The War of Surprises in Ukraine - TomDispatch.com

The War of Surprises in Ukraine - TomDispatch.com Rajan Menon, A War for the Record Books March 28, 2023 Yes, as TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon points out today, the world was surprised first by Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and then by his army's failure to capture Kyiv and obliterate the government of Volodymyr Zelensky. In truth, though, we Americans probably shouldn't have been. After all, it shouldn't have been all that hard to recall a similar American-style scenario -- say, the U.S. military's disastrous attempt to defeat a rebel movement (and North Vietnamese forces) in South Vietnam in the last century or to do something similar in Afghanistan in this one. Either of those might, in retrospect, have been considered American Ukraines. In fact, it almost seems like an unnoticed truth of our moment that the more money a country puts into its military, the less striking the results from its use in the world. Yes, until Ukraine, the Russian military, funded and upgraded by President Vladimir Putin, was thought to be a winner of a force. Today, pressed to the edge of who knows what and having thrown a private mercenary outfit (the Wagner Group) and tens of thousands of barely trained prison convicts into the front lines of death in Ukraine, it looks unimpressive as hell. Strangely enough, however, despite losses of every sort over the last three-quarters of a century, the world's best-funded military (by a country mile) is still considered impressive as hell (and I don't use that word lightly). Explain that as you will. And by the way, the Russians never took the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, but in the American version of their war -- the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- the U.S. military did indeed take Baghdad and little good it did them. Perhaps what we need on this increasingly odd planet of ours is a new assessment of the significance of traditional military power. If only. In that context, let Menon (who has seen the war in Ukraine firsthand) take you through the true strangeness of Vladimir Putin's attempt to invade and conquer his neighbor. Tom