How The USA Aided Ukraine Not To Win A War

Hi All,

Here is the second part (expanded) of the piece that I started last week about how the US has misunderstood war, and from that how the US has, regrettably, imposed their flawed vision of war on the Ukrainians with disastrous results.

The New York Times article—which is one of the most detailed and reliable ones I have seen so far, is actually extremely helpful in doing that, so it will be used as a source and as a means of reflection.

The original piece I wrote started with an overview of what can only be called US-Strategic failure. The US has an extraordinary track record since 1945. It has become arguably the greatest battle-winning/war-losing machine in global history. No power has had the global reach and technological dominance and capabilities of the USA since 1945, and yet at the same time, the US has lost most of the wars it has fought—and that includes the two longest and most expensive that it chose to start, The Vietnam War and The War on Terror in Afghanistan.

And arguably the one reason the Ukrainians have not experienced something similar is that intellectually they refused to accept US-dictation about how to fight their war.

Setting The Disastrous Course

One of the reasons the US has consistently lost wars is that it has a battle-centric view of how wars evolve. This is because the US has assembled a military machine that can win any battle it chooses to fight (though the Chinese might be challenging that reality now). Its fascinating, reading the story, how the US tried to impose its vision of war on Ukraine right from the start and how the Ukrainians tried to fight against US dictation.