Realism and Policy

By Michael F. Duggan

America’s favorite epicurean billionaire is gone at 76. He wrote some fun songs, and created and guarded a branding empire like a Gilded Age robber baron.

I was ambivalent about Buffett’s music, briefly embracing at fleeting moments during fleeting summers in my twenties, and I am sure that I knew some Parrot Heads. It was certainly a background mainstay of laidback summer drinking events at the shore. A lot of his songs are about drinking and now seem self-indulgent, self-centered, and even self-pitying (“A Pirate turns 40”).

But beyond a Dionysian celebration of drinking rum and braggadocio about the high-octane escapist lifestyle, what is there? Among his Greatest Hits are a couple of decent breakup/makeup songs (“Come Monday,” “Miss You so Badly”), and a few novelty songs (“Cheeseburger in Paradise,” Pencil-Thin Mustache,” “Why Don’t We get Drunk?”, and that really silly one about the volcano). This hardly puts him up there with Dylan or Lennon and McCartney, much less the Gershwin’s or T.S. Eliot. As a friend of mine pointed out, his most soulful song, one that is not about himself, may be “He Went to Paris,” which is thoughtful, sympathetic, and bittersweet.

He had a knack for melody, although sometimes they run together a little. But in general, Buffett seemed to be mostly about Buffett, and I suspect the appeal, beyond the facial allure of tropical carousing, was the fact that we could put ourselves in his shoes by singling along with him (if The Simpsons is to be believed, he did not let people cover his songs). Perhaps I am overthinking it and should take his music for what it is as a not insignificant contribution to the songbook of American summer vacation.

It seems fitting that he left us at the end of summer on Labor Day Friday.

By Michael F. Duggan

Last week the Ukrainian Ground Forces took the village of Robotyne on the Russian front lines along the Tomak-Melitopol axis in Zaporizhzhia. The town appears to have been destroyed and one wonders if the destruction was entirely due to extremely heavy fighting, or if it was pre-targeted as a likely objective of the counteroffensive, or both. The next town in the direction of Tomak is Novoprokopivka, a short distance to the south.

But rather than attacking this town directly, Ukrainian forces appear to be using a flanking operation from the east in order to envelope or else bypass it. They appear to be moving southeast by the left flank, toward the town of Verbove. Reports from both sides indicate that advanced elements of the elite Ukrainian 82nd Airmobile Brigade, which until recently had been held in reserve, have breached the initial Russian lines of tank traps and minefields by securing a road into the town. At this point, the Ukrainians may be holding the northwest part of Verbove.

When a combined arms operation breaches the initial lines of a defense-in-depth, it has either found a chink in the enemy armor—a corridor through which it may more easily pass—or it has stumbled into a shaping zone with presighted artillery traps. The Ukrainian Ground Forces have penetrated the grey zone to a depth of roughly four miles, creating an impressive salient. At this point, the Ukrainians and the West are measuring success in terms of territory taken while the Russians appear to be fighting an attritional war. It is Jomini versus von Clausewitz.

Advances in territory have to be measure against what military men call burn rates—casualties, losses of vehicles and materiel, and the expenditures of munitions, especially artillery shells. These rates must then be measured against, not only the ground gained, but the capacity of both sides to sustain and replace such losses. Measuring success in terms of territory gained (a Jominian approach to tactics, operations, and strategy) can be misleading, unless such gains signify a game-changing breakthrough or an all out collapse of the enemy lines.

But what is really going on? What is real? Accurate information is difficult to come by and all of these observations are conjectural and based on control maps and other publicly-available online sources. It is in the interest of both sides to lie about casualties. Questions abound: Have the Ukrainians found a genuine weak point in the Russian lines that they are now effectively exploiting? Have they created a breach through which armor and mechanized infantry can now be rammed through with momentum toward objectives deeper into Russian-held territory with a strategic goal of cutting a swath to the Sea of Azov? Did they really avoid the worst of Russian defenses—tank traps, dragon’s teeth, and minefields—by securing a road leading directly into a likely objective? If so, why was this approach not more heavily defended by the Russians? Was it, as Western news outlets are reporting, less guarded so as to allow Russians to pull back quickly, and, if so, was it intended as a Russian escape route, or a means to draw the in the Ukrainians? Time will tell.

These may be real gains—the attackers have gained ground. The Ukrainians may be exploiting a weak point in the Russian defenses, or, given that they have only breached the foremost Russian lines, it could be an artillery trap. After all, why would the Russians allow a weak point along a vector running near a succession of strategic towns, but one that also directs the attackers away from that line? Deception is a first principle of war.

Robotyne is about 18 miles from Tokmak and around 54 miles from Melitopol. The sea is a little beyond Melitopol.

By Michael F. Duggan

BRICS, an emerging alternative to the G20, appears to be coming of age.

In the new and more conspicuously multipolar world—and the Second Cold War—the two primary poles of the US/West and Russia/China/Iran will be increasingly competing for the favor and resources of the third pole, a loosely aggregated league of mostly free agent states of the Global South (“BRICS” stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the league may prove attractive to much of the developing world). Looks like China and Russia intend to beat the West to the punch.

Take special note of the 15th annual BRICS summit that was held this past week in Johannesburg. Although there is currently no talk about supplanting the Dollar with the Yuan as the world reserve currency (or as a competitive alternative to the Dollar), it seems likely that if the world were to significantly de-dollarized, the US could find itself in the Great Depression II or something even worse.

Some commentators have observed that the sanctions the West has placed on Russia has had the effect of de-dollarazation parts of the world economy, and that the war in Ukraine is driving the decline of Western economic dominance. The sullen response to the war by many of the nations of the South would seem to corroborate this. Worse yet, the new and less cooperative world order is coming at a time when unity is needed, when the cooperation of China, Russia, and the Global South’s will be necessary to combat the unfolding crises of the environment.

It’s all starting to look like a Shakespearean tragedy writ large.

By Michael F. Duggan

It is a first principle of survival for the ambitious, the audacious: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” The fact that this quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, means that even the most etherial of idealists acknowledge the primacy of power in politics.

From the reprisals of the earliest tribal chieftains against their rivals to the brutal realism of the Romans and the Mob, from Machiavelli and the Tudors to the failed Valkyrie plot against Hitler, from The Godfather to the Gangs of New York, history, commentary, and art all tell us that plots against the powerful are a dangerous zero-sum game. As the story of Candaules in The Histories of Herodotus reminds us, a successful coup may yield fruit, but there is nothing more lethal to would-be usurpers than a failed one.

Although coups are often the acts of ambitious lieutenants, I suspect the Prigozhin putsch was more the act of a loose cannon.

In many ways it is surprising that Prigozhin survived as long as he did. When the June 24 coup failed, I thought that it would be presumptuous of him to make Labor Day plans. Let’s see how the U.S. justice system treats those charged with making a coup in this country.

*At this writing, the stories of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash are uncorroborated.

By Michael F. Duggan

There is a town in the Zaporizhzhia oblast to the east of what was the Kakhova Reservoir called Robotyne. It is located on the front at or near the first line of Russian defenses. Over the past several days, a new push by the Ukrainian Ground Forces has been directed toward this town and appear to have gained ground. By some reports, the Ukrainians have captured a part of the town, which lies along vectors toward the crossroads town of Tomak, Melitopal, and the Azov port city of Berdyans’k. Reaching any of these places would be a major Ukraine victory and an initial step in an apparent larger strategy to sever the Russian landbridge.

Notable in this attack is the deployment of the elite Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade, one of the Western-trained and equipped units that has to date been held in reserve. The commitment of this unit and others, like the 46th Airmobile Brigade, suggests that Ukraine is now “all in” and fully committed to the counteroffensive that began in early June. The 82nd is also notable in that it has 14 British Challenger II tanks and a larger number of U.S. Stryker CVs, and Marder IFVs, the German equivalent of the Bradley.

For months this 82nd was celebrated by some U.S. sources as “ridiculously powerful,” and boosted to the point where one wondered if the story was a plant.^1.

Although the latest push may gain additional territory in the flex zone between the lines and may even breach the foremost Russian defensive lines, penetrating all of the Russian lines and defensive zones in a drive to the Sea of Azov would seem to be all but impossible. At least one former U.S. military officer said that the commitment of these units may also signal the final major push of the Ukrainian offensive, that it could be “the beginning of the end” of the military phase of the war.

The question is: what comes next?

Note
1. For example, see, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/05/03/ukraines-82nd-air-assault-brigade-is-ridiculously-powerful-and-could-lead-the-coming-counteroffensive/?sh=7d1ef8811bbf

By Michael F. Duggan

There are necessary wars and unnecessary wars. There are crises that one side or the other wants, and there are crises that, through error or escalation, take on a will of their own.

In 1861 the Confederates forced the Sumpter Crisis: if the U.S. Army resupplied its own forts in the South, there would be war. The Imperial Japanese obviously wanted the crisis initiated by the attacks on Pearl Harbor and U.S. installations in the Philippines. In both instances, events took on a course of their own and proved catastrophic for their instigators. As long as politicians and policymakers control events and seek diplomatic resolutions, there is hope. As Churchill observes “Jaw, jaw, is always better than war, war.” But when decisions become subject to the rapidly-unfolding dictates of the crisis as seen through the lens of national security interests by the military, things may spiral, regardless of whether or not war is necessary.

The exception to this rule is when the military does not not want war.

In the summer of 1914, the politicians and their ministers went back and forth through diplomatic cables, but the two prewar European alliances—the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente—ostensibly designed to create security for the signatories, had in fact created a perfect apparatus for starting a world war. Except for Britain (whose entry in the war was based on national honour and interests like its friendship with France and protecting the Empire), every waring nation could claim self defense.¹ This is because each of the continental belligerents believed that at a certain point they had to mobilize or else fall victim to the mobilization of the enemy. It was an outlook that is reminiscent of the “use or lose” rational for modern first strike nuclear strategy.

If Russia mobilized against Austria in order to protect their slavic ally, the Serbs, Germany would have to mobilize against Russia, causing France to mobilize against Germany. Germany, faced with a two-front war, had to take out France as quickly as possible in the event of a Russian mobilization so that it could turn its efforts to the east. But in order to invade France through a course of least resistance, Germany would have to cross Belgium, thus bringing in Britain. In other words, once policy shifted from the political leaders to the military leaders, events would take on a horrible momentum, a will of their own, and avoiding war would become logistically impossible. When Russia mobilized in response to the Austrian-Hungarian attack on Serbia, the game was on, and the other three major powers of Europe followed suit. Cue: Roses of Picardy.

John Kennedy is supposed to to have read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August the summer before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although academic historians even since have created a cottage industry out of underscoring Tuchman’s errors (or else ignoring her altogether as a non-academic historian), she got some of the basics right, and Kennedy took away the proper lessons. Unlike 1861 and 1941, the leaders of October 1962 were looking for a way out. Unlike 1914, Kennedy was calling the shots for his side and did not let things get to the point where the military completely controlled events. This was also the case with the Bay if Pigs invasion. As we know, war was averted in 1962, and both sides “won.” It was a textbook instance of good judgment, crisis diplomacy, and applied history.

If reports coming from both sides of the Russo-Ukrainian War are accurate, the 2023 Ukrainian offensive has not breached the foremost Russian defensive lines. Ukraine has taken staggering losses, first in the Battle of Bakhmut and then in the offensive launched in early June. The Russians are deeply dug in and likely have hundreds of thousands of reserves in eastern Ukraine and adjacent areas in western Russia. If this is true, then it seems possible that Russia will launch an offensive of its own in the near future.

If this happens, and it then appears that Russian is winning the war, the question becomes: what NATO will do? From what one infers, the true believers on the American side who may be in favor of expanding the war are politicians and policy people. Although I can’t prove it, my sense is that the Pentagon does not want a direct confrontation between NATO (i.e. the United States) and Russia. Unlike some of the military men of 1914 and 1962, they do not want to initiate a sequence that cannot be undone short of a self-destructive, unnecessary war. Like Kennedy, they may realize that when events are locked into a military course of action, they may take on a chaotic will of their own that is beyond human control. The question is whether or not the civilian leadership will heed their warnings.

Note
1. See Hew Strachan, The First World War, 34. See also Michael Howard, The First World War, 33-34.

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.