The neoconservatives have launched their probably last attempt to save their project in Ukraine.
Edward N Luttwak @ELuttwak – 13:42 UTC · Mar 16, 2024
In Ukraine the age of conscription is 27, that is when people have started to work & have children. Naturally not many show up. Now they are discussing lowering the age to 25, still absurd. 18 is the right age, with bodies of growing strength. The Ukraine army is much too small
Following Luttwak's urging, a neocon Senate stooge jumped in:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called on Ukrainian lawmakers Monday to quickly pass a mobilization bill that would make more citizens eligible to be drafted into the military, and he sharply questioned exempting men under 27 from the fight.
Graham called for the swift legislative action — even as U.S. lawmakers remain unable to reach their own consensus on aid for Ukraine — while visiting Kyiv, his first trip to the Ukrainian capital since he abruptly turned against a $60 billion aid package for the country last month.
…
Ukraine is already short of soldiers and ammunition, and Russia is advancing on the battlefield, having recently seized the eastern city of Avdiivka after a Ukrainian retreat. Ukraine’s new mobilization law, which has been under debate for months as the country faces a severe shortage of battle-ready troops, proposes lowering the country’s draft age to 25. Although citizens can voluntarily join the military starting at age 18, and men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving the country under martial law, the draft has until now protected younger men — many of whom are students — from being forcibly mobilized.“I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27,” he told reporters Monday. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.”
“We need more people in the line,” he said.
Hmm – who is this "we" please? Is this meant as a pluralis majestatis or as an admission that the whole war is not about Ukraine but about the selfish aims of some lunatic clique in Washington DC?
Neither Luttwak nor Graham seem to have any knowledge of Ukraine's demography. I pointed out six month ago that there are hardly a significant number of 18 to 25 year old left in Ukraine. If that cohort gets further diminished by senseless dying Ukraine's future will be even more bleak than it is now. Even the British nuts who earlier proposed to draft 18 year old Ukrainians have learned to shut up about it.
The graphic below, taken from Wikipedia's Demographics of Ukraine, presumes that Ukraine has a population of some 40 million:
bigger
But the real population number in the areas under control of the Ukrainian government is by now only about 20 million, half of which are people of retirement age. Drafting the few men of age 18 to 25 will not help to win the war but will, over time, further depopulate Ukraine.
The new mobilization law in Ukraine is slow to move through the parliament. There are many reasonable objections to it. The law will probably pass in April to be signed in May and to be fully enacted by June. It will increase the real mobilization numbers by only a few percentage points.
If those who will be mobilized under it the new law will get the training required they will join the front only by fall. It is unfortunately more likely that they will be immediately send to the front line to die. Either way there is no doubt who will win the fight.
Alex Vershinin of RUSI correctly describes this is as a war of attrition:
Attritional wars require their own ‘Art of War’ and are fought with a ‘force-centric’ approach, unlike wars of manoeuvre which are ‘terrain-focused’. They are rooted in massive industrial capacity to enable the replacement of losses, geographical depth to absorb a series of defeats, and technological conditions that prevent rapid ground movement. In attritional wars, military operations are shaped by a state’s ability to replace losses and generate new formations, not tactical and operational manoeuvres. The side that accepts the attritional nature of war and focuses on destroying enemy forces rather than gaining terrain is most likely to win.
The West is not prepared for this kind of war.
But Russia was prepared for this, just as it had been during previous wars. It is the side which has accepted attritional warfare. It will win.
There are currently more daily losses in the Ukrainian army than newly mobilized men joining it. To surrender to the Russian forces is seen as a real opportunity.
It is high time for Ukraine to give up. Its supporters should urge it to do so.
As Vershinin closes:
Unfortunately, many in the West have a very cavalier attitude that future conflicts will be short and decisive. This is not true for the very reasons outlined above. Even middling global powers have both the geography and the population and industrial resources needed to conduct an attritional war. The thought that any major power would back down in the case of an initial military defeat is wishful thinking at its best. Any conflict between great powers would be viewed by adversary elites as existential and pursued with the full resources available to the state. The resulting war will become attritional and will favour the state which has the economy, doctrine and military structure that is better suited towards this form of conflict.
If the West is serious about a possible great power conflict, it needs to take a hard look at its industrial capacity, mobilisation doctrine and means of waging a protracted war, rather than conducting wargames covering a single month of conflict and hoping that the war will end afterwards. As the Iraq War taught us, hope is not a method.
Make peace you fools.