One of the more
surprising, at first sight anyway, revelations of the war in Ukraine has been
that the Russian armed forces – whose strength and capability we have been told
to fear for decades – have been shown to be rather less effective in practice
than the military hype suggested. They appear to be slowly turning the war in
their direction anyway, but that owes more to their ability to field – and
willingness to lose – larger numbers of soldiers than their Ukrainian opponents.
The reasons for their poor performance are varied, but the main ones appear to mirror the wider problems of the Russian state apparatus, many of them inherited from the Soviet Union which preceded it. It is riddled with corruption and bribery, and successive purges have ensured that those at the top comply with the wishes of the Kremlin, and fear taking any decision with which the man at the top might disagree. Those lower down in the hierarchy know that they must wait for their orders and not show any undue initiative, initiative being seen as a threat to the established order. It makes for slow, cautious decision-taking and a sclerotic organisation.
It looks
increasingly as though Trump, instead of seeing this as a warning, is seeing it
as a model to be emulated. He is conducting a ruthless purge of any public
servants who might not be fully attuned to his thinking, and since his thinking
changes by the day, or even by the hour, he is creating a situation where
decision-taking becomes increasingly difficult, as people wait to be told what
to do. He is now extending that approach to the armed forces, purging
top generals and replacing them with people
who are loyal only to him, and not to the Constitution as their oath of
allegiance requires. The working
assumption of his
administration seems to be that anyone who isn’t a white male has obviously only
been appointed because of their gender or skin colour, and should therefore be
removed. Those who replace them will be Trump loyalists, waiting to be told
what to do. An autocracy headed by someone who changes his mind suddenly and randomly can end up being even less effective than an autocracy headed by someone ruthless and single-minded, but full of corruption and bribery.
Maybe it’s all part
of a really cunning plan to make war between the US and Russia less likely by
reducing the effectiveness of the US military to the same level as that of
Russia. Other explanations are available.
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