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On a recent trip to Europe as part of his administration's response to the invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden visited a convention center in Poland. It was serving as a base for troops from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. After sharing a pizza with several of those soldiers, he gave them a little pep talk, suggesting that they "are the finest fighting force in the world and that's not hyperbole." In doing so, he put himself on a rather crowded presidential stage in this century. If anything, he was less effusive about the glories of the American military than either George W. Bush ("the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known") or Barack Obama ("the finest fighting force that the world has ever known"), since he restricted himself to the present moment. Only Donald Trump begged to differ slightly, claiming instead that he would oversee "one of the greatest military build-ups in American history."
One thing is for sure. When it comes to that military and its achievements, presidents tend to react hyperbolically. And in this, they're in good (or do I mean bad?) company. After all, those "finest" soldiers of our time in Poland face at least theoretically an enemy military that Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly considered the finest around. (He, in fact, seems to have mistaken the present Russian military for the Red Army of the Soviet era.)
Today, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, offers a little history of just how Russian leaders have assessed what they've termed "the correlation of forces" in their military campaigns since World War II. Putin is, in fact, just the latest Russian leader who has proved incapable of imagining how a populace defending its homes and homeland could hold off a more powerful military force. It's striking that, in deciding to invade Ukraine, he seems not to have remembered the Afghan War of the 1980s you know, the one that preceded the disastrous American version of the same even though blowback from it left both the Red Army and the Soviet Union in shambles.
As it happens, Joe Biden is hardly the first American president to similarly misevaluate the abilities of the world's "finest fighting force." After all, since World War II, that force has had only a single brief winning war, the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 that, in retrospect, was but an introduction to a hell on Earth for this country in Iraq. Otherwise, the American military, supported financially in a fashion that might be unparalleled in modern history our "defense" budget is now larger than that of the next 11 countries combined and still rising dramatically has either been unable to win (the Korean War, the Global War on Terror) or has simply lost (Vietnam, Afghanistan) all the significant conflicts it's engaged in since World War II. Given the financial resources put into the U.S. military-industrial complex in those years, perhaps that should be considered a record for the ages. With that in mind, let Michael Klare take you through the Russian version of the same. Tom
Understanding "The Correlation of Forces"
Why Russia Fumbled in Ukraine, China Lost Its Way, and America Should Exercise Restraint
In Western military circles, it's common to refer to the "balance of forces" the lineup of tanks, planes, ships, missiles, and battle formations on the opposing sides of any conflict. If one has twice as many combat assets as its opponent and the leadership abilities on each side are approximately equal, it should win. Based on this reasoning, most Western analysts assumed that the Russian army with a seemingly overwhelming advantage in numbers and equipment would quickly overpower Ukrainian forces. Of course, things haven't exactly turned out that way. The Ukrainian military has, in fact, fought the Russians to a near-standstill. The reasons for that will undoubtedly be debated among military theorists for years to come. When they do so, they might begin with Moscow's surprising failure to pay attention to a different military equation the "correlation of forces" originally developed in the former Soviet Union.
That notion differs from the "balance of forces" by placing greater weight on intangible factors. It stipulates that the weaker of two belligerents, measured in conventional terms, can still prevail over the stronger if its military possesses higher morale, stronger support at home, and the backing of important allies. Such a calculation, if conducted in early February, would have concluded that Ukraine's prospects were nowhere near as bad as either Russian or Western analysts generally assumed, while Russia's were far worse. And that should remind us of just how crucial an understanding of the correlation of forces is in such situations, if gross miscalculations and tragedies are to be avoided.
The Concept in Practice Before Ukraine
The notion of the correlation of forces has a long history in military and strategic thinking. Something like it, for example, can be found in the epilogue to Leo Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace. Writing about Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, Tolstoy observed that wars are won not by the superior generalship of charismatic leaders but through the fighting spirit of common soldiers taking up arms against a loathsome enemy.
Such a perspective would later be incorporated into the military doctrine of the Russian Bolsheviks, who sought to calculate not only troop and equipment strength, but also the degree of class consciousness and support from the masses on each side of any potential conflict. Following the 1917 revolution in the midst of World War I, Russian leader Vladimir Lenin argued, for example, against a continuing war with Germany because the correlation of forces wasn't yet right for the waging of "revolutionary war" against the capitalist states (as urged by his compatriot Leon Trotsky). "Summing up the arguments in favor of an immediate revolutionary war," Lenin said, "it must be concluded that such a policy would perhaps respond to the needs of mankind to strive for the beautiful, the spectacular, and the striking, but that it would be totally disregarding the objective correlation of class forces and material factors at the present stage of the socialist revolution already begun."
For Bolsheviks of his era, the correlation of forces was a "scientific" concept, based on an assessment of both material factors (numbers of troops and guns on each side) and qualitative factors (the degree of class consciousness involved). In 1918, for example, Lenin observed that "the poor peasantry in Russia" is not in a position immediately and at the present moment to begin a serious revolutionary war. To ignore this objective correlation of class forces on the present question would be a fatal blunder." Hence, in March 1918, the Russians made a separate peace with the German-led Central Powers, ceding much territory to them and ending their country's role in the world war.
As the Bolshevik Party became an institutionalized dictatorship under Joseph Stalin, the correlation-of-forces concept grew into an article of faith based on a belief in the ultimate victory of socialism over capitalism. During the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras of the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet leaders regularly claimed that world capitalism was in irreversible decline and the socialist camp, augmented by revolutionary regimes in the "Third World," was destined to achieve global supremacy.
Such optimism prevailed until the late 1970s, when the socialist tide in the Third World began to recede. Most significant in this regard was a revolt against the communist government in Afghanistan. When the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party in Kabul came under attack by Islamic insurgents, or mujahideen, Soviet forces invaded and occupied the country. Despite sending ever larger troop contingents there and employing heavy firepower against the mujahideen and their local supporters, the Red Army was finally forced to limp home in defeat in 1989, only to see the Soviet Union itself implode not long after.
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