Sunday, July 17, 2022

The Glass Is Half Empty

I've had a running commentary on the Institute for the Study of War and the conundrum of how they seem to have so many highly credentialed experts to write their Russian campaign assessments who manage to say so little. This is particularly intriguing as we seem to be entering an inflection point in the Russo-Ukraine War, since by all accounts, not only have the highly publicized HIMARS artillery systems reached combat, but all the other Polish Krabs, French Caesars, German Panzerhaublitzen, and US M270 advanced artillery systems as well. If these have begun to be effective, we should be seeing results by now.

The problem is that the ISW has been putting all its money on, first, a Russian offensive pause to regroup, resupply, and rethink, and then second, a renewed resumption of the offensive following this pause. A big problem with this theory, as I've pointed out, has been that reports differ on whether there has actually been such a pause, despite Russian official announcements. (These people all have degrees in Russian studies and speak Russian, yet they seem to believe implicitly in Russian official announcements. I majored neither in German nor Teutonic Studies, and my German won't win me any prizes, but I think I know Germans better than they know Russians.)

As I noted, on July 6, the ISW reported on the initial Russian announcement of an "offensive pause", followed immediately by an objection from the governor of Luhansk that there had been no such thing. They've spent the past ten days basically arguing with the governor of Luhansk, who I've got to assume doesn't need a degree in Russian studies to hear the rumble of artillery. At the same time, the ISW has had almost nothing to say about either the arrival or any observable effect of the new NATO weapons on the battlefield.

This report from July 15 is a recent sample of the ISW line:

Russian forces are likely emerging from their operational pause as of July 15. Russian forces carried out a series of limited ground assaults northwest of Slovyansk, southeast of Siversk, along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, southeast of Bakhmut, and southwest of Donetsk City. These assaults may indicate that Russian forces are attempting to resume their offensive operations in Donbas. The assaults are still small-scale and were largely unsuccessful. If the operational pause is truly over, the Russians will likely continue and expand such assaults in the coming 72 hours.

Contrast this with an equivalent assessment from the UK Ministry of Defence fom July 16: There's no reference to a deliberate "pause", but an observation that "Russian offensive operations remain reduced in scope and scale", whatever the cause. There is also an observation that "Ukrainian defence has been successful in repulsing Russian attacks since Lysychansk was ceded and the Ukrainian defensive line was shortened and straightened." One thing I've noticed in the current phase is that Ukraine has kept much more of a lid on battlefield reports, especially concerning the use and effectiveness of the new NATO weapons, but especially if there has been no deliberate Russian "offensive pause", which I think it's likely there hasn't been, the reduced scope and effectiveness of the Russsian campaign must be attributable to the new weapons.

As of this morning, however, the ISW declares that the "offensive pause" is at an end:

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian operational pause has concluded on July 16, confirming ISW’s July 15 assessment. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Southern Group Commander General of the Army Sergey Surovikin and Central Group Commander Colonel General Alexander Lapin to increase offensive operations on all axes on July 16, but the tempo of the resuming Russian offensive will likely fluctuate or stutter over the coming days.

So what's going to change? The Kremlin says the generals have been ordered to increase operations, but it's likely they won't have much success, at least according to the ISW. How does this differ from the UK MoD assessment, especially if we take out the idea of an "offensive pause"? The situation on the ground continues, but the Kremlin's announcements are irrelevant. This is what the principle of parsimony would suggest, and it's what I would comment on a student paper that took the long way around on this question, but then, that's why I quit grading student papers nearly 50 years ago.

Oddly, it looks like the ISW has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to a similar conclusion. In the next section down, they acknowledge:

Ukrainian HIMARS strikes against Russian ammunition depots, logistics elements, and command and control are likely degrading Russian artillery campaigns.

And indeed, huffing and puffing, they struggle to catch up with recent history:

Ukrainian officials confirmed that American-supplied HIMARS arrived in Ukraine on June 23. Ukrainian operators have been using the HIMARS to strike multiple Russian targets – notably ammunition depots – since June 25. The destruction of these ammunition depots has likely degraded Russian forces’ ability to sustain high volumes of artillery fire along front lines.

Gee, d'ya think? But if they've been blowing up supply depots with HIMARS since June 25, why do you think Russia announced its "operational pause" on July 6? I'm with the UK MoD that sees this as kabuki for the domestic audience. On the other hand, Frederick W Kagan earned a B.A. in Soviet and East European studies and a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet military history, both from Yale University. You can read more at the Wikipedia entry, including the part about his close involvement with the US occupation strategy in Iraq, his close relationship with the squirrely David Petraeus, and the unanswered questions about what he owes defense contractors or what they owe him.

With the Yale degrees and all, is he really as dumb as the ISW assessments he writes make him look, or does he just have an interest in being selectively dumb? By the same token, Kagan himself has Yale advanced degrees, but the other names on the assessments are bright young things with only non-Ivy BAs who look a great deal like the pampered and docile domestic pets who staff the tech firms. I give them credit, they're writing what they're expected to write so they'll have careers inside the Beltway and homes in Bethesda.

But why have the ISW's assessments been so consistently defeatist since the start of the war? Something's going on here.

posted by John Bruce @ July 17, 2022   0 Comments