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Radio War Nerd EP #416 — The War-se, The Warse-er: 2023 Review, Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-26 02:00:33
Imported:
2023-12
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Recorded: December 20, 2023

Part 2 in our review of the worst year since AP (Anno Podcasti). This episode, we take stock of the Ukraine war & some of the happy analysts who got famous off it.

*Memories:

Total time: 1:09:48

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

*

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Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

AG

Omg merry Christmas. I was thinking I wish I could listen to some more. Thank for a great year of shows.

j

Merry Christmas and Happt New Year! Thank you for the great year.

Isaac Suárez

Great episode! It’s hard not to feel sorry for Ukrainians- they’re learning the hard way that NATO is not what it’s cracked up to be. Y’all have noted this before, but one of the most striking unspoken narratives of the war has been how well Russian procurement has adapted to the conflict (with the help of fellow sanction laden “pariahs near collapse” like Iran and North Korea.) This was has been a blow to the smug self confidence of the US and European defense industries- why pay top dollar for a few gold plated stealth planes, when you could buy a much larger arsenal of Shaheds, or variants of existing eastern bloc weapons platforms? So much for the “arsenal of democracy.”

Ander Pierce

Merry Christmas! Thanks for the episode guys

MoldyTolge

The War on the Rocks analysis was well thought out and one of the more emotional recent “media crit” segments. I’ve treated WOTR as a kind of null hypothesis (or the opposite, I didn’t ace stats) for Ukraine and other conflicts but I gotta ask myself if I would’ve acted differently with that incentive structure.

Magic Mikey

It's been obvious to me since early on that Kofman is a terrible analyst because he only ever talked about Russian weaknesses, real or imagined, virtually never considering their strengths. That's critical analysis 101 and it was completely lacking from his public discourse. But as you point out the political space in msm didn't exist for ANYONE to do that (including your good selves btw, esp early on). Even now the western elites still think they can get a draw like a conflict freeze that they can dress up as a victory. That possibility has passed, Russia is going to win this brutal war of attrition because they have more weapons, industrial capacity and population, and the Russian population largely thinks this is an existential issue.

J P 3

On balance I've found Kofman and Lee's analysis to be sufficiently hedged and generally pretty helpful as a guide for understanding the conflict. e.g. over a year ago, I recall hearing them highlighting potential risks to any future offensive associated with the Ukrainian commitment to hold Bakhmut. The sense that I got in the run up to the offensive was that Ukraine was likely to face a slog that was more similar to the grinding warfare in Kherson in the summer/fall of 2022, rather than a collapse of Russian forces as happened Kharkiv counter-offensive in the Fall of 2022. There was zero certainty of success. Kofman has also continually invoked the idea that things with the Russian military generally start "shambolically", but they don't always end that way.

William

In the wonkspace, Dara looks like she could be a light 7, probably a mid-to-strong 5 on the general scale

William

Most western commentators’ talking points seem to be projection instead of actual analysis

William

Dr. Dolan has been making big strides these last few episodes, in his riffing game. I commend the hard work he has been putting into his podcasting

NYCM&AHole

What about spinal tap: jazz odyssey? That was after the airbase

CR

There’s a dogshit WW2 series that was recently added to Netflix, and as usual it is full of Wehrabooism and Soviet invisibility. (BTW, the autofill for Soviet on my phone is straight out of nato). A reviewer on Reddit who actually teaches military history noted how little Germany was mechanized at the start, and certainly not onward as it ran out of gas. However, I am struck by how the Russian armor strategy (as it were to start) seems so similar to American then where however impressive the Leopard or Tiger or whatever was, we had more tanks than they had shells. Since Russia can take out their logistics once it’s inside Ukraine, their ability to deliver and ability to destroy major Ukrainian logistics makes this a pretty dire situation unless somehow Russia stops having the industrial capacity that it does, I don’t see an ending where Ukraine isn’t fucked.

John Hieronymus

I still see Kauffman as one of the most reasonable pro Ukrainian commentators, he always hedged his commentary and was honest about how hard the war would be, he warned his audience that the western militaries were trying to push Ukraine to fight a style of war they were not equipped to fight, he said the material aid provided to Ukraine was inadequate, and that quality of the Ukrainian units was mixed, and finally he did note that on the ground Russians were learning and a very dangerous opponent. I felt like if you listened to Kauffman and RWN you got a balanced perspective tho I agree that RWN was absolutely correct in saying early on that the Russians would adapt both tactically and strategically and bring their material advantages to bear. The whole war is a terrible tragedy and Ukraine is going to have to sue for peace and make territorial concessions that will probably create serious political instability, and maybe even push them into state failure. What a terrible catastrophic waste in every sense and NATO and Putin are mutually responsible for the whole mess.

PostmasterFenian

I'm also a war on the rocks listener. I enjoy Koffman but would definitely agree that he gets shit wrong and the rest of the rand corp hosts and guests on there i find disgusting. Just standard chicken shit warhawk crap with a sheen of DNC democracy talk. i've hate listened to a few of their other podcasts on stuff like turkey, china containment, latin america and they really have some moronic ghouls on from time to time. I do remember Koffman mentioning at some point that if the counteroffensive went like the offensive in Kherson it would be largely a failure- as that was not a successful offensive in terms of the grinding attritional losses the Ukrainians suffered- he seemed to move the goal posts a couple of times though after that and said at one point in august 2023 that "the counteroffensive was going like the Kherson one but was "succesful" in terms of the attritional battle" which just seems entirely absurd. Alot of the foreign policy academics in the restrainer camps of IR theory like Barry R Posen seem to have sensible takes on russias capabilities at this point https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-07-08/ukraines-implausible-theories-victory

Jaime Christley

Recently I absent-mindedly clicked on a YouTube video called "How to Avoid Pickpockets on the Paris Metro", thinking, yeah, whatever.... I like the Bresson film, let's see some Parisian subway tips & hacks for 2023. By and large it was bog-standard stuff, but around 5 minutes in he has this aside where he says "And, you know, you hate to say it but a lot of them are Eastern European types". And this wasn't, to my eyes, a "How to Racist" primer video that I expect you find around various YouTube corners, it was entirely a normie travel vid, very square. Reflecting on it, I can't quite sort out whether that aside would or wouldn't have stuck in my craw 2+ years ago, or it's a "sign of the times" kind of thing. And I'm not trying to cite it as Ukraine/Russia-related; the French have enough of their own deeply etched racism/xenophobic hangups without additional help from me. But once you start noticing the festering racism (anti-Slav or otherwise) under the veneer of polite society we're expected to take on faith, no matter how bad things get, it's tough to stop noticing it.

PostmasterFenian

Great Episode Re ukranian boxers i think looking at uysks history is interesting. He's the current holder of three heavyweight belts- although he started out as a cruiserweight. Much more exciting fighter than the klitskho brothers. I believe he is russian speaking ukranian and before the war he would say stuff in interviews when asked about crimea (where his wife is from) like "lets just say crimea belongs to god." Honestly the dudes a cypher I'd imagine for a lot of russian speaking ukranians in terms of shifting views (he's almost used as a proganda piece at this point for the ukranian armed forces and at one point joined a terretorial unit along with the former lightweight champ loma).

John Waaben

The ending had me laughing out loud- Happy New Year!

SB

This was a good high-level overview of the war. One thing that I didn't hear was an admission that "Russian military is a joke" was the worst assessment RWN made in its 8-year history. Sorry, I'm not bringing it up to somehow gloat. There's nothing in this terrible war to gloat about. It is very sad. I just think that the basic intellectual honesty requires one to admit his major mistakes. If even Kofman can do it. There's nothing to be ashamed of here. Just requires one to step over his ego. The reality is and was, even if not obvious at first, that it's NATO military that is a joke. It cannot fight without air superiority, cannot produce hardware and munitions, has near zero air defense, and is too arrogant to learn from others and to adapt. There were enough people out there who were able to clearly see this a long time ago. Some even before the war has started. For example, Martyanov is probably a quirky guest to handle, but he wrote a series of books years ago that made the case for what we are witnessing now. @moonofalabama is a German ex-tanker with very grounded assessments. I could list others. It's the selection bias of guests that I think prevented RWN from having a realistic view of this war for too long. Some guests were outright frauds like Jack Murphy and Ben Aris (remember him talking unironically about Russians importing washing machines for chips in missiles?), some were just DC hacks like Sam Bendett. Of course, Mark's disdain for the Russian authorities, however misplaced, didn't help. Why am I writing this? Not to say, "told you!" even though some of us tried, unsuccessfully, to point to the flaws in the analysis. Please don't "this is just a podcast" at me either. I guess I'm just curious at this point if John and Mark are capable of it. I'm forever grateful for how much I learned from them over the years. But this issue is like a splinter under my fingernail making it painful to listen to their analysis of other events.

Craig Gardiner

Great to hear the reference to the Falls the classical song

LET ME DELETE MY ACCOUNT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES

America only wants and plans for a fast food war, in and out. Russia doesn't do that. Ukraine could never win this, but think the US would save them!? is just ahistorical insanity.

William

Russia has repeatedly thought their wars would be “in and out” - ‘91 and now Ukraine in ‘22. It wasn’t until surovikin that they started shifting everything over to a “ground and pound”

Ky Tapp

Would love to hear some more thoughts on Yemen. Their population has been through so much. The Houthis Tiktok game is on point, but I’m worried about what the blowback will look like for wider Yemen.

Michael L

Some aspects of this episode were disappointing. For example, Ukraine is less “patriotic” or “nationalist” than “f-wordist.” I was there in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and each time it became more and more palpable. Especially in the east. Even in the 90s I remember distinctly thinking, “what is going on here? There’s something that feels wrong.” I heard seemingly normal people talking about “Jews” and “mongols.” You could hear drunken people shouting in the streets after dark “Ukraine” (Ooo-cry-een-yeh!) and “Slava Ukraini!” Originally it just struck me as strange but then my Ukrainian friends told me what was going on. They didn’t mince words. “Our country is becoming like Nazi Germany!”

JoR

When the war started the Russian military *was* a joke. It adapted, for now, and the it analysis reflects this change. But why don't you wait until the war is finished before taking a victory lap lol. A lot can still happen

JoR

Mark has spoken for 7+ years about Ukraine's history with jews and it's current antisemitism problem. It's disingenuous to pretend they ignore this. It's also disingenuous to think Ukraine is the next nazi Germany or whatever

John Hieronymus

Yeah if you paid attention to the initial invasion it was clear the Russian military was planning on repeating their success in 2014 with Ukrainian forces disintegrating in front of them. Instead they got bogged down especially around Kiev with their airborne assault ending in complete catastrophe that they clearly were not prepared for

Bryan Nicholson

Always enjoy when M+J sit back to analyze the kreigswelt and read the pundit receipt. Best wishes to John, Mark, Brendan, and the RWN friends and family.

SB

>When the war started the Russian military *was* a joke. Instead of repeating propaganda slogans, let's look at the facts. RF entered Ukraine with a force *smaller* than the defending military. Yet within ~a month it destroyed most of it, took a huge swath of territory, and forced Ukrainian leadership to a capitulation in Turkey, which was only derailed by the US's interjection via BoJo. The conditions of the capitulation included Ukraine giving up most of it military hardware. All of this was achieved without a shock-and-awe destruction of civilian infrastructure. If we compare performance of this small contingent with recent operations of comparable scale, I can't think of an analogy. Iraq? Poorly equipped and trained opponent with low morale, 90+% of civilian infrastructure destroyed. Gaza? If RF military was a joke while achieving these results, then all other militaries are not worth considering seriously at all. >But why don't you wait until the war is finished before taking a victory lap lol. What victory lap? I'm only pointing to the vastly inadequate analysis of this war so far, with ideological and personal biases clouding judgement of the indisputable facts on the ground. Who knows what the future holds.

SB

By now it is pretty clear that the goal of forces on the Kiev direction was not to take it but to force a capitulation that nearly happened if not for the US/UK intervention. They pulled out after the Turkey agreement got repudiated.

SB

Khrushev made the mistake of pardoning in 1950s Banderites that were serving 25-year sentences. They returned back to Ukraine in their prime age and poisoned the society for decades. For some reason, they were even allowed to take leadership and teaching positions. By 1980s even the communist leadership of Ukraine was mildly nationalistic and antisemitic. Ukraine had one of the highest standards of living among the Soviet republics behind only Georgia and maybe Armenia. This contributed to the population's understandable desire to break away from the Soviet Union to "stop feeding the rest." Unfortunately, in 1990 the economic collapse in Ukraine was much worse than in the neighboring Russia and Belarus, although not as bad as in Georgia, Armenia, and most Central Asia stans. And the Ukranian economy never truly recovered after that. It's not difficult to imagine how these decades of humiliation greatly contributed to the resentment and simple 'explanations' that moskals were the reason for their poverty. Remember the fights over stealing of transit Russian gas in early 2000s? Poverty and humiliation are a perfect breeding ground for extreme ideologies. No surprise here.

Doug Cartel

"Hamas loves watching Palestinians die" wow sounds like Israelis have something in common with them. Maybe they can bond with each other killing civilians for sport!

Jacob Kreier

I would really like to see John Mearsheimer on RWN.

Patrick Link

Any DRC stuff soon? I didn't hear how the election turned out.

Hans Anders

I don’t think it would work very well. Mearsheimer is very much a big picture guy. I feel like RWN is much more focused. They wouldn’t be on the same wavelength i think

Dan Quayle

Hello my friends, would you kindly direct me towards the episode that features weapons used by Iran and other proxies, thank you.

Mark Ames

Seems you misunderstood what we said. We've been saying from early on that the joke is the NATO/neocon hair-on-fire propaganda line claiming Russia's military was so powerful & scary that it threatened not only to swallow all of Ukraine but also threatened NATOland and central/W Europe, just as soon as it could take the village of Avdiivka or Chasiv Yar -- that was the joke. And it still is a joke and I think 2 years of war have born that out. And yet it was the thinking behind the European political class's policy of essentially committing suicide on Washington's behalf.

SB

The whole of German army is smaller than each of the Ukrainian contingents around Avdeevka and Chasov Yar. For how long do you think Bundeswehr would be able to hold them with the total of maybe (maybe!) a hundred of Leo 2s with no air defense or air force? These number are from 2018, and from what I read they have gotten much worse since - https://www.statista.com/chart/13077/the-german-military-is-woefully-unprepared-for-action/. All things considered, I think it's fair to say that VSU was the strongest, best equipped and trained, most motivated military in all of NATO, likely over all stronger than all of them combined, including the US contingent of mostly folks hoping for a free higher education in the end. British military, anybody? If we add to that an immediate elimination of most western ISR and communication assets in case of conflict with NATO that Russia lets function unobstructed at present, the fight would be even more one-sided. In that sense, western 'leaders' are rightfully scared that they have neither military nor industrial capacity nor morale that could resist a hypothetical Russian invasion. Their societies are also much more fragile than the Ukrainians who've been surviving for the last 40 years. Of course, Russians have zero desire or reason to go there. Although the Baltic statelets may irritate them enough at some point, for example, by trying to block transit to Kaliningrad. On the flip side, it would be curious to see NATO forces storming Bahmut. That wouldn't be even close to Mosul or Raqqa, where jihadists had zero heavy equipment. In other words, "Russian military is a joke" was a terrible take no matter how you spin it. European politicians are committing political suicide not because that are scared of the Russians but because their elites have been thoroughly compromised by the US for decades. Germany's 'green' energy disaster started long before 2022.

CR

Re: your genocide tourism tweet from December 26, that is almost exactly the same as the world building scenes in The Purge movies of rich foreigners traveling to the U.S. to go on safari during Purge Night. The Purge, a famously apolitical non-allegory …

CR

They can both wax poetic on how Lex Friedman is a braindead bullshit artist and establishment mouthpiece.

Ossi Tapio

What are the Russian war aims at this point?

Arielle Curtin

Hi Mark. You said that the war “united the Ukrainians.” Does that include the population of the western part? I mean, the original civil war and anti-Russian sentiment from those citizens of the western part was the origin of this war. Thus, I do not see how it “united” Ukraine.

Mark Ames

If you look at Ukraine polling before Russia's invasion in Feb 2022 and afterwards, there's no doubt the invasion united the country more than any time since 1992. As I talked about, Zelensky's ratings were in the toilet before his crew decided to turn hawkish in early 2021, and were still pretty bad up to the invasion; after that, his ratings soared, the notoriously fractured elites stopped tearing each other apart, the normally fractured and critical media rallied behind Zelensky, etc. It's the opposite of what Putin expected, especially since Ukraine really did fracture over the 2014-15 wars. That unity lasted as long as Ukrainians believed the war was going well and that they were the belle of the NATO ball. Now it's all falling apart. As for the Galician part of Ukraine, it's always been fiercely anti-Russian, so for them everything's been going according to plan since 2014, and a lot of Ukrainians who rejected the western Ukrainian radicalism came around to their way of thinking immediately after Feb 2022 (though that's been waning this year).

Jason Thompson

“It’s just like Flanders was. Not Ned, the place.” y’all are champions. Happy new year!!

Craig Wilson

On the topic of Ukraine's counteroffensive and John's comment along of the lines of "this isn't Kursk and it's not the 1940s"; Personally I've been struck by the similarities. At Kursk the Red Army had time to prepare multiple dense and complex defensive lines for an expected attack. Immense minefields were laid - sited with artillery and AT guns - to halt and channel German attacks, and they even employed mobile mine-laying units to lay fresh minefields directly in front of German advances. In the southern sector of the Kursk salient (where the Germans would eventually make the most progress) the 'technologically superior' Panther tanks' debut near Cherkasskoye (sp.?) was bogged down in mud and mines and blasted by artillery. This somewhat brings to mind the fates of many Challenger 2 tanks in Ukraine's counteroffensive, as described in the podcast. Kursk has been remembered in the general consciousness as a 'tank battle' but in my own estimation the landmine and artillery piece reigned supreme. How could anyone be surprised - or offended(!) - that Russia would employ the same unglamorous but effective defensive measures as was used in 1943? If anything the war in Ukraine this year has been a reminder of how many things have stayed the same in regards to this type of warfare, despite what hopefuls or fantasists may believe about the capabilities of a small number of 'hi-tech' weapons.

brrrskrrrt

Irt. Galicia - always is a bit of a stretch. Pro-Russian sentiment was not uncommon up to / until the end of WW1.