory) . Having said all that , whenever using “Western” historiography on WW II it has to be understood very clearly–it was influenced greatly by Wehrmacht’s generals who spent their last days publishing self-serving memoirs and narrative-driven Western military “theorists” gladly obliged to follow their guidance. Why–is a separate issue, but before doctrine-mongering (such as Creveld, as well as many others, do) , one has to have their facts straight and that was and still remains a huge issue. Even despite magnificent works by Glants, House or, even, Zaloga, bad habits die hard.
As per categories, technological dimension is important and it manifests itself vertically from tactical to doctrinal level. But assessing this is a whole other story altogether. Military Art does (and primarily so) operate with serious STEM categories and that is a completely different set of skills which requires a very serious academic background.
In Military Art results are judged by achieving, or otherwise, of the:
You might direct your complaint to the late Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart.
And whatever the motivations of the Wehrmacht generals, their helpers in the post-war years, and the nascent NATO builders, the fact remains that the German soldiers were operationally and tactically much more capable than the Allied soldiers through the entire war.
What does “important” mean?
Technology means nothing unless and until a human intellect operates it. Technological proficiency is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for effective output of military force.
Or better yet, go ask John Waghelstein about, you know, actual war while there (I don’t think he’s full-time any more, but he should be around). Tell him a black beret says hello.
Life is stochastic. War is a part of life.
Technology is a derivative of culture. In fact, it is, together with warfare, is A culture. I have some first hand experience with, say, Arab militaries. Not impressed, even when they produced some fairly good officers. Colonel Norwel Atkine’s “Why Arabs Lose Wars” or Colonel Sergievsky’s “One Can Not Fight Like This” pieces, despite being written one–by US officer, another–by Soviet one, are remarkably uniform in their assessments. It is not enough to have a technology, one has to produce it, and, even then, the issue of culture remains decisive. Producing AK-47 or S-400, or T-14 Armata are not in the same category. A brilliant piece by Arthur J. Alexander “Decision Making In Soviet Weapons Procurement” really nails it.
On Eastern Front? I doubt it very much. Not after 1943 and even before that. And, frankly, I see no proof of that just reviewing Manteuffel’s 5th Army (a lot of it Volkssturm) in Ardennes. Speaking of Western Allies, they didn’t encounter any of the first rate Wehrmacht ‘s generals, other than Model (and even then, briefly) till December 1944 by which time operational concept of Blitzkrieg was completely destroyed by the Theory of Deep Operations (you may want refer yourself to Leavenworth papers of US Army Staff College precisely on that–a lot graduate and post-graduate theses were written on that). As for Liddell Hart (with all due respect to him) you just proved my point–the biggest tank battles, as well as combined arms operations, were conducted on the Eastern Front. By 1944 Wehrmacht was effectively denied its best and brightest, including some of the true geniuses of the scale of Manstein. That are facts.
LOL. What were they going to target them with? Baba Yaga's cauldron?
The energy release from the biggest nukes is tiny compared to what you'd need for any of these. The Yellowstone one is really funny, though.
Yeah, this Yellowstone thing was very popular at some point of time. Even some “great” Russian “analysts” (well-known in English-language blogosphere) “explored” it.
It means a difference between bombing the sh.t out of fourth rate Arab militaries and going against even semi-competent opponent who has some semblance of REAL air-defense and other gizmos.
http://nation.time.com/2012/12/03/usmc-under-utilized-superfluous-military-capability/
Some observations of mine about military power in relation to the above article and other much discussed issues around the matter:
a) Yes the Germans were the best soldiers of both World Wars, but what does that have to do with today’s world? Germany’s greatest battles since Berlin 1945 were on the football pitch. I doubt that anything of the old Prussian martial culture survives today. Germany today is the epitome of a wimpish post-modern society, solving technical issues, seeking safety/security/minimizing risk, while all-in with multiculturalism, feminism, gay parades etc… Also, zero experience in fighting. It will take a massive cultural/strategic/social/economic revolution in Germany for any of the above to change. Also, painful engagements will be required so that experience is acquired.
b) The reason why the Germans were very good in both World Wars was not because of some mystical toughness or superiority. As a matter of factly, how different are the Germans to the French/British/Americans, even Russians? In my mind, the reason was that the Germans were always well aware that if a major war in Europe broke out, they would be in a world of shit! They knew that they would probably have to fight on two fronts, and they also knew they had to fight against numerically and logistically superior opponents. Hence they were prepared (tactically, psychologically etc) for casualties, daring tactics, etc… The British and the French were more complacent (especially the British) and were also merely used to fighting colonial wars against natives armed with spears and arrows. Once they had to face a proper enemy armed with technology such as their own, they were in for a mega-shock. Also, as at least one other poster pointed out, the French fought much better in WWI than they are generally given credit for. In WWII they were just shocked by the daring German tactics (a big risk that paid off handsomely) Unlike the Russians in WWII, the British and the French had nowhere to retreat to. As for the Russians in WWII, AK correctly notes that back then the USSR was basically a Third World country (not entirely fair, but certainly less advanced than the West) but we also have to note that they were taken in complete surprise by an already battle-hardened, battle-ready and generally optimized army. Clearly they had no chance in such a scenario hence the initial blows were devastating. After 1943, the balance of power shifted decisively. Another thing is that during WWII, the Russian soldiers (in many cases) were on the verge of starvation, or at least underfed, the Germans had all the food they wanted from looting both the USSR as well as occupied Europe.
c) Soft southerners/tough northeners. LOL! It seems that many confuse the respective technological development of the periods and states under consideration. In WWII, the Italians were lacking natural resources as well as logistics in general. They were also never that much into Mussolini or fascism. They were quite unwilling participants. It was not for cowardice that they performed badly. As for the Spanish, Hitler praised the Blue Division highly for their bravery on the Eastern Front. Also, Spain has a veritable history in both naval and land warfare. Also Greece has a distinguished military history from antiquity to modern times, especially if one considers the size of the country and the limited technological resources.
Now, as for Military Power in general.
a) First of all, military power cannot be indexed.
b) Military balance of power always takes place within a geographical context.
c) Also, always within a plausible scenario. Let me explain myself. There is absolutely zero chance that Russia attacks NATO or the USA. It is however conceivable that the opposite occurs.
d) Same as above applies for China.
e) If either of Russia/China move first, it will be against some regional stooge of the US Empire. Nothing more.
f) I see almost everywhere an extreme underestimation of China, especially in relation to China’s technological prowess. Having watched the Chinese government’s tactics over the years, I can promise you one thing: The Chinese are hiding their power, which was/is the very sensible thing to do for the past few decades. Now, I am not saying that they do not suffer from some weaknesses (they probably do) but in all probability they are faking much of it. Can you honestly believe that a country with a colossal economy, massive amounts of money invested every year in several sectors, cannot produce advanced jet engines? They Chinese are being strategic, they are composed, they remain quiet, they are extremely patient. As Deng Xiaoping once said: “Bide your time, hide your brightness”
g) A country (however advanced) is not a true military power without oil&gas. Hence, even highly advanced countries such as Japan/Germany/France/Korea are basically impotent as independent military powers. For this reason (and many others) are reduced as vassals for the US Empire. In order to act independently of the US, they need a new ally with oil, or a daring and sudden attack that will provide them with oil access.
h) I am not military expert, but the way I see it, with modern technology, basically the missile beats everything. Missiles can easily defeat MBTs, helicopter gunships, drones, fighter jets and entire fleets as well. Moreover, missiles are much cheaper than virtually all of their targets. So, in a serious war, what we will get, is motorized infantry, motorized artillery, submarines and reconnaissance drones.
Here is a quote from one of the greatest historians of our time. I subscribe to every word in it:
“For the power of the nation-state by no means consists only in its armed forces, but also in its economic and technological resources, in the dexterity, foresight and resolution with which its foreign policy is conducted; the efficiency of its social and political organizations. It consists most of all in the nation itself, the people; their skills, energy, ambition, discipline, initiative; their beliefs, myths and illusions. And it consists, further, in the way all these factors are related to one another. Moreover, national power has to be considered not only in itself, in its absolute extent, but relative to the state’s foreign or imperial obligations; it has to be considered relative to the power of other states.”
“The Collapse Of British Power”, Correlli Barnett. William Morrow & Company, Inc. New York, 1972. Page 1.
https://youtu.be/ij0wEHeFQyU
When every controlled to equal, only difference is intelligence.
This campaign competition is pure test of group strategy from campaign level down to individual gamer.
“Poland is trying hard to catch up, and may approach Turkey in 5 years or so.”
Poland, as a dying nation, has no chance to catch up with Turkey which has a big and stable population.
Conscription age and traditional fighting age range from 15-25. Now just take a look at the population structures of both countries and you know which nation is bound to have the stronger army in the next five to twenty years.
Turkey:
0-14 years: 25.45% (male 10,339,731/female 9,868,005)
15-24 years: 16.25% (male 6,587,897/female 6,314,306)
25-54 years: 43.07% (male 17,323,965/female 16,878,498)
55-64 years: 8.15% (male 3,216,877/female 3,253,892)
65 years and over: 7.09% (male 2,498,187/female 3,132,911) (2015 est.)
Poland:
0-14 years: 14.7% (male 2,915,674/female 2,753,218)
15-24 years: 11.52% (male 2,279,404/female 2,163,621)
25-54 years: 43.56% (male 8,471,593/female 8,326,656)
55-64 years: 14.54% (male 2,645,228/female 2,962,305)
65 years and over: 15.67% (male 2,362,421/female 3,682,069) (2015 est.)
Poland is a dying nation. As such it cannot afford to have a big army, if it wants to keep its economy stable, since it needs its young population to replace its retiring population. Turkey on the other hand has no problem replacing its retiring population and at the same time replenishing its army.
Sources:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2010.html
http://populationpyramid.net/turkey/2015/
http://populationpyramid.net/poland/2015/
Twinkie wrote:
“the fact remains that the German soldiers were operationally and tactically much more capable than the Allied soldiers through the entire war.”
SmoothieX12 in reply to Twinkie wrote:
“On Eastern Front? I doubt it very much. Not after 1943 and even before that. And, frankly, I see no proof of that just reviewing Manteuffel’s 5th Army (a lot of it Volkssturm) in Ardennes.”
Nonsense, SmoothieX12. Twinkie is correct.
US colonel Trevor Dupuy is one of the people who have studied German combat performance vs the Western Allies combat performance in the greatest depth.
He devoted an entire book of more than 500 pgs to the battle of the Bulge.
He notes;
“Time after time during the battle of the Bulge German soldiers outfought their American opponents.”
He quotes General Pattons diary “We can still lose this war… the Germans are colder and hungrier than we are, but they figth better”.
Dupuy provides a careful analysis of several major engagements during the battle of the Bulge and shows that even then(late 44/early 45), the Germans still showed higher combat effectiveness values than the Americans.
He also demonstrates that the German advantage had diminished from earlier campaings, and discusses the reasons of it.
Basically, at that point in time, the avg German soldier, NCO, junior officers, were not as good as they had been before, due to the enormous attrition the germans had experienced during the war.
The americans had improved their game somewhat too.
T.Dupuy wrote,( notice this covers German CV for the ENTIRE WAR, NOT just early engagements);
The German advantage over the Soviets was even higher and as late as 1945 the Soviet forces suffered many tactical defeats.
I do not know about your military index, but China and Russia defeated the US in Korea when China was incredibly weak and Russia was still reeling from WWII.
What then would happen today when both are much stronger?
The key that you do not mention is that the US must project power (ie. be the aggressor) whereas China has only to DEFEND itself from an assault in the East by sea. And with Russia protecting its back door, China is not vulnerable by land either. Most importantly with the joint Russian/Chinese territory and the Asian countries between them both countries are entirely self-sufficient.
The US cannot remain the Unipower unless it provokes a nuclear war in Eurasia from which it would have to remain isolated. But that is not possible.
The US has only two choices now – give up on its dream of global domination (which is everyone else’s nightmare) or commit suicide and perhaps take the human race down with it.
The age of US Imperial domination is quickly drawing to a close.
The process seems to me to be essentially irreversible now.
Good point, but…what % of Turkey’s population (and youth) are resentful Kurds?
You fancy yourself a “Jedi Knight,” do you?
Too bad for the Soviets, Stalin had Mikhail Tukhachevsky shot during the Purges in the late ’30s.
You live in fantasy land if you think the Soviet army could compete with the Wehrmacht (or more accurately das Heer and die Waffen-SS) man-for-man even in early 1945 when the Germany Army on the Eastern Front had almost completely disintegrated organizationally, and the Soviets enjoyed massive advantages in manpower and materiel. Even during the late 1944-early 1945, in those instances where the German Army was allowed to engage in local elastic defense, it was able to bloody the noses of the Russian army units that foolishly penetrated too far into German defenses.
That is correct. The manpower quality of the Germans had declined significantly by late 1944 as the cream of the crop had been killed and injured in massive numbers in the epic battles of 1942-1944. The Germans had earlier derived much of their advantage from superior doctrine, high quality training, excellent officer and NCO corps, and (similar to the very durable British regiments) a regional recruitment system that fostered a high degree of cohesion. By 1944, due to the extreme shortage of manpower, all but the first factor had degraded significantly. But they were still substantially more capable than the Western Allies, man-for-man. The Soviet soldiery was several orders of magnitude below in combat-craft, not because they were not tough (arguably they were tougher and more inured to primitive conditions than the Germans), but because they were, in the main, grossly uneducated and poorly trained peasants.
By the late 1944, both the Western Allied and the Soviet combat-craft improved somewhat as many in the respective armies were combat veterans with significant experience, but not enough to overtake the Germans man-for-man. But given the strategic situation and the enormous manpower/materiel advantages they enjoyed, they didn’t have to be equal to the Germans one-on-one in order to beat them.
And once Hitler forbade theater-wide elastic defense on the East as both von Manstein and Guderian advocated, the war was lost irrevocably for the Germans, as was bound to happen to snipers who are ordered to engage in knife fights, to use another metaphor. What von Manstein wanted to do was to repeat continually and theater-wide the Third Battle of Kharkov in 1943 (when the severely understrength Germans conducted a masterful elastic defense and destroyed some 50+ Soviet divisions and recaptured Kharkov). Happily for the Allies, Hitler instead threw away the last large reserve of the operationally mobile forces at Kursk (“Zitadelle”) and sealed his fate.
This pretty much shows your level or, rather, lack there of. Names of Chernyahovsky or Vatutin, among many, are evidently not known to you. I will expand on that later–need to go now.
No, I just operate with data base which is on the order of magnitude more massive than yours. If you need operation by operation reviews (and especially comparative review), I would suggest you to start googling what you can. I will address this issue later. Got to go.
Sir, as I promised, I comment on some of your points which you’ve made.
a) If you have read Vom Kriege attentively you would find Clauzewitzian dictum, which since then became a truism. Specially for you.
“It is legitimate to judge an event by its outcome, for this is the soundest criterion “(c)
“On War”, Carl Von Clausewitz, Edited And Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, 1976, page. 627.
So, if you don’t understand what warfare is and, especially, the war of annihilation, then same Carl is for your assistance who stated clearly that “The War doesn’t consist of a single short blow”. If you want to operate here with categories of MMA or WWF, as per mano a mano or any other martial arts, I have some news for you:
b) Wars are fought by forces (as in structures), national mobilization plans, based on doctrines, industries and military schools. The last time I checked it was Soviet flag over Reichstag flying in May of 1945, not Swastika over Kremlin. It was also Wehrmacht which was since Kursk on the retreat. Not only Soviet Army “competed” with Wehrmacht since June of 1941–it crushed it.
c) Evidently you do not understand, and it shines through, the abyss which separated war on the (late) Western Front and on the Eastern One. As none other than Colonel Glantz mentions in his books not for once, and I quote, “in accordance to Wehrmacht officers, war in the West was a sports proper, while the war in the East was an unmitigated horror”(c). So, for your little enlightenment, here is said Glantz’s lecture in US Army War College:
https://youtu.be/J3tiXgp8ofA
and this:
https://youtu.be/7Clz27nghIg
“when the Germany Army on the Eastern Front had almost completely disintegrated organizationally, and the Soviets enjoyed massive advantages in manpower and materiel.”
and the fact that it was actually fought by the Soviet Army on the East and that it was Red Army which attained those advantages. You need me to narrate the the outcome of the event?
as per this:
in those instances where the German Army was allowed to engage in local elastic defense, it was able to bloody the noses of the Russian army units that foolishly penetrated too far into German defenses.
Sure they fought, they still lost and, on many occasions they were simply bested tactically, operationally, not to mention strategically, when they lost strategic initiative at Kursk Bulge completely. Yes, it was there, where SS Panzer Divisions were stopped. But, that is the whole point–Wehrmacht was the greatest military force in history of humanity prior to February of 1943. By Orel-Belgorod Offensive Operation (Operation Kutuzov) it was not anymore.
Why, how it came about, you, obviously, have no idea other than repeating cliches about German Tactics in the initial period of the War of the Eastern Front (1941-Fall of 1942) but that is the whole illness of the MOST of American historiography of the WW II–it was influenced hugely by Wehrmacht generals who, obviously, blamed Hitler, Russian Winter, Russian Summer, The Father and the Holy Ghost, sudden eclipse of their mind for being utterly destroyed. The fact that they fought pretty damn good military (albeit manned by untermensch) which, in the end, handed their ass to them somehow didn’t occur to them.
I would suggest you, before even attempting to argue here anything on the issue of the WW II, to find “Eisenhower At War, 1943-1945”, by David Eisenhower (rings a bell?) , 1986 First Vintage Books edition, and start reading, very attentively. Especially pages 334 and 335. Maybe it will enlighten you.
If you want to know how the Soviet (Red) Army fought, here are some links for you to chew on:
http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16040coll3/id/133
And though Lieutenant Colonel Connors makes some mistakes in his thesis, such as miscalculating on the size of Soviet Front which was equivalent of roughly Western Allies’ Army Group, after all, it is 1987, it is a good thesis from Combat Studies Institute. Get acquainted with how Soviet General Staff thought, how STAVKA operated, how strategic maskirovka campaigns were conducted, what double envelopments are–in general, educate yourself. I can provide a whole list of wonderful English-language sources on this issue but I doubt you are interested in them. Including from US Army General Staff College
Now, personal. Here I can pass judgements. Sir, if you want to make a point, start with substance not with calling someone “a Jedi Knight”, especially since this Jedi spent 11 years in Soviet Armed Forces, more than 5 of them as an officer, after military academy, including on operational level, plus including some really funny events I had to participate in, not that I wanted to. Judging by what is “known” in the US by this whole “Soviet military expert community” (with some very few exceptions of true professionals of the level of Glantz, Lester Grau and others) I can tell you that–I heard and read a lot of BS in my life but no more than what was said and written about Soviet Armed Forces. That is the “level” of expert community here. If latest events didn’t teach you anything, I doubt anything will. Enjoy your Shcwerpunkts and Aufrollens. This is all time I have for the next several days. I already wasted a lot of it today.
It is true that by by 1944-45, the Soviet Army had become as competent at the “operational art” as the Wehrmacht. William Lind, a American scholar who has been long pushing for reforms in the US Military, states that this was never true of the Western allies.
It shoud also be noted that, unlike anglo-american propaganda, though the Soviets did possess numerical/material advantages over the Germans, so DID the Western Allies.
Anglo/american quack “historians” like to pretend that their armies had to face the Germans on more or less a 1:1 basis, which is completely FALSE.
For example:
When the Western Allies finally managed to succeed in Normandy with Operation Cobra, they had accumulated close to a 4:1 manpower advantage over the Germans. To say nothing of the material superiority.
This was actually better than the Soviet superiority on the Eastern Front. On first June 44 the Soviets had 7.25 million men vs 2.62 million Germans. Or specifically for the battle of White Russia, they mustered some 2.4 million men for their offensive against Heeresgruppe Mitte, which fielded some 849.000 men.
The combined allied armies in Normandy at the time of Operation Cobra amassed 1.452.000 troops vs some 380.000 Germans.
In one aspect the Western allies did better than the Soviets; Allied ground forces suffered around 210.000 casualties. Nearly 37,000 KIA. Over 190,000 KIA/WIA plus another 20,000 MIA
This was much less than what the Soviets suffered in their massive summer victory in White Russia;
Some 180,000 KIA/MIA, plus more than 590,000 WIA.
On the other hand, the Soviet victory in White Russia was much more devastating than Normandy for the Germans. Equipment loss was also much worse and, on avg, the German troops destroyed in Russia were of higher quality, including much higher percentages of specialists.
The Germans lost over 134,000 KIA/WIA, plus some 263,000 MIA. Total of 397,000 casualties.
That is considerably more than the losses the Germans suffered in the entire Western front, not just Normandy, during the same period;
Having said that, SmoothieX12, your pushing a lot of nonsense.
You have to explain, dear sir, how is it that your beloved red army, while tactically and operationally superior to the Germans, managed in 1944, despite manpower and material superiority, to have the following casualty ratios;
Germans= 1.947.106
Soviets = 6.878.600
Remember that when the Germans were on the offensive(and stronger), the ratio was even worse;
Take 1942, for example;
Germans = 1.080.950
Soviets = 7,857,503
No magic of yours can dispute these cold facts.
My use of the term “Jedi Knight” was an allusion to your “authoritative” references to the USA CGSC, of which SAMS is a part. The graduates of SAMS are called “Jedi Knights.”
You seemed to have absorbed a lot of Soviet propaganda during those years. And it seems pretty clear you have absolutely no clue with whom you are communicating, given the pathetic chest-thumping about your Soviet military service… which is par for the course for a heir of the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist in Berlin.
Don’t be moronic or disingenuous. No one is claiming that the Wehrmacht beat the Soviet Army in World War II. The topic under contention (which has long been settled by neutral historians and analysts) is not whether this army or that army won the war, but about the human quality of the respective armies and how they performed given the actual parameters of specific war conditions. The verdict is rather clear as other commenters have pointed out – German soldiers, despite generally being outnumbered, outperformed their Western Allied and Soviet counterparts during World War II. Nor is that analysis all that surprising given the high quality human material, the superior doctrine, the high social prestige, and the elevated cohesion brought on by a regional recruitment system (that harnessed the power of what sociologists call “the primary group”) that the Germans enjoyed throughout much of the war.
The kill ratios were what they were. No amount of your posturing and name-dropping Vatutin or Glantz (about whom anyone who studies “The Great Patriotic War” is familiar) is going to change the facts.
Good luck to you.
Easy. You a spewing a BS that is why. Now we’ll start with serious numbers:
Open page 307 an start looking at the table of (specifically) Wehrmacht Losses (two entries):
a) 20 Nov-1943-June 1944_______________ 1, 500,000
b) June-Nov 1944_____________________ 1,457,000
If you want to see specific numbers of Operation Bagration, open page 298, Table B and see entry Belorussian Offensive. Soviet Losses total 770,888 among them, killed-180,000, wounded 590,848.
Do you need me to narrate the results of Bagration? The utter destruction of the Army Group Center and erasure of more than 30 Wehrmacht divisions from the books for starters. So, how are your “ratios” looking right now?
@SmoothieX12
Pi*s poor effort on your end, mr.’smoothie’. No cookies for you.
The figures I have quoted come from the GERMAN AND SOVIET ARCHIVES.
That is what they were, no matter what magic trick u may try to pull from your BS magic hat.
The figure you used for german losses are TOTAL BS. Numerous British and US historians give highly inflated figures which they pull out of their magic hats. German casualties in Normandy, for instance, are commonly given by various “serious” quack historians as 400,000 or even higher. Those figures do not originate in German archives, rather from allied ‘estimates’ which are alway hugely inflated. They have nothing to do with reality. Also many of these quacks have a very poor understanding of the German reports, sometimes even of the language, and this for the ones that bother to consult them.
As for the battle of White Russia;
Even during the German debacle in White Russia, Soviet casualties far surpassed those of the germans.
Furthermore, the majority of german casualties were POWs.
When we compare the figures for KIA/WIA, the kill ratio advantage for the germans greatly increases.
Battle of White Russia:
Soviets – Some 180,000 KIA/MIA, plus more than 590,000 WIA. Total = 770,000
Germans – Over 134,000 KIA/WIA(some 27,000 KIA), plus some 263,000 MIA. Total of 397,000 casualties.
The German summer offensive against the Kursk salient in 43 is another example.
During the phase of the battle the Germans were attacking, the Soviets enjoyed a manpower superiority of more than 2:1, a considerable superiority in armor and a huge one in artillery.
The Soviets also had roughly as many aircraft.
So, the Germans attacked in inferiority of men and material against well prepared defenses in depth, and with a compromised attack plan.
The attack did fail but;
During the offensive german casualties amounted to some 55,000 KIA/WIA/MIA… at the same time, your beloved red army suffered 178,000 casualties!
Sorry pal, but russian propaganda stinks as much as anglo-american propaganda.
But good luck with your magic hat.
Sure, Earl Zemke from US Army Center Of Military History who compiled German numbers is a well-known Russian propaganda operative in US. And sure, what does he know anyway. In order for me not to answer a stream of amateurish BS you are spreading here–some more numbers.
But let me break you some news. From the same sources, which are fully opened Russian military archives, corroborated by the leading foreign historians, the total number of Soviet casualties throughout whole 1944 is….drum roll…around 2, 330, 000 if one considers it without Budapest Operation which started very late in 1944. Extrapolation WITH this operation, gives us additional about 150, 000. Which amount to approximately 2.5 million casualties with about 40% of them KIA. So, compare numbers now. Source? Zemke and Glantz, pages 298-299.
David Glantz has an unrestricted access to Russian war archives, especially being a full member of Russian Academy of Sciences–an incredible honor to a man of integrity and highest professionalism. And if you didn’t notice, I use overwhelmingly NON-Russian sources. Propaganda, eh.
P.S. I am not your pal.
If you didn’t notice, I use mostly reputable western sources. If they are Soviet propaganda, then sure. As per me “having no clue” whom I talking about–I believe you are totally wrong. I have a very clear picture of who you are–some butthurt amateur whose bubble is about to pop, if not already. Both me and you know that once the real numbers and review of operations starts you will have nothing of substance to say there other than insults and platitudes.
As per that:
It illustrates well who you are. As per you “thesis” about German superiority–I already introduced some numbers. For real military professional–they speak volumes and answer you question in full.
To SmoothieX12
Pal, you are clearly a very deluded individual, and certainly not the sharpest pencil in the box;
The Soviet casualties I quoted come from the MOST DETAILED compilation available in Russia. The work was carried out by Colonel General G.F.Krivosheyev( head of the team of authors from the Russian General Staff), and his team, who combed through thousands of documents and reports from different Soviet archives in order to produce what is known to be the MOST ACCURATE AND COMPREHENSIVE Data for Soviet losses in 20th century conflicts.
Colonel General G.F.Krivosheyev, ‘Grif Sekretnosti Sniat’(Moscow, 1993) pg.147.
Or the same work by Krivosheyev can be found translated into English, edited by Professor J.Erickson;
‘Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century’(1997), pg.96/97.
German losses for the years of 41/42/43/44 come from the German Archives:
BA-MA RW 6/v.552, BA-MA 6/v.553, BA-MA RH 2/1343 and
Der Heeresarzt im Oberkommando des Heeres, GenStdH/Gen Qu,
Az 1335 c/d(IIb),Personelle blutige Verluste des Feldheeres,
Berichtigte Meldung für die Zeit vom 1.6.1944 bis 10.1.1945, T78, R414, F6383234f.
Twinkie wrote:
“The Soviet soldiery was several orders of magnitude below in combat-craft, not because they were not tough (arguably they were tougher and more inured to primitive conditions than the Germans), but because they were, in the main, grossly uneducated and poorly trained peasants.”
This is true, but there are several other reasons which explain why the Soviets were outperformed and suffered such horrific losses.
One needs to examine, beyond the feel good myths of the ‘Great patriotic war’, how the Stalinist regime treated its own troops and civilians. It amounted to complete disdain for human life.
For example, we need to look at the role of the political comissars, of NKVD special units, of the dreaded ‘blocking units’, all in order to keep the red army in line. Why? Bc there was a clear tendency, among the troops, despite all the brainwashing propaganda of how the Finns or the Germans tortured and murdered all pows(many believed it), of surrender and desertion. But why? Well, clearly a lot of the soldiers did not feel so enthusiastic about fighting for a regime which had killed and/or visited horific sufferings on millions of people already before the war.
Many draconian orders were issued to deal with these ‘problems’.
One amongst thousands of such similar incidents was what the NKVD in the 264th infantry div. reported re the first battle of the 1060th infantry regiment. When the soldiers of the 4th company, 2nd Battalion failed in the attack, heavy MGs opened up on them from behind, killing ‘at least 60’.
The regime was so ruthless that Soviet airstrikes were carried out on overcrowded soviet pow camps. In the Soviet military, surrender was not allowed. Officers, if they surrendered, would be executed if taken back(or later repatriated) and their families arrested. Conscripts faced same fate but families ‘only’ lost state support. Many soviet soldiers who were captured, from lowly privates to Generals, expressed their great fear of the NKVD. It also terribly affected the performance of soviet forces. Major General Kirpichnikov stated that bc of the comissars they were totally stiffled in their creativeness and operational thinking.
This is also why Soviet troops were again and again, already since the winter war with Finland, sent to their almost certain deaths in frontal human wave assaults.
Despite all this terror, millions of soviet soldiers surrendered or deserted.
This does not fit very well with a view of mass patriotism. Initially, soviet propaganda aimed at fighting for Stalin and Communism, as it was ineffective, this was later changed to defense of the motherland which proved much more effective. Still, terror appears to have remained the key component in keeping the red army fighting.
Soviet data shows that during the war, more than 1 million court martial trials were held and more than 158,000 soldiers were executed!
As Marshal Georgi Zhukov noted “In the Red Army, it takes a very brave man to be a coward.”
By comparison, the number of German soldiers executed in all fronts was low and there was no such terror apparatus despite strict discipline. This shows the German forces were much more motivated and cohesive.
Actually, towards the end of the war the number of German soldiers executed became quite substantial, and much more than that of British or Americans. By contrast, in WW1 the Germans executed significantly fewer of their own soldiers than any other of the main combatants.
5371
My comparison was to the Soviets, by Soviet standarts, german soldiers executed were few.
Yes, this is exactly what is quoted by Glantz and House (and me) and I have all tables in a front of me, they are from Krivosheev’s volumes, Glantz and House USE them. You dared, and I quote, to put forth these numbers:
See your post above. It is obvious that you never opened either Glantz with House or Krivosheev. OK, let’s try something simpler for you, let us concentrate on KIA and MIA, these are tangibles which define to large degree the staying power of the army and the strain on the mobilization reserves. WIA category is a tricky one, since even leaving the battlefield for a day counts towards that same as being carried away from it in the bag and severely maimed:
KIAs and MIAs for 1944, Yearly total per Quarters: 470,392+251+,745+430,432+259,766=1,412,335
Then there is this small nuance–what to do with 959,000 KIAs and MIAs and 766,800 POWs of the Axis powers other than Germany? I heard (yes, such rumors circulate) that Hungarians and Romanians were not exactly attending the picnic (forget Italians by 1944) . So, what’s the deal with those? Do they count? Don’t answer, I am not interested–I am writing this not for you but for people who read this.
I will reiterate again–that even W/O Germany’s allies in 1944 ratio of Red Army MIAs and KIAs to Nazis comes to roughly 1,412,335 to 1,378,620.
Now to more substantial issues: war (real one, not some COIN) between nation-states is fought by forces–as in structures, whose interaction is not linear and and is not just judged by the sheer numbers, albeit by them too, of course, but by the complex of factors which are even more complex than mere firepower, it is called a set of capabilities. I posted earlier the link to one of MANY works by graduates of US Army’s Staff College in Leavenworth which came to be known as Leavenworth Papers. In, going back to topic of Bagration, many papers dedicated to Red Army’s post Stalingrad (btw, check Stalingrad’s ratios while you at it) operations point out what is known to ANY serious military professional that issues of:
a) amassing appropriate forces on main axes is an art, which involves
b) deception methods on a vast scale
c) constant recon and counter-recon measures, including strategic and political intel
d) outstanding planning from the tactical to general staff levels.
e) execution which must achieve synergy
are key to a successful operation. That is what was demonstrated fully in Bagration. And if Blitzkrieg as concept was buried at Kursk (in reality earlier–Kursk was a final nail) by Bagration Deep Operations concept fully matured. Now, if you DO NOT understand (which you do not) the massive difference between merely numbers of casualties and the fact of demolition of the organized, equipped and experienced force–I don’t know why you are even posting here, in this thread.
In conclusion: unless Glantz and House are paid undercover communist agents (together with Zaloga, on many occasions), which is preposterous to even contemplate, their echoing of the, first, Soviet and then Russian complains about obvious formation of the “Western” views on WWII by former Wehrmacht generals, means only one thing–it is true. It is a fact of life. So, if you want to continue to live in the fantasy-world of utterly destroyed Wehrmacht’s la-la land–your right, sure. Same as Twinkie’s. But it is clear as of now that neither of you have any clue on tactical, operational and strategic realities of the Eastern front other than some beaten to death narrative whose time was up long ago. The start of your post is a great testament to this, since Glantz and House wrote their books in large part based on Krivosheev’s work. Your comments on Kursk are altogether irredeemable. Guess what, Germans got great ratios at Kursk (no, really, Red Army lost more) but then, of course, you never read War And Peace and I very much doubt you even have comprehension of what I am alluding to.
Evidently, your understanding of Zagradotryads is about as my understanding of genetics. Just to really be done with this preposterous discussion:
Just copy and paste text in Google translate and try to read it from the link below, the official statistics with 2.5 billion executed Red Army men by bloody NKVD is also there. And, of course, what really do Russians know of their history, another matter some “specialists” who can not even read Russian.
http://statehistory.ru/1/Pravda-o-zagradotryadakh/
Ever hear of the term “cherry-picking”? Glantz has his own viewpoint, and not all or even most historians of the field share his.
More stupid evasion and fallacy. YOU are steeped in Soviet propaganda, and therefore readily believe and regurgitate any source or viewpoint friendly to the propaganda you absorbed. Stop setting up false choices (i.e. “either I am right or the sources I cited are from Soviet agents”).
Are you a military historian? Have you ever been one? I have. I have peer-reviewed articles published. Have you ever fought in a war? I have. And that’s all this “butthurt amateur” is going to say about his professional credentials.
I am not your researcher. Go argue with Trevor Dupuy and Martin van Creveld. Their numbers and publications are readily available, as are the raw data from the respective national archives.
I agree, but I do think the motivation of the ordinary Soviet soldiery improved as the reality of the German occupation filtered through the lines over time. That also explains, in my view, why the Germans were able to take such massive numbers of prisoners in the early years despite rather tenuous, thin encirclements they created – I believe the Soviet equivalent of “Better Hitler than Blum” was operative in those years when the Soviet citizenry brutalized by their own regime and purged officer corps had not yet experienced the genocidal brutality of the German occupation.
The Germans forces were recruited (especially in the beginning) along regional lines and took advantage of the high degree of cohesion fostering primary social groups brings. Soldiers don’t fight for ideals or even nations, in the main. They fight for their family and friends. When soldiers are recruited from their primary group – family, school chums, men from the same town, etc., they fight harder and are less likely to abandon their comrades in battle. “A brave man dies but once, a coward dies many deaths” and all. This also explains the excellent durability of British regiments that are deeply steeped in family and regional traditions.
Furthermore, I also think that the Nazi propaganda regarding the Soviets was very effective (in part because much of it was true!), and Nazi ideology was better at fostering us-vs-them mentality than Soviet communism was (Omer Bartov explores the ideological origin of German military cohesion in a couple of his earlier works).
Still, the Germans were not necessarily “naturally” cohesive or invincible. One of the German generals (I forget whether it was Heinz Guderian or F. W. von Mellenthin), in his book, narrates a story during the invasion of Poland in 1939 about a group of Pomeranian Grenadiers about to retreat because they heard Polish hussars (horse cavalry!) were advancing on them. The infantrymen in question had to be shamed a bit to hold their position. So, clearly, combat experience (and winning ones at that) played a strong role as well in the high German combat-craft, moral, and cohesion along with other factors we have discussed.
Hey, jackass, in what “real war” have you been?
Of course, you love talking about Bagration. It was the one final victorious Soviet operation that essentially destroyed the already skeletal and disorganized Germany army in the East.
Why don’t you regale us with your great professional expertise about the Third Battle of Kharkov in 1943? You know, when the German army in the East still had some semblance of organization, air support, and intact command and operational structure. How well did the glorious Soviet doctrine of Deep Battle work out when outnumbering the Germans 5-to-1, the Soviets managed to be counterattacked and out-killed by the Germans 10-to-1 (and losing over 50 divisions)?
Mr. Karlin,
More appropriate to the actual topic at hand, the following may be of interest to you: http://index.heritage.org/military/2015/
In particular, this section: http://index.heritage.org/military/2015/chapter/us-power/
[Have you ever fought in a war? I have.]
Which one?
[ That also explains, in my view, why the Germans were able to take such massive numbers of prisoners in the early years despite rather tenuous, thin encirclements they created – ]
That’s not what the German soldiers themselves thought. They noticed a radical difference between Barbarossa and the previous campaigns, even from the very beginning, in that Soviet soldiers continued fighting far longer after being encircled than their other opponents had.
This sums up your level. When no arguments are present this is the only thing you can have.
Heard of Caucasus ever? Unless you are Vietnam Vet (specifically Vietnam), there is really nothing to talk about.
Well, guess what–me too. In US too. Peer reviewed. And not for once. Go to my website if you are interested, one of them is there. Precisely on the issues of strategies and doctrines. I reiterate, you are not historian, especially serious military one, and it shows. You pearl about “cherry picking” and “his own view point” is one of those “arguments” when there is nothing left to counter. Glantz and House are internationally recognized as the best authorities in English-speaking world on the War at Eastern Front. Period, don’t like it? Too bad.
Why should I? It was a strategic blunder with the obvious outcome.
Again, is Creveld the best you can do? While you at it, why don’t you mention Stephen Biddle too. Or, I can give you a simple tactical problem (part of operational planning) on the level of, say, tank battalion–yes, this is what staffs of regiment and upper levels do–agree? Why not to stop this BS from you and get to the active work of Operational Art? So, are you up to it? Then we may talk about credentials. I am absolutely not interested in Creveld of Dupuy, or arguing with them, I am arguing here with you, whoever you are, specifically and, while we are on the issue of the Combined Arms Warfare and its relation to history, we may as well put it to practical use. Right? I hope you agree with me that issue of Force (not the illiterate faux-academic contrived BS you wrote several posts ago about “force” and “power”) and how it is applied is a crucial one? I would love you to comment on operational coefficients which go into the “real war” and define how real planning and execution are conducted. Then we will see what kind of “historian” you are.
Sure, destroying Nazi military machine and ending up in Berlin is really nothing, you know, peanuts. Accidental victory. One Wehrmacht soldier killed on average 200.5 Soviets. It is well-known fact?
To 5371
The fighting was hard from the start, but the facts of desertion, “flight forward”, etc, r very well documented.
The fact of the matter is that many soviet soldiers were not that interested in dying for Stalin and his regime.
Hell, even Glantz talks about this.
Twinkie wrote:
“Glantz has his own viewpoint, and not all or even most historians of the field share his.”
Exactly.
SmoothieX12:
“It is obvious that you never opened either Glantz with House or Krivosheev.”
I actually have several of Glantzs books(which does not mean i accept uncritically what the man writes).
But listen Smoothie, you are clearly a Soviet propagandist and a sad little l-i-a-r.
Look at what you had the gall to write:
“4. I will reiterate again–that even W/O Germany’s allies in 1944 ratio of Red Army MIAs and KIAs to Nazis comes to roughly 1,412,335 to 1,378,620.”
Utter BS! Have you no shame to LIE so blatantly?! Obviously not.
I have Krivosheevs’ book and the total losses for year 1944 read(PAY ATTENTION): 6.878.641
Just the KIA plus other deaths(died later of wounds,,etc) amount to almost 1.6 MILLION in 44.
The German Armed forces accounting of its own casualties was very accurate and obviously had nothing to do with propaganda as that does not even make any sense. You r projecting your own tendencies upon the German archives, 🙂
Germans losses in 1944, KIA, WIA, MIA(mostly in the form of pows), were what I said they were; 1.947.106.
Even if you have the book (which, to the best of my knowledge haven’t been published in US, I could be wrong though) I doubt you understand what is written it for two reasons:
Your number of 1.947.106 is false. So, in order for us to stop this BS propagated by you and the other guy, I will do it this way–I will scan all necessary documents later today and will place them in my blog. As I already said, communications with all kinds of trolls and BSers in this format is a waste of time. Until they are put face to face with facts, the only thing they are able to do is to hurl insults and deny obvious.
Later.
There are some desertions from every army, without exception.
“By comparison, the number of German soldiers executed in all fronts was low and there was no such terror apparatus despite strict discipline. ”
I wouldn’t exactly say it was “low”…30 000 Wehrmacht soldiers were sentenced to death and about 23 000 were executed. It’s true that there wasn’t that much desertion until 1944/45 but then it wasn’t exactly easy for German soldiers to desert.
5371
This is true. But the problem in the Soviet Army was much, much worse than in the German army.
Huge numbers also chose to surrender.
This is the reason for the draconian orders by Comrade Stalin, such as order 270 from Aug-41, order no 227 of july 42, etc.
As i have already explained, it was relatively low when compared to the Soviets.
It was even harder for the soviet soldiers to desert, yet they did so in much greater numbers.
This is a Fact.
Gee, I have really rattled your cage, eh?
You are WRONG, obviously. The book has been published in English as I’ve already said.
“Or the same work by Krivosheyev can be found translated into English, edited by Professor J.Erickson;
‘Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century’(1997), pg.96/97.”
At any rate i ain’t American and do not live there.
So Smoothie, stop being ridiculous. Any person interested, even if not able to read Russian, can get the book in English and check the exact pages i have mentioned.
All the details are given;
There is a column for those who died of disease, accidents, etc. they are designated as non-combat losses.
For the year of 1944 the figure given is 54.420.
Another column is KIA(including those who died under casualty evacuation).
For 1944 the figure given is 1.212.062.
Another column has those WIA who died later in hospitals.
For 1944 the figure given is nearly 330.000.
Your beloved David M. Glantz had this to say about the eastern front, during an interview for historynet.com;
“By 1942, after Leningrad and Moscow, Stalin and Marshal Georgi Zhukov think alike. They understand that even if you have to ruthlessly expend manpower, resistance will wear down a numerically weaker opponent. That tactic cost probably 14 million military dead—the price of defeating a more experienced, battle-worthy, savvy Wehrmacht.”
Of course that many of the military dead perished in captivity but the same is true for german military dead in WWII. In fact, even more so.
The only troll and BSer here is yourself, sir, stop projecting.
I am not writing it for you. I am writing it for people who read this, so called, discussion. Sure “you rattled my cage”. If it works for you, works for me. If you have the book in English–the better. I, meanwhile, will produce tables. Give me half an hour or so.
So, will start with this:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-62vkztIGsDI/VjFUwEUAzVI/AAAAAAAAANQ/CGgMxmTdjFI/s1600/Glantz-House_1.jpg
These are the numbers House and Glantz put for Wehrmacht losses. As you can see yourself (and others with you)–those are not exactly slightly below 2 million which you are pushing here or is it….drum roll…”personal opinions”?
Per this:
I am not in disagreement with this. Or, should I use “personal opinion” or “cherry picking” BS defense here? I, to a certain point, agree with Glantz here since it would take Stalingrad for conditions to mature. You, evidently, are missing my point here–through Summer of 1943, Wehrmacht was the best army in the world. But I digress.
Here (below) is “your number” in the continuation of table 133 from Krivosheev. Pay attention to marked in red squares. Including the number under the column Всего (Altogether), which does included those 1, 135, 342 Заболело (Fallen Ill) which are NOT combat losses. I am really at loss what are we going to do with that? But this is precisely the number which went into Wikipedia;-) ? And House and Glantz.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PE3ddlwbbtg/VjFUweweA_I/AAAAAAAAANU/c628m3FKzE4/s1600/Krivosheev-3_Sanitary.jpg
That is where you have gotten your approx. 6.8 millions. But again, I digress.
Addressing the discrepancy between KIAs and MIAs in table B, pages 298-299 and total combat and other losses for the same period of time–Table B counts them in OFFENSIVE operations for 4 quarters of 1944. I hope you understand the significance of such a close match between German and Soviet killed and missing? If you need me to scan those tables, just whistle. Will gladly oblige.
Now to more pressing matters;-)
I am waiting for our combat veteran Twinkie and then I will expand on Glantz’ statement you introduced above. In fact, I would love to finally get to the issues of FERs and, as a warm up, to why Guderian called Kursk a “decisive defeat”. But then again, it is Guderian’s “personal opinion”, right? Or was he “cherry picking”.
P.S. Wehrmacht was notorious for sloppy record keeping and hiding its losses.
Smoothie goes at it again with this gem:
“P.S. Wehrmacht was notorious for sloppy record keeping and hiding its losses”
Pure shameless lying by you, sir.
The German records were quite accurate and were kept in painstaking detail and this has been recognized by historians who are familiar with them.
The Soviet records are the ones generally viewed with greater suspicion.
BTW, the figure of 1.947.106 German casualties for the year of 1944 has been determined, among others, by Swedish military historians Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson. Zetterling is one of the most well informed historians when it comes to the German archives.
That is right, Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson who have written for ‘The Journal of Slavic Military Studies’ founded by non-other than dear Colonel David M. Glantz himself. That same Glantz who says the Soviets lost some 14 million military dead.
Oh, just another thing; Krivosheevs figures, though the best available, are not without problems.
Zetterling & Anders Frankson have discussed for example how the Soviet 1941 losses appear to be UNDERSTATED and that the records for said year seem imcomplete and unreliable.
Which is natural, given the chaotic situation with all them cauldrons.
For someone who whines about ad hominem, you sure do use it a lot.
Yes, apparently such concepts are above your pay grade of running operations of a Soviet tank battalion.
I think you ought to look at the mirror as this line of “reasoning” seems to reflect YOUR “level,” and, for that matter, your lack of logical consistency and intellectual honesty (another hallmark of a Soviet product).
You implied earlier by this phrase – “war (real one, not some COIN)” – that COIN (or LIC) was not “real war.” When I asked you in what real war – by your definition – you fought, you alluded to the Caucasus. The last conventional war the Soviet Union fought in the Caucasus was in 1943. Are you a World War II vet?
Of course, the Chechen wars came to mind in the more recent years (mid-1990’s and 1999-2000), but you specifically wrote earlier this:
Soviet officer, you wrote, not Russian, so you couldn’t have fought in the Chechen wars.
Furthermore, even if you were a veteran of the battles of Grozny, you disparaged COIN earlier, and the last time I checked the Chechens did not have “real air defenses” and such, the lack of which in America’s recent opponents you used to disparage the U.S Armed Forces and their capabilities.
So again, by your own definition, in what “real war” have you fought? You have some explaining to do, comrade. Might I suggest a healthy session of self-criticism?
Just like that. Dismissed with a wave of a hand. How convenient. This sounds a lot like boxers who get knocked out, who say that they are actually great fighters, but just “got caught once or twice.”
Did the Soviet military personnel only study victories? What happened to the vaunted “Deep Battle” doctrine? In your own words earlier, I thought the Soviet doctrine of deep battle apparently demolished the German doctrine of Blitzkrieg? Does Deep Battle only work when fighting a grossly outnumbered and overmatched enemy that is on the verge of disintegration (as in your favorite case of Bagration)?
By the way, this comparison of yours shows an utter lack of historical knowledge on the topic – “Blitzkrieg” was a popular propaganda term that was quickly adopted by the press, it was not an actual military doctrine. The German mobile warfare doctrine of World War II was synthesized from the infantry infiltration tactics developed in the late World War I and used with some success in the Spring “Ludendorff” Offensive (aka Kaiserschlacht; the tactical innovations are attributed to Oskar von Hutier, though he was not alone in formulating it) and the nascent mechanization/motorization, radio communication, and air force development in the 20’s and the early 30’s by men such as Heinz Guderian (who, interestingly, began his career as a signal officer) and Wilhem Ritter von Thoma (with strong influence from Western theorists such as J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart), then experimented/refined in the Spanish Civil War (with a slight detour in technical development via Soviet Union before the Nazis came to power, as the Soviet Union allowed Weimar Germany to conduct experiments and weapons development sub rosa in the Soviet Union).
And of course there were parallel developments in other countries, mostly Britain and the Soviet Union (your vaunted “Deep Battle”) though such developments lagged behind or otherwise was quite faulty compared to that in interwar Germany. And, in the case of the Soviet mobile warfare doctrine, as you probably know, Triandafillov died early, and others such as Tukhachevky were liquidated in the Purges, so the concept was stillborn (and, worse, politically repudiated). Although the Russians subsequently upheld “Deep Battle” as a native innovation, in reality the Russians learned much from their opponents through the bitter war (as van Creveld is fond of saying, war is a mutually-learning and -imitating activity).
Of course not. They are inconvenient to your arguments. I note that van Creveld is an Israeli. And he has been critical of both the Israeli and U.S. armed forces (for many interesting reasons, which are regrettably outside the scope of this discussion). As far as World War II historiography goes, he has no reason to celebrate the successes of Nazi Germany. On the contrary he has all the reasons to denigrate it. So when he compares the performance of the World War II German army favorably to that of the Allied powers, he is being an objective analyst and historian who is interested in the lessons of why. I know of no serious historian/analyst of respective national military performances of World War II who has not read Creveld’s “Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance 1939-1945.”
You are pretty incoherent here (apparently you picked up childish and vulgar colloquialisms such as “butthurt” but cannot put together a coherent sentence in English). Try again.
Are you stupid, hypocritical or deceptive?
For the umpteenth time, NO ONE, NO ONE, is denying that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in World War II (with assistance from the Western allies, of course). Let me try to use small words and a simple arithmetical example to explain this concept to you: if an army of a country with 30 million troops and 50,000 tanks defeat another country with 10 million troops and 20,000 tanks in a long, bitter war by losing 15 million troops and devastating much of its own territory, whether or not it won the war, can you say that it performed better than that of the defeated, particularly on per capita basis? After all, didn’t the Soviet Union defeat Finland too? Does that mean the Soviet military performed better than that of Finland?
“Deep Battle” did not defeat the German mobile warfare doctrine. On anything close to materially equal footing, the Germans consistently outfought the Soviets. Even when the Germans were severely outnumbered, had no air cover, they still outfought greatly the Russians when they were given the freedom of maneuver by their national command. Germans lost the war, not because their soldiers were less effective than Soviet soldiers, but because the German national command – Hitler – put them in an exceptionally poor grand strategic position of fighting a two-front war against two massive continental powers and because he failed to utilize the comparative advantage the Germans had – the high quality of their fighting men and their superior battle-craft.
Both Hitler and Stalin were amateurs. Hitler’s forbidding of elastic defense and his obsession, instead, with great offensives and static defense (“no retreat”) doomed the Germans and sealed his own fate – instead of listening to leaders such as von Manstein and Guderian who wanted to preserve a large mobile reserve and fight a series of defense-offense/elastic defense operations a la Kharkov 1943, Hitler threw and then wasted the last large-scale operational reserve the Germans had in “Zitadelle” (Kursk) and lost the war.
Stalin wasn’t exactly better. His fantasy orders in 1941 for “immediate counterattacks” against the Germans were in the same league of insanity as Hitler in late 1944 moving nonexistent corps and divisions on his bunker map. The two madmen fought a pitiless war of attrition with millions of hapless lives and, predictably, the one with a bigger country, more numerous population, greater industrial capacity, and fewer enemies won in the end after a massive bloodbath.
That ending doesn’t say anything about the actual fighting qualities of the men involved at the tactical and operational levels.
Stop with the stupid straw man. Even an idiot with only access to Wikipedia can see the estimates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union (Krivosheev’s numbers are not some magical lore only accessible to Russian speakers; this link contains a good summary of his findings and the critiques of the same.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II
Not a “real one” according to “Comrade SmoothieX12.”
Of course. Both the Germans and the Soviets essentially repudiated the international conventions in their war, so their war was fought under very different legal and practical conventions vis-à-vis treatment of the captured enemy.
My point was that in 1941, the Soviet soldiers trapped in “loose” pockets created by German operations were much more likely to surrender than the Soviet soldiers in 1943 and on, because the German rhetoric of liberation from Bolshevism was far more believable in 1941 and the experience of the brutal German occupation of captured Soviet territories and populations was well-known by 1943.
To be fair, Glantz has made valuable contributions to the field. But, and this is my impression, he, as a leading analyst of Soviet military forces during the Cold War, had a tendency, incentive perhaps, to overestimate Soviet capabilities (just as American military experts on China today often exaggerate Chinese military capabilities). Furthermore, Glantz, as a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Science, enjoys access, let’s say, less-Russophilic researchers are often denied, and, as the saying goes, access requires quid-pro-quo or at least “friendliness.” (In DC, it’s pretty well-known that foreign governments, for example, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis to name but a few spread money around American researchers and analysts via think thanks and foundations to advance friendly policy advocacy).
He is not exactly an unbiased, neutral observer.
I always thought his feud with the defector “Viktor Suvorov” (i.e. Vlamdimir Rezun) was a bit odd and at times comical. What a great Cold War novella it would make if it turned out Glantz was used to discredit an influential (and over-the-top in his own way) defector by the Soviets!
Er, familiar with the term Pyrrhic victory?
I absolutely agree with Guderian. The war on the East was lost for the Germans the moment Zitadelle began. As for why, you can read my earlier comment to you.
Pure, Soviet propaganda, in which light is dark, rape is liberation, and truth is false.
Wehrmacht records were so accurate and precise that they were used as evidence for war crimes trials.
Soviet records, in contrast, were grossly inaccurate and often fabricated, because of 1) generally low accounting standards and training, 2) weak institutional ability to collect information, and 3) fear of punishment for being “the bearer of bad news” (Soviet officers were frequently shot for “incompetence” when they failed to carry out fantasy orders).
Your first and second paragraphs contradict each other.
So which one?
It isn’t tenable to blame Hitler or Stalin for each and every failure of German or Soviet forces and credit someone else with each and every success. It’s easy to produce instances when both were right against the majority of professional advice, and there is no evidence of their consistently being uninvolved in the making of decisions that turned out well.
Of course, you never heard of Nagorny Karabakh or what was happening in Azerbaijan. I can give you even the start of all mayhem–mid-November 1988 and barely stopped since then. But I am not insisting on describing what and how things were happening there, it is of no consequence here.
Now about my “credentials”, and “tank battalion” you may read about them in the end of my US Naval Institute Proceedings Article but I’ll help you. Graduate of Caspian (Kirov) High Red Banner Naval Academy in Baku, class of 1985. Advanced degree in Gyro-inertial navigational complexes of the strategic missile systems (focus on pr. 667B-BD Delta I-II class SSBNs). Degree with specialization of Command VUS (ask Creveld what it is), including command of unit of Naval Infantry (marines), apart from other interesting things. Went to serve on surface ships and for some years guarded maritime border between USSR and Iran. Among my class-mates are former (I am 53) COs of submarines, surface ships, professors in Kuznetsov Naval Academy (Naval War College), Admirals and COs of large ground units which fought in Chechnya and even Afghan veterans. I think, I will stop here. I ended my service for health reasons (you know, when bogeys shoot at you, and even friendlies) early 1991. You tend to develop all kinds of health problems, my was simple–I bled with my stomach, but that is just nuance.
I will answer the rest of you vitriol later, including discussion on how military art works and what numbers mean.
Oh, wait a minute–how about that then?
But then again, I will continue to post tables from this “not without problems” source.
“And then comes this tricky issue of the national military school and operational art.”
Exactly. Nobody is talking about the art of war, generalship and social factors. Napoleonic France had clear advantage over Russia in all respects including larger population at the time and military genius at the head of the army too.
Caesar when he started Civil war was in much inferior position to Pompey who had resources of the whole Republic under his command and far more troops. Caesar actually attacked Pompey in Greece with half troops numbers Pompey had.
In both cases things that cannot be calculated decided the outcomes.
Oh, I am about to start;-) I want to discuss with our friends here Salvo (equation) models and ask our esteemed historian to comment on the process of operational planning, such as Force Sizing and how operational coefficients formed, together with criteria of success. Obviously, Twinkie’s fascination with DePuy comes from the simple fact that he doesn’t understand the issues discussed in DuPuy’s and others works–usually material which starts on Tactics And Operational Theory Departments in any respected military academy in the world;-)
They do not. The first paragraph refers to the difference between the treatment of POWs on the Western Front and that in the Eastern Front. The second paragraph refers to the difference between the early part of the war and the later periods on the Eastern Front.
Of course I know about Nagorno-Karabakh. I have Armenian-American acquaintances who helped to finance and even personally participated in the conflict (which I thought was more than a little crazy). But the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan was very small-scale and sporadic prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So if you participated in the Soviet “state of emergency” in Nagorno-Karabakh, that’s not even COIN let alone “real war” per YOUR definition.
You are a joke. I once sat next to General Norman Schwarzkopf. Does that make me a combat veteran of Desert Shield and Desert Storm? Are you that desperate for glories of “real war” (again, your term, not mine) that you are now mentioning people who sat next to you when you were a naval cadet?
So, to recap, you don’t have any real war experience, but you do go around denigrating the U.S. military and its operations and capabilities for not having fought opponents with “real air defense” in what you consider to be less than “real wars.”
Here is an American colloquial expression for you – “That is rich.”
His name is Trevor Dupuy, not “DePuy,” not “DuPuy.”
And, no, I am not “fascinated” with Dupuy’s work (if you looked at his calculations in “Number, Prediction and War,” he makes some significant mathematical errors, something acknowledged by even his ardent defenders). I am generally not a big fan of applying operations research to war. But he was a pioneer in his field in the U.S. so I am acquainted with his work.
Please, provide my quotations here about about “denigrating” US Army? I do respect American soldier, I do have a very warm feelings to US (and Allied in general) servicemen. I DO admire US Navy’s magnificent battles in Pacific and heroism of its sailors and marines. What “sitting next to General Shwartzkopf” has anything to do with it? It was you who brought here your “combat” experience, not me–want a reminder? You threw at me another argument that you have some works published–please, provide references. I did provide mine. Yes, I do not have “combat” experience, I just was almost killed several rimes while serving. Now, I already gave you my credentials, the only thing I hear from you is that you have fought. OK, I am very happy for you that you sat next to Norman, whom I do respect as a man and as a professional. But I’ll be home in the next couple of hours and we’ll continue out “discussion”, in a very to the point and practical matter.
See ya later.
Man, have mercy upon me. I am out of my league here.
I get it you must be meaning some equations to which various battle situations are being reduced to to reduce complexity and provide some templates.
Anyway, bean counting is never sure thing in this business.
You just made my day;-) Let’s start from the beginning of this gem of a stratagem of yours.
Really, I mean really;-))) Well, specially for you, my dear, a hyperlink to an outstanding and famous OEG 51st Report immediately after….drum roll..WW II. I suggest you browse the whole thing, which is, as it turns out, ALL about Operational Research from the times when Colonel Dupuy was still…let say infancy. You know what OEG stands for? Operations Evaluation Group, it was 1946. So, dear, sir. Since I have to (sadly) leave for a little bit, you may consult your consciousness if you want to continue with serious operational review of some (selective) WW II operations and research their utterly nonlinear nature. Before I go, here is a link directly to the 51st Report and remember the names of people who wrote it. I can tell you, though, one thing–I was taught by people who would put your Creveld with his Ph.D. in political science and “history” to shame in 10 minutes flat.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/ASW-51/ASW-11.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/ASW-51/index.html#contents
P.S. Yes, again, NO operations are planned and executed without…see above;-)
Absolutely, but that is why, usually (not always), the leading (as well as sets of sub criteria) operational criteria is a Probability of the event. For duel, it is relatively easy to calculate, for mechanized corps on the offensive–well, that is where it all becomes interesting;-) In fact, even probabilities ARE often the most serious secret since can disclose some of the capabilities. That is why Tactical and Operational Manuals are highly guarded state secret–you know, all those pesky Alphas, Sigmas, Omegas which go into the Salvo modelling.
Attached here are two scans from otherwise Three-volume set of The West Point Military History Series by the Department Of History of the United States Military Academy, Senior Editor Brigadier General Thomas E. Gries. ISBN 0-89529-424-9. Scans are from my copy of this wonderful set.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mGgCOqlOw8A/VjKxrWWJDHI/AAAAAAAAAN4/7YCWWtjmM1Y/s1600/West-Point_1.jpg
or
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ISKy9U6vVjM/VjKxrWbRZNI/AAAAAAAAAN0/Y9C4Te5s1W0/s1600/West-Point_2.jpg
Sir, I don’t know what are your purpose here but your continuous stating of either platitudes, well-known pop-facts or outright unprofessional delirium mixed with propaganda is really beginning to look preposterous. I, again, ask you to provide references to your articles, which were “peers reviewed”. I hope you understand that I am not interested in arguing with you on any matters other than of military history of Eastern Front. Moreover, I allow you to call me coward, idiot, jackass or whatever floats your boat but show me just a single sign that you are a professional in at least any field relevant to anything military.
If you have issues with West Point’s Department Of History, their contact numbers are easily found on the internet. I know, I know–it is their “private opinion” and “cherry picking” but we will get to it in time. As to the point–everyone knows that Blitzkrieg was a label.
“Of course, you love talking about Bagration. It was the one final victorious Soviet operation that essentially destroyed the already skeletal and disorganized Germany army in the East.”
Even if it were true I wonder who caused Wehrmacht to become skeletal and disorganized in the first place.
You have some serious anti Russian issues and bad attitude toward different opinions.
By the way, do you think you are not influenced by what you call propaganda in Smoothie case?
Speaking of the devil;-) Our friends here, while being so “scientific” with “interpreting” tables, forget, of course, to look at the start of those pesky tables of numerical ratios of Axis and of the Red Army, which from 22 June 1941 through December 1941 (5 months) fought being outnumbered 1 to 1.4 in Summer to being twice smaller (1 to 1.9) in November 1941. Of course, I will scan this table too. Yet, somehow those Slavic an other non-Slavic untermensch not only continued to fight but by the end of 1941 did ground Wehrmacht, fresh from its lighting victories in Europe, to the halt at Moscow and then kicked it back. Obviously, if we consider those (I simplify this for readability) Fire Power coefficients (issue of force density also arises here), and that is what was considered throughout whole war by STAVKA and General Staff, we would see that not only Red Army in 1941 was grossly outnumbered, it was grossly outgunned and remained so till the end of 1942. Yet, vaunted Wehrmacht encountered its own losses on the scale unlike anything it experienced in its Western campaign. So, using our friend Twinkie’s insightful definition, we may clearly state, which is an absolutely irrefutable fact, that Wehrmacht fought “skeletal” Red Army throughout 1941 and even early 1942.
I think facts that do not fit into their world view are being ignored or changed to reflect those views.
Also, they bring those crazy numbers like 5:1 numerical superiority. well, it was in those decisive points achieved by maneuvered hide by maskirovka and distraction.
All those excuses brought by those who lost doe snot include the fact they had massive advantage by catching Soviet military with pants down and military leadership in state of transition after purges of 1937-1940. No European power survived this kind of onslaught and all of them collapsed within few weeks. Despite you being polite towards US military, I think US GIs have never been in similar situations. I have serious doubt about their ability to fight and plainly being sane under similar circumstances. Despite savagery the war in Far East was nothing even remotely comparable to Eastern front and Soviet Manchurian operation showed clearly that Japanese were not on same level as Germans.
One of the theses of Leavenworth Papers (by Lieutenant Colonel Connor) I referred to earlier
http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16040coll3/id/133
dedicates a very large portion of a work to a strategic concealment (maskirovka) and amassing of the troops on main axes–both are an integral and high level parts of military art. Both Stalingrad and Kursk saw similar operations. Speaking of the mass, this is precisely the issue of force density. As per comparison of wars, I will later simply scan some of David Eisenhower’s conclusions from his, as I already mentioned not for once, outstanding work (which also became #1 National Bestseller in 1988). It will illustrate a difference quite explicitly. But I am sure, those will be legendary Ike’s grandson’s “personal opinions” and “cherry picking”, after all, what can possibly Eisenhower’s family and circle know about war;-))
I will try and get Eisenhower book you mentioned. But I wonder, is same level of maskirovka possible today under satellites watchful eyes or in case of war all satellites basically will be shot out of the sky and hence back to fighting blind.
also, I know the numbers. USSR had population of around 200 million in 1941. 80 million resided in areas occupied by Germans by December 1941. Hence with left 120 million which was slightly above 80 million Germany proper had and more with allies it was impossible for Soviet Union to field 5;1 numerical superiority. Not to forget that most of 1941 summer forces were captured or killed.
There also was need for people to work at the factories.
BTW, I did not read Krivosheev but I think there was misunderstanding about numbers where that guy mentioned about 7 million dead in 1944 alone is probably because Krivosheev probably mentioned USSR total losses in dead by the end of 1944 from June 1941 as around 7 million?
I will try to ruminate through these links this weekend.
Very good question. I don’t have the full answer. But I know that holographic means are being developed in Russia, at least. Obviously the US and Russia know everything about each-others space recon capabilities. It is also understandable that, indeed, it is vastly more difficult to conceal anything today in the era of smart-phones. Just a naval example–modern subs today are so silent that the next step is to make them sound exactly as the ocean’s background noise. Albeit, the development of non-acoustic detection means is really impressive.
I think modern armies are way to complex and expensive to maintain and operate.
Peer to peer wars have not been fought for 70 years so level of conflicts was pretty low with also pretty low causalities both human and military equipment wise. In my humble opinion once God forbids there will be real peer to peer all out war things will have to be considerably simplified. all currently made equipment is imho too complex and expensive to be produced quickly in significant numbers to replace lost and broken one. Satellites would be a reasonable targets to just shut down all surveillance opportunity for opposite side and so satellites which are used for smart phones communications.
Things might get far simpler again from current complex level.
By the way, those holographic technologies you spoke about. Do they depend upon satellite connections?
Couldn’t let this slide, you, insinuating a-hole. Who the hell are you, prick, to judge people who are upholding, especially in these times, what remains of US scholarship and real academe, not to mention being officers of US Army, with combat experience, such as Glantz . Here is for you, especially, what “peer reviewed” means.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y5lon3Lwn28/VjP93HRgViI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/C_2DF-WMsGk/s1600/Kursk.jpg
I wish Colonel David Hackworth was still alive to get your sorry ass to court for Stolen Valor.
And that is why there are such things in Russia which are called Базы Хранения (Storage Bases). It is sort of Кадрированные Дивизии (Cadre Divisions) of 1970-s and 1980-s. Remember the scandal with T-72s rusting in the forest couple-three years ago? Yep, that contributed to getting Serdykov’s ass out of MO. As for modern real war–080808 and Donbas. Combined arms warfare never went away.
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2015/08/strange-it-took-so-long.html
No , I did not read about that but I do remember when at the end of 80’s beginning of 90’s when Cold war was considered over and we had some 64000 tanks I read in newspaper probably Arguments and Facts that many of them were going to be conserved somewhere in Siberian Storage bases.
I remember you posted many times regarding Serdyukov credentials to be Defense Minister aka his furniture experience 🙂
But he indeed was running army like a business which is not good imho. Buying from abroad vs building own is not wise long term strategy especially for Russia.
I also do not get all that ruckus about brigades. Were there not polki in divisions? Why suddenly to cancel divisions and create smaller brigades while each division has some 3-5 polkov in each which certainly could be used separately if need arose. it awfully reminds me about Theodosius making 5000 legion into 1000 smallish unit that lacked older legion strength and ability to perform independent operations.
Combined arms operation have been here since Alexander the Great and are not going anywhere.
SergeKrieger writes:
‘Man, have mercy upon me. I am out of my league here.”
You really are. You have no understanding of the Soviet and German mobilization policies and aparently no clue to the fact that millions of people were transferred from the areas that Germany occupied into Soviet held areas during Stalins scorched earth policy, a policy which had military and economic facets.
Germany had to send thousands of specialists to keep the economy in these territories running at a minimum.
No amount of clowning around by shameless Soviet propagandists, such as SmoothieX12, can change the basic facts;
As stated by no one else than dear Colonel D.Glantz, so cited by comrade Smoothie;
http://www.historynet.com/david-m-glantz.htm
What is Glantz saying?
1. The obvious FACT that Germany fought against a more numerous enemy.
2. The Soviets spent manpower ruthlessly, suffering some 14 million military dead.
Notice that this figure is quite higher than what Krivosheev offers, which may indicate that even Glantz has his doubts, as do several others, re official Soviet loss figures.
Put it simply, particularly for 1941, the figures appear quite understated.
3. The Wehrmacht was a superior fighting force when compared to the Red Army.
Check out the table scan from Krivosheevs book, showing KIA, died later from wounds plus non combat losses per year and totals in the war against Germany.
http://justpaste.it/Krivosheev
Furthermore, it shoud be noted that the Soviet Union did NOT fight this war alone against Germany. It received MASSIVE help in the form of the lend lease program and other aid from the US and, to a less extent, Britain. Trucks, aircraft, armor, fuel oils, food, all kinds of raw materials were given in huge quantities and new Russian research has confirmed that this contribution may have even have been decisive.
Despite Stalin’s repeated demands for an Allied ‘second front’ to take the pressure off Russia, in point of fact several such fronts were already draining Germany’s quite limited resources—a second front in the air over Germany itself, a third front in the Battle of the Atlantic, a fourth front in the war in North Africa and then later Sicily and Italy—all before the D-Day invasion of France in June 1944.
The mere threat of Western Allied operations shows how that gave the Soviets an edge given that the germans kept switching many units, including some of Germany’s best, from the eastern front to other theatres in the west, to the Balkans, to France, to Italy, and elsewhere, in response to real or expected threats from the Allies.
I see no reason continuing to argue with you since you you are either Twinkie’s clone or the same kind of hot air bag who has no idea what is he talking about and you has no idea. But before I continue, not that I don’t have anything better to do, here is some food for thought regarding you blanket statement:
Here are two scans, one from already well-discussed Glantz and House (When Titans Clashed, page 285, Conclusion)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c5hbLfJ9AVw/VjT_ccnWrtI/AAAAAAAAAOk/kDjVXsYCUGs/s1600/Glantz-House_2.jpg
Or, US Military Academy’s The Second World War, Volume Europe And Mediterranean, page 143.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A-bbcZU50dU/VjT_cQAbxDI/AAAAAAAAAOo/vC-BHm5guJc/s1600/West-Point_3.jpg
Unless we are talking about large conspiracy on part of Glantz, House, Leavenworth General Staff College or West Point’s History Department or them being paid “Soviet Propagandists”, which, as we all understand, has a probability approaching that of a zero, I think the only diagnosis here is that of your deep personal problems. You already exposed yourself enough. If you want to continue to humiliate yourself further, sure, carry on.
Last remark. USSR/Russia remembers and appreciates Allies’ help deeply. Names of Ike, Montgomery, Bradley and, of course, George Marshall–a true American military genius behind Overlord–still have a special place. But having said all that, you can not POSSIBLY know anything about Russian sources or “studies” on Lend-Lease or otherwise, other than what is available in English. For example, you can not POSSIBLY know, as an example, WHAT Captain First Rank Krasnov writes in his Lend-Lease For USSR and I, frankly, have no desire to translate anything for you since it will be the waste of time anyway. In general, you have no military, no historic, no academic, no linguistic and, possibly, no any other background which would allow you to even remotely understand what are you talking about and what are the points of reference. Your pathetic rants here are the best proof of that.
Yawnnn…
The work of Russian historians in this connection(aid to the Soviet Union during the war), published in the late 1990s & early 2000s is well known.
I guess dear comrade Smoothie has not heard of the work of Russian historians Alla Paperno, Boris Sokolov, Aleksandr Vislykh, etc.
How about Marshal Zhukov himself:
How, comrade Smoothie?
Buahahhaha
🙂
On another note, Swedish military historians Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson have noted the general tendency in Anglo-American and Soviet/Russian histories, to exaggerate, sometimes grotestquely so, German strength;
For a Russian example, they discuss how distinguished Russian historian Meltyukhov( who BTW agrees, as do many other russian historians, with Suvorovs thesis ) made several mistakes in this connection, re force ratios at the beginning of Barbarossa.
Some of their conclusions demonstrate the problem;
– Meltyukhov includes German High Command reserves that were released during July, but NOT the corresponding Soviet forces.
– Grossly overstates Luftwaffe manpower participation.
– German satellite troops are included even if they were not committed until much later. If such satellite troops are included, Soviet reinforcements arriving in the meantime should also be included in a comparison.
– Exaggerate German army strength.
A couple of examples; Meltyukhov says 3rd Panzer Group had 265.000 men when in reality it only had 150.000. For 2nd Panzer G. he gives a force of more than 461,000 when in reality only 205,000 men were available.
With such gross distortions – which are regularly found re Normandy, Italy, etc – false impressions are given re force ratios, in this case, at the start of Barbarossa.
Please control yourself. The sources you provide do not repudiate L.K’s claim that “[USSR] received MASSIVE help” and “this contribution may have even have been decisive.” Your sources claim that the aid was very significant, but probably did not make the difference between victory and defeat. They do not completely rule out L.K.’s claim, much less make him out to be someone with “deep personal problems” posting “pathetic rants.”
I also noticed that one of your sources pegged the USSR at 29 million military casualties, which would seem to side with L.K. in the broader disagreement you two are having.
While I am no military expert, your response to someone who offered full-throated praise to the USSR as the most capable and significant of the Allies seems quite beyond the pale. I don’t know what the consensus is in the Russophone sphere, but on an English language forum L.K. is about as pro-Soviet as you’re going to get when it comes to talking about the Soviet contribution to victory. Obviously that does not mean that you should restrain yourselves when arguing about facts – we all benefit from an unflinching strike towards the truth. But it makes your terribly insulting attitude stupid in addition to reprehensible.
Sir, you don’t like my attitude? Don’t read me. Spare yourself negative emotions. Anyone, who mentions Rezun as a viable source cannot be treated seriously. So, skip my responses and you will insulate yourself from my reprehensible attitude. Meanwhile, you may read Edward Stettinius statement (easily found) about the role of Lend-lease, as well, as find your own confirmation of numbers in weapons and materials specifically. Numbers vary, such as tanks–7% of Soviet production, to some materials whose share was as high as 25%. Such as armor steel. The most significant Allied contribution were transport vehicles–that was, indeed, massive and DID improve Red Army’s mobility significantly. Having said all that, overall Lend-Lease numbers (the way they are calculated) still remain a point of contention, it is clear that it was significantly more than 4% claimed (and, sadly, downplayed) in Soviet times but they also hardly rise anywhere higher than 10% of Soviet war production. It was a significant help but it didn’t win the war as it is very often claimed in the West. If you find statements from Glantz and US Military Academy at West Point as “not repudiating” the point of L.K. then nothing I can do for you.
Man, I did not ask your opinion. I meant I was out of my league when it came to all that math and special equations Smoothy was mentioning. Otherwise considering level of many “experts” who post here I do not feel not problem at all.
From what you wrote you I feel a way more comfortable as I have been dealing with your kind elsewhere regularly.
“You have no understanding of the Soviet and German mobilization policies and aparently no clue to the fact that millions of people were transferred from the areas that Germany occupied into Soviet held areas during Stalins scorched earth policy, a policy which had military and economic facets.”
You think I have no idea of that. What a hack. My grandma was transferred to Magnitogorsk.
That’s what make you and your kind different from us. We know it from our experience and you from some books not all of which are reliable sources. Transfer of Soviet industry form occupied areas to Ural , Siberia and Central Asia is not some mystery for me.
I find it amusing as few locals come and behave disrespectfully towards those who does not share their views but then ask those who were insulted to control themselves. I wonder why not to behave respectfully without getting personal in the first place ?
Let’s see, these are your quotes:
And:
“Not some COIN”? That sure comes off derisive to me.
It seems to me that you are suggesting here that because the U.S. forces have not fought “real armies” with “air forces, air defense and naval power” and because it has instead engaged in irregular warfare worldwide or otherwise fought against “Third World” forces, it has not fought a “real war” per your definition of what real war is. So, all the American KIAs in OIF and OEF, including several of my blood brothers and friends died in what? A fake war?
Ordinarily I could not care less what your credentials were or were not. I would not even have cared if you were some idiotic teenager sitting in your mother’s basement, provided you made intellectually honest and robust arguments. But your derision toward the type of conflict the U.S. armed forces have engaged in the past decade and the sacrifices they have made me quite angry. And that is why I asked you whether YOU, by your OWN DEFINITION, have ever fought in a “real war.”
And then you compounded the insult by deceitfully replying as if you had. This was your first response:
You were implying here that you had “real war” experience in the Caucasus. Of course, that sounded fishy to say the least, so when I pointed out that the Soviet Union had not fought a conventional war in the Caucasus since World War II, you STILL tried to act as if you had “real war” experience by rambling forth as follows:
Of course, I then pointed out the problem with using the Nagorno-Karabakh c. 1988 as the place where you experienced this “real war.” And of course the rest is irrelevant credential chest-thumping, including, rather comically and desperately, the combat and command experiences of people with whom you went to school!
And now that I have unparsed your attempt to portray yourself as someone with “real war” experience, you retreat to this:
Whatever that means. And then, of course, when you can’t defend your own posturing, you must attack the questioner, so you go on the offense:
I worked in U.S. politics for some years as well. I must say, you would be an excellent fit for political campaigns and press offices.
If you had any sense of honor or integrity, instead of all this posturing to make yourself seem like a combat veteran, you would have simply replied one of two ways 1) “No, I have not been in a real war. But that doesn’t alter the substance of my argument that the U.S. has not fought in a real war for some time.” Or 2) “No, I have not been in a war, and I am sorry if I implied that all the American servicemen I [supposedly] admire had not been in real war in the past decade.”
Instead of being a man of honor, you tried to be squirrely and you were found out.
I wish to remain anonymous, so the advantage is yours.
All I will say is to repeat what I have mentioned elsewhere on this site in the past. I grew up in East Asia. I attended an Ivy League university and then went onto a top-10 (in the U.S.) Ph.D. program in my field. Then I worked as an academic (historian specializing in military history) for some years and then decided to leave it for both personal and political reasons. I then served my country overseas in numerous assignments (Europe, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia). I have fought in a war (not “real war” according to you). I was wounded and lost friends at war.
I still consult, so I am not keen to advertise myself. And that’s all I am going to say whether or not you call me names or engage in hysterics.
I come to Unz Review mainly to comment on HBD and political issues. I read mostly Messrs. Sailer and Khan, and am not a regular reader of Mr. Karlin, but his interesting attempt to turn national military capabilities into comparative indices drew me to comment on the thread.
The term is “operations research” (or analysis) not “operational research.” They are different things.
I did not state, suggest or imply that the late Trevor Dupuy was the inventor or originator of the use of operations research for war, as I am well-aware of the history of the field (having, during my student days, done considerable research on the topic as it relates to the Vietnam War). But Dupuy was a pioneer in using operations research and formulating a predictive model for battle outcomes (particularly as it relates to history) in the United States. So I familiarize myself with his work, going so far as to re-do some of his calculations in “Numbers, Predictions and War.”
As far as why I am not a “big fan” of using operations research as it relates to war is a very lengthy and complex topic, and I don’t wish to open another front in this already sprawling discussion. But, to simplify extremely, it comes down to this. In terms of prescriptive purpose, operations research is obviously great for calibrating inputs for obtaining specific outputs based on past data of a given system (or conversely, maximizing outputs by calibrating the inputs differently). That obviously has much utility in various aspects of war (especially as it relates to logistics and such).
But for me there are two major issues with this as it relates to the art of war (whether strategic or operational). First, war is not a unitary system. It is a contest of wills, bodies, and materials of at least two foes – foes who always adapt to each other (if one party fails to adapt, he loses, and the war is over). Because of the mutually-imitating, -learning, and -adaptive nature of war, calibrations based on past data tend to be reactive and not predictive of future changes of the opponent – meaning, anticipating the adaptations of the enemy to one’s moves. In war, which is a highly time-sensitive activity, reacting can be deadly (I am sure you know all about the OODA loop). This is the “art” (not the “science”) part of war. The ability to anticipate the “unknowns” of the enemy in a timely fashion is not something that can be calculated quantitatively. A reasonable amount of quantitative analysis is useful, but ultimately the final decision in matters of life and death is in the realm of “finger feel” to paraphrase a German expression.
Second, operations research tells us what and how well, but is not very good at telling us why. You seem to fixate on numerical issues like aggregation of firepower and such, but in my view, in war intangibles (leadership, genius, courage/fear, cohesion, etc.) matter more. While these can be captured in the what’s and how’s by operations research, the why’s is not, and operations research may even provide faulty “why’s,” leading to future failures. The lessons of Alain Enthoven (and his boss Robert McNamara) regarding Vietnam is an obvious example.
Jim Dunnigan used to tell an amusing story about his early days as a commercial war game designer several decades ago (early ’70’s I think). I don’t recall which game it was (probably PanzerBlitz) or what the exact numbers were, but the story goes that he and a friend came up with a probability ratio for one of his war games rather casually. It was one of those games with hexagonal maps and rectangular counters displaying force type, size, and mobility (number of hexes they can move in a turn). The thought process was something like, “Gee, I think if the correlations of forces were 3-to-1 attackers-to-defenders, maybe dice rolls of 1 would be the attacker destroyed, 2-3 would be stalemate, and 4-6 would be defender destroyed and attacker occupies the hexagon.”
Then according to Dunnigan, after the game was published, he was visited by some folks from the USG, who interrogated him on how he “obtained” this ratio of probabilities. They just would not believe that Dunnigan came up with it off-the-cuff and apparently suspected that he obtained leaked USG research. Dunnigan claimed he later found out the U.S. army spent considerable resources, millions of dollars, into probabilities research and came up with essentially the same ratio as he did after a few dice throws. Or so he’d like to tell.
And yet you seem to ignore what I wrote about the Eastern Front and engage me with ad hominem on everything else.
I called you a jackass for implying that the U.S. forces have not been in “real wars” of late, but I never called you a coward (to make that determination, I’d have to meet you and get to know you in person). Stop making things up and stop portraying yourself as a victim.
As far as this “sign,” it is impossible since your logic is circular, along the lines of “1) Show me a sign that you know anything about war or military affairs. 2) Everything you say is amateur, academic BS, etc. etc. 3) Show me a sign.” Since you are the sole arbiter of what is and is not a sign of being “a professional in at least any field relevant to anything military,” it doesn’t matter what I say or write. You will just dismiss it with a wave of a hand and then call me names.
Nobody brought up the Nazi racial concepts here but you. Will you stop with these stupid straw man arguments?
In comment 158 above, I attributed the relative combat deficiencies of the Soviet soldiery (in comparison to that of the Nazi Germans) to the simple facts of lack of education and training, not to some innate racial defects.
In the same comment, I praised the Soviet soldiers for being probably tougher and more inured to hardship than the Germans.
My assessments of the respective fighting qualities of the World War II Germans and Russians is not out of ethnic animus or ideology (I loathe both Nazism and communism).
Of course, you do realize that:
And that diversion as well as the intelligence from East Asia that Japan would “go South” (attack the Western Allies in the Pacific and Southeast Asia) and not “go North” (attack the Soviet Union) provided the Soviets with the time and opportunity to bring 30 fresh Siberian divisions to stiffen the defense of Moscow.
The rain and resultant mud during the delay proved to be critically damaging to the German motorized movement once they resumed their attack along the Moscow axis.
And that the Germans, though incurring MUCH smaller casualties than the Soviets could not replenish those casualties as well as the latter, and, being at the very end of a very long supply line, were at the end of their tether operationally.
And yet for all that, one of their reconnaissance battalions still captured the bridge over the Moscow-Volga canal. In 1941, the Germans came within a proverbial inch of defeating or fatally wounding the Soviet Union, but fortunately did not.
What I wrote about Glantz was a whimsical speculation on my part. Hence the amusement over the Rezun-Glantz feud and proposing a Cold War novella about it.
Stop with the fake outrage. And frankly you attribute a lot more to Glantz than he would about his own achievements by crediting him with “upholding… what remains of US scholarship and real academe” (implying that others are frauds).
By the way, I know Glantz is your personal hero for advancing arguments friendly to your national ego, but if we are talking about Soviet mobile warfare doctrine during the interwar years, the best authority on the subject in the West is not Glantz, but Richard Simpkin.
That is, again, rich coming from someone who tried to weasel his words to make it seem as if he were a veteran of “real wars.” All this vitriol, cursing, and personal attacks just because you couldn’t answer honestly your own experience after you disparaged the war experiences of others (i.e. American servicemen). So you know have to invert.
Just typical.
And not only that, while tanks were very nice indeed, trucks were what won the war for the Allies. Studebaker alone built 200,000 that were sent to the Soviets under Lend-Lease.
On the German side, the situation was reversed, as you likely know, and the Germans went through something of de-mechanization/de-motorization as the war on the Eastern Front worsened, which led some of the German generals to joke darkly that they no longer had Panzer divisions but “Panje divisions.”
I don’t recall anyone using terms like asshole and prick except one commenter. Or, for that matter, accusing other commenters of being “sock puppets” when they agree.
While several of us have used intemperate words (in my case “jackass” for example; see my comment 231), after “SmoothieX12” was cornered into admitting that he didn’t have “real war” experience, he went batty and took it to another level. And that was after repeated use of “BS” to dismiss what I and another commenter posted, often at some length.
If someone here cannot handle an opposing view, it’s him. You could practically imagine the spittle flying as he unleashed these tirades.
By the way, for the record, count me as someone who thinks that the Soviet Union was critical and decisive in defeating Nazi Germany, of all the participants in World War II. And I agree with those who say that – among the ordinary people – those in the West are often ignorant of the titanic sacrifices and hardship that the people of the Soviet Union underwent to be that decisive force. But among anybody with even a modicum of historical knowledge I think the Soviet role is well-known.
At the same time, it should be acknowledged that the Soviet contribution to this victory was by necessity and not by choice. I have no doubt that, given the opportunity, Stalin would have loved to enter the war “late” after other combatants were exhausted fighting each other and reap much of the spoils of victory (as the Soviets actually did to a limited extent in the Far East, declaring war on Japan late and demolishing the much drained and demoralized Kwantung Army). After all, until the very end of the pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1941, the former was supplying the latter with critical war resources such as petroleum with which the latter was attacking the Western Allies.
US participation in the war both against Germany and Japan was also, on the face of things, by necessity and not by choice; I don’t know why you think this is a damning remark. The USSR certainly owed no loyalty to the western powers which had never shown it any.
It shouldn’t be controversial that none of the US wars since Vietnam is at all comparable with that conflict in its intensity, let alone with those of other countries in history. The casualty totals are not a secret.
The first inflammatory sally, it seems to me, was yours about the “tomb of the unknown rapist”.
Sorry to interrupt
(3. The rain and resultant mud during the delay proved to be critically damaging to the German motorized movement once they resumed their attack along the Moscow axis.
(This is called Raspytica and it is happening regularly twice a year. It is like blaming sun for being hot. It is what it is. Soviet army had to deal with this conditions as well.)
You always can google images from Russia with vehicle up to the roof in mud.
Information about Japan moving South came from Richard Sorge.
Yes, it was one of those I meant by using control themselves especially on such sensitive topic as Soviet unknown fallen soldiers.
The losses of the USSR were on such a scale that frankly after what Germans did it was act of amazing kindness that Germans were not exterminated at all.
Out of 27 million dead , 18 million were civilians and number of starved to death or shot outright POWs were around 3 million.
It is very sensitive topic. Americans are very sensitive about 3000 who died in 9 11 and I have not heard Russians making fun of this…
Sir, this quote is NOT mine:
This is the quote from Colonel Douglas Macgregor (the author of the cult Breaking The Phalanx) from his Time magazine article “USMC: Under-utilized Superfluous Military Capability”. Here is a direct link and I suggest you to read whole article.
http://nation.time.com/2012/12/03/usmc-under-utilized-superfluous-military-capability/
As per COIN. It is not just my point, it is point of view of many US Armed Forces professionals who do realize that US Armed Forces DIDN’T fight even second rate military, let alone first rate one, in decades. Namely, since Vietnam.
Sir, if you didn’t notice, I didn’t get to my credentials until you started stating yours. I DO NOT discuss something for advantage or not, I discuss things for a simple reason–getting facts and truth out. When forced and, as it was the case with Operations on the Eastern front, I had to state who I am. In fact, it was germane to a discussion since required serious military academic background. Because you want to remain anonymous, I want to remain not interested in discussing anything with you further. Good luck.
P.S. For your consideration, when you have time.
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/warfare/2015/08/02/us-army-ukraine-russia-electronic-warfare/30913397/
Interesting point you bring. There was a faction in US military headed primarily by incomparable George Marshall and his protege Ike, who were pressing from the get go for the Second Front. That is where Sledgehammer came from and was…defeated by British on the ARCADIA in D.C. Late Stephen Ambrose discusses this in detail in his Supreme Commander, as well as introduced Ike’s diary in which he states that failure to help USSR in 1941-42 is “the gravest mistake”. But, but…there were still Pacific firsters and, of course, isolationists with whom FDR had to content in Congress. And, of course, there was Sir Winston. In Casablanca, however, General Stanley Embick (he was the head of US-Canadian side on ABC conferences with Lord Halifax in 1940) of George Marshall’s staff who had enough of British delays and secondary theaters of operations efforts and wrote his “Primrose Path” memorandum which OPENLY accused British in avoiding proper operations in Europe. Attached here are two scans from David Eisenhower’s monster of a book about his glorious Grandfather and those scans give a very good insight (however partial) into the Allies’ strategic considerations and discussion re: Second Front.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IbG4gbrfe8c/VjY1vOs9XYI/AAAAAAAAAPA/FDm84vCo2-Y/s1600/Ike_1.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hhs882opTA0/VjY1vej8pkI/AAAAAAAAAPE/sH9CR7N8uEo/s1600/Ike_2.jpg
The war with Japan, yes, but the war against Germany is debatable. My own view, of course, is that U.S. ought to have entered the war against Germany, as it historically did. But whether that was by choice or necessity is arguable. Japan actually attacked the U.S., so in that there was no choice for the U.S.
It’s not a “damning remark” per se, just a statement of fact. Given that the Soviet Union was supplying critical raw materials to Nazi Germany with which the latter was attacking Great Britain right until the commencement of Operation Barbarossa and also given that the Cold War ensued immediately after World War II, perhaps the people of the former Soviet Union should not be that sensitive about the people of the West not celebrating the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.
That is obviously a reasonable assessment, but that’s not what SmoothieX12 wrote. Furthermore he called COIN “not real war,” which I believe he meant as a slight to US military capability and experience and, by extension, those of the servicemen and women who have fought the recent wars.
There is a great deal of difference between calling something a war of lower intensity (LIC) and “not a real war.”
Fair enough. But I did not call HIM a rapist – I sarcastically called him “an heir” to that legacy. And “Tomb of the Unknown Rapist” is what the locals in Berlin call the Soviet War Memorial there. They are not my words.
Obviously the blame, as such, lies with the Germans for not being able to forecast and deal with it. Nonetheless, the particular rain/mud cycle came at a particularly opportune moment for the Soviets. Furthermore, it was more critically damaging for the Germans because 1) they were at the end of their supply tether; 2) the Soviets were on defense, thus less reliant on motorized transport and on interior (shorter) supply lines, and 3) presumably the Soviets were more familiar with the weather patterns and their effects.
In any case, it was one of several reasons why the Germans failed to take Moscow. If Hitler had not altered the war plans and allowed Army Group Center to proceed on the central axis of attack without a diversion to Kiev, things might have turned out very differently.
Yes, I am well-aware of the role the Sorge ring played in conveying intelligence from the Germans and the Japanese to Moscow.
Yes I know. You quoted someone else.
There is a difference between calling a war LIC and not real war. You meant it to be derisive.
Now that you are politely referring to me as Sir” again, does that mean I am no longer “an asshole,” “a prick,” and someone with “Stolen Valor” who should have been taken to court by Hackworth?
If you are not interested in discussing anything with me, just don’t respond. Don’t act like you are doing me a favor after calling me names, making accusations, all the while weaseling out of having attempted to inflate your credentials as if you were in a “real war.”
Indirectly Mistaken Decision Cycles
He has a column up here as well: http://www.everyjoe.com/2015/08/10/politics/immigration-doesnt-work-like-it-used-to/#1
It’s called Lines of Departure …
To the extent that Germany almost delivered the knockout blow to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941, that sentiment is understandable.
But attempting to enter the continent in 1941-42 would have been an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. and for the Allied war effort as a whole as it turned out. The American ground forces were insufficiently organized and trained for large scale mechanized combat at that time. Even in early 1943 in North Africa, the U.S. forces suffered for such deficiencies (see the Battle of Kesserine Pass) – which led one captured British officer under German interrogation to call Americans contemptuously as “our Italians.” (By 1944, of course, the script had flipped and the Americans frequently complained of the British forces for being overly cautious and lacking elan.)
And then of course there was the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid (which, on a more positive note, taught the Allies much about what would be necessary to effect a successful large-scale forced landing).
The large-scale looting, destruction, killing of civilians, and an orgy of mass gang rapes without parallel in modern history were an “act of kindness”?
No matter what the German military and the SS did in World War II (obviously they perpetrated horrendous crimes), exterminating German civilians would have been a monstrous evil without peer.
Who is “making fun” of the Soviet suffering in World War II?
Furthermore, while the numbers are incomparable, the Soviet losses took place 70 years ago (and sandwiched between Stalin’s terrors on his own people). There are not many alive today who remember those losses firsthand. Several generations have come of age since that time, and the descendants of the perpetrators are, by and large, very remorseful about their ancestors’ crimes.
The 9/11 attacks occurred fewer than 15 years ago and the memories are still fresh. They happened unexpectedly during peacetime. Many of us Americans (including I) knew and mourn people who died in the attacks firsthand.
I thought you would know that Germany declared war on the US first.
[the people of the West not celebrating the Soviet contribution to the Allied victory in World War II]
They celebrated it plenty before Hollywood and the rest of the American lie machine got to work.
Just because someone declares war on you is no reason to fight him. Up to that point, Hitler had not targeted the US, with the exception of ships carrying supplies to Britain. Pro forma declarations of war in support of allies without any actual contributions to their war efforts are pretty numerous throughout history. Bottom line is that at no point after Germany’s “declaration of war” was it in a position to invade the US, given the way the Royal Navy had neutered the Kriegsmarine. As such, the US entry into the war against Germany, along with 2/3 of its war efforts, actually set back V-J day, perhaps by years.
When the White House lie machine about Uncle Joe gave way to the reality of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, along with disclosures of how integral Soviet support was to the Nazi invasion of the West, Russians began to creep a lot lower in the estimation of ordinary Americans. Add to this Russian imperial designs, including the support for communists in Korea and Vietnam, which resulted in the deaths of 100K Americans, and it became clear as day that Russia was what Reagan would call “an evil empire”. We would no more celebrate the Russian contribution (i.e. its fight for survival against its former ally, Nazi Germany) than we would al-Nusra’s contribution to the fight against ISIS. The principal difference between Germans and Russians is that Germans actually regret the evil they wrought around the world, whereas Russia remains unrepentant.
You are not worth talking too. If you are historian I am ballet dancer.
If those who call themselves historians repeat that cr*p about mass rapes no wonder general public is even more ignorant.
Germans must be lucky they were not move din mass to USSR to rebuild what they destroyed and pay for their sins. As historian you must know what Rome did with Cartage. Germany deserved nothing better. The fact that it exists now and is whole again speaks volume about Russian character.
Russia has nothing to repent for but US has got a lot. Let’s calculate how many people died in the world since 1945 due to US invasions, sanctions and destabilizing of the whole countries via coups and so called orange revolutions…
US is a country that unlike Germany which clearly stated her goals are doing basically same things but pretending and declaring pure goals of the world betterment while actually pursuing own selfish agenda of the world domination via other means.
Look into the mirror first before blaming other.
Few governments will ever be so carefree as not to take a declaration of war by one of the world’s leading powers seriously. I have already explained why Britain and France had no legitimate cause for complaint about the German-Soviet pact or its consequences. The USA still less, if possible, since it was not yet at war with anyone itself.
In WWII alone, thanks to Russian support for the Nazis, they were able to overrun Poland and Western Europe, leading to the deaths of 12m people during the Holocaust, as well as millions of other civilians. Without the distraction of a European war that the Russians enabled, would the Japanese have felt confident enough to expand their depredations in the direction of the European colonies in the Far East? Without Russia lending the Germans a hand, WWII might not have occurred. Going beyond WWII, Russian support for Mao set in motion a communist victory in China that eventually resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese. Thanks to Russian support for Kim Il-Sung, North Korea, though endowed with a first rate resource in the form of a population with an average IQ ranked among the top 10% in the world, is a country that is perpetually either in the midst of or in between famines. The idea that the US, in the course of battling communism, Iraqi imperial ambitions or terrorism comes close to any of these body counts is fantastical.
Going beyond body counts – just run your eyes along a list of Russia’s closest erstwhile and current allies – Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Assad’s Syria, Gaddafi’s Libya, Castro’s Cuba, et al – do these sound like normal countries, countries that a non-Russophile might get the warm and fuzzies about?
There are many books, some written by American historians, about the not so ‘inoccent’ Roosevelt administration in re to WWII.
A well known one is C.Beards ‘President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: Appearances and Realities’.
http://www.amazon.fr/President-Roosevelt-Coming-War-1941/dp/0765809982
There is much new research too:
For those who can read German, i recommend D.Bavendamms “Roosevelts Krieg’, published in 2002. There is Thomas Flemmings ‘The new dealers War”, “Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor’ by Robert Stinnett and many others.
The US was guilty as sin over WWII. So was Comrade Stalin.
The article about the polish documents got cut off.
Here it is:
President Roosevelt’s Campaign To Incite War in Europe:
The Secret Polish Documents
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p135_Weber.html
These are Anthony Beevor’s and his, supposedly “great” late British ignorant hack Keegan, BS-ers, who had a visceral hatred for Russians, “students”. Doesn’t matter that Sandhurst today is nothing more than a vocational school for PC morons, including from all over Muslim world, who still think that British Empire does still mean… sh.t.
Sir, you need to really get back on your anti-depressants, if not altogether check yourself into the asylum. The delirium you deliver is for psychiatrists to deal with.
That is right.
And the 200.000, if memory serves, refer only to heavy trucks. Tens of thousands of light trucks and jeeps were also sent.
Just so people can get a grasp on this, Waffen SS armored divisions, which were very large units of more than 17,000 men(model 1944) were supposed to have some 3800 trucks.
Often, real availability was considerably lower though.
So it is easy to see what more than 200.000 trucks could do for an army, mobility-wise, which is extremely important.
At any rate, the german fuel production was too low, so even if they could have put out more vehicles they would not have been able to fuel them.
Just a comparison between Germany with the US demonstrates this;
figures including imports and synthetic fuel in million metric tons.
US – 1942 = 183.9 / 1944= 222.5
Germany 1942 = 7.7 / 1944= 6.4
The situation was serious from the beginning of the war. So much so that the Germans turned massively to Holzgas generators. More than 500,000 vehicles(civilian but also many military) were converted, including even tanks.
On Producer Gas(Holzgas);
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=OZYrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=%22producer+gas%22&source=bl&ots=PQbyjnhC51&sig=Dd_tqPlW_ERy_IO-cL6baDYIx30&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.amazon.de/Fahren-mit-Holz-Holzgasgeneratoren-Ersatzantriebe/dp/3768825086/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446397082&sr=8-1&keywords=Fahren+mit+Holz
No amount of explanation can get past the fact that Russia is at root responsible for the war that killed so many of its own. The reason the Western allies shouldn’t be grateful for the Russian attempt to avoid being exterminated by the Germans is because it was Russia’s alliance with Germany that resulted in the West’s initial defeat, and the massive sacrifices that followed, to overturn German rule and to avoid Russian domination of the European mainland.
This is the fourth post which went for moderation. So much for “no moderation” posts on Karlin’s blog.
AK: There isn’t. The spam filter sometimes mistakenly holds back comments now and then, but there are currently zero comments in either the spam or pending folders.
[US participation in the war both against Germany and Japan was also,(on the face of things), by necessity and not by choice.]
Read my sentence again more carefully, paying attention this time to the words I have now helpfully set off by() . Do you imagine that my prose is as careless and my choice of expressions as meaningless as yours?
A white-straight-healthy-gentile-Christian-male would have to be either desperate, mercenary, or an idiot to join and fight with the US military.
The US military is a tool of the dominant US political regime, and the dominant US political regime is inimical to his long term interests.
And yet they incinerated millions!
Clearly, they were stupid.
I mean, just check out the energy costs of cremating a human body. Sheer stupidity.
The whole thing with France, Britain, and the USSR with Hitler was a game of buckpassing initiated by the Franco-British alliance. The very reason the British and French appeased Hitler in Central Europe – including doing NOTHING when the vast bulk of the Wehrmacht was in Poland and the French could have easily seized 30% of all German Industry in the Ruhr Valley and at the very least forced the Germans back across the Rhine with a minimum of effort – was to allow Poland to be conquered and put the USSR and Nazi Germany on a shared border and on the path to an early war between them.
They were absolutely gobsmacked when the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact was executed. They thought Stalin was a dummy.
Seldom reported – but contained in most mainstream accounts of WW2 that I have read – is that Stalin offered to guarantee Poland against the Nazis, but the Allies rejected it, weeks before the M-R Pact was signed. Stalin’s jaw dropped when the British envoy – who had no negotiation power – revealed that Britain had only 2 active divisions in all of Europe.
The French and the British figured the next war would be a repeat of WW1 – a meat grinder. Whoever ‘won’ would be so weak and the war would take years to decide, leaving them time to rearm and mop up the exhausted, bloodied victor. They gambled, sacrificing Poland and Czechoslovakia for time and an early Nazi-Soviet war and lost. Hitler went for France next, and held the Soviet Union for later.
Word is about 25% of the Saudi National Guard is Pakistani, not including all the other foreigners they have in their “military”. They are bragging about bottling up the last of the Houthis, but I just read an article about how Najran or one of their other border cities, was shelled repeatedly again the other day.
If you do a google search, you’ll see just before the shelling of Najran, the Saudis were bragging they had totally removed the threat to their own cities.
Given their performances against Saddam in 1991 or against the Meccan Terrorists in the late 70s, their results in Yemen are no surprise whatsoever.
To have them next to the Turks, or anywhere near them in rankings, is absurd, unless the measurement is only counting equipment and budget.
You and SmoothieX12 seem to excel at ad hominem.
For the sake of clarity and accuracy, I am not a historian now and have not been for over a decade.
So the history of the Soviet mass rapes is “crap,” eh? Just more Western propaganda, right? Just like Katyn massacre.
I am glad that the modern conventions of war have evolved just a tad since the days of Rome and Carthage. And because I was a historian, yes, I do remember that Rome defeated Carthage THREE times before it proverbially salted the earth of what eventually became the Roman province of Africa (and I write “proverbially” because evidence is scant about the actual salting). Although about 50,000 Carthaginians were sold to slavery after the city fell, other Punic cities (such as Utica) received better treatment, and “Africa” went on to prosper under Roman rule until the arrival of the Vandals.
Although Romans did sometimes, as Tacitus put it, “make a desert and call it peace,” in reality they were quite shrewd about giving lenient treatment to former enemies and incorporating them into their empire, sometimes even on nearly equal terms to Roman citizens proper (but without suffrage, obviously). It is because of this that Roman legions were almost always accompanied by Italian allied legions in equal number in battle prior to the Marian reform (in fact, in cavalry the allies provided more troops).
Stupid and inhumane conquerors who go about exterminating the civilian populations of their onetime enemies don’t last long. Remember how the Melians admonished the arrogant and powerful Athenians, the vision of which came true after the Battle of Aegospotami.
Certainly your lack of humanity says a lot about YOUR character.
Sure, the world would be the same place had Nazi Germany won World War II or the Soviet Union won the Cold War.
I have no doubt then I would be conversing freely on the Soviet-built Internet and letting an heir of the Soviet global domination such as yourself with absolutely no fear of retribution.
Now I see that you and SmoothieX12 are unrepentant Soviet apologists.
Um, yes, okay. OODA loop is “science fiction.” A few paragraphs in, it became quite clear that he doesn’t understand OODA loop at all and have never seen the briefings. And not only his knowledge of the history of the OODA loop highly defective to say the least (one of the key realizations over the air-to-air combat by Boyd was about the communication between the pilot and the airplane (as relates to the ability of the latter to effect the maneuvers ordered by the pilot in a timely fashion).
He also is quite ignorant about Japanese sword fighting/one-on-one combat. “Sen-no-sen” is a classic category of technique that epitomizes superior cycling through the OODA loop.
In the few paragraphs I read, the only thing he is correct about is that, indeed, the US Army’s (now dated) AirLand Battle doctrine that was formulated under General Don Sparry at TRADOC was NOT a correct realization of Boyd and his followers’ ideas. AirLand Battle was an improvement, to be sure, from the previous iteration of the US Army’s operational doctrine “Active Defense,” but it wasn’t what Boyd or his followers intended (I am intimately acquainted with the FM100-5 Operations manual of the U.S. Army of that period, because I wrote a thesis on it.)
Tangentially, I should note that Don Sparry and Brigadier Richard Simpkin (the premier Western expert from the UK on the Soviet maneuver warfare doctrine, especially during the interwar years) collaborated on these topics. Indeed Sparry wrote the foreword to Simpkin’s iconoclastic “Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare” that was published in 1984.
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blockquote>A few paragraphs in, it became quite clear that he doesn’t understand OODA loop at all and have never seen the briefings.
I take it that you have seen Boyd’s briefings, then?
You may have written a thesis on FM100-5 but as a former Lt Col, Kratman had to actually use the 1982 version of AirLand Battle when he went into Panama.
Let me ask him.
The man wrote quite a substantial rebuttal of OODA with detailed references to a number of significant historical battles, but I guess that someone who wrote a thesis on FM100-5 knows better.
Not as Boyd did. But those by his “Acolytes” based on his material, yes.
Where did I write that I knew FM100-5 of the era better than someone else, let alone a particular individual? I merely wrote that I was intimately familiar with that particular iteration of the FM100-5 as I spent a couple of years obsessively studying its development, history, critiques, etc.
If LtCol Kratman was an active, serving officer at the time, he most likely has a far better understanding of how AirLand Battle was implemented in practice. In fact, if you could read the rather simple sentence I wrote above, I wrote that I AGREE with him (for different reasons and motives) that AirLand Battle was not a correct expression of Boyd and his Acolytes.
My critique of him is regarding his understanding of the OODA loop and his examples (specifically the comparison to Japanese sword fighting).
And it would take a phonebook to rebut everything he wrote. Is there a particularly salient point or two of his you’d like to bring up? I’d be happy to reply if you have specific points you’d like to argue.
Furthermore, if you were really interested in the substance of the OODA loop debate, I can point you to someone who can defend it far better than I ever could or will. Bill Lind with whom you should be familiar is only too happy to engage in such discussions (or at least he was – I’ve sent many officers his way for such discussions).
Hitler’s War: What the Historians Neglect to Mention. An English translation of “Hitlers Krieg? Was Guido Knopp Verschweigt” by Alphart Geyer (Germany 2009).
This is a 96 minute long “Made in Germany” underground documentary film. It’s the first documentary ever to unabashedly explain from the German perspective, how World War II really began, and the many efforts that were made by Hitler to avoid it, and to establish a lasting, viable and mutually acceptable peace, but how he was ultimately left with no choice but to invade Poland. It documents many facts that have been deliberately left out of the “official narrative” as presented by the victorious Allies, which we have all been taught since 1945, and which Germans especially have been constantly reminded of since the war ended; with the blame entirely upon Germany’s shoulders. Many of the claims of the Allies that have been widely accepted as fact are refuted here as patently untrue, distorted, or ignored completely.
The film is largely based upon a book entitled “Der Krieg der viele Väter hatte or in English: ‘The War that had Many Fathers” by German author and historian, Gerd Schulze Rhonhof and “Ein unvermeidlicher Krieg? — Der Weg zum 1. September 1939”. Rhonhof is a former high-ranking, German military officer (Brigadier General in the Panzer Division) who has done, as any honest historian should, his own deep research in the war archives, and has been assisted by many other historians.
Also of interest is the following speech which gives a glimpse into the depth that the victors went to frame and incriminate the losers.
In this speech Gerd Schulze Rhonhof describes how he discovered forged material in British archives regarding the Nürnberger Prozesse, aka, Show Trials. Unfortunately in German only.
The British simply replaced complete pages in German documents but did not know that their paper material was of different physical quality when compared to the German originals. This led to a different discoloring process of the aging papers, so every page they replaced can now be identified, but the originals appear to have vanished.
You have Azerbaijan and Georgia ranked above Armenia. Yet, Armenia is the only country among the 3 Caucasian states that won a war in the last 30 years – against Azerbaijan. Armenia was outgunned and out-manned but still won. And the same is true now but to a lesser extent. Any ranking ought to take into account the will power and moral strength of a military, but since this is nearly impossible to quantify one never sees this component.
Put it simply, the Allies won WWII bc they had more of everything; manpower, industrial output, raw materials, etc. To say nothing of Germany’s horrible geographic position.
For example:
Global GDP distribution 1941 in %:
USA = 29
USSR = 13
British Empire = 11
France = 5
– –
Germany = 11
Japan = 6
Italy = 5
It was basically a team of giants(USSR, US, Brit.Empire, Colonial France, China, etc) X a team of midgets(German, Japan, Italy, Hungary,etc).
To make matters worse, the Allies actually generally coodinated their war strategy and planning while the Axis countries often fought parallel wars which hurt each other.
Given the odds, it is not surprising the Axis lost, what is surprising is how close to winning they got and the horrible price the allies had to pay to ultimately prevail.
Fighting-wise, the soviets were the ones most responsible for winning the war, given that most german troops were lost on the Eastern Front and Germany was the strongest Axis power, militarily and economically.
That said, realistically the Soviet ability to keep fighting cannot really be separated from the aid it received, whether material aid or other fronts that kept draining germanys very limited resources.
I disagree with this vehemently. Hitler in no way avoided World War II. He had a different vision of it than how it unfolded (he expected the British to sue for peace after Dunkirk – in fact, I think he preferred the British to stay out of the war and keep their empire), but he intended to engage in a titanic struggle with the Soviet Union sooner or later.
Hitler met with Molotov in Nov. 1940 in an attempt to get the Soviets to become full members of the Axis. Molotov showed little interest and made demands (like acquistion of the Dardanelles,which belonged to Turkey ) that AH thought outrageous.
All the shiny toys in the world don’t make one whit of a difference if you lack the cojo-, er, the will to use them.
http://www.danisch.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/defense_ministers.jpg
“I disagree with this vehemently.”
Having read some of your other posts, I’m in no way surprised. But the F-A-C-T-S vehemently disagree with your disagreement! 🙂
” Hitler in no way avoided World War II. He had a different vision of it than how it unfolded (he expected the British to sue for peace after Dunkirk – in fact, I think he preferred the British to stay out of the war and keep their empire), but he intended to engage in a titanic struggle with the Soviet Union sooner or later.”
In fact, had you at least watched the documentary(with an open mind), you would know that he very much did try to avoid War.
In January 1939, after uniting the Austrian, Sudenten and German brothers in a German Reich,
Hitler said that the process of the formation of the German nation – the German “Lebensraum” – had reached its conclusion.
Here is the speech:
Adolf Hitler Speech – 1939.01.30 – at around 2:40 / Eng. subs
As for the Soviet Union, the German command, after failing to bring the war to a close after winning in the Western Front in 1940, began to seriously consider the creation of an Eurasian block, which would include the Soviets, as a way to face the Anglo-American threat.
This, among other evidence, shows that NS Germany could be flexible and was not nearly as ideologically rigid as people assume.
It was not meant to be. Stalin had other plans.
After the war, the first to realize that the official narrative of the Soviet-German conflict was not correct were the Russians themselves.
As D.W.Michaels wrote:
Since the 90s, with the partial opening of Soviet archives(closed again), many Russian historians have refined the evidence for Stalin’s agressive aims.
Fanatic propagandists and quacks such as Smoothie and Serge hate Resun and would like him to have been the only Russian to advance such a thesis. Far from it.
An incomplete list of such Russian historians/researchers:
Former Soviet intel officer ,Vladimir Bogdanovich Resun(Viktor Suvorow), Russian historian Dr. Mikhail Meltiukhov, V. A. Nevezhin, Colonel V. D. Danilov, Igor Bunich, Irina. V. Pavlova, V. L. Doroshenko, M.Solonin, Constantine Pleshakov, Dr.Alexander Pronin, Prof. Dr. Maria Litowskaja, Colonel Kiselev, Dr. Dschangir Nadschafow, faculty director of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, etc.
Since the 1990s, many Western historians have reached similar conclusions. Americans such as Albert Weeks, Richard Raack, John Mosier, R.H.S. Stolfi. German and Austrian historians such as Dr.Joachim Hoffmann, Ernst Topitsch, Ernst Nolte, Dr.Werner Maser, Lothar Rühl, Fritz Becker, Dr.Walter Post, Dr.Max Klüver, Wolfgang Strauss, Heinz Magenheimer, French Stéphane Courtois, François Furet, etc.
This is the reason behind Russia’s new legislation against ‘revising’ WWII history. No, I’m not talking about the holohoax, but about the war itself. Just as with the holocau$t, truth need not be shielded from scrutiny.
Also most Soviet archives of the era remain closed. Why? Or are only selectively opened to ‘approved’ historians, such as the israeli Gabriel Gorodetsky.
W.Strauss lists in his book ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa und der russische Historikerstreit’ ( i highly recommend it for those able to read german )(from a review of it by D.Michaels), the findings of several of these Russian researchers:
Major findings:
-Stalin wanted a general European war of exhaustion in which the USSR would intervene at the politically and militarily most expedient moment. Stalin’s main intention is seen in his speech to the Politburo of August 19, 1939.
-To ignite this, Stalin used the [August 1939] Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, which: a) provoked Hitler’s attack against Poland, and b) evoked the declarations of war against Germany by Britain and France. But not against the Soviet Union which also invaded Poland taking half of it.
-In the event Germany was defeated quickly by Britain and France, Stalin planned to “Sovietize” Germany and establish a “Communist government” there, but with the danger that the victorious capitalist powers would never permit a Communist Germany.
-In the event France was defeated quickly by Germany, Stalin planned the “Sovietization” of France. “A Communist revolution would seem inevitable, and we could take advantage of this for our own purposes by rushing to aid France and making her our ally. As a result of this, all the nations under the ‘protection’ of a victorious Germany would become our allies.”
-From the outset Stalin reckoned on a war with Germany, and the Soviet conquest of Germany. To this end, Stalin concentrated on the western border of the USSR operational offensive forces, which were five- to six-times stronger than the Wehrmacht with respect to tanks, aircraft and artillery.
-With respect to a war of aggression, on May 15, 1941, the Red Army’s Main Political Directorate instructed troop commanders that every war the USSR engaged in, whether defensive or offensive, would have the character of a “just war.”
-Troop contingents were to be brought up to full strength in all the western military districts; airfields and supply bases to support a forward-strategy were to be built directly behind the border; an attack force of 60 divisions was to be set up in the Ukraine and mountain divisions and a parachute corps were to be established for attack operations.
-The 16th, 19th, 21st, 22nd and 25th Soviet Armies were transferred from the interior to the western border, and deployed at take-off points for the planned offensive.
-In his speech of May 5, 1941, to graduate officers of the academies, Stalin said that war with Germany was inevitable, and characterized it as a war not only of a defensive nature but rather of an offensive nature.
Also, the trouble with the notion of the “peace loving” and “neutral” USSR is that it had already invaded Poland and Finland in 39, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania in 1940 and even after the German-Soviet war started they invaded and occupied Iran in August 1941(together with the British). During world war 2 Bulgaria was in a unique position amongst the European Axis countries in that it did not go to war against the USSR after June 22 1941. Hitler asked Boris III for military assistance but he refused. The Bulgarian monarch would not even allow a Waffen SS recruitment agency for individuals who wanted to enlist. In September 1944 after advancing through Romania to the Bulgarian border the Bulgarian government reminded the USSR that it was neutral in the german-soviet conflict. The Soviet army invaded anyway.
Japan and the USSR were signatories to a non aggression pact which the Japanese adhered to, refusing German appeals to open a new front to the Soviet rear. But that didn’t stop the Soviets from attacking the Japanese when it suited them, after the war in Europe had ended.
I’ve been meaning to ask you a question. As we discussed here, there are many examples in history of more effective fighting forces succumbing to great odds. We have touched on the Finns and Germans and there r many others.
When I went to high school in the US in the late 90s, in the South, i had a teacher with whom I discussed the American Secession war, and he told me that the confederates, though they lost, man for man had been the better soldiers. The evidence I’ve come across seems to support what my teacher told me.
What’s your take? Do u know of any good books or online articles that discuss this aspect of the ‘civil’ war?
Regards
The only way to tell which military is the most powerful is to have a competition. Which is to say, a war. And at the rate at which they are carrying on we should soon have one. So those of us who survive should soon be able to answer the question definitively, and without employing any math.