Explaining The Failure To Properly Assess Russia
Kudos to Andrei Martyanov for highlighting an article I missed — Bad history makes for bad policy on Ukraine — by Robert English. Andrei correctly takes English to task for butchering the statistics regarding the Battle of Kursk. I want to take a deeper dive into Mr. English’s article because he embraces a number of false assumptions about Russia but still manages to come to the correct conclusion about the failure of U.S. and NATO planners to understand the cause of the Ukrainian debacle, which is:
. . . a broader analytical failing that has yet to be acknowledged: flawed and often facile historical analogies led defense planners to underestimate Russia’s resilience.
Okay. There is the benchmark — i.e.,
