SHAPING THE BATTLEFIELD

 Lost in the art of war is the simple reconsideration of war in all its aspects. What is the point of war is always the first question. What do you intend to achieve by waging war? Is it right to simply slip into a war because you don't know what you're doing or did not know that actions sometimes lead to war? The questions for the new war seem not to be asked and most certainly aren't getting answered anymore. One of the most irksome questions that seems most glossed over is, who wants war?

Let us assume that all the questions are answered and we are now faced with making war so lets get on with the strategy and the operational art for making war in the modern era. What are the goals and what are the desired outcomes and how best are they met by invoking violence taken to the max to achieve them? Let us say that our goal is ending the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia until Russia retaliates and then we jump straight into war with Russia, win that sucker and liberate Ukraine! It's a stupid certainty that this is almost bound to be what the EU gets up to out of its continued intent for making war on Russia, except for the winning that sucker and liberating Ukraine.

Let us say that Russia retaliates with a number of decapitation strikes aimed at taking out the warmongers in France, Germany, the Baltic States and always Poland. That's all. They stop shooting and now NATO is going to retaliate. I'm curious to see how that next Phony War works out as the generals and leaders all confess that without 100% backing from Donald Trump they are unable to do more than spit at Russians and there is no way in the world that they will have forces ready to line up and cross the line of departure and advance into Russia except mabye in Kaliningrad and there they are scared to because President Putin has said he will nuke the first invader to step foot into the territory.  

I would be curious to see what kind of aviation response they try to pull off because that is always the first response now to any situation that gets out of hand. I mean to say, I'm sure that our NATO allies have a dozen flavors of long range artillery missiles that they're prepared to unload on Russia that are similar to our ATACMS or ground launched cruise missiles, I've just never heard of them and given who we're talking about, I very much doubt that any such thing exists. At any rate, the European Air Forces are sure to be deadly after all the relentless practice they have had at precision air strikes over the last 50 years.

I was wondering earlier about the Fleet-in-Being and while some say it exists, I tend to doubt it. More to the point, it would be a fleet without much purpose given all the sanctions on Moscow which have no doubt already disposed of almost 100% of its seaborne trade and the Russian Navy never really had any strategic or operational relevance outside its ballistic missile fleet and vast flocks of SSNs that would have proven a tough nut if we could still even dream of pulling off a REFORGER (return of forces to Germany). I kind of laugh at the idea of NATO Surface Action Groups and Carrier Battle Groups built around French and British carriers taking the war against Russia into the Baltic or the Black Sea.....

For all the posturing and verbal bellicosity I'm not seeing much war here. I don't think anybody else is either which really only leaves us with blundering into war and the neocons behind that kind of idiocy are fairly well contained on this continent and never much in favor in Europe so that spares us all that. So the real question remains, why beggar ourselves to position ourselves to fight Europe's wars for them?  

Next up, Rolling Thunder II.