Scott Ritter Is Wrong
Everyone’s favorite military “expert”, Scott Ritter is much in the news, despite being wrong half the time and continually reversing himself. How we love our “experts”.
Ritter, as you may know, is a former Marine Corps office, who achieved prominence in the prelude to the Iraq War as a weapons inspector. He was right then. Iraq did not have WMD.
In the case of the Ukraine SMO, he has made various predictions, which he now calls "possibilities", since most of what he said would happen, didn’t – or at least not in the way that he said they would
For example, he predicted Russia would "win" the "war" in the first week. That didn’t' happen because it wasn't a "war" as he understood it and the Russians weren’t playing by the American rule book.
As a American military officer, Ritter inevitably thinks “show & awe”, emphasizing the importance of military tech. That doctrine proved futile in Afghanistan where the enemy were simple villagers with WWII weapons.
Marine doctrine additionally emphasizes "maneuver combat", which means mobility on the ground, given air supremacy: this doctrine, partially based on Colonel John Boyd's much more complex philosophy of which is multidimensional encompassing military, economic, moral and mental aspects of strategy in conflict.
Ritter knew that the RF would have air superiority and could restrict the mobility of the UAF from day one. That would have won the “war”, if the Ukraine was being attacked by the US which would just reduce the country to rubble with a million or so civilian casualties.
But for the Russians, such destruction would not be victory. Theirs was a huge police operation, not a war. They did not want to “save” the village but not by destroying it.
In contrast to Ritter, I argued early on that the "war" would have four phases: military-- meaning achieving military superiority, taking somewhere between two weeks and a month, demilitarization, destroying Ukrainian military infrastructure ; denazification -- destroying or capturing Ukrainians neo-Nazis and their social and political infrastructure , and finally consolidation -- a new political map for the Ukraine, with a return to 1922 borders and much of the Ukraine as part of Russia, except perhaps for a isolated rump state in Galicia.
I estimated that this process would be substantially over by May.
Now, it is obvious that this process is more complicated than I thought it would be – and is going to take longer.
The Ukraine may be now defeated but the US is not yet.
Putin's strategy takes into account all the dimensions of multinational conflict -- in essence a world war. He can take his time with the Ukraine: it just one battleground.
US and "allied" funding of weapons for the Ukraine prolongs the conflict but at the same time, it weakens the West economically. Sanctions do not harm Russia—which actually benefits. Rather, sanctions harm the world. In essence, the US’s war is with the world.
In September, you will see a lot of countries, defaulting on their debt in dollars, which will hurt the dollar, already severely damaged, with these countries turning to Eurasia. You will also likely see a world with two economic systems – and the US one collapsing.
Therefore, the Ukraine will be finished -- when the US is.
By de-industrializing, the US retired as a hegemon.
Biden is a fit symbol as leader, a doddering old man who shakes hands with invisible people
You will see a new congress in the Fall. And in their war with the Democrats, the Republicans will take no prisoners. That will signify the end of the US—a divided country with an unworkable political system.
Julian Macfarlane
Canadian media analyst / writer. 40 years in Japan. Has worked for every major Japanese company including Toyota as media advisor the middle east. More than 200 articles on political events and propaganda. Author of "Ageing Young: You're Never Too Old To Rock 'n Roll", a seminal study of evolutionary psychology. https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/
