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Size Matters – On A U.S. Ground Intervention In Ukraine
A European financial research company has sent me one of their quarterly research letters. It is a 'contrarian review of political and military ramifications' of the war in Ukraine. It analyzes 'winners and losers' of the war.
It is contrarian only in the sense that it counters the false views of 'western' mainstream media with reality. The losers of the war are all on the 'western' side with the only two winners being the owners of the U.S. defense industry and Russia.
I was sent the courtesy copy because, as the company writes, the discussions at Moon of Alabama were "immensely helpful" in forming their view.
Note to the authors: You are welcome.
I will not quote from the paper as it seems to be a somewhat confidential business product. But I will steal two graphics from it that will help to understand the size of the war in Ukraine and how it will NOT end.
There have been theories that Poland or some U.S. led coalition force would intervene with their troops on the ground in Ukraine to 'kick the Russians out'.
The two graphics though dispel any hope for such an operation.
The following is an operational map of Desert Storm. The U.S. led operation in spring 1991 to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
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It took the U.S. some nine month to assemble a forces of some 700,000 U.S. and 250,000 allied troops with all their equipment. Iraq had an estimated 650,000 troops in the theater. The U.S. first created total air superiority by destroying Iraq's fighter aircraft and air defense forces. With that done it took only 100 hours of ground operation to destroy a third of the Iraqi forces. The rest of the Iraqi army retreated under fire towards Baghdad.
There are some 550,000 Russian troops in and around Ukraine. A hypothetical operation to 'kick Russia out' would thereby have about the same size as Desert Storm. But the geographic dimensions differ drastically.
The following is an operational map of Desert Storm from above overlaid in scale on the map of Ukraine.
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The map was turned to the left by 90 degree. North is to the left, east at the top and Crimea in the south to the right.
Russia occupies some 87,000 square kilometer of Ukraine. The Desert Storm theater around Kuwait was five times smaller.
A hypothetical U.S. coalition of the size of Desert Storm could probably cross the Dnieper and cut of Crimea. But it could do little more than that. The Donetz and Luhansk oblasts and Crimea itself would still be in Russian hands.
But there are many reasons why no such operation will ever be planned and executed.
- The U.S. no longer has a force of the size it committed to Desert Storm. Nor do its allies.
- The U.S. was able to create air superiority in Iraq because it could fly from nearby Saudi airfields and from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. Air superiority in eastern Ukraine could only be achieved with the destruction of long range air-defenses within Russia. The next safe air fields the U.S. could use are in Poland and Romania. No U.S. aircraft carrier will dare to enter the Black Sea. U.S. fighter planes to not have the necessary reach for combat missions in eastern Ukraine.
- The Ukrainian rail system is by now a mess. It is incapable of moving a large force from the west into east Ukraine.
- Any attempt to move a large force through Ukraine would be subject to deep battle interdiction by Russian and Belorussian forces.
- Iraqi equipment was badly maintained and Iraqi forces were barely trained. Russia has a well trained high tech army.
I could go on but you can certainly see the point.
No U.S. ground troops will move into Ukraine. It is ludicrous to think otherwise.
Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA literally built the infrastructure of modern America, including 572,000 miles of rural roads, 67,000 miles of urban streets, 122,000 bridges, 1,000 tunnels, 1,050 fifty airfields, and 4,000 airport buildings. It also constructed 500 water treatment plants, 1,800 pumping stations, 19,700 miles of water mains, 1,500 sewage treatment plants, 24,000 miles of sewers and storm drains, 36,900 schools, 2,552 hospitals, 2,700 firehouses, and nearly 20,000 county, state, and local government buildings ALL WITH UNSKILLED workers.
So when you compare productivity that is what you compare. You compare that output against sitting at home doing nothing because the private sector wouldn’t hire them. You either pay the unemployed to do something or pay them to do nothing.
What happened? Not only did these people develop new skills on the job that could be easily transferred into the private sector. So that the private sector would hire them.Some of these people set up their own businesses and became business leaders. Whilst developing infrastructure of modern day America free from the rentier class. Making America at the time a cheap place to live and do business.
Why of course China is winning who follow this model.
MMT takes the view that monetary policy is largely useless as a stabilisation device, and what is known as the horizontal circuit (“bank money”) should be left to operate as a market rather than being manipulated all the time. Therefore you leave the base rate at the natural rate of 0% and stop artificially trying to hold it above that, particularly stop moving it around.
What that means is that government stops paying banks “welfare on reserves” payments. No Interest on Reserves. No Bond Coupons. Any income banks earn they have to get by discounting collateral in the private economy and charging for that service (aka making loans).
System stabilisation can then be done using the vertical circuit (“central bank money”) which is added and removed as required to commercial bank’s balance sheets and forcibly creates additional bank deposits in the hands of individuals – because bank money is pegged one-to-one to central bank money.
The result is that the bank money system operates within a containment vessel defined by fixed banking policies, not ones that change month to month, and the banking system ebbs and flows within the policy boundaries, with the government’s vertical system countercyclically matching the ebb and flow.
This is where the Job Guarantee sits. The wage is paid with vertical money and matches the ebb and flow of bank money spending countercyclically. But importantly it does the same thing on the production side with labour hours – injecting and removing labour hours countercyclically with private and public sector demand keeping labour hours near constant relative to the working population.
A guaranteed alternative job replaces bank credit manipulation as the stabilisation process. The production system gets a change in output, not a dead loss. You get income in your pocket, not a debt millstone around your neck.
And that’s how you get to true full employment and price stability within an economic system where demand is satisfied. Yet, imperative that you reform the banks.
Posted by: Derek Henry | Jan 31 2023 7:49 utc | 346
Lol b, Hope they have sent you a substantial subscription and donation!!
Glad that there are ‘experts’ paying attention to MoA because this Oasis of Truth seekers through our regular imbibition of clear argument , exposition, lecture and yes ‘voices’ does provide a better understanding of the Human Condition
On the note of the failed again perennial campaign to take Russia, it’s been attempted for centuries now! They have bet the farm on it many times and lost everything every time. Some even twice and idiotically going for a full rubber – their reputation for being thick as mince is well earnt – Poles certainly, dumb Scandies and now the somehow mentally challenged Germans- the French and Italian long since given up, as usual, just the walloons and Dutch and English lions left to wake up. To be fair, I have known a few East Germans who seemed to have their heads screwed on better than their American occupied brethren .
So – whilst Russia plays the game of being extended – ‘Stop please , I am tired, I am spent out, you are surely winning , ouch , puff puff, idontthink I’ll last much longer, your plan is amazing , I was not prepared to go the full 15 rounds ..etc – whilst rope-a-doping like a genius old champion. Having a wink and joke with supporters in his corner. And constantly jabbing deadly punches , gaining more points each round …this rumble in the ukrop jungle is about to destroy the Gardeners into a Collective Waste.
The madness of the centuries will finally end , the masonic idolators and their bred blue bloods will not only fail again but forever.
Their tears of not having control of Russias resources, profits of which they had long booked , borrowed against and spent, out of hubris , means they are left like toddlers having tantrums in the sweet shop, denied even more sugar brain warping.
‘I want it now and I want it for free , it’s MINE, my grandma promised me!’
The populations blinded by cultural media, cinema songstress and super hero fantasies, propaganda and censorship will emerge from our cave of fantasy, blinking and marvelling at how infantilised and deluded we are compared to the majority of Humanity and Civilisation.
All that is left is for the deluded naked masters to realise they are no longer relevant.
Look at them , rolling around on the floor , red faced, snotty, bawling – whilst everyone else stands there watching at the strange entitled behaviour , wondering if the grown adult child has anyone that cares enough to drag them out and send them to bed early for being so horrifingly embarrassingly naughty!
See that noisy fat dishevelled brat? That Bozo the Clown King of ‘Global Britain’, whining about Putin being able to zap him wherever , however far behind the lines , he feels safe from, indulging in wine women and mountains of cocaine? See him whine ? See all the sold out social justice warriors? all the Blair babe turd way clones, the woke trans human boy toys, the dinosaur grandees on their last deluded legs, having only survived so long by inhuman organ stealing, minced baby stem cell slurping and such diabolical practices?
That is the punch drunk Collective Waste tottering. And if they try and pull a fast one by cheating as usual , the Chinese Umpire will step in and fulfill the SCO treaty obligations of mutual self defence as reaffirmed just a year ago BEFORE the start of this match.
Today I will raise a glass to the victory at Stalingrad and the surrender of the Nazis deluded general there.
Urrrrrraaaa!
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 31 2023 12:08 utc | 381
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