Wen - Deng Fei
Ukraine has once again pushed for a counteroffensive, and since June, Western media have reported on several Ukrainian "counteroffensives" and "big counteroffensives". But the biggest achievement was only the capture of a very large village, the Ukrainian army recovered a total of twelve large and small villages and broke through a Russian defense line in the southeast (at least two more lines behind). The point is that none of the military achievements played a decisive role in bringing about a political settlement, Ukraine's achievements had no political role, and Russia's military had no political influence, including the short-lived one-day mutiny and plane crash of the "chef" of the Wagner Group. To put it bluntly, a military record that does not have a political impact is equal to no record!
The German military scientist Von Clausewiz, the originator of modern Western military science, has a famous saying that has been quoted countless times: War is the continuation of policy with other means. This sentence, like Kirsch's writings, always reads with a sense of obscurity. In fact, in the most popular terms, war cannot be fought for the sake of fighting, it is only a means, a means to achieve some political goal. If this method does not play the expected political role, then no matter how brilliant the war is, it will be meaningless. There is a Western idiom: To win a battle, but to lose a war, which means similar but is sadder. In ancient Roman times, Hannibal Hannibal, the commander of the Carthage Republic of Carthage, the sworn enemy of the Romans, led an army to invade the Italian peninsula where Rome was located, annihilating tens of thousands of main forces of the Roman army more times, which was to win the battle; But the Romans did not give in to this and still held out, and Hannibal could only withdraw his troops and return home. Finally, in a protracted war in which the two countries exhausted their patience and strength, the Romans finally leveled Carthage, and Hannibal was forced to commit suicide, which was a lost war.
It is not to use the Hannibal tragedy to imply or compare either side of Russia and Ukraine, but to remind the ultimate political goal of the war: Ukraine, through the victory of the war, forced the Russian army to lose the will to fight, and finally forced the Russian political scene to change the world, so as to end the war and recover the lost territory; Russia, the original goal of the war was to clear Ukraine of anti-Russian forces and support pro-Russian forces, but now it is clearly not reached. A more realistic political goal at present is to keep the war from endangering the security of the regime.
Next year is almost a globally important election year, the US presidential election officially begins in the second half of the year, and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and the Republican Party have almost irreconcilable different positions on whether to further military aid to Ukraine. But two options that were held almost simultaneously may be even more important: the respective presidential elections in Russia and Ukraine! On March 17, 2024, Russia will hold a vote in the presidential election; On March 31, 2024 (the official polling day refers to the last Sunday of March), Ukraine will hold a vote for the presidential election. Although there is still more than half a year until March next year, the election project cannot be carried out until the last day, at least six months ago. In other words, around October this year, the election atmosphere will emerge one after another. Every year from mid-October to the end of November, it is the "road muddy season" in Eastern Europe, and the autumn rain causes the roads to become generally muddy, whether armored vehicles or infantry walking, they will fall into the "mud", greatly reduce the efficiency of action, and at the same time expose the risk of positioning attacks to the opponent is higher. Therefore, when the "war off-season" comes, it is precisely the time for the two countries to prepare for the next presidential election.
There is a phenomenon that defies the instincts of blows, that is, whether Ukraine, a country that is regarded as relatively democratic by the mainstream media in the West, will make a presidential choice as scheduled under a state of war, it is not clear. According to the latest version of Ukraine's constitution, presidential elections can be suspended while military martial law is imposed. But whether Zelensky will really suspend the election, and whether the political parties in the Ukrainian Rada (that is, the Congress) really support the suspension of the election, depends not so much on the provisions of the constitutional military law, but on how much the Ukrainian people can endure a war that has been attacked for a long time and conscripted soldiers. Although Zelensky has accumulated great political popularity abroad, he does not necessarily enjoy the same prestige as the Western media in the domestic environment of exhaustive conscription and the diversion of women and children to other countries. The US military and NATO countries hope that Ukraine will concentrate Western aid and training forces and weapons to fully break through the Russian defense line, but Zelensky is unwilling to use this kind of human sea tactical concentration of forces to face the Russian army's solid mine array defense line without air supremacy, preferring to subdivide each combat brigade into several tactical detachments, with small groups of troops to test the attack in multiple ways, in order to reduce casualties and break through the Russian defense line. Let's not evaluate the military rationality of this "small force tactic", but it at least reflects one thing: Zelensky is not willing to suffer too many casualties in order to counterattack, whether his reluctance is out of humanitarian concern or out of concern for casualties to provoke popular support and political opposition. This presents a dilemma:
If you make a forced landing in Russia in order to win the war before next year's election, then you must concentrate your forces now, fiercely counterattack, and not spare people's lives, but this will have to bear personal political risks later; But if we slow down the offensive now and wait for the long-lost fighters and other weapons and equipment of the United States and NATO to be in place (pilots need to train for four months to half a year to form effective combat effectiveness when pilots fly fighters), then the war will definitely drag on until next year's election period.
As for Russia, it is counterintuitive that, first, it has never said that it will suspend the presidential election, and there are potential candidates from all parties, and these are all public. Putin himself does not belong to any political party, and of course has the full support of the United Russia party, of which Defense Minister General Igu is the party leader; Second, there was even a retired Marine officer who made it clear at the end of July that he was running for president next year! In other words, at least on paper, Russia's presidential election looks more "democratic" and "open." So how did this war affect Russian politics? In the next issue, we will talk about Russia's so-called "Politburo 2.0" pattern.
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