A Vietnam Analogy — March 26, 2022

Updates

April 12, 2022: Putin's War of Attrition. 

Original Post 

My 40,000th posted blog. 

• Lack of support back home.

• Body counts.

• Asymmetrical warfare.
  

• Financial drain.

• Global pariah.

• Unable to win on the battlefield.

Nope, not the Ukraine. Vietnam. 1969.

Observations.

• First order observations. 

• like the North Vietnamese, the Ukrainians have sanctuaries. The biggest sanctuary, of course, is Poland.
• like the North Vietnamese who had Chinese support, the Ukrainians have huge US, NATO, and to a lesser extent, EU support. The support the Ukrainians receive is several magnitudes greater than what the North Vietnamese received from China:
• asymmetrical warfare and technology 
• the enlisted fighting soldier
• Russians never planned for a war that would take more than six weeks
  

• Second order:

• Poland as a sanctuary
• Ukrainians cannot be surrounded and crushed
• guerilla warfare can last for years
• the Russian military can't possibly seal off the entire Polish-Ukraine border
• allies' ability to finance Ukraine dwarfs what Russia can provide
• military allies: this is not their first rodeo
• planning and preparation
• asymmetrical warfare and technology
• military weapons;
• reconnaissance and intelligence
• technical advisors;
• none better than the US
• US military with huge amount of experience
  
• the enlisted fighting soldier
• a war lasting longer than six weeks will be difficult for Russia to sustain
  

Third order: 

• Poland as a sanctuary
• military arms can be replenished ad infinitum
  
• a military ally that has planned and trained for a war with Russia for decades:
• the majority of our linguists speak Russian, Chinese, and Arabic
• "we've" been studying the European maps for decades
• asymmetrical warfare and technology
• Ukraine doesn't need huge batteries of anti-aircraft artillery used in WWII and Vietnam, they have drones, Stingers, and Javelins. And a never-ending supply.
• Russia planned to fight a conventional land war;
• 7,000 tanks look impressive but at the end of the day, in an asymmetrical war, they don't bring much to the fight except a lot of rubble (is there a B-52 analogy during the Vietnam War?)
• reconnaissance and intel
• talk about asymmetry
• I doubt the Russians are getting much actionable intel from the battlefield
• the Ukrainians are getting huge amounts of actionable intel from US reconnaissance a/c and drones that can stay airborne for 72 hours (GlobalHawk)
• technical advisors
• my understanding is that Ukrainians are receiving huge amount of training from "our" special forces
• snipers may be one of many untold stories before this is all over
• enlisted fighting soldier -- US advisors, second to none
• a war lasting longer than six weeks
• Russia does not have the logistics capability to feed their vast army for months
• they may be already running out of basic hygienic supplies for their soldiers
• rations will become an issue if the war lasts more than six weeks; that's why they're called rations.

Other observations:

• Russia may or may not use chemical or biological weapons, but these weapons won't win the war for Russia, and will irreparably damage whatever place Russia might have on the world stage going forward.
• With guerilla warfare, exactly what do you expect to gain with chemical or biological weapons;
• in addition, your own troops would be as vulnerable as the enemy.
  

• That's probably true for nuclear weapons, also.