Soviet Deep Battle and OODA Loops in the Ukraine

This post is a part of my ongoing series about the information war in Ukraine.

A reader sent me this intriguing story about Winter-20, a large tabletop exercise in Poland to simulate a Russian invasion. The setup and its outcome were both interesting. Poland started the wargame with large advantages, namely, a futuristic arsenal of F-35s and souped-up Leopard tanks that doesn’t exist, and might never exist at all. Despite this edge, they lost badly.

The Polish news outlet, Interia.pl, managed to gather information from the participants of the “Winter-20” wargame. The testimonies of officers that had reportedly taken part in the drills were more than grim. With the original defense plan for the East, the Polish Armed Forces were unable to hold for the anticipated 22 days. Instead, on day 4 the Russian forces managed to reach the line of the Vistula River and encircle Poland’s capital, Warsaw. On the fifth day the remaining Polish forces left on the eastern bank of the river were virtually obliterated. It was assumed that the units fighting on the first line lost between 60 to 80% of their equipment and personnel within the opening 96 hours of operations. Furthermore, Onet Wiadomości reported that some of Polish division commanders refused to fulfil orders given by the General Staff as they were incomprehensible.

A similar scenario with a similar conclusion was conducted during the wargame conducted by Marine Corps War College in 2019. NATO forces were deployed in the same region and received similar tasks to stop the Russian invasion through the Suwalki Gap. As the outcome, after merely 72 hours the Polish Armed Forces received 75% losses and were incapable of conducting any further operations. They were practically drained defending the Suwalki Gap, with the Russian spearhead achieving a major blow.

The pro-Russia crowd was of course very happy with this outcome. I dislike the idea and think it paints a very wrong picture, and here’s why.

First off, and I speak as someone with first-hand experience of military tabletop exercises like Winter-20, this is strange. The first reason I find it strange is that the Russians won. Before going any further, understand the difference between a field exercise and a tabletop exercise. In a field exercise, the “good guys” fight the “bad guys” (opposing forces, OPFOR), and it’s possible that the OPFOR are more skilled and win, even if the exercise is heavily stacked against them.

But see, in most cases (like Winter-20) these weren’t real armies maneuvering through the suburbs of Warsaw, where one Polish unit defeated another Polish unit through superior skill. This was a tabletop exercise, a bunch of officers talking to each other in a conference room with big maps on the wall. The American military industrial complex has spent a huge amount of money developing computer games like WARSIM, and this spending was somewhat justified. WARSIM can calculate even minute details of a military operation, like how much fuel a truck consumes. I don’t know what software was used for Winter-20, but it was probably something similar to WARSIM, or maybe it was WARSIM.

Video games like WARSIM make such exercises easier, more convenient, and also reduce the problem of cheating. But still, computers can’t completely eliminate cheating. If an imaginary Polish unit fights an imaginary Russian unit, who’s to say who “won”? Especially since a Russian unit’s capabilities and weapons cannot ever be fully known, especially before what’s happening now in Ukraine. It’s not as if they told us. At some point, no matter what tools are thrown in, the game is “won” or “lost” by an arbitrary decision. What kind of commander is going to confess that he’s bad at his job and the Russians would easily defeat him? Any commander would have every motivation to exaggerate his own forces’ strengths while downplaying the enemy’s. But in this exercise the opposite happened?

Just to emphasize how extremely weird this is, I’m going to bring up Millenium Challenge 2002, an American combined arms exercise preceding the invasion intervention in Iraq. From Wikipedia:

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States Armed Forces in mid-2002. The exercise, which ran from 24 July to 15 August and cost US$250 million (equivalent to about $360M in 2020), involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military “transformation”—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more effective command and control of current and future weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as “Blue”, and a fictitious state in the Persian Gulf, “Red”, often characterized as Iran or Iraq.

Since the wargame allowed for a ship-to-shore landing of ground troops at some (unknown) point during the 14 day exercise, and because their naval force was substantial, the Blue force was positioned on the shore-side of the region’s active shipping lanes to keep them from impacting commerce during the exercise. This placed them in close proximity to the Red shore rather than at a “standoff” distance. Conducting the wargames during peacetime also meant that there were a large number of friendly/unaligned ships and aircraft in the zone, restricting the use of automated defense systems and more cautious Rules of Engagement. Red’s tactics took full advantage of these factors, and to great effect.

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue’s approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue’s fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces’ electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of Blue’s six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue’s navy was “sunk” by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue’s inability to detect them as well as expected.

Such defeat can be attributed to various shortfall in simulation capabilities and design that significantly hindered Blueforce fighting and command capabilities. Examples include: a time lag in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance information being forwarded to the Blueforce by the simulation master, various glitches that limited Blue ships point-defense capabilities and error in the simulation which placed ships unrealistically close to Red assets

Considered the shortcoming of the simulation it was decided to re-float various Blue ships in order to proceed with the exercise, while still validating the attack by Red forces. After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action.

Among other rules imposed by this script, Red Force was ordered to turn on their anti-aircraft radar in order for them to be destroyed, and during a combined parachute assault by the 82nd Airborne Division and Marines air assaulting on the then new and still controversial CV-22, Van Riper’s forces were ordered not to shoot down any of the approaching aircraft. Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed.

The rule changes following the restart led to accusations that the war game had turned from an honest, open, free playtest of U.S. war-fighting capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise intended to end in an overwhelming U.S. victory, alleging that “$250 million was wasted”. Van Riper was extremely critical of the scripted nature of the new exercise and resigned from the exercise in the middle of the war game. Van Riper later said that Vice Admiral Marty Mayer altered the exercise’s purpose to reinforce existing doctrine and notions within the U.S. military rather than serving as a learning experience.

Cheating to look good is a perpetual problem with wargames, and it comes from human nature so is tough to get rid of. Why were the Poles so brutally honest? I have two theories:

1. Exaggerating the “Russian menace” and their own helplessness was a great way for the Polish military to whine for more money and free weapons.
2. Polish ineffectiveness in the wargames might have been the tip of the iceberg, indicating widescale rivalries and political turmoil the original article from OVD I quoted suggests this idea as well:

The strategy of defending the area of Eastern Poland was based on the deployment of the 1st Armoured Brigade from Western Poland to Wesola near Warsaw. The Brigade consists of new Leopard 2A5 and Leopard 2PL MBTs and is a part of a newly created 18th Mechanized Division that was formed during the 100 anniversary of Polish independence. It was the idea of a former Minister of Defense, Antoni Macierewicz, a controversial figure.

Antoni Macierewicz is a politician closely tied to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and he remained in radical circles and was defense minister until the government reformed 2018. During his time in the office, the Polish Armed Forces conducted purges among high-ranking officers, academic lecturers, chiefs of various committees, directorates, and members of the general staff. Macierewicz was accused of dismantling and politicizing the armed forces as he made changes suitable to his views and demands, for example, he turned down the Airbus contract for new MH-225M helicopters. He was also the creator of the WOT formation, which has arguably deprived the Armed Forces or much needed equipment reserves. Since then, the Polish Armed Forces condition began to deteriorate rapidly and Macierewicz was replaced with the current Minister of Defense, Mariusz Blaszczak.

The lessons were learned by the general staff quickly as the subject unfolded among experts. There are plenty of voices suggesting that in the case of a conventional war with the forces from the East, the defense of regions on the eastern bank of the Vistula River is illogical. Many units will struggle to enter the combat zone under enemy artillery fire and their capabilities for a stand-off will be much diminished. Setting up a defense line to the West seems to be a wiser option. However, Mariusz Blaszczak rejects this proposition. In his words, giving up eastern Poland without fighting is the wrong thing to do.

Especially consider this line:

Furthermore, Onet Wiadomości reported that some of Polish division commanders refused to fulfil orders given by the General Staff as they were incomprehensible.

So Polish officers got together for a friendly video game, with a lot of top brass from NATO watching them, and acted like jerks to each other? But why would they want to do that?

Look, we have to seriously consider the possibility that Polish commanders and staff officers deliberately threw the game to make their bosses look bad. It’s also very weird to me that the results of the wargame were so conveniently leaked to the press. Again, this is a game, not real life. If a Russian attack on Poland did happen, or alternatively, Poles attacked Belarus or crossed into Ukraine, we have to assume they would fight tooth and nail. Just because they performed badly in a game, which was probably intentional anyway, doesn’t mean real life would play out like that.

But here’s another problem with exercises like Winter-20. Not only were they useless for assessing Poland’s ability to fight, they’re arguably useless for assessing Russia’s ability to fight.

Theoretical Russians annihilated the Polish army and captured Kiev, I mean Warsaw, in four days. I find the whole situation very relevant to Ukraine, because the western conception of what a Russian military action would look like followed a Blitzkrieg template. During Winter-20, theoretical Russians used Blitzkrieg to crush Poland. Blitzkrieg is an interesting and often effective strategy, but we need to remember that it is a western strategy. While it’s possible for Russians to use a western strategy, it is much more likely that Russians would use a Russian strategy (go figure).

For this next part, I’m going to invoke the famous Col. John Boyd.

Let’s review the Ukraine information war from a John Boyd perspective. We can only guess what Boyd might have to say about the war and the decisions surrounding it, but we can apply the military theory he left behind. How do the opposing sides of this conflict size up to the OODA Loop?

John Boyd (1927-1997) was an Air Force pilot and Pentagon strategist who co-authored Patterns of Conflict (read it here), an exhaustive 12-hour presentation outlining his idea of “fast transients” and how it can be applied to tactical, operational, and grand strategy levels of warfare. From Patterns of Conflict:

-Need fighter [plane] that can both lose energy and gain energy
more quickly while out-turning an adversary.
-In other words, suggests a fighter that can pick and
choose engagement opportunities—yet has fast transient
(“buttonhook”) characteristics that can be used to either
force an overshoot by an attacker or stay inside a hard
turning defender…

–Idea of fast transients suggests that, in order to win, we
should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our
adversaries—or, better yet, get inside adversary’s
observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or
loop.
-Why? Such activity will make us appear ambiguous
(unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder
among our adversaries—since our adversaries will be
unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree
with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or
patterns they are competing against.

Boyd introduced the widely acclaimed (and frequently misinterpreted) idea of the OODA Loop. Observe, orient, decide, act. Here’s a good synopsis from TechTarget:

The OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is a four-step approach to decision-making that focuses on filtering available information, putting it in context and quickly making the most appropriate decision while also understanding that changes can be made as more data becomes available. The strategy is applicable at an individual level as well as an organizational level. It is particularly useful in scenarios where competition is involved and where the ability to react to changing circumstances faster than an opponent leads to an advantage.

The OODA Loop has many children in the military and corporate spheres. Even Operational Risk Management (ORM) – also called Composite Risk Management – process routinely used by organizations all over the world is based on the OODA Loop.

Trying to picture the OODA Loop is confusing, and Boyd himself was reluctant to draw a diagram. To understand this diagram in military terms, here’s how I explain it. Imagine each of the pictured steps and shapes as a distinct group of people in a military organization. The “observe” phase could represent reports from scouts, radar installations, informants, and many other people. The “orient” phase is accomplished by various intelligence, operations, and planning staff at headquarters who give their ideas and conclusions to the commander, who “decides” what to do next. His decisions are transmitted back down to subordinate units, who continue relaying information back in a continuous loop until the mission is over. The army headquarters of course is an OODA Loop like I just described, the units under it have their own OODA Loop, and even individual soldiers have an OODA Loop in their heads.

In 2020 I had an interview with my friend Jake Pries, a self-defense instructor in Iowa. Here’s a blurb about how the OODA Loop can apply to day-to-day life.

And put this in perspective, people do this every single day while they’re driving, right? You’re driving on the road, you’re constantly getting input of information from either vehicles around you, the radio, what you see what you hear what you smell, what you feel through the steering wheel, you feel through the pedals. Even the most basic driver does things within the OODA Loop every single day.

When we talk about the application, the use of force or whether it be in defense or anything else, the big thing we have to remember is action versus reaction. And the action versus reaction within the OODA Loop is something that the reactionary gap will always be longer than the action gap. And what I mean by that is, when you decide it takes about for the average person and it takes about point 0.6 seconds to actually see and understand what it is using, right for your brain to process that information and that’s usually for somebody that’s relatively locked in. And that’s usually on a, in a relatively calm environment. Okay, from there it takes about another point to 0.3 – 0.5 seconds to put whatever action you decide to do in the play.

In military terms, an army should improve interaction between their own people and the environment, while isolating the enemy from each other and their environment. According to Boyd, “compressing” your own OODA Loop while “stretching” the enemy’s accomplishes this goal:

Collapse adversary’s system into
confusion and disorder causing
him to over- and under-react to
activity that appears
simultaneously menacing as well
as ambiguous, chaotic, or
misleading

A side note. The entire western media is still endlessly and hysterically talking about Kiev, but western leaders (as far as I can tell from publicly available information) have done almost nothing to help the Ukrainian troops stuck in the Donbass “cauldron.” In other words, Ukraine and her puppetmasters wildly overreacted to Russian forces in the Kiev region and underreacted to Russian forces in the Donbass region. I would certainly call that a success on Russia’s part.

To sum up the OODA Loop in practical, actionable terms, your decision-making cycle should be “smaller” than the enemy’s. In other words, your team should be able to collect, process, and act on information faster than the enemy. If you succeed, this means you will always have the initiative and always be one step ahead of the enemy. Let’s describe the OODA Loop in terms of a chess game. Most people don’t actually know how to play chess. We literally make it up as we go along. After a player learns how to play three moves, or even just two moves ahead, he will consistently defeat everyone who doesn’t know how to do that. Think about it. If you can think two moves ahead, your opponent will always be responding to moves you already made and you can shape the playing board however you want and he can’t do anything to stop you. You will consistently win. Even if one of your plans doesn’t work and the opponent does something you didn’t expect or want, you can just think two moves ahead again and continue on. Not only will a skilled player constantly win against unskilled players, he can make a lot of mistakes and still win. Even when the unskilled player has a temporary advantage, like taking an important piece for example, he’ll have no idea what to do with this success andl end up losing anyway.

War games, and actual war, aren’t entirely based on skill. There’s an element of chance and factors beyond anyone’s control. But superior skill, shown through a tight OODA Loop.

Boyd also talked at length about centers of gravity. First, what is a “center of gravity,” in military terms? From Wikipedia:

…the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.” Thus, the center of gravity is usually seen as the “source of strength

Modern Western military doctrine revolves around the German idea of Blitzkrieg, which Boyd described as the following:

Action
• Intelligence (signal, photo, agent … ), reconnaissance (air and ground), and patrol actions probe and test adversary before and during
combat operations to uncover as well as shape changing patterns of strengths, weaknesses, moves, and intentions.
• Adversary patterns, and associated changes, are weighed against friendly situation to expose attractive, or appropriate, alternatives
that exploit adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses, hence help shape mission commitment and influence command intent.
• Mission assigned. Schwerpunkt (focus of main effort) established before and shifted during combat operations to bypass adversary
strength and strike at weakness. Nebenpunkte (other related or supporting efforts) employed to tie up, focus, or drain away adversary
attention and strength (elsewhere).
• Special seizure/disruption teams infiltrate (by air or other means) enemy rear areas where, with agents already in place, they seize
bridges and road crossings, sever communications, incapacitate or blow up power stations, seize or blow up fuel dumps, … as well as
sow confusion/disorder via false messages and fake orders.
• Indirect and direct air firepower efforts together with (any needed) sudden/brief preliminary artillery fires are focused in appropriate
areas to impede (or channel) adversary movement, disrupt communications, suppress forward defensive fires, obscure the advance,
and divert attention.
• Armored reconnaissance or stormtrooper teams, leading armored columns, advance rapidly from least expected regions and infiltrate
adversary front to find paths of least resistance.
• Armored assault teams of tanks, infantry, anti-tank guns, and combat engineers as well as other specialists, together with close
artillery and air support, quickly open breaches (via frontal/flank fire and movement combinations) into adversary rear along paths of
least resistance uncovered by armored reconnaissance or stormtroopers.
• When breakthrough occurs, relatively independent mobile/armored teams led by armored recce with air support (recce, fire, and airlift
when necessary), blow through to penetrate at high speed deep into adversary interior. Object is to cut lines of communication, disrupt
movement, paralyze command and envelop adversary forces and resources.
• Motorized or foot infantry further back supported by artillery and armor pour in to collapse isolated pockets of resistance, widen the
breaches and secure the encirclement of captured terrain against possible counter-attack.
Idea
• Conquer an entire region in the quickest possible time by gaining initial surprise and exploiting the fast tempo/fluidity-of-action of
armored teams, with air support, as basis to repeatedly penetrate, splinter, envelop, and roll-up/wipe-out disconnected remnants of
adversary organism in order to confuse, disorder, and finally shatter his will or capacity to resist. [emphasis mine]

We think in terms of Blitzkrieg, and all of our military exercises seem to assume that Russians also think in terms of Blitzkrieg. I think this assumption is untrue, especially now with their war in Ukraine playing out the way it is.

Here’s Boyd’s take on Soviet revolutionary strategy:

Soviet revolutionary strategy
• Lenin, and after him Stalin, exploited the idea of crises and vanguards—that arise out of Marxian contradictions
within capitalism—to lay out Soviet revolutionary strategy.
• Result:
– A scheme that emphasizes moral/psychological factors as basis to destroy a regime from within...

Employ agitation and propaganda in order to exploit opposing tendencies, internal tensions, etc. Object is to
bring about a crises, to make revolution ripe as well as convince masses that there is a way out. This is
accomplished when the vanguard is able to:
– Fan discontent/misery of working class and masses and focus it as hatred toward existing system.
– Cause vacillation/indecision among authorities so that they cannot come to grips with existing instability.
– “Confuse other elements in society so that they don’t know exactly what is happening or where the
movement is going.”
– Convince “proletariat class they have a function—the function of promoting revolution in order to secure the
promised ideal society.”
• Concentrate “the main forces of the revolution at the enemy’s most vulnerable spot at the decisive moment,
when the revolution has already become ripe, when the offensive is going full steam ahead, when insurrection
is knocking at the door, and when bringing the reserves up to the vanguard is the decisive condition of success.”
To quote Lenin paraphrasing Marx and Engels:
– “Never play with insurrection, but, when beginning it, firmly realize that you must go to the end.”
– “Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point, at the decisive moment, otherwise the
enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organization, will destroy the insurgents.”
– “Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without
fail, take the offensive. The defensive is the death of an armed rising.’“
– “You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.”
– “You must strive for daily successes, even if small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and
at all costs retain the ‘moral ascendancy.’”

While Boyd did touch on Soviet “revolutionary strategy” and went at length about Blitzkrieg (which makes sense since American doctrine mostly revolves around German doctrine), Patterns of Conflict, unfortunately, did not discuss Soviet strategy against Blitzkrieg, which would have been interesting.

In World War II, the Red Army perfected the idea of Deep Operation (Глубокая операция). From Wikipedia:

Deep operations had two phases: the tactical deep battle, followed by the exploitation of tactical success, known as the conduct of deep battle operations. Deep battle envisaged the breaking of the enemy’s forward defenses, or tactical zones, through combined arms assaults, which would be followed up by fresh uncommitted mobile operational reserves sent to exploit the strategic depth of an enemy front. The goal of a deep operation was to inflict a decisive strategic defeat on the enemy’s logistical abilities and render the defence of their front more difficult, impossible, or indeed irrelevant. Unlike most other doctrines, deep battle stressed combined arms cooperation at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.

Here’s the best graphic I was able to find highlighting the (simplistic) differences between Blitzkrieg and Deep Operation. Thanks, Reddit!

With the idea of Deep Operation in mind, let’s look at a map of Ukraine, as of April 1 (with squiggly lines drawn by the Saker, with analysis).

Looks an awful lot like Deep Operation, doesn’t it? One of the key differences being that they didn’t have modern cruise missiles in 1944. They do now. Thanks to improvements in fire support and air power, it’s possible to disrupt operations deep behind enemy lines without physically sending troops there.

Another quality about Russia’s “special operation” is that it is asymmetric in the Russians’ favor. They can continue to supply and reinforce their forces with little effort, meanwhile, the West empties their armories and treasuries flooding Ukraine with weapons that (as far as I can tell) end up in warehouses along the border with no chance of making it to units who could use the help. Refugees of course further burden western economies. Even the sanctions are doing more damage to the West than to Russia, which is almost entirely self-sufficient with little debt and one of the largest gold reserves in the world.

Back to the idea of unity and isolation. In my first post in the Information War series, I said that wars are won by the truth.

There is this idea that “both sides are equally bad” and everyone spreads disinformation. No. If a general or government spokesman says something, it should and absolutely must be a true statement, not a lie. If he says that 20 enemy tanks have been destroyed, that must be a true statement. If he says that we have had 500 soldiers killed in action, this must be a true statement. See, if a general lies about enemy casualties, and his own casualties, nothing he says can be trusted. This is why it is so important for official spokesmen and outlets to not tell lies.

The nazi regime in Ukraine has lied, and lied repeatedly about everything. They have also gone to extraordinary lengths to make their lies appear credible with faked photo and video evidence. Absolutely nothing they say can be trusted. We cannot believe any claim coming out of their mouths. We cannot even believe a claim that appears to be true. It is better to ignore the Ukronazis altogether. Why waste precious time and mental bandwidth analyzing the words of someone who constantly lies? Just don’t. The more attention we give to fake news, the more people die (see my post Fake News Killed the Ukrainians and it is Our Fault).

Official institutions and media outlets are deliberately spreading lies, this is poisonous and destroys their credibility. I can never again listen to an American military spokesman and trust a single word coming out of his mouth.

This apparently caused controversy with some readers, but I stand by my statement. Psyops and public affairs need to be two distinct organs in a war effort, and mixing them is a fatal mistake. If you deliberately tell ridiculous lies to your own population, that is detrimental to your war effort and will cause you to lose if you do it enough. The people of a nation need to have a realistic understanding of the enemy, the threat they pose, and the consequences of losing. The current disinformation campaign shrouding Ukraine is accomplishing the opposite. I’ll give you one classic example of how this disinformation is counterproductive. I have numerous times predicted a false flag of some sort to justify NATO intervention in Ukraine, and I wasn’t the only one making this prediction. However, it looks like I was wrong, so far at least. Apparently, the stories of faked (or worse, reversed) atrocities by Russians only exist to justify more weapon shipments and sanctions. But why? These are clearly things that Western governments wanted to do anyway, so why not just do it? Why invent silly lies to justify something you already wanted to do and would have met little to no opposition anyway?

So far, I have made predictions based on simple cause/effect and logic, and been entirely wrong. I keep predicting NATO entry into the war – by that I mean sending aircraft and troops – it hasn’t happened. Also, the window for such an idea to even have a chance of working has probably closed. From my previous post:

If direct NATO intervention was going to happen, it would have happened already. Now it’s too late. A Ukrainian counteroffensive would have needed to happen early on in the fight, while they still had command and control (C2), aircraft, tanks, and perhaps most importantly, fuel. A lot of fuel.

Now all of those assets have been vastly reduced or destroyed altogether, the window for direct NATO intervention came and went. A NATO air war would only succeed if there was a Ukrainian ground attack for it to support, and their ability to do that must be near nonexistent by now. The only remaining course of action with even a theoretical chance of changing the outcome of this war would be for NATO to fight and win a ground war, which is probably equally unlikely as winning an air war. (See my post No-Fly Zone is a Euphemism for War).

All that said, I don’t think this disinformation campaign is stupid, there are clear reasons for it, and they come back to the idea of unity/isolation. Disinformation targets the enemy, finding and exploiting hairline fractures in their government and society. We assume that enemy is Russia but maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe, instead, there are clear fault lines and factions within our own western societies and government organs, and that’s what the disinformation is all about.

Here me out. The bewildering whirlwind of fake news and lies are consistent with a turf war within the US government itself. The Pentagon wants a more hands-off approach to Ukraine. Yes, the Pentagon spreads absurd propaganda, but it’s consistently more pragmatic and (sort of) more grounded in reality. The civilian organs of our government in the State Department and “intelligence community” are shrill and hysterical.

This isn’t even the first time these two factions have come into open, literal conflict with each other. In Syria, militias trained by the Pentagon fought against militias trained by the CIA. How bizarre! American-sponsored militias fighting other American-sponsored militias. How long will it be before we start seeing open warfare between Ukrainian nazi units trained by the CIA and moderate army units trained by the Pentagon? That would be hilarious. Anyway, as strange as that sounds, it makes sense if we understand that this is a proxy war. Not exactly a proxy war against Russia, though that’s also true (and not mutually exclusive). It’s a proxy war between the conservative and liberal factions of the American government.

The Pentagon wants Ukraine to be the next Afghanistan (see my post here), an endless proxy war to justify more military spending and lucrative troop deployments to Eastern Europe. A deployment to Eastern Europe is a gift from heaven. Those deployments are expensive and require substantial budget increases, and without the difficulties that come with a real war involving people shooting at you. Soldiers can go and flirt with sexy Polish girls and not actually have to do anything.

Bear in mind that the Pentagon is still a mostly conservative institution. They’ll repeat woke ideas like transgender suicide battalions, but still align more or less to the conservative republican mindset. Republicans are currently the “lesser of two evils” and from what I’ve seen from the Russian media, that’s what the Kremlin thinks too. Republicans love money and they respect strength. That makes Republicans predictable and they can be reasoned with.

The same cannot be said about Democrats, who have over the last 20 years transformed into a death cult. I mentioned this in my post about Biden’s recent “democracy summit.”

From the outside, American Democrats might be difficult to distinguish from American Republicans. But this summit is a clear case for the argument that, yes, Republicans and Democrats are very different. When it comes to foreign policy, Republicans do tend to be more pragmatic and willing to make ideological concessions. Democrats are not willing to make such ideological concessions. Their minds are typically ruled by emotion and they lack even basic impulse control. Let me remind everyone that the USA has nuclear weapons, and the people who currently control those nuclear weapons are emotionally and mentally unstable.

Democrats firmly control the Department of State and the CIA (which are almost the same thing these days), and use these government organs to project their ideological crusade. Unlike Republicans, these liberal Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They irrationally fear and hate Russia on a primal, ideological level. A Republican likes money and won’t deliberately hurt himself. Russia has a lot of missiles and ships so fighting them is dangerous, and Russia also has a lot of resources and industry, so trading with her makes a lot of money. Republicans like money and don’t want to die, so are content with the idea of peace with Russia.

But all reason goes out the window when dealing with a Democrat. What can I say? Is it a stretch to say he wouldn’t risk a nuclear Armageddon for equally insane reasons? A lot of people think it’s weird that American liberals have fallen in love with Ukrainian nazis, but I disagree. Nazism and American liberalism have grown so ideologically similar that it’s hard to dismiss as coincidence. Why does liberal Critical Race Theory so closely resemble Nazi race theory? Well, maybe they’re the same thing (see my post here).

Over the last couple of weeks, I made the serious mistake of watching television. I know! I shouldn’t have watched the chatterbox and my IQ certainly suffered for it. But I did notice a trend lately. As interesting as the Russian “atrocities” are, American corporate media has gotten more interested in domestic affairs. Namely, the Jan. 6 “insurrection” and transgender issues. What do those things have to do with Russia? Well, on an existential level, Russia is bad. But beyond that, the “insurrection” and transgenderism are useful tools for rooting out internal dissent. It’s like dumping a witch in water and seeing if she floats. The Democratic establishment is waging war on their Republican enemies, not unlike the ancient civil war between Caesar and Pompey (The Roman general, not the city). Democrats want a death match against Russia, even if it would inevitably end in the destruction of humanity, and Republicans are getting in the way of that. So Republicans have to be eliminated.

Next time you look at the information war in Ukraine and think it is really weird and counterproductive, well, you’re right. Ukraine is a proxy war within a proxy war between American Republicans and Democrats.

Featured Image Source: Stonetoss! See original here.

Ian Kummer

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