by Douglas Macgregor at The American Conservative
Presidents lie when it suits their purpose. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson all promised Americans that they would not send American boys to die in foreign wars. President Joe Biden, however, is arguably the first to make public predictions that invariably came true in reverse.
Instead of deterring China, the Taiwanese electorate is likely to elect a new government that favors reunification with Beijing. Rather than collapsing the Russian economy, Biden’s proxy war is destroying the economically fragile European Union. Instead of realizing Francis Fukuyama’s “Rebirth of the West,” Washington’s policies are accelerating its decline. And instead of preventing the emergence of a new coalition or axis of illiberal powers—including Russia, China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others—Washington has cemented these relationships to the detriment of Western interests.
Ukraine’s “spring” and now summer offensive operation is stalled, if not defeated. Exact numbers of Ukrainian dead and wounded are not yet available, but the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action in the latest onslaught reportedly number in the thousands, along with many more wounded. Tank and armored-fighting-vehicle losses have also been significant. Meanwhile, Russian losses in response to the offensive are reported to be relatively negligible, with Russian soldiers killed and wounded in action only in the hundreds.
Americans must understand that that there is no more difficult and complex military operation than a deliberate attack to penetrate prepared enemy defenses. Remember, the German army, arguably the best trained and most competently led army in the last 100 years, opted in 1940 to avoid frontally assaulting the Maginot Line.
Cracking deliberate defenses is so difficult, so time- and resource-consuming, that U.S. ground forces rarely practice it in peacetime, nor do U.S. Army officers study it in detail as Russian officers do. U.S. and British advisors were no doubt limited in their ability to lend much assistance in launching this offensive to Ukrainian forces that already lacked sufficient artillery, engineers, and air defense systems. In addition, Russian integrated air defenses have neutralized opposing airpower.
Predictably,…
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