Michael Vlahos writes about the American Civil War of the 1860s and makes some interesting comparisons with the civil war in Ukraine today.
1. Bear in mind that Ukraine and Russia are culturally very close and were parts of one country for more than 300 years.
2. Both Civil Wars pitched a poorer region - the southern states which became the Confederacy, or the West Ukrainian Slav remnant of the Polish-Lithuanian empire - against a much richer region, the northern states which were double the South's population and Vlahos makes the point that this is also true of this conflict, that Ukraine has perhaps a third or now less, of Russia's population.
Russia is a much richer state, far more economically and
industrially and technologically developed
3. The Southern States during the Civil War received
political and some logistical and military support from some of the European
powers, notably Great Britain, which however was careful to stay out of the
American Civil War itself. This parallels the way in which the Western Powers
have been supporting Ukraine.
4. Vlahos goes on to make the point that despite the fact
that the southern states were much weaker than the industrialised and more
populous and richer North, the southern states pursued a policy of continuous
attack against the northern states in the hope that some sudden victory would
either cause a collapse of morale and political discipline in the North, or
might induce the South's European allies to come to its rescue.
This parallels very closely the military policy that Ukraine
has been following, over the course of this war and in both cases Michael Vlahos
says that in strict military terms this is an erroneous policy driven by
politics and to some extent by ideology that it would have made better sense
for the South during the American Civil War to have gone on the defensive
rather than expend its energy and resources in offensives against the North, in
the same way that today Ukraine's constant practice is of launching offensives and
going on the attack, which is only depleting its strength and draining its
resources.
5. Perhaps most controversially of all, continuing the point
made above, Michael Vlahos suggests that though on a much shortened time scale,
the cycle that we saw in the American Civil War will repeat itself over the
course of this Civil War. The South eventually collapsed because it exhausted
itself, it no longer had the men and machines necessary to continue the war and
above all its military and political leaders began to lose fath in themselves
and belief in the possibility of victory As did its people.
Eventually that led to the capitulation at the battle of Appomattox
and Vlahos suggests that Ukraine is on the same trajectory. There is, he says,
an accelerated rate of Ukrainian losses on the same sort of scale as
Confederate losses. They haven't yet reached the same levels of losses that the
Confederacy absorbed before it collapsed, but they're starting to approach them.
He also says that with every passing day that this offensive
fails to make progress, and with more losses incurred with more damage to Ukrainian
territory, even those people in Ukraine
who up to now have been passionately supportive of the war are increasingly
having doubts that victory is achievableand that they're starting increasingly
to question the prospect of this and that this ultimately would lead to a
further collapse of morale which will spiral and cause the entire military
system in Ukraine to collapse.
Indeed, if there is a Russian offensive over the next few weeks and the Russians do capture Kupiansk, which Ukraine captured last year in its offensive, if they move on and capture other places like Ezyum and Balakllia, then the effect on morale in Ukraine will be dire. There will be a major operational military crisis and of course Ukraine's Western sponsors will at that point also start to have doubts.
BIBLIO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA1yofpkMg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvYCxK8THbg
https://sonar21.com/michael-vlahos-says-it-all-about-ukraines-loomng-disaster/
This is President Kennedy's peace speech from 1963
https://youtu.be/5ootEGoVKy4?si=ePwuaFw4qfAVtsW6
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