by Yameen Khan
The United States is actively committed to bring Russia into submission via encirclement and a two pronged attack.
NATO’s expansion of bases in vassal states right up to Russia’s borders, coupled with an attempt at encroachment in Syria, should allow The Hegemon to undermine Russia’s underbelly from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
To understand how Russians usually respond to Western power a little time travel, starting 1219 AD, is more than useful.
This was a time when a cataclysmic event left deep scars on the Russian character; an abiding fear of encirclement, whether by nomadic hordes then or by nuclear missile bases today.
Russia then was not a single state but consisted of a dozen principalities frequently at war with each other. Between 1219 and 1240 all these fell to the Genghis Khan hurricane, whose lightning-speed cavalry with his horse-borne archers, employing brilliant tactics unfamiliar to Europeans, caught army after army off guard and forced them into submission.
For more than 200 years Russians suffered under the Golden Horde of the Mongol – named after their great tent with golden poles. They left the Russian economy in ruins, brought commerce and industry to a halt, and reduced Russians to serfdom. Asiatic ways of administration and customs were superimposed on the existing Byzantine system.
Taking full advantage of its military weakness and of its reduced circumstances, Russia’s European neighbors started to help themselves to its territory, starting with German principalities, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden. The Mongols couldn’t care less so long as they received their tribute. They were more concerned with their Asiatic dominions.
Still, European cities did not match the riches of Samarkand and Bukhara, Herat and Baghdad, whose incomparable wealth and splendor outshone wooden-built Russian cities.
Russia’s greatest fear begins here – crushed between their European foes to the West and the Mongols to the East. Russians were to develop a paranoid dread of invasion and encirclement which has tormented their foreign relations ever since. Hardly ever has an experience left such deep and ever-lasting scars on a nation’s psyche as this cataclysm did on Russians. This explains, among other things, their stoical acceptance of harsh rule at home.
And then came Ivan III – the man who freed the Russians from the Golden Horde.
Muscovy then was a small provincial town overshadowed by and subservient to its powerful neighbors. In return for allegiance and subservience locals were gradually entrusted with more power and freedom by the unsuspecting Mongols. Over time the Principality of Muscovy grew in strength and size, eventually to dominate all its neighbors.
In 1476 Ivan refused to pay the customary tribute to the grand Khan Ahmed. In a fit of rage Ivan trampled the portrait of Ahmed and put several of his envoys to death.
The showdown came in autumn 1480 when the Khan marched with his army to teach a vassal a lesson, but was astonished to find a large well-equipped force awaiting him on the far bank of the River Ugra, 150 miles from Moscow. For weeks the two armies glowered at one another, neither side wanting to make the first move.
The stakes were clear. Ivan did not need to cross the river. He would change the course of history if he did not lose. A stalemate could become a turning point in history.
For Ahmed Khan there is no choice. He must cross the river and engage. Win or die like Tariq ibin Ziyad in 711 AD, another age and time, when a brilliant Arab general landed on the ‘rock of Hercules’ subsequently called by Arab Historians ‘Jabal Tariq’, meaning the ‘mountain of Tariq’ and later anglicized as Gibraltar.
Tariq, by one master stratagem, with a much smaller force (12,000 against 90,000 Spaniards) at the Battle of Guadalete defeated Roderic and thus opened the road for the subsequent Arab commanders to march all the way to Tours in France.
With the arrival of winter, the river began to freeze. A ferocious battle appeared inevitable. And then something extraordinary happened. Perhaps a miracle. Without warning both sides turned and fled in panic. Despite their inglorious act, the Russians knew that their long subservience was over.
The Khan had lost his stomach for a fight. The once invincible Mongol might had evaporated. Their centralized authority in the West had now collapsed, leaving three widely separated khanates (Kazan, Astrakhan and Crimea) as their last remnants of the once mighty and the largest contiguous land empire in history.
It was in 1553 when Ivan the Terrible, a successor of Ivan III, thirsting for revenge, stormed the fortress of Kazan on the upper Volga, slaughtered its defenders and thus ended the Mongol rule. Two years later the Khanate of Astrakhan, where the Volga flows into the Caspian met with similar fate.
Starving Napoleon’s army
Fast forward to June 1812, and the fateful day, the 24th , when Napoleon’s Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army.
Napoleon’s aim was to compel Tsar Alexander I of Russia to stop trading with British merchants through proxies and bring about pressure on the United Kingdom to sue for peace. The overt political aim of the campaign was to liberate Poland from the threat of Russia (as the US claims of Eastern Europe today). Thus the campaign was named the Second Polish War to gain favor with the Poles and provide a political pretense for his actions.
The real aim was domination of Russia.
The Grande Armée was massive; 680,000 soldiers. Through a series of marches Napoleon rushed the army rapidly through Western Russia in an attempt to bring the Russian army to battle, and in August of that year winning a number of minor engagements and a major battle at Smolensk.
Any invading army must consider war in Russia as a war at sea. It is futile to occupy land or city or cities. The aim of an invading force must be to destroy the military machine of Russia. The aim of Russian commanders has always been to survive and use its vast land mass to exhaust its enemy, learn from him and defeat and annihilate him with his own tactics and stratagems, only better executed.
Napoleon engaged the Russian army for a decisive battle at Maloyaroslavets. The Russians would not commit themselves to a pitched battle. His troops exhausted, with few rations, no winter clothing, and his remaining horses in poor condition, Napoleon was forced to retreat.
He hoped to reach supplies at Smolensk and later at Vilnius. In the weeks that followed the Grande Armée starved and suffered from the onset of “General Winter”. Lack of food and fodder for the horses, hypothermia from the bitter cold and persistent attacks upon isolated troops from Russian peasants and Cossacks led to great losses in men, and a general loss of discipline and cohesion in the army.
When Napoleon’s army crossed the Berezina River in November, only 27,000 fit soldiers remained. The Grand Armée had lost some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured. A riveting defeat.
All those Afghan overt – and covert – wars
Four centuries after the cataclysm of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Empire had been steadily expanding at the rate of 55 square miles a day – or 20,000 square miles a year. At the dawn of the 19th century only 2,000 miles separated the British and the Russian empires in Asia.
Both the Russians and the East India Company (as in the British Indian Empire) sent their officers, businessmen in disguise, as Buddhist priests or Muslim holy men, to survey uncharted Central Asia.
One such chap was Captain Arthur Connolly of the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry in the service of the British East India Company. The East India Company was the British version of America’s Halliburton.
Connolly ended up beheaded as a spy by the orders of Alim Khan, the Emir of Bukhara. It was Connolly who coined the expression “The Great Game”, which Kipling immortalized in his novel “Kim”.
By the end of the 19th century the Tsars’ armies had swallowed one Khanate after another and only a few hundred miles separated the two empires. In some places the distance was only twenty miles.
The British feared that they would lose their Indian possessions – the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ – to the Tsar; and two theories emerged to defend the frontiers of British India.
The ‘forward policy’ and its proponents (hawks, today’s US neocons) argued to stop the Russians beyond India’s frontiers by getting there first, either by invasion, or by creating compliant ‘buffer’ states, or satellites, astride the likely invasion route.
But there were those who did not buy this proposition and did not believe that the Russians would invade India. The opponents of the ‘forward policy’ argued that India’s best defense lay in its unique geographical setting – bordered by impassable mountain ranges, mighty rivers, waterless deserts, and above all warlike tribes.
A Russian force which reached India surmounting all these obstacles would be so weakened by then that it would be no match for the waiting British Army. Therefore, it was more sensible to force an invader to overextend his lines of communications than for the British to risk theirs. And above all this policy was cheaper.
NATO today has a forward policy of deploying troops all over Eastern Europe and creating bases around Russia in an effort to encircle it. The final straw for the Russian Federation has been the occupation of Ukraine, by proxy, by Washington.
Guess who won the policy debate in 19th century Britain? The hawks (the US neocons of today), of course.
In 1838 Lord Auckland decides to replace the current Emir of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad Khan with Shuja-ul-Mulk.
One could easily replace Dost Muhammad of Afghanistan in 1838 with today’s Gaddafi of Libya or Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Or Putin of Russia. Or anyone who becomes an obstacle to the West’s geopolitical, geoeconomic domination.
And yet the British suffered a massive defeat after a year’s occupation of Afghanistan. The only soldier who eventually reached Jalalabad was William Brydon. The Afghans may have spared him so he would be able to tell the tale of this horrific defeat.
You would think the British would have learned from history. Not at all. They did it again.
Tension between Russia and Britain in Europe ended in June 1878 with the Congress of Berlin. Russia then turned its attention to Central Asia, promptly sending an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul.
Sher Ali Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan (the son of Emir Dost Muhammad Khan) tried unsuccessfully to keep them out. Russian envoys arrived in Kabul on July 22, 1878, and on August 14, the British demanded that Sher Ali accept a British mission too.
The Emir not only refused to receive a British mission under Neville Bowles Chamberlain, but threatened to stop it if it were dispatched. Lord Lytton, the viceroy, ordered a diplomatic mission to set out for Kabul in September 1878 but the mission was turned back as it approached the eastern entrance of the Khyber Pass, triggering the Second Anglo–Afghan War.
After several defeats in various battles except one, and thus abandoning the provocative policy of maintaining a British resident in Kabul, the British were forced to withdraw.
One would think the British would have enough sense to cease with the stupid policy of occupying Afghanistan. Not at all. They tried it for the third time.
The Third Afghan War began on May 6, 1919 and ended with an armistice on August 8, 1919. An Afghan victory, again.
The British finally abandoned their forward policy. It had failed – just as the American neocons “policy” is failing.
And yet, roughly 60 years later the Russians would don the madman’s (British) hat and on December 25th, 1979, launched a vertical envelopment and occupied Kabul.
Their main aim was the airbase at Shindand, about 200 miles as the crow flies from the Straits of Hormuz, the choke point of the Persian Gulf, through which at the time 90% of the world’s oil was flowing.
They placed 200 Bear Bombers – the equivalent of the US B-52’s – as if sending a message to President Carter: “Checkmate”. A certain game was over – and a covert war was about to begin.
As our historical trip takes us from The Great Game to the Cold War, by now it’s more than established that the United States took on the mantle of the British Empire and filled in the power vacuum left by the British. If Connolly were to come back during the Cold War he would be right at home – as the Cold War was a continuation of the Great Game.
In between, of course, there was a guy named Hitler.
After Napoleon, it was Hitler who considered the Russians as barbarians and despite a nonaggression pact invaded Russia.
The Second Great European War (GEW II) was in fact fought between Germany and the USSR. Germany deployed 80% of its economic and military resources on its Eastern Front compared to 20% against the rest of the allies on the Western Front, where it was merely a ‘fire brigade operation’ (Hitler’s words).
Paul Carell describes the moment when, at 0315 on June 22nd 1941, the massive ‘Operation Barbarossa’ over a 900-mile front went under way.
“As though a switch had been thrown a gigantic flash of lightening rent the night. Guns of all calibres simultaneously belched fire. The tracks of tracer shells streaked across the sky. As far as the eye could see the front on the Bug was a sea of flames and flashes. A moment later the deep thunder of the guns swept over the tower of Volka Dobrynska like a steamroller. The whine of the mortar batteries mingled eerily with the rumble of the guns. Beyond the Bug a sea of fire and smoke was raging. The narrow sickle of the moon was hidden by a veil of cloud. Peace was dead.”
Bagration revisited
Russians are masters of Sun Tzu: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
These principles were recently applied in Ukraine and Crimea. For background, one just needs to study the battle of Kursk as well as Operation Bagration.
The Soviet military doctrine of maskirovka was developed in the 1920s, and used by Zhukov in the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol against Japan.
The Field Regulations of the Red Army (1929) stated that:
“Surprise has a stunning effect on the enemy. For this reason all troop operations must be accomplished with the greatest concealment and speed.”
Concealment was to be attained by confusing the enemy with movements, camouflage and use of terrain, speed, use of night and fog, and secrecy.
Operation Bagration – the Soviet destruction of the German Army Group Centre – was, arguably, the single most successful military action of the entire war. This vital Soviet offensive is symptomatic of the lack of public knowledge in the West about the war in the East. Whilst almost everyone has heard of D-Day, few people other than specialist historians know much about Operation Bagration.
Yet the sheer size of Bagration dwarfs that of D-Day.
“Army Group Centre was really the anchor of that whole German front,’ writes Professor Geoffrey Wawro, ‘blocking the shortest path to Berlin; and the Russians annihilated it at the same time as we were landing on D-Day and marching on, liberating Paris and then heading towards Germany. But the scope of the fighting was much bigger in the East.
You had ten times as many Russians fighting in Bagration as you had Anglo/American/Canadian troops landing on the Normandy beaches.
And you had three times as many Germans in action fighting trying to hold up the Russian advance as you had defending the Atlantic Wall.
So, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the problem (of lack of appreciation of the scale of fighting on the Eastern Front). I mean, think about it, when D-Day and Bagration jumped off, the allied armies in Normandy and the Russian armies on the Eastern Front were equidistant from Berlin, and in the German view they were sort of equal threats.
After Operation Bagration, Russia is seen as being the principal threat because they just kicked down the door altogether and reoccupied all the ground that was lost in 1941. They take most of Poland and they move into East Prussia and they’re at the very gates of Berlin while we’re still slogging our way through Normandy and towards Paris.”
Operation Bagration was a colossal victory for the Red Army. By the 3rd of July Soviet forces had recaptured Minsk, capital of Belorussia, a city which had been in German hands for three years. And by the end of July the Red Army had pushed into what had been, before the war, Polish territory, and had taken Lwow, the major cultural center of eastern Poland.
Before Operation Barbarossa, the German High Command masked the creation of the massive force arrayed to invade the USSR and heightened their diplomatic efforts to convince Joseph Stalin that they were about to launch a major attack on Britain.
Maskirovka (deception) was put into practice on a large scale in the Battle of Kursk, especially on the Steppe Front commanded by Ivan Konev.
The result was that the Germans attacked Russian forces four times stronger than they were expecting.
The German general Friedrich von Mellenthin wrote, “The horrible counter-attacks, in which huge masses of manpower and equipment took part, were an unpleasant surprise for us… The most clever camouflage of the Russians should be emphasized again. We did not .. detect even one minefield or anti-tank area until .. the first tank was blown up by a mine or the first Russian anti-tank guns opened fire”.
Broadly, military deception may take both strategic and tactical forms. Deception across a strategic battlefield was uncommon until the modern age (particularly in the world wars of the 20th century), but tactical deception (on individual battlefields) dates back to early history.
In a practical sense military deception employs visual misdirection, misinformation (for example, via double agents) and psychology to make the enemy believe something that is untrue. The use of military camouflage, especially on a large scale, is a form of deception.
The Russian loanword maskirovka (literally: masking) is used to describe the Soviet Union and Russia’s military doctrine of surprise through deception, in which camouflage plays a significant role.
There are numerous examples of deception activities employed throughout the history of warfare, such as: feigned retreat leading the enemy, through a false sense of security, into a pre-positioned ambush; fictional units creating entirely fictional forces or exaggerating the size of an army; smoke screen – a tactical deception involving smoke, fog, or other forms of cover to hide battlefield movements; Trojan Horse – gaining admittance to a fortified area under false pretenses, to later admit a larger attacking force; strategic envelopment – where a small force distracts the enemy while a much larger force moves to attack from the rear (that was a favored tactic of Napoleon’s).
And that brings us to Syria, and its importance to Russia.
The deep state in Washington wants to keep the entire spectrum from the Levant to the Indian sub-continent destabilized – shaping it as the platform to send sparks of terrorism North to Russia and East to China. At the same time the US military will keep a physical presence (if China, India and Russia will allow it) in Afghanistan, from where it can survey the Eurasian land mass. As a master geopolitical chess player, Putin is very much aware of all this.
Syria is right at the underbelly of Russia and would be strategically important if it were in the hands of remote-controlled thugs like Ukraine is today. It has the potential to destabilize Russia from the Caucasus to Central Asia – generating as many Salafi-jihadi terrorists as possible. The region from the Caucasus to Central Asia holds about 80 million Muslims. Russia has enough reasons to stop US advances in Syria and Ukraine. Not to mention that in Iraqi Kurdistan the Pentagon is aiming to build a mega base, a springboard to create mischief in Central Asia for both Russia and China, in the form, for instance, of an Uyghur uprising in Western China, like it has done in Ukraine for Russia.
Once again; it may be helpful to look back to the continuum of history. It tells us these current efforts to encircle and destabilize Russia are destined to fail. (edited by Pepe Escobar)
Selected bibliography:
Carell, Paul: Hitler’s War on Russia (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., London, 1964).
Fraser-Tytler, W.K.: Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, London, 1950).
Hopkirk, Peter: Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia (First Published by John Murry (Publisher), 1980; First issued as an Oxford University Press, paperback 1980, Oxford).
Tzu, Sun: The Art of War (Edited with an introduction by Dallas Galvin; Translated from Chinese by Lionel Giles, First Published in 1910, Produced by Fine Creative Media, Inc. New Yor
Gibbon, Edward: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume III (Random House Inc. Manufactured in the United States by H. Wolf).
Weatherford, Jack: Genghis Khan and the making of the Modern World (Three Rivers Press, New York).
Wawro, Geoffrey: WW2.com (Professor of Military History at the University of North Texas).
Somewhat on topic : Can someone comment on Suvorov’s Icebreaker?
If its bs then I can accept that, but I find the thesus compelling.
Did a google search on Suvorov’s Icebreaker? Interesting, I guess.
I do know that nothing in the deployment of Stalin’s armies when Barbarrosa struck indicates any offensive plans. Some feel that Stalin and his generals had made a mistake. They left what fortifications that were prepared on the old border, and advanced to the new Molitov-Ribbentrop borders. This left the Soviet troops forward deployed and vulnerable. This would appear to have been a political move, as when Barbarossa struck (after Stalin had ignored warnings), there were no concentrations of troops that would have indicated any offensive plans.
Overall, to my reading, Stalin was still playing for time. Stalin knew he had new tanks and new planes starting to be produced. The T-34 tanks for example. But in 1941, he was only getting a few of these. So, Stalin was playing for time. He seemed to have no intention of doing anything that might provoke an early war. He certainly didn’t trust Hitler, and he didn’t seem to believe that the non-aggression pact would last. But Stalin seemed to be hoping he might get one more year to prepare before war came.
Stalin was, of course, playing for time, but knew exactly what the Germans were up to
and was not surprised. He did not ignore warnings. He was right on top of the situation
for the day of the invasion until Berlin fell.
You will read a lot of bull shit about Stalin and his failures in the bourgeois press, endless lies and falsifications.
cut and paste: Another view of Stalin
https://www.google.com/search?q=another+view+of+stalin&oq=antoher+view+of+Stalin&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.6762j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=ludo+martens+another+view+of+stalin+pdf
“Suvorov’s view that a Soviet invasion of Germany was imminent in 1941 is not shared by most historians.
A noteworthy rebuttal of Suvorov’s thesis is contained in Colonel David Glantz’s work Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War. Glantz views Suvorov’s argument as “incredible” on a variety of fronts: first, Suvorov rejects without examination classified ex-Soviet archival material, and makes highly selective picks from memoirs. Glantz points to this as a serious methodological flaw. Further, Glantz argues, Suvorov’s thesis is strongly contradicted both by ex-Soviet and German archival material, and the facts do not support the argument that the Red Army was prepared to invade Germany.[1] On the contrary, the appalling lack of readiness, poor training level, and abysmal state of deployments show that the Red Army was unprepared for static defense, much less large-scale offensive operations. Glantz’s conclusion is that “Stalin may well have been an unscrupulous tyrant, but he was not a lunatic.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker_(Suvorov)
I agree with Colonel Glantz. He is the most authoritative historian of the Soviet Army and the War. He reasons clearly with little ideological slant.
Stalin might have thought it was a good idea, and it was, but his Army was hardly capable of doing what the Idea required.
T1, I would highly recommend giving that book a read. At first, I was also skeptical of the claim that the USSR was preparing to invade Nazi Germany and Western Europe with Operation Groza. But even after a few chapters, that book provides more evidence than just quotes from generals. It also provides statements from Soviet magazines that were then swept under the rug to censor any prior intentions of invading Europe. The fact that the USSR had dozens of mountain and airborne divisions covertly deploying to the western frontier by train for many months, rapid expansion of Airborne troops (useless in a defensive war) is already a red flag.
They also started to disarm mines, barbed wire and repaired bridges next to their border with Germany, which was done by Gulag prisoners that were supervised by the NKVD. This explains how the Germans were able to quickly Blitzkreig through the Soviet western frontier, since the cleared path was originally meant for thousands of Red Army vehicles to cross over the border. Getting rid of the Stalin Line bunkers from 1940-1941 was another giveaway that the Soviet doctrine was only becoming more offensive than defensive. The book eventually lays out that after Stalin’s invasion of Romania with taking Bessarabia and Bukovina in June 1940, it made Hitler decide that Operation Barbarossa was the last option left for the survival of his regime.
Since Romania was the most important oil supply to Germany, they couldn’t let the Soviets take it in one massive invasion. Unless they wanted Soviet tanks rolling into Berlin by 1941. So the Germans played the same game of “we’re partners, we would never have a war with each other” in public during the Molotov-Ribbentrop phase. They also covertly deployed divisions to the east and disarmed the so-called Hitler Line bunkers. Both sides took a large gamble in trying to massively invade first, and in this case Germany succeeded. That’s why the history books say Germany was able to “catch the Soviets completely off guard”, when in reality the USSR was the strongest military in the world despite many setbacks. Generals can’t win battles in a defensive war when all of the military tactics are offensive, same would have happened to the Nazis if the Soviets invaded first. The Axis would have crumbled without being able to catch up.
In any case, there’s much more interesting historical truth to it. Being a critical thinker requires looking at both sides of history to see if we’re being lied to. Here is the free and downloadable pdf file. http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdf_books/icebreaker.pdf
Thanks, I’ve read two translations as well as the original.
Certainly food for thouht. I can see why archives might be restricted, still too hot a topic.
Btw, I dont lay the entire blame on stalin. It wasnt all under his control.What a waste of humanity brought about by the neocons of their day.
Viktor Suvorov (Victor Souvorov, Suworow, Ви́ктор Суво́ров) wrote not only Icebreaker in 1990, but as least two other books (Day “M”) about the same topic.
If Viktor Suvorov was a conman, he is the best conman I have ever seen in my life.
By the way, he has been condemned to death for his book. The sentence is not revoked up to the present day as far as I know.
Would you condemn a joker to death?
PS: This subjects merits very elaborated discussion, but let me be brief here.
Next we’re going to hear that the US had to nuke Russia because Russia was planning to nuke the US. Russia was definitely the aggressor!!!
Very interesting overview.
The American military maniacs seem to have far more pieces on the Monopoly board than any one power (Britain, France) was ever able to field in the past.
It seems as though internal collapse of the USA is the only chance for Russia to escape being torn to pieces. Unless Putin decides to strike the first blow and put the USA out of commission.
Katherine
The good news is that the US is an advanced state deterioration and internal collapse.
Look at the Trump administration. Trumps motley crew can call themselves lucky that they can enter the White House without being beaten by Soros thugs.
Look at the Democrats. The party is in a worse condition than the Bolsheviks ever were. The Mossad Mafia has taken over the shop, racketeering, drug dealing, bleeding to death the Military-Industrial complex is the only thing that works smoothly.
Look at the Pentagon. Poroshenko would stand out in this crowd as an honest, hard-working hero of the people.
Look at the State Department. Israel flags on every desk. Probably every Ambassador to Muslim nations is Jewish.
Look at the CIA. If you can spot a non-Jew, non-crypto-Jew in the upper echelons, please let us know.
The list is endless.
“Internal Collapse”…shifting over to Judo – a question about internal collapse.
Question: In Judo when one partner is dominating the other partner function ineffectivly and becomes exhausted, by degrees. Naturally, if process goes on, this tiring partner…does what?
Collapse? Is this “internal collapse”?
Obviously. The RuF Strategy is thus obvious too.
Internal Collapse of the foundations of 4th Reich in the several loci where these foundation exist is not “the only chance” – it is the method whereby Comrade Colonel President and the RuF intend to bring the Reich to Justice.
Color Revolution? Nothing so simple-minded…
US will invite RuF to instruct and assist. Reparations? Probably Alaska will vote to join RuF…
Seems logical. I do not believe what the logic tells me… I am too old…
Beautiful report and many thanks!
Happens I had already read the books in bibliography…I recommend them too.
Pax,
LZ
@Katherine: “Far more pieces on the Monopoly board”. True – and playing with Monopoly money; I doubt how much longer Uncle $cam can afford to keep up the largest, loudest and most expensive army in the world.
I know I’m a freak amongst Americans, but I know of Operation Bagration. I like history, and I’d almost call myself an amateur historian.
A good popular tale of Operation Bagration is in Bert Lancaster’s “The Unknown War”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ftAQtTAHPM
If someone doesn’t know the history of this huge war, then the episode about Kursk is worth
watching as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI8P_q1g9KY
At Kursk, Hitler basically ignored anything that Sun Tsu might have taught him. He decided that getting the “momentum” back after Stalingrad and the defeats of the winter that followed in the south. So, he decided he must attack. And he picked a very obvious place on the front to do so. So, the Soviets were waiting for him, dug in and in great strength.
I don’t denigrate the people who fought bravely on D-Day. Especially the ones on Omaha beach where they met great resistance. The opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan are worth watching as its the only “popular” version that shows what a horror it was. But the numbers and size of that were nothing compared to what was going on on the eastern front.
But, thanks very much for the interesting article!!!!
A nice read Mr Khan
I love reading about Mongol history. It’s decline started with Kublai Khan’s spliting of the Empire. Later generations cannot be compared to that initial spark. Most of the great Khan’s childhood and earlier years moulded his beliefs and actions later. A very hard and difficult environment. The generation of Hulegu Khan (his was the last pagan burial involving human sacrifice) was mostly raised in the saddle or with conquest. Later generations grew lax and fat on tribute. They were bound to lose on account of complacency. And the nature of warfare had changed. Like you mentioned, one has to view Russia as ocean warfare. The Mongols with their light and fast moving cavalry found the vast grasslands of the steepes ideal for offensive actions. The story of how the great general Subodai subdued and destroyed the proud Russian nobility is fascinating. I have read that the Mongol invasions did in fact change Russian art, culture, and character. A Russian would know more I guess.
Two empires survived only because the Khan of that time died, the Islamic and the Christian European. The Mongols would have crushed them too.
Thank you
One wonders why this historical sketch has been posted. Apart from stating the obvious that Russia – as any other country – fears malicious encirclement and that it had survived against two massive attacks from the West.
There is plenty material for discussion, such as the reliance on “western” sources and narrative (e.g. a treaty becomes a pact if Russia is in) but I’ll take issue with the diversion into the invasion of Iberia by Muslim forces circa 711 AD and one wonders why it was inserted here if it took place at the other extreme end of Europe. My suggestion is to show that Arab arms defeated a Christian kingdom perhaps in symmetry with the Mongol invasion of Russian lands.
First, there were no “90,000 Spaniards” at Guadalete. The Visigothic kingdom was highly fragmented and it had no standing army. There were frequent rebellions by the restless nobility and Roderick, the dux of Baetica, was then engaged in a contest for power against other noblemen. The Berbers across the strait were a constant menace against the southern shores of Hispania, as well as the Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) ambitions to bring Hispania into their fold following their earlier successes in North Africa. Adding to the mix, there were the remnants of the Alan and Vandal peoples who had ruled Northwest Africa as well as a sizeable Jewish population in the trading centres of the Mediterranean shores.
Neither Tariq (Tarif) nor his forces were Arab. They were mostly Berbers who had converted to Islam following the rapid expansion of that religion in North Africa. There was a longstanding tradition of cross-strait raiding – usually by the Berbers, more accustomed to seafaring than the continental-minded Visigoths – in addition to involvement into alliances with the quarrelling Visigothic factions.
It is well recorded (except the Arab accounts of 90-100 thousand!) that the Visigothic forces were miniscule (perhaps no more than 3,000) considering the size of the country and the difficulty of gathering a large fighting army. The decisive factor was the invaders’ ability to move as a single body of highly mobile troops (cavalry) against scattered local self-defence garrisons – the nomadic advantage similar to the Mongol invasion in the East.
The Visigoths were used to the raids from North Africa and temporary alliances with the Berbers in their internal fights and were caught unaware that what was happening in 711 was an invasion, perhaps the same problem facing the Saxons in 1066. There was, of course, the usual betrayal by some Visigothic nobles (also unsuspecting it was an invasion) even in the field of battle and the Jewish collaboration with Islam against the hated Christians, which was highly rewarded by the new rulers who used the Jews as tax collectors and enforcers of Islamic power.
Light, mobile cavalry is a distinct advantage against sedentary populations housed in defenceless settlements on the vast plains of Russia, and the same thing took place in the flat country of Southern Hispania. But it is at disadvantage when it ventured into the mountainous terrain of Asturica, Galaecia and Vasconia where it was comprehensively defeated and the Islamic tide stopped and where the Reconquest of the south began.
While you are on the Berber topic. USofA went to war against them, and lost it (I think they had two wars, but I am not sure how the second one ended). This was also an event that is credited with the creation of US Marines. Sad beginning, I’d say. Interestingly enough Berber fleet was totally maned by Greek pirates.
There are glaring inaccuracies in this overview, e.g. the Mongol invasion started in 1238 not 1219, the Byzantine bureaucratic system wasn’t adopted until the XV century, etc. And good Lord, Lvov in Eastern Poland? Technically correct, and yet obscenely blasphemous to any Russian. At the same time, what the article does get correct is mostly old news.
While I have no intention of being purposefully mean, I believe that had to be pointed out.
Perhaps so. But the author’s focus was on the mentality of the Russian people, and in this what actually happened (and how) pales in comparison with what is believed (even if only imagined) to have happened. Examples of this are everywhere — starting with MSM’s steady stream of fairytales.
@ Grim Deadman – why would a historically accurate description of Lwow / Lviv / Lvov as being in Eastern Poland be obscenely blasphemous to any Russian? I would say that the idea of Lvov being in Ukraine is still blasphemous to many, many Poles but it’s just the way it is. No offense meant, just wondering why Russians would have any strong opinions on Lvov whatsoever, especially over the Poles. All the best.
I had a chance to read the Great Book, Nasha velikaya Rodina./ Our great homeland., 1953, Moscow. If anybody want to know more about Russians and their land, reading this book it is a must. It is very rare and a copy used, cost US $199.00.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the concept of being Soviet was obliterated. Consequently, Russia went through a decade long identity crisis, just as many of its former republics did. When the Soviet states declared independence, Russia lost control of 52 percent of the Soviet population and 24 percent of Soviet territory. Through this loss, the country shed many territories that were not ethnically Russian, though many diverse groups and peoples remained inside the Russian Federation. This created a question for the new regime: Without the foundation of a unifying Soviet identity, how would Moscow continue to oversee (let alone unite) such a motley population?
Moreover, freedom from Soviet control sparked an explosion in groups trying to carve out their places in the new country. Under Yeltsin, economic and political centralization — two of the main pillars of Russian power and consolidation during the Soviet period — were broken down. The country’s economic system fell apart, leading to rampant organized crime, the rise of the oligarch system, financial schemes that defrauded millions, and foreign groups purchasing strategic Russian assets. All of these factors contributed to the financial collapse of the 1990s.
Objectively, Russia’s position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the “heroic efforts” of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. The country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation.
Meanwhile, the combination of a rising domestic budget deficit and balance-of-payments deficit has given Russian advocates of privatization an argument to press ahead with the sell-offs. The flaw in their logic is their neoliberal assumption that Russia cannot simply monetize its deficit, but needs to survive by selling off more major assets. We warn against Russia being so gullible as to accept this dangerous neoliberal argument. Privatization will not help re-industrialize Russia’s economy, but will aggravate its turn into a rentier economy from which profits are extracted for the benefit of foreign owners.
So the West is taking Russia piece by piece, Corporates control Russian Economy, Finances, Press and are investing tens of billions to private groups, to destabilize the nation from inside. They don’t need to get any fruits from Russia Tree, because they are going to get it all, the fruits the tree and the roots.
Something strange happened with Russia during 1980 – 1990. Now we know that someone corrupted the Russian government and Hijacked the government. Without Ukraine Russia is totally vulnerable, and the Ukraine is taken over by the West. The Russians sold out theirs Nasha Velikaya Rodina (Наша великая Родина).
The Fifth Column has never had more than 5% support.
The nation just recently polled supports Putin’s foreign policy by 90%.
The morale around Crimea, Donbass and the military and humanitarian costs of Syria are astoundingly high.
I think the Russians have their identity crisis under full control.
Now they are dealing with Hybrid War that included a massive drop in oil and gas revenues. That induced a recession. The recession is over. Russia is poised for a long growth rise. Debt wise, it is one of the most solvent nations on earth.
If it could more quickly integrate Belarus and Novorossiya into a larger EAEU economy, which is doable and logical, the growth of the RF would be one of the best in the world. They have had to absorb 2.5 million refugees from Donbass and Ukraine, take over and modernize Crimea, another 2.5 million people, while handling two wars and sanctions and the oil-gas price drop.
The most recent developments in trade and exports shows that crisis produced enormous gains in key area. Gas to China and Eurasia is fantastically large. The Turkish Stream is proceeding. The North Stream is going forward inspite of EU and US obstacles. Germany has to have that gas. Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of wheat. Russian arms sales are maxing the output of all its MIC factories.
They have problems to solve. What nation doesn’t have problems?
Russia was screwed over by the Soviet system and then sabotaged by the West and sold out by Yeltsin and the oligarch criminals. In the 17 years of Putin it has survived, grown, risen and prospered. And he hasn’t been able to rid the nation of the 5th Column nor reclaim all the stolen wealth from the Oligarchs, protected by the West’s legal systems.
Putin’s next seven years will be different. He will clean out the liberals, make the government respond more to citizens’ needs and attract back many good minds and wealth that is overseas.
The biggest problem with Russian demographics is the death rate. The birth rate problem has been corrected and it is doing very well, better than Eastern Europe and supportable with social assistance. Having larger families is on the upswing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Inside the structure of the economy is a hollow made from two historic facts. Much of the heavy industry was in Ukraine. Now, most all of it has moved into Russia or Russia has replaced most of it with native capacities.
The other thing is entrepreneurial spirit was never a Russian cultural trait. To take full advantage of capitalism, individual invention and innovation and small business development has to improve. The high bank interest rates has stifled this in Russia.
When the rates of borrowing and more risk capital in science and technology incubator districts becomes more normalized, Russian genius will compete with Silicon Valley and Chinese creativity.
Much Russian genius has fueled Israel’s technology, South Korea’s technology and the US technological leaps. If all that had stayed home, Russia would be atop the world despite every other disadvantage. The next generation will raise Russia to the pantheon of nations in science and technology, products and services.
@ Larch
Gosh! You just listed the most comprehensive list of wishful thinking for a rosy Russian future. But didn’t you overlook the fact that Russia has not even the power to issue its own currency as any issuance depends on equivalent value in US$ being injected into the Russian economy? Have you noticed that 20% of Rosneft has just been sold to Qatar? Russia is literally being sold to foreign interests to become another source of wealth for the home-grown and foreign comprador oligarchy pushing on for globalization.
As to Russia being screwed by the Soviets – that is the most revealing part of your comment. Without the Soviets Russia – and perhaps most or all of Europe – would now be part of a huge German fascist empire and not even the US would have been safe from it.
a-mouse – I don’t know how you got through moderation but I personally am offended with you when you talk to Larchmonter 445 that way – okay ?
He writes interesting articles that even Pepe Escobar likes – so don’t talk to a dignified – super polite person like you’re an –
Thanks.
Yours truly,
Ann
Even if frequently repeated – that Russia “was screwed” by the Soviet system – still does not make it true. (And contrary to Saker’s opinion that the system was somehow super-imposed on Russia against its values, it seems to me that Russia’s values (a certain generalisation) are exactly what enabled the system to take root there.) The backward Russia of the 19th cent. would not be where it is today without the socialist system. Just look at China vs India today – one picked socialism, the other did not (granted, China’s system evolved). Seventy-one yrs is how long the Soviet system lasted – in historical terms, a blink of an eye. Had it been allowed to develop unimpeded, it could have also evolved. (Just think of capitalism after 70 yrs – would you really want to live in the London of Charles Dickens?)
WW2 with just heavy military losses (14 241 000 deceased soldiers according study made by Russian Military Academy, 2008) was catastrophe to Soviet Union and especially to Russia itself. War caused terrible demographic and economic issues for future and these things should be better studied now.
“…the Genghis Khan hurricane, whose lightning-speed cavalry with his horse-borne archers, employing brilliant tactics unfamiliar to Europeans, caught army after army off guard and forced them into submission”.
Forced them into shallow graves, you mean. The Mongols weren’t big on taking prisoners. Unlike Alexander the Great, they didn’t believe in giving enemies a second chance.
“For weeks the two armies glowered at one another, neither side wanting to make the first move”.
By that time Genghis Khan or any of his generals would have made a wide outflanking move and captured Moscow. The Mongols of 1480 weren’t what their ancestors had been.
The Mongols done the bulk of their conquests when they were pagan, the Golden Horde’s decline coincided with their conversion to Islam. So yes, the Golden Horde ‘Mongols of 1480 weren’t what their ancestors had been’.
Similarly, the bulk of the Roman Empire’s conquests occurred when they were pagan, and Rome’s decline coincided with their becoming Christian.
I just remembered what tactic was employed by the Mongols against the Muslims in present day Iran or there about. When confronted by superior Muslims forces on the border, the Mongols did not engage, they just went via a supposedly impassable desert area and then snuck up and destroyed the 2 or 3 main cities of that region, killing every women, child, dog and cat, etc.
After that the Muslim army just fell apart because they had no more family to protect or homes to go back to. I guess that’s what you call taking Sun Tsu’s ‘how to win without fighting’ to the extreme. Moscow got lucky.
And the Mongols had a habit of retreating from superior forces. Its not that anyone could catch them, they would sleep on the horse, eat on the horse and shite from the horse. Each warrior had 2 or more horses available to him, when the one got tired he mounted the other – the long ride they called it. Since no-one could catch them because of their endurance, and because their scouting was excellent, they invariably knew where the enemy forces were located and their disposition, so the Mongols could choose to fight when they wanted to, no hurry.
Hiding behind fortified cities was also not much of an option in West, the Mongols had experience with sieges and siege engines from tacking much, much bigger cities in the East. For instance, the Mongols tactic of crossing moats, developed in the East, was to take captured soldiers and civilians, march them up to the moat, then kill them and toss them into the moat so that they could cross the moat over the dead bodies. qed.
“Their main aim was the airbase at Shindand, about 200 miles as the crow flies from the Straits of Hormuz…”
Actually at least 1,000 km (about 620 miles). Do try to get these simple facts right. Otherwise your credibility is co9mpletely shot.
In spite of my carping about details, compliments on an excellent and very convincing article. Thanks!