High Kudos! "THE RUSSIAN ART OF WAR: HOW THE WEST LED UKRAINE TO DEFEAT"

New book by Jacques Baud

Some readers will be aware of the publication of this book’s first chapter by The Postil and may already have read its 18 pages. Those who’ve read along at the Gym since last July will see much that’s familiar regarding Russian governance and its approach to problem solving. Perhaps the most important revelation if one can call it that is how Russians see and assess things; specifically, why the SMO is termed that and not a war. I’ve written about this difference several times but Baud digs it straight out of Russian doctrine. Here are the two key paragraphs dealing with that:

These three components correspond to levels of leadership, which translate into leadership structures and the space in which military operations are conducted. For simplicity's sake, let us say that the strategic level ensures the management of the theater of war (Театр Войны) (TV); a geographically vast entity, with its own command and control structures, within which there are one or more strategic directions. The theater of war comprises a set of theaters of military operations (Театр Военных Действий) (TVD), which represent a strategic direction and are the domain of operative action. These various theaters have no predetermined structure and are defined according to the situation. For example, although we commonly speak of the "war in Afghanistan" (1979-1989) or the "war in Syria" (2015-), these countries are considered in Russian terminology as TVDs and not TVs.

The same applies to Ukraine, which Russia sees as a theater of military operations (TVD) and not a theater of war (TV), which explains why the action in Ukraine is designated as a "Special Military Operation" (Специальная Военая Операция—Spetsialaya). A Special Military Operation" (Специальная Военная Операция - Spetsial'naya Voyennaya Operatsiya—SVO, or SMO in English abbreviation) and not a "war."

Russia’s December 2021 security proposals gave away how it saw the issue as it promised to initiate a military technical operation if their proposals were rebuffed as they were for the Big Picture War was already happening. In fact, if one reviews Russian government statements by Lavrov and Putin prior to December 2021, they were already using the term “Hybrid War” and I had already invoked the idea that we were engaged in the Hybrid Third World War.

I don’t want to spoil this read for those who haven’t yet, so I’ll provide no further glimpses other than saying if the opening chapter is any indication of the book’s quality, then I must say the book is well worth getting and reading in whole thing. Here’s the link to The Postil’s page that includes an imbedded pdf of the table of contents and the first chapter in html in case the pdf version isn’t suitable.

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