![]() ![]() "No dictator or authoritarian who wants to maintain power ever wants to instill too much skill in subordinate military leaders," the retired Army general wrote to Newsweek. Russian leaders have also ignored the reality that success in the information age-even military success-demands education, open initiative and even freedom. ![]() Moscow continues to invest in hardware at the cost of ignoring the human dimension of warfare (and the human dimensions of the strength of the nation state). It seems, three decades later, that few lessons have been learned. ![]() government-make about Russia as a military threat.įor the United States and the West, the stumbling Ukraine invasion recalls the collapse of the Soviet Union, an eye-opening moment when it became clear that a supposedly unstoppable military shrouded a crumbling economy and a weak political and human base. But in the longer term, if escalation doesn't worsen and the Ukrainian conflict can be contained, Russian conventional military weakness upends many assumptions that geopolitical strategists-even those inside the U.S. In the short term, Russia's military failures in Ukraine increase the threat of escalation, including the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. "'Then send in the peasant Army to kill or rape anyone left alive.' Subtle the Russians are not." flatten everything ahead of you," he says. Zhukov's orders were to "line up the artillery and. "I believe that at the heart of Russian military thinking is how Marshall Zhukov marched across Eastern Europe to Berlin," a former high-level CIA official told Newsweek in an interview. Army general told Newsweek in an email: "We know that Russia has a plodding army and that Russian military force has always been a blunt instrument, but why risk the antipathy of the entire planet if you have no prospect of achieving even minimal gains." The Army general believes that the only explanation is that the Kremlin overestimated its own forces. Other military observers are flabbergasted that a Russian invasion force, fully prepared and operating from Russian soil, has been able to move just tens of miles into an adjoining country. military experts say, to the failure of Moscow's conventional forces to make quick progress on the ground. And President Putin resorted to a nuclear threat-a reaction, U.S. Russia began to compensate for the weaknesses of its land army with more long-range air, missile and artillery strikes. ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty ImagesĪfter just one day of fighting, Russia's ground force lost most of its initial momentum, undermined by shortages of fuel, ammunition and even food, but also because of a poorly trained and led force. Ukrainian tanks move on a road before an attack in Lugansk region on February 26, 2022. military leaders learned by watching Vladimir Putin's invasion. ![]()
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