Tuesday, April 19, 2022

War: Good for Nothing

 I thought the Russians were going to steamroll Ukraine and accomplish their military goals quickly.

Nope. I was totally wrong.

In fact, it seems like a "modern" military really can't hold territory, even when it's right next door and the opponent is much weaker on paper.

The same thing is happening in Yemen. The super wealthy and well equipped Saudi military can't defeat dirt poor peasant militias.

The US has encountered the same problem repeatedly around the world. The US squandered trillions of dollars on imperial war since the 1960s and has nothing to show for it except a pile of IOUs.

Modern weapons are probably too expensive to use. The USA has blown up mud huts with $1M cruise missiles on several occasions. The Russians have probably already lost billions of dollars worth of equipment, even though they seem to use a less expensive approach to equipping their military than the USA, e.g. using more cheap-off-the-shelf stuff. They probably already did more damage to Ukraine infrastructure than they'd ever recoup in value from that country.

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