this might be the most badly misunderstood war in our era. And when “experts” compare the Ukraine war with World War I, that suggests they don’t understand either war.
In World War I, all the major participants were more industrialized and had better logistics, and more firepower than ever before in human history. The idea that WWI was just “positional warfare” is nonsense. There was constant movement and rotation of troops, and redirecting logistical trains as necessary.
Back in the “old days,” if your army of guys with spears defeated the enemy guys with spears, they would run away and you would capture their city, which looks really dramatic on a map. But if you tried this in WWI, the results were not so dramatic. If for example the Germans launched an offensive and captured several French trenches, the French would pound them with artillery, bring in another 100 thousand men by train, and counter-attack, taking back the trenches in a day or two, resulting in a stalemate.
Offensives in World War II looked more dramatic for a pop history video on YouTube because technology had changed once again. There were tanks and far more trucks, so it was possible to launch an attack that could breach enemy defensive lines and make huge gains before anyone had time to respond to it. A “blitzkrieg” (again that pop history mentality) spearheaded by tanks could attack with massive local superiority and far faster than the defending force could bring in reinforcements. Remember that armies at this point were still reliant on horses and pack mules, so it wasn’t possible to immediately bring in reinforcements from 500 kilometers away.
Now we’re back to that “positional warfare” which really isn’t positional at all. There are enough wheels to move around whole armies, taking them from one end of the front line to the other almost overnight. So if the Russians move half of their army to the South, the Ukrainians can also move half of their army to the South. And with modern satellites and drones, it is near-impossible to conceal your intentions from the enemy.
That’s why the “live maps” of territorial control of Ukraine look so boring and barely change over months, but that doesn’t mean there’s no movement and it’s a moronic thing to say. There’s a constant dynamic movement always happening, it just doesn’t usually result in territorial changes.
We can make the logical conclusion that when facing a relatively equal force, it generally isn’t possible to make great territorial gains. Unless… someone uses low-yield nukes. The Russians won’t use low-yield nukes in a civil war, but there is no such constraint for NATO, and there’s no constraint for Russia fighting NATO either.
So to answer the question, a NATO offensive against Russian positions would involve nukes on both sides.
I think that’s the root cause of Europeans’ hysterical fear of the Ukraine war effort collapsing. There will be no more East Slavic meat fodder between Russia and Europeans.
Ian Kummer
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