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Ukraine Should Invade Russia
Simple Sun-Tzu. Attack where the enemy is not.
Russian forces are in Ukraine. In the South (the 60 mile-wide path from Donetsk to Crimea), Russians have numbers and have massed their resources. War now, as is usual in history, tends to favor defenders. Ukraine has enough force there to keep the Russians busy, terrified of a mass surrender from Kherson.
But in the North, there is nothing. The Russian rout from Kharkiv Region leaves Belgorod entirely undefended (with tens of thousands of people fleeing Belgorod as I write this).
Intelligent war strategy is to attack where the enemy is not. Ukraine can – and should – invade Russia where it is soft and undefended. Do lots of damage. Do it on the ground. you might even follow the highways around to encircle the Russian forces facing into Ukraine. Wreak havoc, and spread fear. And keep doing it until Russia sues for peace. Then you trade invaded Russia for invaded Ukraine.
Done and dusted.
Published in General
I was reacting to this:
iWe (View Comment):
Whether that means 5 miles or 500, you still strike where the enemy is not.
That’s a long way. I think the capabilities to do so are tenuous at any distance behind the enemy on the enemy’s soil. But the Ukrainians are indeed motivated fighters.
No. A general mobilization achieves little – without training, conscripts are just cannon food.
Maybe. But you have to weigh the pros and cons before being certain that this is not a trade you want to make.
I ain’t having it. Those Russians were shipped in by Stalin after he starved out a bunch of Ukrainians. Those Russians can absquatulate the AO if they don’t like it. GTFO. Those “rebellious provinces” are parts of the Ukraine falling to decades of Soviet and now Russian agitation.
Russkiye na Xuy and all that.
Damn, son. Nailed the whole century.
The pros and cons are different for the US and for Europe.
This is pretty well answered by VDH
Me three.
Given that NATO facilities are supplying all the weapons that are keeping Ukraine in the war, Russia should clearly strike at the weak underbelly. Europe.
They should launch cruise missile strikes against all the undefended parts of Europe. You know target NATO headquarters in Brussels, bases in the UK, France and Germany. Widen this war as much as possible. NATO wants a war in Europe, Russia should give it one.
Tack nuke strikes why not. Lets just go all in on a Nuclear power and have a full exchange while were at it.
Western civilization who needs it.
Or maybe Ukraine should negotiate. Take there tactical victory. and use it to get the Russians out of as much territory as they can.
I assume that you are using spcklephraxis, or whatever that rhetorical technique is wherein you return a tartly distilled version of the other party’s statement. Is “NATO wants a war in Europe” part of that, or is that your belief?
Given that Russia is now sourcing equipment and ammunition from North Korea and Iran, it seems that their vaunted “endless” stores are running dry.
I very much doubt that Russia has many (or even any) working nukes. They do better with the vague threat than finding out for sure. If their nukes don’t work, then they lose the entire facade of being a great power, even internally. The country breaks up, and the world is better for it.
Only if the misfire is the first one.
Perhaps you should start with an example in which your proposed strategy actually worked, as opposed to your hypothetical opinion that it would have worked.
Most appropriate to the present point, perhaps, Napoleon aimed at, and took, Moscow during his invasion of Russia. How did that work out?
The Germans were successful in defeating France, in both 1870 and 1940, by focusing on the French army. They did not aim at Paris. They encircled and destroyed, or captured, much of the French army.
Capturing key cities — Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad — was the German strategy on the Eastern Front in 1941-42. How did that work out?
For that matter, Grant’s ultimately successful campaign in Northern Virginia targeted what, exactly? Richmond? No, it targeted Lee’s army.
I wouldn’t claim, however, that targeting the enemy’s army is always the best strategy. It is very difficult to assess the morale effect of the loss of an important city. There might be some occasions on which the loss of a city led to surrender, even when a county had a powerful army still in the field. I’m not coming up with a good example at the moment, but there may be some. Can you think of any?
Countless examples in history. Every time there is a holding force, and a secondary force conducting a flanking maneuver. Stonewall Jackson did this a great many times, with tremendous success. Jackson kept advising that the South invade the North and use it as leverage for peace.
An excellent book on this topic is Sun-Tzu at Gettysburg. It covers a whole range of wars in addition to the Civil, and the author advocates for this kind of basic common sense. It is also where I learned of Lee’s consistent idiocy as a strategist.
Sun-Tzu absolutely works. Proven time and again.
Here is a current one: the attack the Ukrainians just executed!
They convinced the Russians that Kherson was where the action would be. The Russians defended Kherson. That holding action kept eyes on the South.
Then the Ukrainians spiked into the Kharkiv region, turned and flanked all the remaining Russians in the area, forcing them to flee at speed, abandoning huge amounts of armored vehicles and ammunition.
Classic Sun-Tzu.
So, not one example.
You weren’t advocating using a holding force with a flanking maneuver. You were advocating ignoring the enemy army, and attacking the enemy’s cities.
When did Stonewall ever do that? As far as I can recall, the answer is never.
According to the blurb in the Sun-Tzu at Gettysburg book that you linked, even that book does not advocate the strategy that you suggested. It says that Lee should have followed Longstreet’s advice by withdrawing to the high ground and tempting the Union army to attack, rather than by launching the disastrous frontal attack on day 3 known to history as Pickett’s Charge.
Lee was not consistently idiotic as a strategist. Lee made two notable errors, both of which involved his effort to follow the strategy that you advocate, i.e. an invasion of the North. This led to his repulses at Antietam and Gettysburg, respectively.
Otherwise, Lee did a remarkable job in holding off a superior Union army in Northern Virginia, for several years. Eventually and unsurprisingly, he lost, as the North was far stronger than the South in both manpower and wealth.
You know, the same way that Russia is far stronger than Ukraine.
No, that’s not an example. You are moving the goalposts, because what you said originally is obviously wrong. Just admit it, and move on.
One can, of course, aim for the enemy army by a flanking movement or an encirclement. A frontal assault is often a bad idea, though sometimes unavoidable. Frontal assaults did work for Napoleon on occasion, and Alexander the Great.
I’ve also found it strange when Westerners cite Sun Tzu, as if he is some unique military genius. Hannibal at Cannae is the obvious Western example.
But Hannibal ended up losing. Why was that? Well, because he ended up being stuck wandering around Italy conquering city after city, while Rome pursued the “Fabian strategy” of a war of attrition and indirection. (Named after Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus.)
Morgan at Cowpens is another, more recent example.
I was thinking too of how General Washington drove General Howe out of Boston in 1776.
Russian plutonium is as radioactive as ours. Their high explosives work, too; every Russian shell that demolishes a school or a hospital offers tragic proof. So…setting off explosives that surround a plutonium sphere will cause a nuclear detonation, each and every time. It works the same way for us, the Chinese, the British, the French, the Israelis, the Indians, the Pakistanis and the North Koreans. Every country that’s made a serious attempt to build a nuclear bomb has succeeded on the first try. Those mechanisms have proven to be remarkably reliable. The Russians have thousands of these bombs.
Something has been bugging me about this example and the way you’ve laid out what Lee should have done. I think what has been bugging me is where you say,
Let’s just assume that Lee was able to take Philly. How exactly do you think the ANVA would hold the city hostage? How would he feed his army? How would he resupply ammunition, etc.?
I think the way it would end is with Lee ending up besieged in Philly in 1863, instead of at Petersburg in 1864. And if he were, what CSA army would come to relieve him? Grant and others were tying down Confederate forces in the West. Lee would be trapped, with no supplies and no hope of relief.
All the Union would have to do is keep fighting. And with Lee bottled up in Philly, and Grant’s victory at Vicksburg, etc., there’s no reason at all the Union would negotiate. Not with Lincoln at the helm.
Similarly, all Russia has to do is keep fighting. Now, I understand that there’s some question of support for Putin in Russia if the defeats keep piling up after this. But a counterattack could probably change that.
Uhm, no.
Every carefully engineered piece of explosive surrounding the plutonium has to go off precisely together, to within fractional nanoseconds, to get enough density change to get critical mass. If even one segment is mistimed, you just get a dirty bomb–radioactive debris scattered about, but not the big boom.
Engineering the timing with components that survive on the shelf is non-trivial.
(No, I’m not cleared on this stuff, but these basic constraints are public knowledge.)
Sherman.
According to Military Summary the Ukrainians ARE attacking across the border (not far) North of Kharkiv Oblast.
I can’t find any reports of this – but I’m limited by the algorithm and English language sources. Not definitive, as this would be consistent with how stuff has been reported so far. If it has happened, how long will there be a blackout on the news in the West?
MS posits this as something which would increase support for general mobilisation in Russia itself – so I imagine it’ll be covered extensively there.
The Poles attacked a border radio station in Gleiwitz, Germany on August 31, 1939, thus triggering World War II.
Honest. Who are you going to believe, history books or Doktor Joseph Goebbels?
@iwe ??
I can translate to Strine for you…
You really have a knack of ignoring whatever a person writes, and just positing that it must be some straw man.
I wrote:
That is the holding pattern.
Then I wrote:
I have the benefit of having had read the book. The author repeatedly, and citing considerable data, argues for bypassing the Union Army and heading for Philly.
This is a ridiculously simpleminded view of war.
Did the US win in Korea and Vietnam because they were far stronger?
Armies of that age lived off the land – a city had plenty to feed an army.