{"id":1625254,"date":"2022-08-29T08:18:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1625254"},"modified":"2022-08-29T08:20:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:20:42","slug":"can-russia-still-win-in-ukraine-what-history-keeps-telling-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/can-russia-still-win-in-ukraine-what-history-keeps-telling-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Russia Still Win in Ukraine? What History Keeps Telling Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcan-russia-still-win-in-ukraine-what-history-keeps-telling-us%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1625254&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Six months into Russia\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/press.un.org\/en\/2022\/sc14803.doc.htm\">special military operation<\/a>\u201d in Ukraine, talking heads of all manner of political stripes and sympathies have debated ad nauseam about whether Russia can actually win the war.\n<\/p>\n<p>My take as a lifelong student of military history, combined with my life experience in the military, is that it depends on how one defines \u201cwinning.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>It also pays to look at the historical precedence of past wars where the invading country had a clear advantage in manpower, materiel, and technology; I shall look at two such wars wherein Russia was the invader\u2026and one involving the U.S.\n<\/p>\n<p><strong>Russia Should Think About The American Civil War (1861 \u2013 1865)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t have time right now to get into an acrimonious debate about whether the Union Army truly deserved to be labeled the \u201cinvader\u201d or \u201caggressor.\u201d What\u2019s not debatable is the fact that the industrialized North had overwhelming on-paper advantages over the mostly rural South in terms of men, money, and resources.\n<\/p>\n<p>Plus, there was Union Gen. Winfield Scott\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanhistorycentral.com\/entries\/anaconda-plan\/\">Anaconda Plan<\/a>\u201d for choking off Confederate ports, not entirely unlike Russia\u2019s current <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/world\/2022-07-01\/how-break-russias-black-sea-blockade\">blockade of the Black Sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, against all odds, for the first 3.5 years of the American Civil War, the South won <em>most<\/em> \u2013though certainly <em>not<\/em> all \u2014 of the victories.\n<\/p>\n<p>The Southrons had the \u201chomefield advantage\u201d so to speak, interior lines, and more. Moreover, to \u201cwin\u201d the Civil War, the Confederacy simply had to hold out long enough and not lose; by contrast, the Union needed to attain total conquest in order to claim victory. We already know that Putin\u2019s attempt to attain total conquest of Kyiv failed miserably.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_30973\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-30973\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Civil War Era Cannon Firing. Image Credit: Creative Commons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Though we\u2019re admittedly oversimplifying things here, that initial string of Confederate victories was due in large part to the Rebels\u2019 more aggressive and audacious generals like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/guns-of-the-south-harry-turtledove\/1100270420\">Robert E. Lee<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RNZQrQg-MiI\">Stonewall Jackson<\/a>, while the Yankees were accursed by generals with a case of \u201cthe slows\u201d (as Abraham Lincoln himself put it), i.e., men like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Partners-Command-Joseph-Glatthaar\/dp\/0684863634\">George B. McClellan<\/a> who had impressive credentials but were unwilling to bring the total weight of the North\u2019s numerical and industrial powers to bear. (Granted, some Civil War scholars like my personal friend <a href=\"https:\/\/antietamguides.com\/antietam-guides\/antietam-battlefield-guides\/justin-mayhue\/\">Justin Mayhue<\/a> and the late <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Taken-Flood-Confederate-Strategy-Maryland\/dp\/0873386310\">Prof. Joseph L. Harsh<\/a> assert that McClellan has been judged too harshly by history, but that\u2019s a debate for another time &#038; place.)\n<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until the Union promoted generals like Ulysses S. Grant, who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/187704\/born-fighting-by-jim-webb\/\">willing and able to match<\/a> the Southrons\u2019 aggressive fighting style, and, as cruel as this sounds to modern-day Southerners, military leaders like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/american-civil-war\/shermans-march\">William Tecumseh Sherman<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shenandoahatwar.org\/philip-sheridan\">Philip H. Sheridan<\/a> who had no qualms about waging \u201ctotal war\u201d against the South.\n<\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that Abraham Lincoln had two distinct advantages that Vladimir Putin does not: (1) moral high ground and (2) lack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/05\/himars-the-300-mile-range-rocket-system-ukraine-wants-to-fight-russia\/\">foreign intervention on behalf of the adversary<\/a>. Both advantages were secured via at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Bloodiest-Day-Battle-Antietam-Civil\/dp\/0809447401\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JTRZS2ZWFY13&amp;keywords=the+bloodiest+day+antietam&amp;qid=1661542215&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=the+bloodiest+day+antietam%2Cstripbooks%2C60&amp;sr=1-1\">Battle of Antietam<\/a> in September 1862, which was enough of a strategic victory to (1) enable Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation \u2013 thus ennobling the Northern cause \u2013 and convince Britain and France not to come to the South\u2019s aid.\n<\/p>\n<p>Ergo, total conquest, if you\u2019ll pardon the bad Southron-inspired pun, is a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.battlefields.org\/learn\/articles\/lost-cause-definition-and-origins\">Lost Cause<\/a>\u201d for Putin.\n<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Winter War (Russo-Finnish War), 1939-1940<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an example I already touched upon on 21 May 2022 <em>19FortyFive<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/05\/meet-simo-hayha-finlands-white-death-sniper-who-terrorized-the-russian-army\/\">article<\/a> about Finland\u2019s Simo H\u00e4yh\u00e4, the deadliest sniper in history.\n<\/p>\n<p>To reiterate what I stated then, this war began on November 30, 1939 (three months after the beginning of WWII, but before Hitler\u2019s ill-advised invasion of the USSR) with the Soviet invasion of Finland, and t lasted until 13 March 1940.\n<\/p>\n<p>Technically, the Soviets won the war, as the Finns eventually sued for peace and ceded significant territorial concessions to Josef Stalin, but it was very much a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/5-famous-pyrrhic-victories\">Pyrrhic victory<\/a> for Moscow: somewhere between 50,000-15,0000 Soviet troops were killed in action, compared with 25,000 KIA the Finns. Of those Soviet KIAs, at least 542 were inflicted by the aforementioned Mr. H\u00e4yha AKA \u201cThe White Death.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>To elaborate further, accepting an armistice from Moscow cost Finland 11% of its territory, including the country\u2019s second <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lonelyplanet.com\/russia\/vyborg\">city of Vyborg<\/a>. Yet, needless to say, Finland is still very much a free and vibrant country today. And to elaborate further on just how Pyrrhic the victory was for Moscow, we can examine the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/finlands-winter-war-with-the-soviet-union\/30280490.html\">words of Nikita Khrushchev<\/a>: \u201cAll of us \u2014 and Stalin first and foremost \u2014 sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies\u2019 conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>So then, <em>conceivably<\/em>, one could envision <a href=\"https:\/\/www.president.gov.ua\/en\/president\/biografiya\">Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> ceding Luhansk and Donetsk to Putin \u2013 but far less likely to budge on Crimea \u2013 to preserve his country\u2019s remaining blood and treasure while preserving Ukraine\u2019s overall independence and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/08\/what-would-a-ukraine-victory-over-russia-look-like\/\">majority<\/a> of its territorial integrity.\n<\/p>\n<p>As with \u201cgaining\u201d Vyborg in 1940, this would definitely be a Pyrrhic \u201cwin\u201d for Putin.\n<\/p>\n<p><strong>Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan (1979 \u2013 1989)<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<p>Even if Ukraine does concede Donetsk and Luhansk \u2013and, for argument\u2019s sake, even Crimea \u2014 to Russia, that doesn\u2019t guarantee that anti-Moscow elements wouldn\u2019t continue to wage a protracted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/08\/ukraine-is-waging-guerilla-warfare-hell-on-putin\/\">guerrilla war<\/a> in those areas\u2026<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/31982000.html\">as we\u2019re witnessing already<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>The USSR\u2019s experience in Afghanistan AKA \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/opinions\/1988\/04\/22\/the-soviets-vietnam\/5e7fde43-6a0c-46fb-b678-dbb89bcb720b\/\">The Soviets\u2019 Vietnam<\/a>\u201d shows that Russian troops don\u2019t handle insurgencies in hostile foreign countries terribly well. As is the case with the Ukrainians, the Afghan <em>mujahedeen<\/em> resistance fighters were big-time beneficiaries of Western weaponry supplies. (For an exciting fictitious account of the CIA\u2019s material support of the <em>mujahedeen<\/em>, read Ken Follett\u2019s bestselling 1985 novel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/92371.Lie_Down_with_Lions\">Lie Down with Lions<\/a>.) And before any nitpickers out there start carping, yes, I know, Putin eventually did defeat the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thriftbooks.com\/w\/terror-at-beslan-a-russian-tragedy-with-lessons-for-americas-schools_john-giduck\/312550\/#edition=20539832&amp;idiq=34368306\">Chechen insurgency<\/a>, but there\u2019s a difference: Chechnya, its high degree of autonomy notwithstanding, is still Russian sovereign territory.\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_64110\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64110\" class=\"size-large wp-image-64110\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle-1200x675-1.jpg\" alt=\"Russia&#039;s Putin\" width=\"880\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle-1200x675-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Putin-Rifle-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle-768x432-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle-1024x576-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle-600x337-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Putin-Rifle.jpg 1280w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-64110\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Russian President Putin. Image Credit: Russian Federation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b>Russia Meets History:\u00a0<\/b>\n<\/p>\n<p>To sum up, Russia could conceivably still \u201cwin\u201d in Ukraine under sufficiently scaled-back mission parameters and objectives, but other than Moscow\u2019s wounded national pride and bragging rights, what would Putin truly gain from such a costly \u201cvictory?\u201d\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_52169\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-52169\" class=\"size-large wp-image-52169\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks-1200x675-1.jpg\" alt=\"Russia Tanks\" width=\"880\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks-1200x675-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Russia-Tanks-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks-768x432-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks-1024x576-1.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks-600x337-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Russia-Tanks.jpg 1280w\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-52169\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A service member of pro-Russian troops is seen atop a tank during fighting in Ukraine-Russia conflict near the Azovstal steel plant in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine May 5, 2022. Picture taken May 5, 2022. REUTERS\/Alexander Ermochenko<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon).\u00a0Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/dailytorch.com\/2021\/12\/biden-drops-ball-on-electro-magnetic-pulse-security\/\">The Daily Torch<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academicapress.com\/journal\/V3-2\/JICS_Vol3_Is2_Orr_Final.pdf\">The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security<\/a>. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.navalorder.org\">Naval Order of the United States (NOUS)<\/a>. In his spare time, he enjoys shooting, dining out, cigars, Irish and British pubs, travel, USC Trojans college football, and Washington DC professional sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Six months into Russia\u2019s \u201cspecial military operation\u201d in Ukraine, talking heads of all manner of political stripes and sympathies have debated ad nauseam about whether Russia can actually win the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1625256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1625256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}