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To rephrase/edit a comment I posted here 3 months ago: I think this whole sh*tshow is yet another consequence of Western Europeans generally lacking a perspective on their own continent’s history and acting accordingly. It has been true in almost all cases that the Russian army blunders and stumbles during the initial phase of any war, even regardless of it aggressing or defending, but then shows itself to be capable of gradually learning and adapting even if the final outcome is defeat, as in WW1 for example. See the Brusilov offensive of 1916 in that case, characterized by John Keegan as “the greatest victory seen on any front [of WW1] since the trench lines had been dug on the Aisne two years before” (as quoted in Wikipedia). And there are cases when the important lessons are only learned after the war, such as the war against the Japanese in 1904-5 (which, by the way, wasn’t a cakewalk for the Japanese army by any means). I assume this is the consequence of the intellectual sloth and naïve romanticism that generally characterize the Russian people, the legacy of languishing as slaves for centuries etc., probably the Mongol yoke also has something to do with it, but this is largely beside the point. There are also a few cases when that initial period of incompetence is rather short, like during the naval war against the Ottomans in 1788-91, whom were soundly beaten.
In the case of WW2, the Red Army clearly demonstrated an ability to gradually gain competence, although the results generally appeared only in the final phase of the war. The offensives in the territory of present-day Belarus, Moldova, Romania and Poland in the summer of 1944 or the invasion of Manchuria in 1945 were impressive by anyone’s standards. The Russians are slow to learn maybe, but they do learn. Even the Afghanistan war wasn’t just a series of one blunder after another, just look at the battle for ‘Hill’ 3234 for example.
It seems that Western Europeans apparently have this usual tendency to concentrate on Russian blunders while ignoring every other factor and then assume that winning against them will be easy, and also have a way of convincing their big American brother of this.
I would say it is a result of hyper moralism, a view of history that reads francis fukuyama as a prophet and the dumbing down of politics. The way Russians are being treated is similar to how transphobes were treated during peak wokeness. They can't be acknowledged to have any legitimate concerns, they are motivated by evil and we all have to performatively show our disgust on social media. It becomes impossible to have a sane, rational and calm debate regarding topics when they go BLM 2020.
We can't have a debate regarding war aims, what the security architecture of Europe should look like, whether pax Americana is feasible in a world in which the US is 17% of global GDP or whether Ukraine in NATO even makes sense. Just like we couldn't have a calm, rational debate about what defund the police will actually look like. There is just people performatively screeching slogans.
This has some roots back to the Afghanistan war. We could never have a debate or calm discussion. It couldn't be treated like a normal war because we were fighting "terrorists" and that apparently justified anything. Nobody could explain a path to victory, just slogans. It is amazing that it took five months from 20 years of Afghanistan fiasco to the start of the next forever war. At least after Vietnam there was a long cool down period.
Also it took years for the true scale of lying and issues in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to be revealed by whistle blowers. During those wars the media was far more critical than they are now. Sooner or later there will be a Daniel Ellsberg of Ukraine and most likely we will find out the lies and propaganda for this war were at least as spectacular as they were in the previous wars.
Thermostatically relevant moral cause offers avenue for posturing. Its proximate to "demand for racism outstripping supply" and thus every small incident needs to be emphasized as maximally as possible within the attention window before people stop caring.
No one (in general, not the poster specifically but I won't care either way) cared about Maidan or whateverfuck other than its relevance as an anti-CIA USA bad bulletpoint. The relevance of Russia in 2022 due to the invasion is probably the biggest shot of adrenaline to the Russian national psyche because they are now a feared invading monster in the eyes of the west, not a dying gas station surrounded by rotting tank graveyards. Unlike (most) transphobes, Russians revel in being treated as scary enemies of the west, because they correctly calculate that the west is not interested enough in ruining their comfy lives by pocketbook or nuclear hellfire. Playing up the big bad unstoppable enemy is great especially if the only cost is a bunch of Buryats and Dagestanis that you were hoping to get rid off anyways.
The specific tactical strategic macro historical whateverfuck navelgazing about immutable historical characteristics or other personal pet explanatory theories are just fitting a messy situation onto personal prior beliefs. Russia Ukraine offers a delicious discussion ground for Grand Theory on (military/history/racial character/jews) without consequence, because Ukraine and Russia are irrelevant just as Sudan is irrelevant. A choice is being made to pay attention, and a choice can be made to ignore. Can't do that for Israel because of retarded domestic US politics, can't ignore China because Altman needs to justify his ascension to AI Godhood.
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