Ok, so this is far removed from McHenry County or even Illinois politics, but Breitbart has a thoughtful interview with retired tank commander Lt. Col. Danny Davis.
He warns that the Biden Administration has no plan in the Ukraine.
Just sending tanks for which no Ukrainian soldier is trained to use will not change anything militarily on the ground.
It’s not like “…getting this capacity on your video game and poof, you’ve got the full capacity as though you were fully trained, but it just doesn’t work that way in reality…”
Davis points out that tanks are used offensively, but he can find few instances in which the over 1.000 tanks the Ukrainians already have were used in an offense or in a tank-on-tank fight.
But what is occurring in the Ukraine is nothing like a video game.
“…just having NATO tanks does not equal battlefield success…roughly 90 percent of the success is the people who operate the equipment…”
Davis finds on Bloomberg that the Ukraine already had 1,000 tanks, plus 410 donated Soviet-era tanks.
He asks, ““just what an Abrams or Leopard tank is going to do differently than the T72s, the T80s or the T64s that they have right now?”
The article continues,
The former Lt. Col. admitted that “if providing all this equipment we have in the last eight days combined with what’s apparently coming from these other dozen European nations, had a legitimate shot at ending the war and winning it for Ukraine without sparking a nuclear retaliation from Russia, then I’d be willing to say it is worthy.”
However, he explained, “there’s none of that.”
“All you’re doing is making Russia want to go to war,” he warned. “Far from wanting to deter Russia or making them hesitate and count the costs – it’s having the exact opposite effect across the board in Russia.”
“If anything, it makes them want to be more aggressive,” he added. “It makes them absolutely think we cannot lose this and double down on their efforts.”
He added copncerning the Russian people that “it’s a very valid position to say all of NATO is against them.”
Davis pointed out,
“We’re doing everything except physically pulling the trigger..
“We’re providing intelligence. We’re providing ammunition. We’re providing weapons systems [and] repair facilities, literally everything but the pull of the trigger.
He then suggested considering another country doing the same to the United States:
“Imagine during the war with Afghanistan that Russia or China had just completely got behind the Taliban, gave them everything they had, including all their modern gear to kill American soldiers.
“Do you think we would have accepted that?”
Then Davis asked, ““We think that, like Biden said hiding behind a fig leaf today, when he announced this change, that ‘we are not going to war with Russia’ and ‘we’re not a direct participant,’ as though just saying those words means anything to Russia.”
The retired tank man suggested that Russia would look at actions, rather than words.
Davis complains that our country has no plan, no strategy, no way to determine if we are succeeding or not.
“We’re just giving all this stuff, nobody’s talking about, not even ethereal kinds of overarching statements. What is this supposed to accomplish? What is the outcome you see by giving [these tanks]? What are you trying to produce on the ground? How is this going to benefit the United States of America as opposed to not doing it? What are the pros and cons?“
Davis asks what is the “American national security interest here we’re trying to protect is?”
“Not a general statement, but an actual physical, detailed answer: ‘Here’s what we want to accomplish; here’s what we consider success; here’s the objectives we want to accomplish.’ That should be a bare minimum, and it’s not even on the table.”
He explains this is not like fighting in counties like Syria, Yemen or Libya.
They didn’t have nuclear weapons.
And what will the Russian reaction be to providing the tanks?
“I fear that one day, Russia’s going to say, ‘OK, you finally did cross a red line this time and we’re going to take action,’” he said.
The article continues,
“[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov recently said that based on all this stuff about the tanks, they reserve the right to attack any provider of NATO gear, NATO tanks, NATO vehicles, their ammunition – no matter where they are, meaning Poland or in some other NATO country.”
“So they’re now saying that they may attack those things that are directly for war, that are there against their forces wherever they are,” he added.
Davis also warned that Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which dictates that member states consent that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” could lead to an explosion:
There is zero chance – and I mean zero – not point anything, that Russia could ever militarily defeat NATO in a conventional sense. It’s a physical impossibility. They’re just struggling even now to defeat Ukrainians in part of the Donbas, their next-door neighbor, so they certainly couldn’t take on a 30 member NATO military alliance; they know that.
“So the only way they can defend against NATO, is through nuclear weapons, of course,” he explained.
“So if we try to think we’re going to trigger Article 5 and not trigger nuclear war. I mean, we’re just insane and fooling ourselves.”
And while, he claimed, the information he relayed is “just common sense and logic, if you just played stuff through,” Davis argued that “we don’t like to play with reality.”
“We like to play with words,” he said. “In fact, we just create our own reality, whatever we prefer.”
