Monthly Archives: July 2023

By Michael F. Duggan

In World War One, there were big pushes and there were attritional battles. For most of the war however, breaching operations attempted by both sides lacked the suppressing firepower necessary to overcome the defensive advantages of the enemy.  Armor and close air support lacked the power, sophistication, and doctrine for an effective modern combined arms offensive. The final victory of the Allies in the 100 Days campaign in 1918, had less to do with Blitzkrieg than with the arrival of two million American troops and a general collapse of the German lines. 

Between the big offensives of 1916-17 and the 100 Days battles in the summer and fall of 1918, there were trench raids and the development and refinement of infiltration tactics by both sides.  But as the name states, these actions involved tactics—small raids—more than strategy, although, like most of the big pushes, they did little to move the lines. Even the first major tank action at Cambrai at the end of 1917 ultimately proved futile as the lumbering monsters were eventually picked-off piecemeal by artillery after their initial shock and first-day gains.

The problem with tactics, operations, and strategy in the First World War—and never before or since have the three seemed more like one—was the belief that the front embodied a kind of pressurized equilibrium.  Pop the enemy’s bubble, so it went, and a general collapse would follow.  The petering-out of the German Michael Offensive in the spring of 1918 laid waste to this idea.  As Andrew Bacevich recently observed, “Punching holes is a poor substitute for strategy.”¹       

Western sources are now reporting that the Ukrainian offensive is failing, that after significant losses in armor and infantry, it has not breached the Russian lines (how an army is supposed to launch an integrated combined arms offensive without air superiority, massive stocks of artillery ammunition, a superiority in suppressing fire against an entrenched enemy, and a secure communication system to coordinate it all, is not clear).²  These reports tell us what we already knew: that Bradleys and Leopard II tanks were picked-off en masse, like the British Mark IVs at Cambrai. Notably, Cambrai was followed by a German counteroffensive.   

The Russo-Ukrainian War appears to be a culmination of the World Wars and a return to initial states. After the big pushes of the First World War, the massive combined arms offensives of the Second World War, and the aerial bombing of civilians, modern war has come full circle to grinding offensives along a wide front, attrition, forays into no man’s land, an enemy with a flexible, multilayered defense in depth and pre-sighted kill zones, and small unit infiltration and raids into often booby-trapped enemy trenches. Ironically, tanks, originally developed by the British to breach the fortified German lines, now appear to be primary technological victims of the renewal of positional warfare. The drones and loitering munitions are new. As with the first Cold War, a nuclear Sword of Damocles hangs above the action on the ground.

The First World War was a tragedy, but it was also a crime.  After it became apparent in late 1914 and early 1915 that the war would become bogged down into an attritional nightmare, the warring nations should have come to a settlement.  The fact that this was not politically feasible at the time does little to excuse it.  The Ukrainians have fought better than anyone had expected with competence, courage, and tenacity, but the situation on the front presents them with an overwhelming tactical, operational, strategic, and logistical impasse.  As I have written before, through no fault of their own, the numbers are against them.  If the diplomats of our time are to effectively apply the lessons of history, they would to well to succeed where the statesmen of 1914-18 failed.    

Notes

1. Andrew Bacevich, “America’s Compulsion is Intact and Ready for More,” Responsible Statecraft, June 5, 2023.
2. For example, see Daniel L. Davis, “Why Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive is Failing,” Responsible Statecraft, July 20, 2023.  Davis also makes a strong case for a diplomatic solution to the war.   

By Michael F. Duggan

This week 31 of the 50 U.S. states baked in 90+ degree weather, as a heat dome continues to cover the South and Southwest. Hot weather in the summer is hardly news, unless you consider that this week was also the hottest week in recorded history worldwide. The climate crises are here and have been for some time.

The question is whether or not we have reached a tipping point—a demarcation from the known into the chaotic, a change from which there is no return. The other question is whether or not the children and grandchildren of those reading this will be killed by the crises, or if their lives will be merely degraded by it.

By Michael F. Duggan

I’ll put it up front: some of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s statements in recent years have turned me off. That said, in last Wednesday’s live town hall meeting, with a sometimes less-than friendly audience and hosted by Elizabeth Vargas, he acquitted himself well. I watched it not wanting to like him or what I thought he was going to say and came away more impressed than I have been with any American candidate in a long time.

He took on all comers with no topics being out of bounds and gave thorough, thoughtful answers. His stated goal is to bring the Democratic Party back to the values the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society—the party that was largely destroyed by the murders of his uncle and father (before the Democrats become the pro-war, “Republican Lite” party of the Clintons, Obama, et al.). I believe in vaccines and am agnostic on the clarifications he gave of his position on vaccines, and will have to examine them more closely.

He seemed to frustrate Elizabeth Vargas, who prodded him for binary, either/or culture war replies. She seemed baffled that he wouldn’t take the bait, that he did not reply with hostile, divisive answers against those with whom he disagrees. His thoughtful, non-divisive answers to her questions appeared to frustrate her as things outside of her frame of reference.

I have a theory of presidential leadership that I call the “noble executive” model. It holds that the greatest presidents of the 20th century—TR, FDR, and JFK—were all high-minded aristocrats who had experienced a humbling health experience that gave them a strong sense of empathy and undercut snobbery and allowed them to do great things for all Americans. I believe that RFK, Jr., whose history of personal problems are manifold, could fit this mold. The fact that he is from a rich and famous family means that he does not need to tow the line on the orthodoxy and shibboleths of either party. He is his own man and appears to be telling the truth as he sees it. Most of his answers to tough questions on policy were much better than what I have heard from any political candidate in decades. The forthrightness and intelligence of his replies reminded me of the strength and honesty of his father’s answers in a November 1967 edition of Meet the Press.

When I was young, the elder Robert Kennedy, the transformed Bobby of the 1963-68 period, was one of my political touchstones. His assassination is my earliest political memory. What our country needs is not further division, but unity, if it is still possible. RFK, Jr. reminds me of the lost potential of the 1960s. The death of his uncle, his father, and Martin Luther King, Jr. marked the death of a vigorous, tough-minded, result-oriented kind of liberalism in this country that it has never regained. Since then the Democratic Party and the political left have been characterized by watered-down mediocrity with a track record of ineffectiveness or else self-defeating politically correct stridency. The U.S. does not need more “centralist” mediocrities like Biden or, on the right, populist demagogues like Trump. What we need is genuine leadership, redeeming leadership. I do not know if Robert Kennedy, Jr. is the man who can provide it, but last Wednesday, even with his afflicted voice, he sounded as if he could be.

The problem I have with Kennedy is this: right after seeing his strong performance in the town hall event, I saw a clip from a conference with anti-vaxxers in which Kennedy spouted some batshit about how it is possible that the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 might have been the result of vaccine research. This is the kind of thing that reels me back in from Kennedy. There are charlatans (people who know that they are trying to fool you), and there are cranks (people who subscribe to the delusions they push). I suspect that Kennedy falls under the later. The broader issue is that his sensible positions on other issues of domestic and foreign policy may be tainted and dismissed because of the crazy stuff that gives his opponents ammunition. The question is whether these views should disqualify him.

Already the guardians of the status quo, like Vanity Fair, are attacking his Wednesday night performance. The major networks and newspapers snubbed him altogether, and some, like the Los Angeles Times, tried to poison the well before the event and then provided a hostile after-action report. Even though Kennedy has some quirky and even dangerously wrongheaded views, his stated goals of uniting the nation, returning the Democratic party back to its first principles, and demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy, are powerful and eloquent and deserve our attention and consideration. With Democrats backing a catastrophic war in Ukraine, and the GOP willing to embrace strongman extremism, Kennedy’s views may constitute the lesser danger among the current options. The Democratic establishment is mobilizing to destroy his candidacy, and they may succeed.

My advice is that before rejecting him and his candidacy outright, take a look at his performance from last week’s town hall meeting and then weigh him against the others.

Postscript
I renounce the benefit of the doubt that I once extended to Kennedy.

By Michael F. Duggan

The Somme Offensive began today on the Western Front 107 years ago. It is also the the 125th anniversary of the Battle of San Juan Hill, the 160th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg and the 333rd anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. Leslie turns 91 today. Leibniz would have been 377 years old. Princess Diana would have been 62.