This article claims Putin fell into the dictators’ trap of surrounding himself with sycophants unwilling to question bad ideas and believing their own BS after seeing it amplified on controlled media. However, this trap may not be limited to dictatorships, because, hrrumph…
And more evidence the convoy has stalled, unable to cross a river.
I fully expect anyone who managed to get 4 stars and command one of the unified combatant commands to be able to analyze and have insightful opinions on this very sort of thing. In other words, you don’t get to where he has been without being an expert strategist, at least to the degree where you can make insightful and accurate comments like he made.
I would imagine we can take his comments to the bank, being from a highly accomplished wartime military commander like they are.
Here’s a contrary view of Petraeus.
This is from a journalist who covered Petraeus for seven years, and calls him a “world-class bullshit artist”. He goes into detail why.
More so than any other leading military figure, Petraeus’ entire philosophy has been based on hiding the truth, on deception, on building a false image. “Perception” is key, he wrote in his 1987 Princeton dissertation: “What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters — more than what actually occurred.”
Yes, it’s not what actually happens that matters — it’s what you can convince the public it thinks happened.
I’m not trying to say that he’s a particularly great general, or that he’s some sort of paragon of virtue.
What I’m saying is that if you end up having four stars on your shoulder and end up the commander of one of the unified combatant commands, you are highly unlikely to be poor at the nuts and bolts of military operations- you will have commanded and been a staff officer at all the levels below you at some point in your career.
What Petraeus said wasn’t really rocket science either- pointing out that the Russians seem unprofessional isn’t new news at all. Nor is his commentary that urban warfare is difficult and bloody, for example. What’s interesting is that we actually have someone who knows what they’re talking about confirming what a lot of others have suspected all along.
I’m not sure that is the meaning of the quote. He is not talking about the public reception but that if the policy makers. The truth is obviously important.
President Trump was not President in 1987. I suspect he did not always have the patience or knowledge to go into fine details about complex events. Probably some people were occasionally put in the position of needing his decision. I would guess they tried to handle this Yes Prime Minister style, giving him three decisions including the one his advisors wanted him to take, as well as two decisions that were less satisfactory but would not be terrible.
How well this worked, if it was tried, I could not say and likely would vary in any case. But not every policy maker wants to hear the truth. Sometimes they want the best decision, or someone else to make the decision, or know how things fit into a larger scheme. As per the Dictator Trap, leaders often are not told the whole truth. Sometimes, not even the partial truth. Sometimes telling the truth is riskier than it should be.
What I also do not know is how similar previous Presidents were to Trump. At least with how much information they wanted, whether they were told the complete truth, whether people tried to get them to pick a specific option they found most palatable - and so forth.
I can hardly believe you’re saying that it’s fine for a general to lie to and manipulate the President, because… the general thinks he knows what’s good for the country so much better than anybody else.
I mean, that worked out so well in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn’t it? 
Do you really want your country to be ruled by unelected generals, rather than a democratic government?
I’m not saying it is fine, I am saying that it happens. Me - I prefer the truth. But not everyone does. A lot of people in executive positions are skillful in massaging the truth. Some punish those who tell them the truth, which is why sycophancy in part exists.
If someone asks you for an opinion and you give three choices, there is going to be one you prefer, even on a subconscious level. Truth is extremely important to me personally. When you tell someone what is going on, you can include every detail. If they do not want to hear every detail but an executive summary, it becomes more difficult to be completely objective.
I remember reading an op-ed by Petraeus around the time of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” pageant that assured us all that the US had won in Iraq. Bush wasn’t the last US President to regret listening to Petraeus.
Given the size of Kyev I think the Russians risk getting flanked in urban warfare if they advance into the city. There’s just such a home-team advantage in knowing the the layout of the city.
Generals have their own agendas and ambitions all the time. Just ask Al Haig.
Presumably, most generals, being human, often want - subconsciously or not:
- To be perceived as knowledgeable and competent
- To be seen as supporting the views of bosses
- To perhaps expand their own role or responsibility
- To funnel resources, prestige and money to their branch of the military or the military in general
- To be seen as a team player
- To keep future options open
- To minimize and justify their mistakes
- To avoid situations which endanger their people, or other non-combatants
- To use resources efficiently
Russia may not be able to take Kiev in the WW2 sense, but they can reduce it to rubble and make it unlivable. If that is what they intended, they will have succeeded.
IMHO (since thankfully I don’t live in Putin’s mind) he felt and was advised that he could take it all fast (wrong), that NATO and the West would accept it (partially wrong), and that once he made examples of the troublemakers everyone would fall into line (wrong).
Having failed at the above, and being quite put out that Ukraine and the West dare interfere, he is quite happy to break all the toys before going home and claiming the win. And Ukraine will probably accept the loss of the breakaway regions and likely at least a decade delay before applying to NATO again (maybe indefinitely, but will likely be ignored once Putin dies/is out of power) as part of a negotiated end of the war.
So the destruction is a feature, not a bug. It will be shown as proof on the domestic side that the valiant army destroyed the dangerous enemies, and then returned in triumph. And it’ll probably be believed, at least on the surface.
The question is if in an effort to return to the prior status quo, if the Western sanctions will remain in place, lifted in part or whole as a condition of the settlement (I think likely), or removed proactively in order to secure petrochem reserves for Europe.
If I had to bet, it would be towards at least a partial lifting in exchange for the settlement, but . . . since Putin’s promises are (as proven in the Ukraine) worthless I don’t think there will be any trust remaining for major western investment in Russian until Putin is gone. And that leaves out all the private parties that will be pursuing claims in various international courts against members of Putin’s government and Russian entities over their losses.
Meantime (back to the OP), I suspect that Putin is going to have his officers and generals ‘explaining’ under extreme rigor, as to how they could fail him this badly. Which is not likely to end well for them or for the troops. Which will make putting said troops into better order for future adventures even more difficult.
So the new status quo is likely to be Ukraine in ruins, with little or no compensation from Russia, and limited support from the West. Europe getting it’s cheap(ish) petrochemicals from Russia, and maybe continuing NATO’s military buildup but at a reduced rate (due to expense), and Russia getting the ruble out of the ‘junk’ range, but being back to entirely dependent upon said petrochemicals for cash and having to develop said resources on their own/with Chinese aid for at least a few years until everyone forgets or gets greedy.
And the Russian people (as always) will get the shaft: loss of prior creature comforts, loss of the illusion of any freedom of choice, and very possibly increased conscription with fundamentally no pay to allow Putin to build the army he feels he deserves.
Unlikely. The Russians remain out of artillery range of Kyiv, and are gradually being pushed back. They have launched a few missiles against Kyiv, but they are now critically short of missiles.
The general is undoubtedly correct about the limitations the Russian military has displayed. In fact, the defects are so glaring that I was insisting they must be deliberate not long ago. Their tactical failure is obvious and must be quite a disappointment to Putin himself (who is more strategic than tactical in my view).
Putin is going to fail and fail very publicly despite his immense efforts at controlling all information and framing the conflict as a “Special Military Operation” of righteous valor. But every action the Russian military takes contradicts that framing and I have been puzzling over what IS motivating him and nothing seems to make sense to me.
In theory, I more or less agree with the following with some speculation on the side:
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K:
To explain my thought, I am afraid I have to resort to relating a personal experience and then letting the parallels demonstrate themselves.
When I was a young guy and had worked at my very first Summer job for a few seasons, I was finally accepted enough to be invited to socialize with the older guys who were the demigods within our company. I was very young and at the time not cut out for the rough and tumble construction sites of residential carpentry. I felt a bit like the provincial D’Artagnan on the staircase of M. de Treville, leader of the Musketeers with one exception-- I never believed that I would ever ascend to the great heights and magnificent glory of my co-workers. All of them were bigger and tougher and smarter and more capable than I was, weighed as much as a hundred pounds more than I did, and some were a full foot taller than I was. About half were Vietnam vets and the others had badges of their badassery also. A couple were former scholarship athletes, one was a former Golden Gloves boxer, two had “rolled with The Dozen” which meant they had been genuine bad ass bikers. All of them had been arrested at one point or another and many of them had done more than an overnight in jail.
So one evening after leaving an establishment, they decided to stop at a convenience store for some more beer to finish the night. So a souped up and lifted Jeep, a pickup truck, and a muscle car pulled into a Circle K adjacent to a Jack in the Box restaurant. There was a fight in progress in the parking lot the two establishments shared. While I sat wide eyed and afraid in the back of the open Jeep clutching onto the roll bar, the demigods strolled over to break up the fight. Honest to God, there was a one armed man beating the living shit out of a loud drunk. It had gone to ground, and the drunk was trying to get free of the guy on top of him raining a series of rights on all parts of his sorry hide.
The biker and the boxer dragged the drunk over by the Jeep while the others dragged the one armed man in the opposite direction. Despite their disdain for parking lot brawlers, the guys were trying to calm their man and give him some dignity. “Here, wipe that blood off your face . . . you are gonna be okay.” "Doesn’t look too bad, guy with only one arm is twice as strong in that one than most guys are in both of theirs . . . " I found out later the other guys told the guy who had been winning the fight to leave before the cops showed up and he got in trouble; he was also covered in blood. As soon as the other guy started to leave, the drunk found his tongue and was yelling after him “You coward, you better run home before I finish you off!!”
My buddies got the guy to leave and warned him not to even drive by once he left because it would mean trouble for him. Told him they would cover for him with the cops as long as he left for good and didn’t cause anymore trouble. But the guy who was getting his ass kicked felt emboldened I guess and just kept getting mouthier by the moment. “You guys let me go right now or I’ll kick your ass before I finish that guy off!!” Right then I heard the second best line I ever heard in person, in real life. Another young guy who was only a few years older than me and not yet a demigod walked up and said: “Mister, you just got your ass kicked by a one armed man-- don’t eff with these guys.” Then the drunk swung on them both with battle cries and oaths of doom as well as poorly aimed punches and spitting. It was not a wise move. In fact it ended rather poorly for him, but it became a story he could live with in the future.
The moral of this story is that for some people, sometimes it is better to be taken down by a biker gang than to loose to a one armed man. (This really happened, it is a true story even though I believe it makes a pretty good allegory for Russia’s situation right now.)
Putin has been baiting the entire NATO and American structure and it makes no sense. Having his hands full being stalled by Ukraine – why would one want to widen the pool of opponents?
I am now leaning in this direction: Putin is going lose either way. Even if he eventually gets nominal control over Ukraine or portions of it, it will be a very temporary victory that still weakens Russia. While Putin may be an egomaniac, he is not as insane or as selfish as Trump-- he does not want to enrich himself at the cost of his nation, he genuinely cares. He has put himself into a position where he cannot win – BUT, he can lose with something of a silver lining!
Putin needs these few concessions - - - but accepting them from Ukraine would be a bloody insult!! It would be like being beaten up by a one armed man. But if he can go mano a mano with the whole world, and then get those concessions, well that is a different story! Then he can convince himself (and maybe half or more of the Russian population) that he was the righteous actor who protected the Russian speakers “trapped” in Ukraine and he fought the whole damned world to do it!!! The West was systematically encroaching upon our homeland and enslaving our Russian kinsmen . . . but I heroically fought them off and rescued the most vulnerable of our people.
Putin is going to involve NATO (but probably not target the US directly- indirect involvement would be best). He has announced that any weapons being supplied to Ukraine is fair game and a legitimate military target. He is going to piss around in Ukraine for a few more weeks at most hoping for a great change in fortune (which does sometimes happen in war), but then he will engage some NATO something or other if his war crimes do not cause an intervention before then. Bombing that airport facility near Poland was a test bubble. He keeps committing war crimes to entice the west to engage and give him the face saving opportunity to saber rattle for a week or so before signing a treaty and getting out of this mess.
This is the only thing that makes any sense to me. He clearly bit off way more than he can chew so now it is about spinning the imminent loss and gaining as much as possible on the way out. Fighting Ukraine to a draw or even a partial win is a horrible loss that cannot be spun. But losing to the might of – essentially everyone except China, is acceptable as long as he gets to keep the eastern regions he had some control over before the invasion. It certainly makes more sense to me than the idea that people who would rather die than surrender will be affected by brutality. That would be like thinking- this dog bites everyone . . . perhaps if I abuse it further it will become more docile. Targeting civilians is just making Ukraine and the rest of the world more resolved-- yet he continues. Why?
Putin may even suggest the sanctions should be lifted so that reparations can be paid to Ukraine (even though once the sanctions are lifted most of the wealth will be corruptly pocketed).
Had to stick in the thought about reparations above but wanted to end with the thought above it so I will repeat it: Targeting civilians is just making Ukraine and the rest of the world more resolved-- yet he continues. Why?
There’s some sense in that, I suppose… except that if he does get more direct NATO involvement, it’ll become flat-out impossible for him to keep the “breakaway” regions. With direct NATO involvement, he’d be lucky to even keep Crimea.
I am sure you are correct.
For what it is worth, I still believe Putin would rather lose a fight against NATO than a fight against Ukraine - - and that is sort of the decision he has left himself with.
Unless he uses nukes, and threatens to destroy the world if he does not get what he wants.
And I would not put that past him. I don’t think he gives a shit if the entire world is destroyed. He’s a sociopathic egomaniac, who knows he’s going to die soon.