- Simplicius: In The Spirit Of Russian "Total War" - An exploration of how Russia's warfighting Archived Message
Posted by sashimi
on February 22, 2023, 12:08 pm
|
- doctrine differs from the West 22 February 2023 (quote) An important distinction has been long overdue in the making, as pertains to a topic of much confusion and misinterpretation to a great many people. There's an inherent misconception about the conceptual differences between Soviet/Russian military systems (read: weapons) and those of NATO/Western equivalents. Endless debate has been made not only about which side's weapons are 'better', but the doctrinal purpose behind their respective philosophies. The most inane of these debates revolve around the reductive arguments that Russian weapons are made 'to be mass-produced' and 'cheap', like some chintzy dollar-store toy, while Western weapons are made to be high-value, advanced, but prohibitively expensive, complexes. This is often supported with the usual assortment of examples, like mass-produced Russian tanks in WW2 getting killed in 10:1 ratios against the much more advanced but fewer in number German tanks. And a generous handful of mis-attributed quotes is then sprinkled in to justify this view. Like Stalin's purported "quantity has a quality of its own", etc., not to mention the tired references to Soviet "human wave" tactics. One of the problems with this framing is that it indirectly, and erroneously, aims to suggest that Russian doctrine has always treated soldiers as "cannon fodder", and lives were never important to Russian commanders; so believing that weapons systems were manufactured around that faulty premise is a natural extension of this fallacy. To wit, the belief that Russian weapons are designed with the barbarically callous philosophy that soldiers' lives are expendable. There is a very basic and often eye-opening way of reframing this miscomprehension: Russian weapons are made with the doctrinal purpose and philosophy known as: Total War. Whereas, Western weapons are made for "limited" war. Surprisingly (or not), this is a concept quite alien to the standard Western nous; their countries were never involved in a civilizational, existential war of extinction. That's not to denigrate the acknowledged valor of their own heroes, but simply to aver that, by and large, America's involvement in major conflicts has never been of an "existential" nature, but rather one of opportunity or - if you choose to parse it that way - support for some allied cause. But America itself was never in danger of total annihilation, its people never faced with complete genocide or enslavement. But the Russian people bear an ancestral, hereditarily ingrained remembrance of World War 2, the Great Patriotic War, and the type of existential plight it entailed. There are many things Westerners don't understand about the Russian people (cue rhapsodies of the "great Russian soul", etc.). One of them is the sheer religious fervor with which Russians regard the Great Patriotic War. The war itself can almost be elevated to the status of national religion in the Motherland; or that of the National Myth. The fallen heroes are consecrated as saints, and venerated with a holy reverence - if partly for the reason that Christianity and religion itself were famously curtailed during the Soviet era, leaving the hagiography of the Great War to naturally inscribe itself on the donnée of the Russian soul. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/in-the-spirit-of-russian-total-war |
| Message Thread:
|