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Have we reached an impasse?Putin Won't Go, Russia Won't Collapse—So What Will Biden Do About Ukraine?
BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN
Another seance with the ghost of Cardinal Richelieu explains Putin’s objectives in Ukraine: Russia will ruin and depopulate Ukraine, the way Richelieu reduced large parts of Germany to cannibalism during the Thirty Years War. Shortly after I conjured the spirit of Europe’s greatest (and nastiest) strategist, the Telegram channel of Russia’s most fanatic nationalist, Aleksandr Dugin, featured the item below:
NATO says the military phase of the conflict in Ukraine is far from over. Of course, no one will let Zelensky make peace.
Ukraine is not a subject, but an object, where the Zelensky regime is not an actor, but a tool.
Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the intentions of the enemy and use the period of the military phase of the operation to continue the methodical destruction of the military infrastructure of Ukraine, and taking into account NATO’s course of prolonging the conflict, it is advisable to consider moving on to the destruction of industrial facilities in the territories of Ukraine that lie outside our interests, especially paying attention to those objects that Ukraine, for obvious reasons, will not be able to restore. Later, such a convenient opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine may not present itself.
An “opportunity to complete the deindustrialization of Ukraine.” Putin isn’t defeated or baffled or confused. He’s turning the crank on the meatgrinder. One doesn’t have to read too far into these lines to conclude that Putin hoped that Zelensky would cut a deal on his terms once Russia invaded, but when Zelensky refused to cut a deal, Putin moved to Option B, which is to erase most of Ukraine from the face of the earth. That’s not as difficult as it sounds. Putin will keep the bits he wants in the Southeast (Donetsk and Luhansk), leave the West to factory farming, and pound the rest to rubble with artillery and air power.
Ukraine’s national population of 45 million had fallen to just 33 million by 2020 because half the working-age population left. Another 5 million refugees have fled, and millions more will leave before Russian cannons fall silent. There won’t be enough working-age Ukrainians left to begin reconstruction. Putin claimed on Feb. 23 that the West intended to turn Ukraine into a NATO missile platform with a 300-mile distance to Moscow. If he can’t get Ukraine to accept neutrality with Russian control over its southeast provinces, he’ll eliminate the threat Richelieu-style.
Related: Reliving the Nightmare of 1914 (We’re Doing It Again)
It’s horrible. But what’s going to stop Putin? To flatten Ukrainian cities, all the Russians need is artillery. All the Javelin anti-tank missiles in the world won’t do any good.
Meanwhile, Putin’s popularity is at 78% according to independent polls that Western analysts think are accurate. The ruble has climbed back to just about where it traded before the invasion and the Russian economy is doing “better than you think,” according to the London Economist. Biden bragged that the U.S. had reduced “the ruble to rubble.” He spoke too soon. He declared that Putin “can’t stay in power.” Looks like he can and he will. China’s sitting on the sidelines enjoying the show, and India, which refused to support sanctions against its longstanding ally Russia, will sell the Russians’ consumer goods.
U.S. officials can scream all they want about Russian “war crimes” (I don’t know the facts and take no position on whether war crimes were committed or not). I think that Putin is a bad guy and that the Russian invasion was a wicked enterprise. But Putin isn’t going anywhere, Russia isn’t collapsing, and the Russian Army is demolishing Ukraine.
What, then, does the Biden administration do next? Russia outguns us in nuclear weapons (and can deliver them from submarines firing hypersonic cruise missiles underwater). We don’t want a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
That’s why I signed this statement calling for de-escalation of the conflict sponsored by Compact Magazine, founded by my friends Sohrab Ahmari and Matthew Schmitz. Biden, Blinken, Nuland et al. have led us into a dead-end crisis that threatens to have a horrifying outcome—and maybe even a nuclear fireball. If you think I’m exaggerating, read this Asia Times analysis by editor-in-chief Uwe Parpart and myself. There’s still time to back out of the cul-de-sac. But not a lot.
Late-breaking news: The Wall Street Journal reports:
Mr. Scholz made one last push for a settlement between Moscow and Kyiv. He told Mr. Zelensky in Munich on Feb. 19 that Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and Russia. The pact would be signed by Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, who would jointly guarantee Ukraine’s security.
Mr. Zelensky said Mr. Putin couldn’t be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. His answer left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading. Aides to Mr. Scholz believed Mr. Putin would maintain his military pressure on Ukraine’s borders to strangle its economy and then eventually move to occupy the country.
U.S. and European leaders held a video call. “I think the last person who could still do something is you, Joe. Are you ready to meet Putin?” Mr. Macron said to Mr. Biden. The U.S. president agreed and asked Mr. Macron to pass the message to Mr. Putin.
Mr. Macron spent the night of Feb. 20 alternately on the phone with Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden.
The Frenchman was still talking with Mr. Putin at 3 a.m. Moscow time, negotiating the wording of a press release announcing the plan for a U.S.-Russian summit.
But the next day, Mr. Putin called Mr. Macron back. The summit was off.
Mr. Putin said he had decided to recognize the independence of separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine. He said fascists had seized power in Kyiv, while NATO hadn’t responded to his security concerns and was planning to deploy nuclear missiles in Ukraine.
AND:
Compromised Biden Cannot Lead America or the World
By Vasko Kohlmayer
By directing US foreign policy in ways that would benefit foreign entities who kept his family on lavish pay, Joe Biden sold out his country and betrayed the trust of the high office he held. More
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Some times one's inner strength wins the day:
Ukraine’s Three-to-One Advantage
It’s not technology or tactics that has given Ukrainian fighters their greatest edge.
By Elliot Ackerman
About the author: Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of the novel Red Dress in Black and White and a co-author of the novel 2034. He is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A few nights ago in Lviv, after an early dinner (restaurants shut at 8 p.m. because of curfew), I stepped into the elevator of my hotel. I was chatting with a colleague when a man in early middle age, dressed and equipped like a backpacker, thrust his hand into the closing door. “You guys American?” he asked. I told him we were, and as he reached for the elevator button, I couldn’t help but notice his dirty hands and the half-moons of filth beneath each fingernail. I also noticed his fleece. It had an eagle, a globe, and an anchor embossed on its left breast. “You a Marine?” I asked. He said he was (or had been—once a Marine, always a Marine), and I told him that I’d served in the Marines too.
He introduced himself (he’s asked that I not use his name, so let’s just call him Jed), and we did a quick swap of bona fides, exchanging the names of the units in which we’d both served as infantrymen a decade ago. Jed asked if I knew where he could get a cup of coffee, or at least a cup of tea. He had, after a 10-hour journey, only just arrived from Kyiv. He was tired and cold, and everything was closed.
A little cajoling persuaded the hotel restaurant to boil Jed a pot of water and hand him a few tea bags. When I wished him a good night, he asked if I wanted some tea too. The way he asked—like a kid pleading for a last story before bed—persuaded me to stay a little while longer. He wanted someone to talk with.
Read: A month of war has transformed Ukraine
As Jed sat across from me in the empty restaurant, with his shoulders hunched forward over the table and his palms cupped around the tea, he explained that since arriving in Ukraine at the end of February, he had been fighting as a volunteer along with a dozen other foreigners outside Kyiv. The past three weeks had marked him. When I asked how he was holding up, he said the combat had been more intense than anything he’d witnessed in Afghanistan. He seemed conflicted, as if he wanted to talk about this experience, but not in terms that could turn emotional. Perhaps to guard against this, he began to discuss the technical aspects of what he’d seen, explaining in granular detail how the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainian military had fought the Russians to a standstill.
First, Jed wanted to discuss anti-armor weapons, particularly the American-made Javelin and the British-made NLAW. The past month of fighting had demonstrated that the balance of lethality had shifted away from armor, and toward anti-armor weapons. Even the most advanced armor systems, such as the Russian T-90 series main battle tank, had proved vulnerable, their charred husks littering Ukrainian roadways.
When I mentioned to Jed that I’d fought in Fallujah in 2004, he said that the tactics the Marine Corps used to take that city would never work today in Ukraine. In Fallujah, our infantry worked in close coordination with our premier tank, the M1A2 Abrams. On several occasions, I watched our tanks take direct hits from rocket-propelled grenades (typically older-generation RPG-7s) without so much as a stutter in their forward progress. Today, a Ukrainian defending Kyiv or any other city, armed with a Javelin or an NLAW, would destroy a similarly capable tank.
If the costly main battle tank is the archetypal platform of an army (as is the case for Russia and NATO), then the archetypal platform of a navy (particularly America’s Navy) is the ultra-costly capital ship, such as an aircraft carrier. Just as modern anti-tank weapons have turned the tide for the outnumbered Ukrainian army, the latest generation of anti-ship missiles (both shore- and sea-based) could in the future—say, in a place like the South China Sea or the Strait of Hormuz—turn the tide for a seemingly outmatched navy. Since February 24, the Ukrainian military has convincingly displayed the superiority of an anti-platform-centric method of warfare. Or, as Jed put it, “In Afghanistan, I used to feel jealous of those tankers, buttoned up in all that armor. Not anymore.”
This brought Jed to the second subject he wanted to discuss: Russian tactics and doctrine. He said he had spent much of the past few weeks in the trenches northwest of Kyiv. “The Russians have no imagination,” he said. “They would shell our positions, attack in large formations, and when their assaults failed, do it all over again. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians would raid the Russian lines in small groups night after night, wearing them down.” Jed’s observation echoed a conversation I’d had the day before with Andriy Zagorodnyuk. After Russia’s invasion of the Donbas in 2014, Zagorodnyuk oversaw a number of reforms to the Ukrainian military that are now bearing fruit, chief among them changes in Ukraine’s military doctrine; then, from 2019 to 2020, he served as minister of defense.
Russian doctrine relies on centralized command and control, while mission-style command and control—as the name suggests—relies on the individual initiative of every soldier, from the private to the general, not only to understand the mission but then to use their initiative to adapt to the exigencies of a chaotic and ever-changing battlefield in order to accomplish that mission. Although the Russian military has modernized under Vladimir Putin, it has never embraced the decentralized mission-style command-and-control structure that is the hallmark of NATO militaries, and that the Ukrainians have since adopted.
“The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.”
Eliot A. Cohen: Why can't the West admit Ukraine is winning?
The individual Russian soldier’s lack of knowledge corresponded with a story Jed told me, one that drove home the consequences of this lack of knowledge on the part of individual Russian soldiers. During a failed night assault on his trench, a group of Russian soldiers got lost in the nearby woods. “Eventually, they started calling out,” he said. “I couldn’t help it; I felt bad. They had no idea where to go.”
When I asked what happened to them, he returned a grim look.
Instead of recounting that part of the story, he described the advantage Ukrainians enjoy in night-vision technology. When I told him I’d heard the Ukrainians didn’t have many sets of night-vision goggles, he said that was true, and that they did need more. “But we’ve got Javelins. Everyone’s talking about the Javelins as an anti-tank weapon, but people forget that the Javelins also have a CLU.”
The CLU, or command launch unit, is a highly capable thermal optic that can operate independent of the missile system. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we would often carry at least one Javelin on missions, not because we expected to encounter any al-Qaeda tanks, but because the CLU was such an effective tool. We’d use it to watch road intersections and make sure no one was laying down IEDs. The Javelin has a range in excess of a mile, and the CLU is effective at that distance and beyond.
I asked Jed at what ranges they were engaging the Russians. “Typically, the Ukrainians would wait and ambush them pretty close.” When I asked how close, he answered, “Sometimes scary close.” He described one Ukrainian, a soldier he and a few other English speakers had nicknamed “Maniac” because of the risks he’d take engaging Russian armor. “Maniac was the nicest guy, totally mild-mannered. Then in a fight, the guy turned into a psycho, brave as hell. And then after a fight, he’d go right back to being this nice, mild-mannered guy.”
I wasn’t in a position to verify anything Jed told me, but he showed me a video he’d taken of himself in a trench, and based on that and details he provided about his time in the Marines, his story seemed credible. The longer we talked, the more the conversation veered away from the tangible, technical variables of Ukraine’s military capacity and toward the psychology of Ukraine’s military. Napoleon, who fought many battles in this part of the world, observed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” I was thinking of this maxim as Jed and I finished our tea.
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As I suspected Romney breaks ranks. Not qualified for lower court but fine for SCOTUS.
What Conservatives Found Peculiar About Mitt Romney's Decision on Ketanji Brown Jackson
By MattVespaMatt Vespa|
Landon covered this last night. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) will be voting to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the United States Supreme Court. She will be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. It will be Joe Biden’s biggest win to date, though it does nothing to solve the inflation, gas price, supply chain, southern border, or Ukraine crises. He won’t get a bump in the polls from this confirmation battle. Romney will join Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) in confirming Jackson.
It's always those three—always. When it comes time for Republicans to unite, they will find some reason to stab us in the back. The Romney hate erupted within the ranks of the conservative base and for good reason. Not only did Romney stab us in the back, but he had also previously voted against Judge Jackson for her lower court appointment. She’s not qualified for the appeals court, but she’s a-okay for the Supreme Court. That’s the anti-Trump GOP for you, everyone. Luckily, they’re a breed that’s rapidly approaching extinction.
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To lead takes leadership to lead and we have none at this time. We also need diversity in leadership and I am not referring to racial but to those who attend colleges that are not among the Ivy League.
Elitist's are often full of themselves and cannot relate to "deplorables" who have a different mindset and background.
The trouble with our State Department is that most professionals are cut from the same cloth. They all think alike. It is more like an Ivy League fraternity house.
Will the U.S. Lead or Continue to 'Lose Ground'?
by Pete Hoekstra
Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and then Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on June 14, 2019. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images)
The world is seeing Vladimir Putin's clear plan to reestablish the Russian Empire. It also is hearing rumblings from Asia about restoration of a Chinese dynasty, and in the Middle East, a return to when Persia -- now an extremely different Iran -- dominated the region.
For any of these empires to expand, they need to take control of other states or groups of people. Those states can either be overrun and annexed, or they can be controlled and remain smaller, more manageable political units. Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored.
Russia, China and Iran are all totalitarian regimes with authoritarian leaders. Russia by its actions in Syria and Ukraine, as well as Iran for its actions in the Middle East, easily can be identified as terrorist states. China -- with its genocide against the Uyghurs, its illegal seizure of Hong Kong, and its continuing threats against Taiwan -- should also be designated that way.
Russia under Putin is acting most aggressively on the vision of regaining stature as an empire with its invasion of Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and now Ukraine in 2022 -- all well documented in the public domain. While all eyes are on Ukraine, however, the world also should take notice of Russia's recent actions in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan, part of the former Soviet Union, is rich in titanium, oil, gas, and uranium, and it borders Russia, China, and Iran. That is a tough neighborhood in which to coexist.
Earlier this year, Kazakhstan was folded back into the Russian Empire without much international reaction. As Kazakhstan's government faced significant internal dissent, major protests threatened to topple the regime. Putin, apparently not standing on ceremony for an invitation, sent troops into Kazakhstan at the time to "help."
When Kazakhstan declared it had been attacked by terrorist gangs that had been trained abroad, the door flew open. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), composed of former Soviet Republics and evidently meant to take the place of the Warsaw Pact, was asked to assist. Russia, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus all sent troops. The protests were stopped, and the status quo was maintained. By propping up the Kazakhstan's strongman government against popular dissent, Russia effectively pulled Kazakhstan back under its umbrella, and the CSTO was put forward as an effective force.
That is how former empires attempt to regain their status. Through either outright invasions or through the back door, both are strategies used by aspiring empires to fulfill their visions.
Just because these former empires again seek to reclaim their former status, however, does not mean that they will be successful -- unless they are allowed to. People who truly cherish freedom -- perhaps, as in Ukraine, where they know what it is like not to be free -- resist.
The Ukrainian people and their president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have proven to be worthy adversaries. Together, they are inspiring the world with their passion and conviction for the freedom and independence of their homeland. The Ukrainian people and Zelenskyy are fighting for a different outcome: not to be consumed by a Russia currently led by a serial war criminal. Even though most Americans do not want to fight a war with Russia over Ukraine, polls show they hope that Ukrainians will receive sufficient support from the world community to prevail.
The US must -- in the best interests of the United States -- immediately deliver the weapons Ukraine needs to forestall future predators such as China, Iran and North Korea. What happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine.
The longer the US shilly-shallies, the longer urgently needed weapons fail to reach Ukraine, the more it invites other predators. As the chess grandmaster and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov noted, "the weapons Ukraine needs to stop long-range artillery, missile attacks and aerial bombing are still being held back by the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations."
Ukraine must have -- now -- not only the weapons it needs to combat Russia's carnage, weapons to "close the skies," such as S-300s and S-400s and MiGs that the Ukrainians could pull over the border; it must also have heavy weapons such as tanks and long-range anti-ship munitions that Zelenskyy is requesting to repel Russia's assault to sever Ukraine from the Black Sea, and landlocking the country to suffocate all means of commerce.
One wonders, as Kasparov suggests, if the Biden administration secretly wants Putin, "the devil you know," to win.
"Everything I hear from other NATO members is that the U.S. has become the obstacle, and an explanation is required. Allowing Mr. Putin to keep an inch of Ukrainian soil after bombing civilians should be unimaginable. Conceding large areas of eastern Ukraine to the invader in exchange for a cease-fire would only give Mr. Putin time to consolidate and rearm for next time—and there will always be a next time."
Kazakhstan, too, had an inspirational leader, Serikzhan Bilash, willing to fight for freedom. Many in the media and the Biden administration have completely ignored him and the struggle of the people of Kazakhstan. Some have called him the Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel of Kazakhstan. Each day millions of people view his podcasts promoting a freer, more independent Kazakhstan.
Bilash was one of the first to identify the suffering and genocide of the Uyghurs and Kazakhs in China. He has sacrificed and risked his family's safety for speaking "truth to power" to the governments of Kazakhstan, China and Russia. His family and he were driven from their country. He was arrested, pled guilty in exchange for his freedom, and today is living in a different country.
When Zelenskyy was offered a plane ride out of Ukraine by the U.S., he said, "I need ammunition, not a ride." Bilash is still waiting for his claim of asylum to be processed and approved in the U.S. This approval would be the first step in reuniting with his family, who are now living an ocean away in the Netherlands.
Another rising voice of freedom is that of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the opposition in Belarus, who is fighting to keep her country on the side of freedom. She, along with Zelenskyy and Bilash, represent the dreams and aspirations of thousands, likely millions, of people within their homelands. They are risking everything for the ideals that America and the West claim to hold dear.
While defining exactly what military and humanitarian aid the U.S. and others are willing to provide to those fighting against these want-to-be empires is an important question that requires considerable debate, supporting those leaders who are out front should be easy. Why is America not supporting them further? Why are Russia's generals and military leaders not being threatened? Why are America's attempts at sanctioning Russian energy and all of Russia's oligarchs, their families and their businesses so incomplete and half-hearted?
Russia guaranteed the Budapest Memorandum to safeguard Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. Putin guaranteed safe passage so Ukrainians could leave their cities, only to open fire on them when they emerged. Putin does not keep his word. There is no diplomatic way out of this war.
It is important to recognize the heroes for freedom -- Zelenskyy, Bilash and Tsikhanouskaya as well as, with far clearer eyes, the long-term predatory plans of totalitarian states such as Russia, China and Iran. As the world is witnessing the courageous struggle by Ukrainian people, the West should take pride that, as totalitarian regimes seek to expand their empires, voices and expressions of freedom can rise up in defiance. "The U.S. can restore its leadership of the free world, or it can lead from behind while democracy continues to lose ground," Kasparov concluded. The U.S. not only needs to recognize the power of these defiant leaders, but do more -- much, much more -- to help them. That is what is in the strategic interests of the United States.
Peter Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Center for Security Policy Board of Advisors, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
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Is Gen. Berger leading the Marine Corp In the wrong direction? We will not know until a war occurs. Suppose it is not with China?
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The Marines Are Reforming to Prepare for War With China
Gen. David H. Berger seeks a more agile force.
By Tom Rogan
The art of war is always evolving. Those who anticipate these changes are most likely to prevail the next time conflict arrives. But pre-emptive reforms, which are by nature untested, are often controversial. This is the problem facing Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger’s dramatic reform program. Critics, such as former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, argue that he is making a terrible mistake, but the commandant’s ideas would prepare the U.S. to better face its primary enemy: China.
It’s certainly true that Gen. Berger’s Force Design 2030 reforms are near revolutionary. Under his plan, the Marine Corps would dramatically shrink its cannon artillery and helicopter forces while eliminating its tank forces. Several infantry battalions and their supporting elements would be cut. Gen. Berger admits these reforms carry risk and have sparked controversy within the Marine Corps. But the Marines have finite resources, which are organized around maintaining democratic international order and defeating the largest threat to America. In today’s world, that’s China.
The U.S. military anticipates combat with the People’s Liberation Army has a significant likelihood of breaking out within the next 10 years given Beijing’s imperial claims over Taiwan and almost the entirety of the South China Sea. America is currently not in a strong position to win in a conflict against the Chinese military. China could easily surge at least 1,000 fighter-bomber and strategic-bomber aircraft from Hainan Island and its mainland bases. Hundreds of increasingly capable ships and submarines would join them at sea. U.S. forces would often be outgunned and outmanned.
America has conducted war games to help predict what a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and U.S. conflict with China in the South China Sea would look like, and the U.S. record in these games has been damning: U.S. forces struggle to array with sufficient speed, are blinded by Chinese electronic warfare, antisatellite and long-range missile systems, and are forced into pockets of isolated resistance which are then eliminated. As Gen. Berger says in his 2030 vision, it was these war games that shaped his “conclusion that modest and incremental improvements to our existing force structure and legacy capabilities would be insufficient to overcome evolving threat capabilities.”
In a war with China, which would likely be largely amphibious, the Marines would play a central and distinct role from that of the other branches. As set down in federal law, the Marines’ primary mission is to provide “service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign.” In the South China Sea, this means the Marines would often operate far from other U.S. resources out of small land bases that will be easily cut off from support from U.S. military command and control, intelligence platforms, longer-range weapons systems, and combined-arms capabilities.
The PLA could throw excellent long-range antiship missiles at U.S. Navy aircraft carriers to keep their F-35 squadrons too far from the fight to make a difference. PLA warships, long-range bombers and fighters would aim to overwhelm U.S. forces in scale and in various locales. The PLA is also likely to use massive cyber and satellite attacks to blind the U.S. military and deplete Washington’s resolve. As Gen. Berger explained in a February podcast, he believes the Marines will need to operate as an organic kill chain that doesn’t rely on support from other U.S. military surveillance, strike, logistics and command assets.
Not every sort of materiel would be useful in that sort of fight. The helicopter squadrons Gen. Berger wants to cut are highly unlikely to be able to sustain operations against the PLA under saturated fire. The tanks and cannon artillery he’d like to dump would have next to no utility in the South China Sea and would struggle to get to Taiwan in time to make a difference. Massed infantry formations would have limited strategic effect in a fight over such small pieces of land and would drain American resources.
This is not to say it’s time to abandon tanks and artillery across the military. The Army must retain those forces amid rising threats in Europe and the Korean Peninsula and for its own contribution to a defense of Taiwan. But as the Russians are learning in Ukraine, it’s not enough to have good equipment if you can’t deploy it, sustain it, and use it to kill the enemy before he kills you. As the Ukrainians are demonstrating, agile forces armed with potent portable weapons can deliver major battlefield gains.
That’s how the Marine Corps must operate to prevail against the PLA. Gen. Berger wants small groups of Marines to be able to seize artificial island territories in the South China Sea. His plan would enable Marines to rapidly establish potent combat units on Taiwan and the Philippines. These units would deploy small-unit portable antiship, antisubmarine and antiair capabilities to deny the PLA freedom of movement, action and resupply. The Marines would then seek to protect these territories as strongholds to support the supply and forward projection of other U.S. and allied forces as well as the collection of intelligence for targeting PLA units.
In the 1930s, two Soviet generals, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Semyon Budyonny, pushed Stalin in different directions. Tukhachevsky believed mechanized armor had to become the Red Army’s linchpin. Budyonny insisted that horse cavalry would remain key. Budyonny won, and Tukhachevsky was purged. When war with the Nazis arrived, Budyonny’s forces were annihilated along with many other Red Army units. Tukhachevsky’s reforms eventually prevailed and assisted the Soviet victory. But by then the suffering of the Soviet people had been immense.
Gen. Berger’s reforms seek to avoid that experience. Let’s hope his fellow service chiefs find the courage to heed their colleague’s example.
Mr. Rogan is a national-security writer for the Washington Examiner.
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The USS Cincinnati (LCS-20), an Independence-class littoral combat ship of the United States Navy heads out of San Diego Bay.
By The Editorial Board
Photo: K.C. Alfred/Zuma Press
Meanwhile, the Navy’s top officer has said that a Navy capable of defeating peer adversaries like China needs about 350 ships and another 150 unmanned or lightly manned vessels, for a total of 500. A reasonable observer may wonder how the Navy plans to grow by getting smaller.
The truth is the Navy finds itself without the resources to expand its fleet or sustain its current ships, and some of its inventory is ill-suited for the next fight. The Navy wants to retire nine littoral combat ships, arguably the service’s biggest acquisition failure of all time in a crowded field. As usual with these Pentagon disasters, the admirals and civilians responsible have long since left the building.
The littoral ship designed to operate in shallow waters has struggled to carry out any useful mission. One marked for retirement was commissioned less than two years ago. The USS Detroit and USS Little Rock, slated for early retirement, “both experienced major propulsion issues to their engines in 2020, which rendered both ships inoperable,” the Government Accountability Office reported in February. “The Navy terminated both deployments early to perform repairs on these ships.”
It is tempting to stop throwing money down this hole, but the Navy’s replacement, a new frigate, is still in development and years away from entering the fleet. Meanwhile, the Navy wants to retire five cruisers that each pack more than 120 missile tubes—serious offensive firepower—arguing that the 30-plus-year-old ships are so rundown they’re unsafe.
As the U.S. debates its least-bad options for managed decline, China is laying hulls. The chart nearby illustrates how China’s fleet will soon dwarf the U.S. Navy. No matter, some say, since U.S. ships are more capable. But quantity is underrated in preventing wars and surviving them if they start. The Pacific isn’t the world’s only water to police. The U.S. Navy has been spending less time in the Black Sea in recent years, according to one analysis, and Vladimir Putin may have priced that into his Ukraine invasion calculation.
Congress last year intervened to buy more ships, and it will need to come to the rescue again. Promising ideas for making the most out of ships in the water: Outfitting the littoral combat ships with the long-range Naval Strike Missile, or tying up the poor old cruisers to do air defense over Guam.
But the Navy’s proposal to retire two dozen ships to save $3.6 billion over five years—a tiny fraction of the service’s budget, as Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria has pointed out—suggests the institution lacks a strategy as well as money. Americans have grown accustomed to peaceful seas over the past 70 years, but that luxury will fade if the U.S. Navy does.
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