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US Military Superiority Is a Propaganda Myth. Russia's Forces Are Actually Far More Capable

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US Military Superiority Is a Propaganda Myth. Russia's Forces Are Actually Far More Capable
When was the last time the US won a war?

  • Unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is.
The Saker

The fact that the US is facing a profound crisis, possibly the worst one in its history, is accepted by most observers, except maybe the most delusional ones. Most Americans definitely know that. In fact, if there is one thing upon which both those who supported Trump and those who hate him with a passion can agree on, it would be that his election is a clear proof of a profound crisis (I would argue that the election of Obama before also had, as one of its main causes, the very same systemic crisis).

When speaking of this crisis, most people will mention the de-industrialization, the drop in real income, the lack of well-paid jobs, healthcare, crime, immigration, pollution, education, and a myriad of other contributing factors. But of all the aspects of the “American dream”, the single most resilient one has been the myth of the US military as “the finest fighting force in history”.

In this new book, Andrei Martyanov not only comprehensively debunks this myth, he explains step by step how this myth was created and why it is collapsing now. This is no small feat, especially in a relatively short book (225 pages) which is very well written and accessible to everyone, not just military specialists.

Martyanov takes a systematic and step-by-step approach: first, he defines military power, then he explains where the myth of US military superiority came from and how the US rewriting of the history of WWII resulted in a complete misunderstanding, especially at the top political levels, of the nature of modern warfare. He then discusses the role ideology and the Cold War played in further exacerbating the detachment of US leaders from reality.

Finally, he demonstrates how a combination of delusional narcissism and outright corruption resulted in a US military capable of wasting truly phenomenal sums of money on “defense” while at the same time resulting in an actual force unable to win a war against anything but a weak and defenseless enemy.

That is not to say that the US military has not fought in many wars and won. It did, but in the words of Martyanov:

Surely when America fought against a third-rate adversary it was possible to rain death from the skies, and then roll over its forces, if any remained by that time, with very little difficulty and casualties. That will work in the future too against that type of adversary—similar in size and flimsiness of Iraqi Forces circa 2003. But Ledeen’s Doctrine had one major flaw—one adult cannot continue to go around the sandbox constantly fighting children and pretend to be good at fighting adults.

The main problem for the US today is that there are very few of those third-rate adversaries left out there and that those who the US is trying to bring to submission now are either near-peer or even peer adversaries. Martyanov specifically lists the factors which make that kind of adversary so different from those the US fought in the past:
  1. Modern adversaries have command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities equal to or better than the US ones.
  2. Modern adversaries have electronic warfare capabilities equal to or better than the US ones
  3. Modern adversaries have weapon systems equal to or better than the US ones.
  4. Modern adversaries have air defenses which greatly limit the effectiveness of US airpower.
  5. Modern adversaries have long-range subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles which present a huge threat to the USN, bases, staging areas and even the entire US mainland.
In the book, all these points are substantiated with numerous and specific examples which I am not repeating here for the sake of brevity.

One could be forgiven for not being aware of any of these facts, at least if one considers the kind of nonsense written by the US corporate media or, for that matter, by the so-called “experts” (another interesting topic Martyanov discusses in some detail). Still, one can live in an imaginary world only as long as reality does not come crashing in, be it in the form of criminally overpriced and useless weapon systems or in the form of painful military defeats.

The current hysteria about Russia as the Evil Mordor which is the culprit for everything and anything bad (real or imaginary) happening to the US is mostly due to the fact that Russia, in total contradiction to all the “expert” opinions, not only did not crash or turn into a “gas station masquerading as a country” with her economy “in tatters”, but succeeded in developing a military which, for a small fraction of the US military budget, whose armed forces are in reality far more capable than the US forces.

I realize that this last statement is quite literally “unthinkable” for many Americans and I submit that the very fact that this is so literally unthinkable greatly contributed to making this possible in the first place: when you are so damn sure that by some kind of miracle of history, or God’s will, or Manifest Destiny or any other supernatural reason, you are inherently and by definition superior and generally “better” than everybody else you are putting yourself in great danger of being defeated. This is as true for Israel as it is for the US.

I would also add that in the course of the West’s history this “crashing in of reality” in the comfy world of narcissistic delusion often came in the form of a Russian soldier defeating the putatively much superior master race of the day (from the Crusaders to the Nazis). Hence the loathing which western ruling elites always had for everything Russian.

In this book, Martyanov explains why, in spite of the absolutely catastrophic 1990s, the Russians succeeded in developing a modern and highly capable combat force in a record time.

There are two main reasons for this: first, unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is.

This latest argument might look circular, but it is not: Russians are all acutely aware of what war really means and, crucially, they are actually willing to make personal sacrifices to either avoid or, at least, win wars. In contrast, Americans have no experience of real warfare (that is warfare in defense of their own land, family and friends) at all. For Americans warfare is killing the other guy in his own country, preferably from afar or above, while making a ton of money in the process. For Russians, warfare is simply about surviving at any and all cost. The difference couldn’t be greater.

The difference in weapons systems acquisition is also simple: since US wars never really put the people of the US at risk, the consequences of developing under-performing weapons systems were never catastrophic. The profits made, however, were immense. Hence the kind of criminally overpriced and useless weapons system like the F-35, the Littoral Combat Ship or, of course, the fantastically expensive and no less fantastically vulnerable aircraft carriers.

The Russian force planners had very different priorities: not only did they fully realize that the failure to produce an excellently performing weapons system could result in their country being devastated and occupied (not to mention their families and themselves either enslaved or killed), they also realized that they could never match the Pentagon in terms of spending. So what they did was to design comparatively much cheaper weapons systems which could destroy or render useless the output of the multi-trillion dollar US military-industrial complex. This is how Russian missiles made the entire US ABM program and the US carrier-centric Navy pretty much obsolete as well as how Russian air defenses turned putatively “invisible” US aircraft into targets or how Russian diesel-electric submarines are threatening US nuclear attack subs. All that at a tiny fraction of what the US taxpayer spends on “defense”. Here again, Martyanov gives plenty of detailed examples.

Martyanov’s book will deeply irritate and even outrage those for whom the US narcissistic culture of axiomatic superiority has become an integral part of their identity.

But for everybody else this book is an absolute must-have because the future of our entire planet is at stake here: the question is not whether the US Empire is collapsing, but what the consequences of this collapse will be for our planet. Right now, the US military has turned into a “hollow force” which simply cannot perform its mission, especially since that mission is, as defined by US politicians, the control of the entire planet.

There is a huge discrepancy between the perceived and the actual capabilities of the US military and the only way to bridge this gap are, of course, nuclear weapons. This is why the last chapter in the book is entitled “The Threat of a Massive American Military Miscalculation”. In this chapter, Martyanov names the real enemy of both the Russian and the American people – the US political elites and, especially, the Neocons: they are destroying the US as a country and they are putting all of mankind at risk of nuclear annihilation.

The above summary does not do justice to Martyanov’s truly seminal book. I can only say that I consider this book as an absolutely indispensable “must read” for every person in the US who loves his/her country and for every person who believes that wars, especially nuclear ones, must be avoided at all costs. Just like many others (I think of Paul Craig Roberts), Martyanov is warning us that “the day of reckoning is upon us” and that the risks of war are very real, even if for most of us such an event is also unthinkable.

Those in the US who consider themselves patriots should read this book with special attention, not only because it correctly identifies the main threat to the US, but also because it explains in detail what circumstances have resulted in the current crisis. Waving (mostly Chinese made) US flags is simply not an option anymore, neither is looking away and pretending that none of this is real.

Martyanov’s book will also be especially interesting to those in the US armed forces who are observing the tremendous decline of US military power from inside. Who better than a former Soviet officer could not only explain, but also understand the mechanisms which have made such a decline possible?

Source: The Unz Review

@Chinese-Dragon , @Raphael , @Cybernetics
 
.
Martyanov specifically lists the factors which make that kind of adversary so different from those the US fought in the past:
  1. Modern adversaries have command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities equal to or better than the US ones.
  2. Modern adversaries have electronic warfare capabilities equal to or better than the US ones
  3. Modern adversaries have weapon systems equal to or better than the US ones.
  4. Modern adversaries have air defenses which greatly limit the effectiveness of US airpower.
  5. Modern adversaries have long-range subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles which present a huge threat to the USN, bases, staging areas and even the entire US mainland.
:rolleyes::disagree:
 
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This article is the actual propaganda.600 billion budget cant compete with 60 billion - sad fact.We want Russia to develop great weapons too because of our history,but Russia has to prioritize due to limited budget - and so far it has focused on Nuclear capability and Air defence mostly and special forces infantry gear.
 
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Russians have mastered the art of propaganda, to sway public opinion and fool the gullible.
 
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I always think back to WW2: at the time, much of the world, and even many Americans themselves, would say "oh, America lacks this, America isn't that, etc". Then America fully enters & mobilizes, all industries & resources devoted to the war effort, and suddenly America is a 2-Theater beast.

The gear America is in right now is hardly top gear I think we can agree, bit soft and lazy. But with the right motivation...
 
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Yes, Russia does have an active ring of anti-aircraft weaponry along its borders and yes we have long ago removed ours. So it's more of a geographic offensive/defensive way of looking at military might.

The US has done a 180 degree view of warfare after the lessons learned during WW2. The idea now is to be perpetually mobilized so as not to be caught in a major defensive situation the OP speaks of.

Russia: Most forces/equipment within its borders.
US: Military spread out across the world.

Russia: Can't easily do large scale global military force projection.
US: Airlift capability routinely shuffles thousands of men/material around the world.


Russia: Active military conscription for ages 18-27
US: none

Russia: 20,000 tanks
US: 6,000

Russia: 6,000 self-propelled artillery
US: 1,000

Russia: 4,000 MLRS
US: 1,000



Russia: 800 fighter aircraft
US: 2,000

Russia: 1,500 transport aircraft
US: 5,000

Russia: 1,200 airports
US: 13,500

Russia: Not much of a Navy..ventures out sporadically
US: Large Navy.. with 10 Large aircraft carriers and 10 large helicopter/VTOL/V22 Assault carriers. At least a few always forward deployed around the world.
 
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Sorry, that whole article is presented in a rather immature and quite obviously a vindictive manner rather than with any objective analyses. When it says something like this: "first, unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is." I just stopped right there, no offense to the OP.

And certainly no knock on Russian military technology, capabilities, innovations, numbers and prowess, to simply categorize the US' military might in a phrase like the above is not only an insult to our intelligence, it's an insult to even to the Russian military that it's being compared in that fashion.
 
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The Description Banner by the Source...Wrote by "Themselves btw"...

"The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media"

Aka Bedroom wannabe journalist... aka I get paid in ETH... aka Got a signed Picture of a Shirtless Putin riding a Circus Photoshopped Bear...

Who's next?
"US Military Superiority Is a Propaganda Myth. China's Forces Are Actually Far More Capable"
 
. . .
US Military Accuses Russia of Jamming Its Troops in Northern Syria

(South Front) Fri, Aug 3, 2018
US troops in Syria are allegedly suffering from Russian jamming devices.

On July 25th, U.S. Army Col. Brian Sullivan spoke to reporters in the US Department of Defense. He said that his troops had encountered a “congested … electronic warfare environment” while fighting in Northeastern Syria during their nine-month deployment between September 2017 and May 2018. His words were: “It presented challenges to us that we were able to successfully contend with, and it gave us an opportunity to operate in an environment that can’t be replicated anywhere at home station, including our combat training centers. It’s a great opportunity for us to operate particularly in the Syrian environment where the Russians are active.”

US troops in Syria are allegedly suffering from Russian jamming devices.

On July 25th, U.S. Army Col. Brian Sullivan spoke to reporters in the US Department of Defense. He said that his troops had encountered a “congested … electronic warfare environment” while fighting in Northeastern Syria during their nine-month deployment between September 2017 and May 2018. His words were: “It presented challenges to us that we were able to successfully contend with, and it gave us an opportunity to operate in an environment that can’t be replicated anywhere at home station, including our combat training centers. It’s a great opportunity for us to operate particularly in the Syrian environment where the Russians are active.”

Sullivan did not disclose how the jamming affected his team. However Foreign Policy cites experts in electronic warfare saying that an attack can impair communications equipment, navigation systems and even aircraft.

Laurie Moe Buckhout, a retired Army colonel who specializes in electronic warfare, quoted by Foreign Policy, said that suddenly communications would stop working or a soldier would be unable to call for fire or radars wouldn’t work, because they’re jammed.

Foreign Policy has cited unnamed officers who have experienced electronic warfare, they claim it’s no less dangerous than conventional attacks. However, it might also have a silver lining, it allows for US troops to have a rare opportunity to experience Russian technology in the battlefield and think of ways to deal with it.

Syria is a battlefield with forces from the US, Russia, Iran and even Israel, as well as the Syrian army. A miscommunication or inadvertent encounter may lead to a full-blown war.

An expert on national security and military issues at the Lexington Institute, Daniel Goure says that Russia’s new electronic warfare systems are sophisticated and can be mounted on large vehicles or aircraft and can affect targets hundreds of miles away.

Earlier this year, on April 10th, it was reported that Russian jamming has seriously affected US drones. The targeted drones were the smaller surveillance ones, and not the larger ones with strike capability like the MQ-1 Predator or the MQ-9 Reaper, as reported by NBC News. Russian electronic warfare systems affected the US drones despite the encryption that is supposed to protect them from such attack.

Analysts, cited by Foreign Policy, claim that Russia is increasingly using Syria as a testing ground for its new electronic weapons. The electronic warfare systems were developed over the past 10-15 years in response to NATO’s dominance in conventional weapons. Russia’s operations in Ukraine offered Moscow a similar chance to test its equipment. Furthermore, the conflict in Syria allows Russia to discover how sophisticated US response is to electronic attacks.



Gen. Raymond Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, at a conference in Florida, on April 24th, said that Syria is “the most aggressive [electronic warfare] environment on the planet.” According to him Russia were testing the US every day by knocking communications and even disabling aircraft built specifically for electronic warfare.



Source: South Front
 
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Thats not true.
US destroyed the middle east with their bombing, they destroyed Afghanistan, their drones are killing inside Pakistan. And still you think their weapons are fake. :o:
 
.
Thats not true.
US destroyed the middle east with their bombing, they destroyed Afghanistan, their drones are killing inside Pakistan. And still you think their weapons are fake. :o:

you judge a winner by the opposition he takes, Otherwise I can fight a boxing match with a chursi and declare myself world champion which is what US has been doing all along and its only because of their economic power
 
.
US Military Superiority Is a Propaganda Myth. Russia's Forces Are Actually Far More Capable
When was the last time the US won a war?

  • Unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is.
The Saker

The fact that the US is facing a profound crisis, possibly the worst one in its history, is accepted by most observers, except maybe the most delusional ones. Most Americans definitely know that. In fact, if there is one thing upon which both those who supported Trump and those who hate him with a passion can agree on, it would be that his election is a clear proof of a profound crisis (I would argue that the election of Obama before also had, as one of its main causes, the very same systemic crisis).

When speaking of this crisis, most people will mention the de-industrialization, the drop in real income, the lack of well-paid jobs, healthcare, crime, immigration, pollution, education, and a myriad of other contributing factors. But of all the aspects of the “American dream”, the single most resilient one has been the myth of the US military as “the finest fighting force in history”.

In this new book, Andrei Martyanov not only comprehensively debunks this myth, he explains step by step how this myth was created and why it is collapsing now. This is no small feat, especially in a relatively short book (225 pages) which is very well written and accessible to everyone, not just military specialists.

Martyanov takes a systematic and step-by-step approach: first, he defines military power, then he explains where the myth of US military superiority came from and how the US rewriting of the history of WWII resulted in a complete misunderstanding, especially at the top political levels, of the nature of modern warfare. He then discusses the role ideology and the Cold War played in further exacerbating the detachment of US leaders from reality.

Finally, he demonstrates how a combination of delusional narcissism and outright corruption resulted in a US military capable of wasting truly phenomenal sums of money on “defense” while at the same time resulting in an actual force unable to win a war against anything but a weak and defenseless enemy.

That is not to say that the US military has not fought in many wars and won. It did, but in the words of Martyanov:

Surely when America fought against a third-rate adversary it was possible to rain death from the skies, and then roll over its forces, if any remained by that time, with very little difficulty and casualties. That will work in the future too against that type of adversary—similar in size and flimsiness of Iraqi Forces circa 2003. But Ledeen’s Doctrine had one major flaw—one adult cannot continue to go around the sandbox constantly fighting children and pretend to be good at fighting adults.

The main problem for the US today is that there are very few of those third-rate adversaries left out there and that those who the US is trying to bring to submission now are either near-peer or even peer adversaries. Martyanov specifically lists the factors which make that kind of adversary so different from those the US fought in the past:
  1. Modern adversaries have command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities equal to or better than the US ones.
  2. Modern adversaries have electronic warfare capabilities equal to or better than the US ones
  3. Modern adversaries have weapon systems equal to or better than the US ones.
  4. Modern adversaries have air defenses which greatly limit the effectiveness of US airpower.
  5. Modern adversaries have long-range subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles which present a huge threat to the USN, bases, staging areas and even the entire US mainland.
In the book, all these points are substantiated with numerous and specific examples which I am not repeating here for the sake of brevity.

One could be forgiven for not being aware of any of these facts, at least if one considers the kind of nonsense written by the US corporate media or, for that matter, by the so-called “experts” (another interesting topic Martyanov discusses in some detail). Still, one can live in an imaginary world only as long as reality does not come crashing in, be it in the form of criminally overpriced and useless weapon systems or in the form of painful military defeats.

The current hysteria about Russia as the Evil Mordor which is the culprit for everything and anything bad (real or imaginary) happening to the US is mostly due to the fact that Russia, in total contradiction to all the “expert” opinions, not only did not crash or turn into a “gas station masquerading as a country” with her economy “in tatters”, but succeeded in developing a military which, for a small fraction of the US military budget, whose armed forces are in reality far more capable than the US forces.

I realize that this last statement is quite literally “unthinkable” for many Americans and I submit that the very fact that this is so literally unthinkable greatly contributed to making this possible in the first place: when you are so damn sure that by some kind of miracle of history, or God’s will, or Manifest Destiny or any other supernatural reason, you are inherently and by definition superior and generally “better” than everybody else you are putting yourself in great danger of being defeated. This is as true for Israel as it is for the US.

I would also add that in the course of the West’s history this “crashing in of reality” in the comfy world of narcissistic delusion often came in the form of a Russian soldier defeating the putatively much superior master race of the day (from the Crusaders to the Nazis). Hence the loathing which western ruling elites always had for everything Russian.

In this book, Martyanov explains why, in spite of the absolutely catastrophic 1990s, the Russians succeeded in developing a modern and highly capable combat force in a record time.

There are two main reasons for this: first, unlike their US counterparts, Russian weapons are designed to kill, not to make money and, second, Russians understand warfare because they understand what war really is.

This latest argument might look circular, but it is not: Russians are all acutely aware of what war really means and, crucially, they are actually willing to make personal sacrifices to either avoid or, at least, win wars. In contrast, Americans have no experience of real warfare (that is warfare in defense of their own land, family and friends) at all. For Americans warfare is killing the other guy in his own country, preferably from afar or above, while making a ton of money in the process. For Russians, warfare is simply about surviving at any and all cost. The difference couldn’t be greater.

The difference in weapons systems acquisition is also simple: since US wars never really put the people of the US at risk, the consequences of developing under-performing weapons systems were never catastrophic. The profits made, however, were immense. Hence the kind of criminally overpriced and useless weapons system like the F-35, the Littoral Combat Ship or, of course, the fantastically expensive and no less fantastically vulnerable aircraft carriers.

The Russian force planners had very different priorities: not only did they fully realize that the failure to produce an excellently performing weapons system could result in their country being devastated and occupied (not to mention their families and themselves either enslaved or killed), they also realized that they could never match the Pentagon in terms of spending. So what they did was to design comparatively much cheaper weapons systems which could destroy or render useless the output of the multi-trillion dollar US military-industrial complex. This is how Russian missiles made the entire US ABM program and the US carrier-centric Navy pretty much obsolete as well as how Russian air defenses turned putatively “invisible” US aircraft into targets or how Russian diesel-electric submarines are threatening US nuclear attack subs. All that at a tiny fraction of what the US taxpayer spends on “defense”. Here again, Martyanov gives plenty of detailed examples.

Martyanov’s book will deeply irritate and even outrage those for whom the US narcissistic culture of axiomatic superiority has become an integral part of their identity.

But for everybody else this book is an absolute must-have because the future of our entire planet is at stake here: the question is not whether the US Empire is collapsing, but what the consequences of this collapse will be for our planet. Right now, the US military has turned into a “hollow force” which simply cannot perform its mission, especially since that mission is, as defined by US politicians, the control of the entire planet.

There is a huge discrepancy between the perceived and the actual capabilities of the US military and the only way to bridge this gap are, of course, nuclear weapons. This is why the last chapter in the book is entitled “The Threat of a Massive American Military Miscalculation”. In this chapter, Martyanov names the real enemy of both the Russian and the American people – the US political elites and, especially, the Neocons: they are destroying the US as a country and they are putting all of mankind at risk of nuclear annihilation.

The above summary does not do justice to Martyanov’s truly seminal book. I can only say that I consider this book as an absolutely indispensable “must read” for every person in the US who loves his/her country and for every person who believes that wars, especially nuclear ones, must be avoided at all costs. Just like many others (I think of Paul Craig Roberts), Martyanov is warning us that “the day of reckoning is upon us” and that the risks of war are very real, even if for most of us such an event is also unthinkable.

Those in the US who consider themselves patriots should read this book with special attention, not only because it correctly identifies the main threat to the US, but also because it explains in detail what circumstances have resulted in the current crisis. Waving (mostly Chinese made) US flags is simply not an option anymore, neither is looking away and pretending that none of this is real.

Martyanov’s book will also be especially interesting to those in the US armed forces who are observing the tremendous decline of US military power from inside. Who better than a former Soviet officer could not only explain, but also understand the mechanisms which have made such a decline possible?

Source: The Unz Review

@Chinese-Dragon , @Raphael , @Cybernetics

what a fine piece of propaganda verbal diarrhea.

the idea of China and/or Russia and/or the US going toe to toe has always been ridiculous to people who live by common sense rather than (fear of) megalomania. to ensure that, they've always been on equal footing when it comes to weaponry and command-and-control abilities.

and Russia is at least as expansionist-driven as the US (Chechnya, eastern-Ukraine, Belarus), the US has merely had a chance to gain ground in eastern Europe and elsewhere, and they chose to lure that ground into NATO. whether or not that's a wise choice remains to be seen, but it's hard to predict the future and it's better to be safe than sorry.
 
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