Sun Tzu Judges Zelenskyy

By Martin Sieff

The Battle of the Somme has been reenacted west of the Dnieper: As I was among the first to warn in these columns, Kiev regime leader Volodymr Zelenskyy, hailed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Joe Biden and their witless entourages as the Heir to Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, that Great Strategic Genius, Leader without Fear, and Invincible Warrior has led his people to a bloodbath without precedent in European history for 88 years since the end of 1945.

Sober US military analysts now put the total Ukrainian battle/combat dead well in excess of 400,000 after only a year and a half of war. At least 70,000 poor Ukrainian boys have had their limbs amputated or destroyed.

The population of Ukraine – a robust 40 million before then-Senator John McCain (now dead) and then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (and now Acting Deputy Secretary of State) Victoria Nuland appeared magically in the streets of Kiev in early 2014 to urge and approve the toppling of a lawful, democratically elected responsible government in a major peaceful European nation – has plunged to around 14 million to 18 million and is shrinking fast. Ukraine is destroyed.

What were the grand strategy and tactics of Zelenskyy that led to this catastrophe? He just listened to the NATO advisers on whom he has always been slavishly, pathetically dependent and launched a direct frontal assault on long-prepared lines of defense that the Russians have known for at least four months was going to come.

The much ballyhooed “Great Ukrainian Counter-Offensive Came at Last. And it was drowned in its own blood. It was the Battle of the Somme all over again. Scores of thousands of dead for no gain or significant cost to the defending forces whatsoever.

Frontal attacks against armed-to-the-hilt, well-prepared defensive positions manned by hardened, veteran professional soldiers who knew the attack was coming and carried out by innocent, un-blooded, untrained naive boys in their scores of thousands was already a Bad Idea at Cold Harbor, Virginia in 1864. Ulysses Grant, the most underrated commander of the US Civil War, recognized that at once, called off the attack and did not repeat it. The Genius Zelenskyy did not know that.

The legendary – but very real – Chinese victorious general, master strategist and tactician Sun Tzu knew all this 2,500 years ago. Sun Tzu’s teachings are simple. Unlike the baleful spells of the brutal and unimaginative German mage Carl von Clausewitz, those who follow Sun Tzu always win their wars. Often, they do not even have to fight them.

Sun Tzu has weighed Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his balances – and found the professional television clown of Kiev wanting.

Sun Tzu teaches – Always attack that which is weak: Avoid that which is strong. Zelenskyy, urged on by his American strategic geniuses Zelenskyy launched his brand, new army – the third that has been assembled, equipped and presented to him by his NATO and US handlers in only a year and a half – against the strongest, best prepared positions of the Russian lines.

No US or NATO force, however well-equipped and well-trained. – has ever broken through multiple lines of Russian land defenses or come up with any convincing tactical doctrine. concentration of weaponry to do so.

Robert E. Lee learned that lesson 160 years ago when against the urgings of his best combat commanders led by General James Longstreet (Lee has always been ridiculously overrated) he threw away the lives of the cream of his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia charging uphill against a well-defended and brilliantly led Union force at Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg. None of the current genius US and NATO four stars “advising” Zelenskyy thought to apply that to Ukraine’s latest counter-offensive.

This of course contradicts Sun Tzu too. No plan or any bad plan for battle ensures defeat before combat begins, he warns. So, it was always in the past. So, it has been again.

For any successful attack, Sun Tzu emphasizes the importance of deception and masrilovka – something the Soviet Red Army and their Russian successors today have always taken rightly seriously. Douglas Haig ignored that simple basic principle when he launched his doomed legions Over the Top at the Somme and in the Mud Hell of Passchendaele, the Third Battle of Ypres a year later. Haig could never learn.Neither could Zelenskyy or his NATO wise men, and least of all the neocon and neoliberal geniuses in the Biden administration, Congress and their eager packs of baying hyenas in the Washington, New York and London mass media.

Everyone knew the Great Attack was coming. Endlessly delayed, endlessly excused, the idea of cancelling it never crossed any of their Genius Minds. The idea that talking about it so much – even at all – in advance might be a Bad Thing, never crossed any of their brilliant brains.In the spring of 1944, Western masrilovka – strategic deception – before D-Day was masterly. Enormous preparations were made and maintained to convince the German High Command and intelligence services that the great invasion would come at the Pas De Calais.

So great was the success of the plan that for nearly two months after more than a million Allied soldiers had already landed in Normandy, Hitler was still convinced the real invasion was going to come at the Pas de Calais.

Most fundamental of all, Sun Tzu always asks: Why are you going to war at all? What is your strategic goal? What do you hope to achieve? Is your goal clearly defined? Are you achieving it? Is it a realistic goal to attempt in the first place?

Once again, Zelenskyy and his US-NATO handlers fail this test outright. Their goal was not any quick knock-out blow, but to draw Russia into a prolonged war and “bleed her dry.” The examples of The Somme, Paschendaele, Verdun and Stalingrad should have taught them that such brutal, open-ended merciless bloodbaths never succeed, never achieve their aims, but only succeed in degrading and eventually destroying the entire armies and militaristic systems that planned them and launched them.

And, of course, in the current conflict, Russia – like General Philippe Petain at Verdun and General Ivan Chuikov at Stalingrad – simply refused to play their mad game.

Belshazzar’s Feast in the Book of Daniel never happened. It’s a Fairy Tale: It was written down 400 years after the events it imagined never took place. But those fateful words have remained burned into the Western Judeo-Christian religious consciousness. And they now express the Judgment of Sun Tzu on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Western “Protectors” and “Friends” who needlessly sacrificed the precious lives of the Ukrainian People: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

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