Yachts and Rockets

It seems that Vlad’s “special operation” isn’t going so well.

To be sure, he probably didn’t count on the formidable response of the West, and he certainly got it entirely wrong about the resolve of Ukrainians. But his version of Anschluss is crumbling mostly because of factors decades in the making, for which he has to accept most of the blame.

On the battlefield his army is in large part defeating itself. Supply lines are rickety and tenuous, soldiers are out of control, feckless, and ill-disciplined, and weapons are turning out to be something much less than the formidable killing machines they had been hyped up to be.

Russian military doctrine has always focused on brute strength, massive firepower, and cheap lives on both sides. Russian tanks, for example, keep the shells in the turret while Western tanks keep them in a separate, shielded compartment. The difference is that when a deadly weapon hits the turret of a Russian tank, the shells explode, the turret is blown off and the crew is incinerated. No worries, there are plenty more soldiers where they came from. To such an army, schools and hospitals are simply pressure points.

In a society where graft is universal and in an army which pays its officers less than we pay short-order cooks, nobody should be surprised if everyone in the supply chain for fuel, food, medicine, and other supplies takes out a personal slice on the way through. It’s a miracle that any provisions make it to the front.

Add to that the culture of the Russian military where independence and initiative are crushed out of young conscripts by hazing, beating, and even gang-raping, and where mid-level officers are deathly afraid of making operational decisions, and you have an army with plenty of brawn but few smarts. Sure, Russia has an immense military, but what good is an army of craven followers whose initiative has been beaten out of them?

Vladimir Putin inherited a stunted, corrupt society, and leveraged it into enormous personal power and wealth. To do so he pitted everyone against everyone, sold off the country’s industry and resources to sycophantic cronies, and crushed independent thought. As long as he only picked on small non-Western enemies with limited resources, he looked like the tough guy. Now the bully has met his match, and more.

Having terrified and liquidated any opposition, he was left with nobody to tell him his war plans were moronic, both in principle and in execution.

So now Vlad is stuck, the author of his own misfortune. He needs a functioning military, he needs loyalty, he needs a country willing to fight and die for ideals. He needs his friends with yachts to be in his corner.

He has none of those, and he has no one but himself to blame. Sic semper tyrannis.