Quagmire

In 1983 writer Jonathan Steele published arguably his most noted work regarding the old Soviet Union, "Soviet Power - The Kremlin's Foreign Policy From Brezhnev to Chernenko." In it, Steele gave a superb analysis of Soviet intentions, limitations and actual abilities in their quest to not only preserve but to project communist ideology to those with the right combination of poor governance, disgruntled populace, and could easily fall prey to their expert use of anti-western propaganda. Efforts to increase their sphere of geopolitical influence were propagated everywhere from the Central Asian theater of Afghanistan with large scale use of hard power to more subversive actions like the struggle to expand their global influence to the African continent with violent, leftist insurgencies in Congo, Rhodesia, and Namibia.

The focus of Soviet military strategy throughout the Cold War years was maintaining a massive numerical superiority in conventional forces against the perceived threat of antagonistic NATO-aligned countries and their associated armies that surrounded their Western flank, and wary of a Sino presence to the East. Thus, the Soviets built vast quantities of tanks, APCs, and aircraft that were not a match in technology and battlefield effectiveness as their Western counterparts, and gave short-shrift to crew safety and survivability in direct kinetic conflict. Men and armor were expendable assets due to vast reserves of both, and the Soviets would surely win such a war of attrition with any foe.

As analysts dissect the carnage unfolding in Ukraine today, the modern Russian army, true to its sclerotic nature, is still using such Soviet-era tactics and assets in its offensive into Eastern Ukraine. Immense columns of armor and transport vehicles are flooding into its smaller neighbor in an effort to capture main cities and topple the existing government. It has not gone as well as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin had hoped.

The strategic advance has been all but stalled due to several factors, ranging from the Ukrainian army's bold efforts at defending these hubs of population and commerce, to uncooperative conditions on the ground, with daily images of massive T-90 tanks and APCs bogged down in mud so soundly as to simply be abandoned on the battlefield. It is near impossible to accurately ascertain the loss of men and materiel' on either side, as false reports and propaganda are spewing forth from both sides of the conflict, and media outlets in the United States focusing on more emotional, humanistic reporting on the tragedy in an effort to sway public opinion, as opposed to hard analysis and intelligence gathering.

During United States' military efforts throughout Central Asia and the Middle East after 9\11 left leaning media outlets, meaning, essentially all of them, would use the word "quagmire" to describe the status of any military effort by then President Bush under his watch in blatant efforts to discredit his presidency. In the current conflagration in Ukraine, this is truly an accurate description of the state of Russian efforts. Propaganda aside, the fact that this action has been completely static for nearly a week speaks volumes about the Russian military machine, its leaders, and command and control competency in the theater.

The buildup of Russian assets along the Ukraine border was a months long effort by logistics personnel. Fuel, food and ordinance were stockpiled in heaps for the invasion, and some stunning Intel has been coming out of the AO of fuel and food shortages among the invaders. If even half of these reports are true, it is a glaring sign of poor planning on the part of Russian field commanders. It is even more stunning when you consider the close proximity of safe avenues of ingress into the theater for re-supply of said materiel'.

This stalling of the invasion effort has led Putin to take more and more drastic steps to achieve his strategic objective(s). His attacks on civilian population centers, especially the capital Kiev, has led to accusations of war crimes along with increased bombardments as a terror strategy. This has only led to the steeling of Ukranian resolve to fight, and increased global outrage at the increasingly isolated Putin.

Western strategy, particularly that of the United States, should immediately take action to keep the fight from spreading westward past the Dnieper River. Activation of Title 50 assets in order to mobilize covert activities to support the Ukrainians should already be taking place. Providing Intel and lethal weapon platforms from the vast, open region to the West of the country will make this an increasingly painful and difficult exercise for Putin. Russia's escalatory actions of attacking civilians may eventually lead to the capitulation of Kiev, but not even Russia has the numbers to control the inevitable long term fallout of this action.

The inevitability of a low intensity, guerilla style insurgency is already taking shape. With video emerging from the theater of civilian cars and trucks bringing loads of man-portable weapon platforms such as NLAWs, Stingers and Javelins into the fight. This will slowly, but assuredly, lessen the will to fight of an already demoralized Russian army. A proverbial "death by a thousand cuts" as small groups of fighters use stand-off tactics to take a terrible toll on what now is, and will absolutely continue to be, a target rich environment.

The outcome of this tragedy is still impossible to determine as it is predicated upon the semantics of what constitutes victory or defeat. It is quite possible that this will lead to a stalemate of sorts, with the bravery of the Ukranian fighters simply making this effort too costly for Putin to maintain either strategically or pragmatically at home with the Russian people. This would be a loss for Putin, and may influence him to take ever more drastic steps to end his misguided adventurism. Putin's hopes are resting upon the least likely outcome, and that is an exhausted Ukraine capitulating and aceeding to Moscow's demands of recognition of Russian sovereignty of Crimea and the Donbas region, and a guaranteeing of Ukraine neutrality in respect to not joining NATO. Another aspect of this is the exposing of Russia's military machine to be significantly less capable than once thought. Much like the over-emphasis of Soviet military might during the Cold War that proved to be inaccurate (Which in hindsight should come as no surprise, as shortages of such basic goods as pantyhose and basic foodstuffs were common throughout the Soviet Union due to the gross inefficiency of communist economic policy) Modern Russia's poorly maintained, And poorly led military as well as outdated strategy has been exposed.