Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

 
Also, Russia is not in a “strong” position right now. It made a mistake in 2022 that put it in a very problematic situation. Russia’s military is not as strong as they would have us think:
 
https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/s...ert-storm/
 
Above is an interesting article about the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam’s army back then is said to be the world’s fourth largest military. It operated accordingly with the Soviet military doctrine. It was quite a modern army with the latest Soviet military equipment. Yet the US army that had air superiority + NATO military doctrine + newer technologies dismantled the whole thing within days.
 
And that was in 1991. So how does anyone make the exact same mistake in 2022?
 
Answer: Someone who has no idea about anything and simply delivers to the Russian oligarchs, the Russian mafia or whatever entity is behind the current regime in Russia.
 

The iraqi military was no better the second go around.  It's not so much that they'd failed to observe the change in modern warfare but that there was nothing they could do about it even though they observed it in the worst possible way.  The same is true of russia, which is not the soviet union, and is still relying on soviet era hardware and tactics.  What they need to do, if they wish to continue fighting, is difficult.  Rapidly adopt and roll out new hardware and tactics to turn the tide.  The romans adopted naval boarding during the punic wars.  The british introduced armored warfare in ww1.  The us replicated then perfected blitzkrieg.  Unfortunately for russia, it was the ukranians who made such a move in their current conflict, by fully integrating drones into the battlespace.  

So, yes, the culture around dear leaders is an obstacle for militaries under such systems - but it's not quite as trivial for them as doing this, this way, just because dear leader says so.  If they had other options they'd use them.  There's a ton of institutional inertia in the form of training, leadership, culture, and decades of defense spending, that act as a sort of enemy within.  They have become better at adopting ukranian tactics, though, as their soviet era defense stocks dried up element by element.  Russia might have an edge in wire guided drones right now, for example. Even so, they're still going to do The Thing they've been doing because that's the way their army was built.