I wanted to make two additional observations related to Putin’s speech. First, Russia is estimated to have about 25 million “reservistsâ€, defined as people who’ve been through military training. How many of those are actually available is unknown but that’s still a substantial pool.
Second, and this is something I have alluded to before, the role of NCOs and junior officers in the Russian military (most of the world to be honest) is quite different than in ours. Since the Civil War the U. S.has used a platoon system in which very small units are led by a junior officer and an NCO. These platoons have substantial operational latitude.
That isn’t the case with the Russian military which is very much more top-down. That’s why so many of their general officers are getting killed. They must go to the front to direct operations.
Russia does not have a professional NCO corps – they rely primarily on officers for most leadership positions, even at low levels. They don’t have enough of these, and most are not well trained to begin with. This is something that is difficult to fix.
Russia is still not official at war. That means that conscripts legally can’t be used in the fighting in Ukraine. That has also meant that volunteers could, in theory at least, tear up their contracts or refuse to extend their contracts (Putin’s new policy likely includes stop-loss to keep volunteers past their contracts).
One reason Russia wants to hold annexation “referendums” in the Ukrainian Oblasts it controls is so that conscripts can be used in those areas. If they are annexed, then they are legally part of Russia, and conscripts can then be used in those areas.
Those 25 million “reservists” (I think that number is probably overestimated) are the functional equivalent of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) here in the US – they are people who have previously served in the armed forces as either conscripts or volunteers. But not all of them will be what Russia needs – which are primarily infantry and other ground combat and support troops.
And the problem is that most of these people have jobs and are working in the Russian economy. Mobilizing 300k takes out a lot of labor in a short period of time. That would be the equivalent of removing ~750k people from the workforce here in the US.
Besides partial mobilization; it sounds like the Russians have also changed the rules of engagement; i.e. a whole of bunch off-limit targets are now game. They are also importing Iranian drones, which while not a game changer, does seem to be making some impact.
In the end, while mobilization is the sexy news one must focus on the big picture. A nuclear power with the ability to annihilate the world thinks it is in an existential hot conflict. There’s no convincing data that the conflict will not expand beyond Ukraine, perhaps even into the American homeland…
That’s a major reason we should be cautious about giving the Ukrainians weapons with longer ranges. How much more threatened do we want the Russians to feel? Attacks within Russia proper would be sure to have that effect.
“That’s a major reason we should be cautious about giving the Ukrainians weapons with longer ranges”
That’s closing the barn door after horses have left. On Russian twitter / telegram, there’s pretty clear evidence the Ukrainians have been shelling, bombarding inside Russian territory (and this is not even talking about Crimea).
Through 4 Presidencies, the US hasn’t missed a chance to escalate the issue of Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia; and certainly not in this war.
Lets go through the exercise, I posited if mobilization fails for Russia, it results in an extremely dangerous situation. But if mobilization succeeds and shifts the momentum of the war, I suspect there will be immense pressure on Biden to up the ante to put the Russians on the backfoot again. It would be a similar dynamic to May/June period where the Russians had success and Biden responded by significantly boosting support to Ukraine (HIMARS).
You need to understand that war is coming to America for the first time since 1860. In the case of the northeast for the first time since 1775. This no longer a European war. It is a European/North American war
Lets see. Russia invades another sovereign country. They kill lots of those people. If they dare to fight back and kill anyone in Russia it is an existential threat and Russia will use nukes.
The rules seem pretty clear now. Russia gets to act with impunity. If anyone resists they threaten nukes. And some people wonder why all of those former SSR countries wanted to join NATO.
Steve
With all deference to the (correct) notion that accurate information is difficult to come by in this war, it seems odd that Russia has not closed things out yet. Or at least reduced things to guerrilla warfare.
What is the read? Incompetence? Restraint?
The battlefield is one bit; but as I say, one must look at the bigger picture.
Iran is supplying arms to Russia. Relations with China are the worse in 50 years and close to a breaking point.
The economy too is being put under a lot of strain; it is not normal to see the 10 year treasury yield blowout 20bps in a day — I think the conditions are set for a crash. And on the horizon — the Federal Reserve’s policies is creating a $400 billion / year hole in the Federal Government budget, which is actually a lot of money — take a look at this post for the eye opening details — https://www.thebeartrapsreport.com/blog/2022/09/11/powell-playing-tough-guy-with-the-math-stacked-against-him/
However this goes; I think every party (and that includes this country) to this war is going to lose big.
How are they going to fudge that?
Well, if everything caves one can either use Hillary Clinton’s logic, “What difference does it make!†Or, Newsom’s new canned response,â€Itâ€s Trump’s fault!â€
“Iran is supplying arms to Russia. Relations with China are the worse in 50 years and close to a breaking point.”
I’m pretty sure Dave has posted on this a few times, but one thing that we both have agreed on for well over a decade is that China and Russia are not natural allies, and the US should not take steps that would make them into allies.
And I’d just bring up again the folly of believing that the post Cold War world would forever be a unipolar construction dominated by the US and that it would be crazy for any country to think otherwise.
I honestly think we might have maintained that. What we couldn’t do was maintain the “unipolar construction”, erode our industrial base, undermine our middle class, and invade other countries almost continually over a thirty year period all at the same time.
U. S. military power was an outgrowth of our relative wealth which in turn was a consequence of our industrial strength and middle class.
No way. It was only a matter of time until another fairly large country had enough economic growth to get close enough to be an economic rival. We benefitted immensely from WW1 and WW2 in achieving a lead on the rest of the world but that was going to go away.
Steve