Recently I spoke to a fellow graduate of Virginia Military Institute and he said, “That is not the hill I want to die on.”
Both of us, being former soldiers, understood the portent of those words. There was no hill involved nor any prospect of death, but it meant what he intended it to — this was not the issue upon which to bet the entire enterprise. I agreed with him.
In business, life, relationships, the military, and the social wars that engulf our great national experiment, it is becoming progressively more difficult to sell the idea of the decisive engagement.
George Washington is known for being the most influential Founding Father, but he was also the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, a warrior chieftain, and the first two American Presidents. Sort of awkward the way I said that, but you understand what I mean.
Washington depicted after the battles of Trenton and Princeton by Charles Willson Peale, one of 8 different paintings of G Washington by Peale and his son.
We are only a nation because this brilliant, rugged soldier-statesman-patriot-leader-planter-horseman (by reputation the best horseman in the Colonies) refused to risk his army in decisive engagements with what was then the largest and most accomplished army in the world.
His genius in refusing to risk his entire army — and thus the American Revolution — was nothing short of brilliant. Most of us do not appreciate its sheer brilliance because we are lazy and do not understand our history. [This is a problem for another day.]
We Americans rebelled against the most powerful monarch on the planet who owned the most powerful — in size, armament, and experienced leadership — army and navy further enhanced by the employment of the best mercenaries in the world.
The American Revolution was the boldest rebellion — successful, mind you — against authority in history. It made it to the finish line because of the exquisite timely assistance of the French and the quality of the gerneralship provided by George Washington (who had no middle name), and because able bodied, freedom-seeking men wielded bayonets and painted their tips with British blood.
Las Vegas booked the odds 100,000,000 : 1 against the rebels to vanquish the King, but the Americans turned the trick because of Washington.
A decisive engagement is one in which the warring forces risk their entire army to achieve a decisive outcome. When you risk your entire army, you risk the outcome of the war, and you risk the fate of your nation.
In World War II, when Hitler put together a substantial force at the Battle of the Bulge and took a gamble he could cleave the Allies and drive to the Belgian coast and then seek a negotiated settlement with the Allies, that was a decisive engagement.
He risked it all, but the Americans refused to cough up Bastogne — a critical, strategic crossroads that was essential to the German plan of maneuver — and the glorious paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division and a part of the 10th Armored Division charged a tariff for passage that broke the German attack.
The Allies followed the German army home, destroyed them in detail and depth, and the war in Europe was over in a matter of months.
That is a decisive engagement.
Ahhh, yes, dear reader. I would never stand in the way of your spiritual development.
As an entrepreneur, you must identify what risks will throttle your baby in its cradle and avoid or somehow mitigate those risks. Be patient.
The most underrecognized trait of successful entrepreneurs — not the most important — is patience.
In the face of a decisive engagement, a roll of the dice that risks the fate of the entire enterprise, the wise, patient entrepreneur takes a half step backwards, a deep breath, and a moment more to lower the risk threshold and to fight again another day.
OTOH, that same successful entrepreneur will be presented with opportunities to strike a killing blow and he/she must take that stroke. It is not an easy racket being an entrepreneur.
In the social wars, we must identify those things worth fighting to the death over and fight those battles whilst similarly identifying those that are not worth fighting for because they may bring on a decisive engagement that will wreck the country.
Right now there is enormous confusion as to who actually raises children to adolescence — the family, the schools, the state, religion?
In foreign relations — such as the war in Ukraine — we must know when an entanglement is wandering into the minefield of a decisive engagement and ensure we are approaching it with the appropriate magnitude of risk/reward in our head.
Yes, dear reader, Ukraine.
We are nearing a point in which the Ukrainians — much like the Americans in their Revolution — may be able to strike a blow of such magnitude as to eject the Orcs from their country.
The US/NATO/West seem to be getting a bit wobbly in their support, but I preach now is the time to double down.
I argue it is because we don’t see the magnitude and portent of the engagement and the potential to gain a decisive victory over Putin and his murderous, criminal horde and mercenaries.
The Wagner Group — a truly vile private army which was 10,000 contracted soldiers and 40,000 criminals flushed from Russian jails until the Ukrainians killed half of the contracted soldiers and sixty percent of the ex-cons — is this war’s Hessians.
In general when you have the smaller force, you do avoid the decisive engagement, but there are times when it is the right move.
There is a fight over a town, Bakhmut, formerly home to 70,000 peaceful Ukrainians. It has been flattened.
The Russians/Wagner Group want it. The Ukrainians rebuffed Russian wants and forces are engaged in a hard fight — World War I style, medieval, Dark Ages fight and an extensive and extraordinary exchange of artillery and rockets.
The Ukrainians and their supporters say it is of no strategic significance — not quite in agreement with that view, but play along — and thus if they lose it, no harm, no foul.
The Russians have now worked themselves into a dither that it is a gigantic symbolic objective to be the centerpiece of a new offensive that requires its capture by the one year anniversary of their stupid invasion.
Reminds me of Wm Tecumseh Sherman’s (first American war criminal) Christmas gift of Savannah to President Lincoln during the Civil War.
[Frame of reference: Putin and his substandard leadership and intel team honestly believed the Ukrainians would open their kimono to him and his tanks in three days during which they would motor gaily to Kyiv and ceremoniously hang Voldomar Zelenskyy in the presence of the Ukrainians who would now rally to their Russian pals and exchange shots of Russian vodka. They did not have a Plan B and a year later, the Ukrainians have slaughtered more than 100,000 Orcs and killed more than half of their tanks.]
My bad, sorry. Allow me to get to the bloody point.
1. The fight around Bakhmut is a stupid fight, but the Orcs are providing a useful calculus in that they are throwing troops into that killing maw at a rate that results in an ankle depth of blood and dead Orcs as well as a junkyard of dead armor and artillery.
They have lost as many as 1,000 KIA in a single day and, one has to presume, 2X that number in WIA to Ukrainian losses of 1-200.
2. This is an expensive fight and both sides are investing gobs of all types of ammunition — small arms, mortars, rockets, ATGMs, tank rounds, artillery rounds, missiles.
3. The Russians will not take Bakhmut by the 24th of 2023, the one year anniversary of their invasion. It will not happen.
4. The Russians now believe their special sauce, their secret power, is manpower and they have called up a huge number of former soldiers and conscripts.
Russia is a nation of 140MM +/- before the war whilst Ukraine is a nation of 44MM of which 10MM have fled as refugees to neighboring countries. Manpower favors the Orcs though the male demographic in the appropriate age slice is not wildly encouraging.
Recall that Russia used to routinely annually call up as many as 360,000 conscripts — half that number drafted twice a year — to serve a year before they invaded Ukraine and Putin has admitted to a bungled conscription of 300,000 followed by another 200,000, but the smart money is on the proposition the real number is likely 700,000.
A “former soldier” in the reserve pool is likely to be a man who has no interest in going to Ukraine in the winter time and being shot and left to die in the snow because the Russians do not have a competent system of battlefield medicine.
He served a single year as a conscript and you cannot make a civilian a competent soldier in a year when he is a conscript. Probably not in the former fighting shape he was never in and loves a vodka in the afternoon that begins about 9:30 AM.
5. As many as 1,000,000 Russian men in the zone of eligibility to be conscripted and sent to die in Ukraine have fled the country. Putin has been reluctant to expose the depth of his panic by closing the borders, but he wants to.
6. Whilst all this manpower turmoil is afoot, the Russians also announced they are increasing the size of their regular army by 500,000. I think this will happen, but it amounts to a whiff of toilet water to mask the stench of the Ukraine conscription.
7. The Orcs have lost more soldiers now in a single year than the US lost in Vietnam over a 20-year period. Dead bodies are hard to hide and their mothers get pissed. Pissed off mothers are policy changers.
They have also lost their combat experienced NCOs and company grade officers. This is a shit show.
8. Nobody has been paying attention, but when you evaluate the size of the Russian army pre-Ukraine, the losses in Ukraine, and the current forces in Ukraine, the Russians have committed 95% of their bloody army to this war.
[For those scoring at home, this is reminiscent of Hitler’s gamble at the Bulge, why not?]
Now is the time for the US/NATO/West to make the maximum effort to support the Ukrainians with top shelf gear, gobs of training, and all the ammunition that can be shipped there.
It is not the time for extensive, pimple-on-the-nose-of-the-debutante-on-her-big-night hand wringing. Act.
The moment has come when the Russians will be lured into a decisive engagement and wager their entire army, their nation, and Putin.
If the Ukrainians miss this opportunity, the Russians may jam in enough manpower/cannon fodder to overwhelm the Ukrainians.
A defanged Russia is good for the world. Let’s defang those bastards.
Have a nice church service. Praise the Lord, but for God’s sake pass the God damn ammunition.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car headed to worship with the Methodists. Hello, Methodists.
