1/
Alright team, time for a thread. Today we'll be talking about military centers of gravity.

A center of gravity for a nation at war is much like the center of gravity of a person fighting - take it out and they drop.

2/
A center of gravity can be the national capital - particularly in the small but dense nations of Western Europe, if you want to win a war you generally need to march on and seize the enemy's capital city.

Paris and Berlin getting the treatment below lol

3/
However when dealing with larger, less-centralized nations the capital is generally not a meaningful center of gravity. Western European armies have learned this to their great regret when fighting countries like Russia and the United States.

4/
Similarly for some countries even the existence of national territory at all isn't a necessity to continue a war effort. Many countries were conquered completely in WWI and II and their armies continued fighting elsewhere with foreign sponsorship.

5/
In some of these cases even single individuals can be key national centers of gravity - Free France would not have existed without the dominant personality of Charles de Gaulle, for instance - a brigadier general nobody at the start of the war but a titan during and after.

6/
For island nations such as Japan and the UK, naval forces are generally the national center of gravity. Defeat at Midway doomed the Japanese war in the Pacific, and a similar catastrophe would have crushed the UK in any number of its wars.

7/
Nations may have other, subtler centers of gravity. Finance, public opinion, governmental legitimacy.

8/
So what does any of this have to do with Ukraine, you ask? Well, what is the Ukrainian center of gravity?

It's certainly not Kiev, as soon as the Russians threatened it the Ukrainian government fled to Poland and made appearances via green screen to encourage the troops.

9/
Similarly it's absolutely not Zelensky, the man is an actor psyopped into a position of political leadership by oligarchs.

It would be like if Martin Sheen was elected President of the US based on his performance in The West Wing.

10/
Ukrainian ultranationalist organizations like Azov have outsized power in the national government, and we're probably already seeing results from the surrender at Azovstal.

That being said these organizations are hydra-headed and hard to target.

11/
The Ukrainian Army is absolutely a national center of gravity in the sense it allows Ukraine to continue to resist. That being said, the simple fact of the matter is that it's being propped up with weapons and money thanks to the West's "blank check."

12/
Now we're getting somewhere. Because the other fact of the matter is that Ukraine would probably have surrendered months ago without near-unlimited Western support to the point of outright control over its decisionmaking apparatus.

13/
This can be seen in something that repeats every couple of weeks - Zelensky gives a pessimistic interview suggesting he's willing to make significant concessions for peace and then some other Ukrainian official walks it back extremely hard within hours or even minutes.

14/
As such to win in Ukraine, Russia doesn't just need to conquer the country - NATO has made it more than clear that it's willing to sponsor an open-ended guerilla war in that case, which in fact was NATO's original plan.

Russia needs to wear out Ukraine's foreign sponsors.

15/
Which Russia has, by the way, been working on quite aggressively for months now - sky-high gas prices (and accompanying gas-for-rubles schemes), skyrocketing inflation and a brewing food crisis are quickly souring the Western public on the Ukrainian adventure.

16/
Meanwhile the Russians are grinding through NATO's entire military stockpile on extremely favorable lines in eastern Ukraine while minimizing their own casualties.

The West is increasingly out of equipment to send and finger-pointing has already begun.

17/
All of this works directly on the Ukrainian center of gravity in this war - the willingness of NATO and its affiliates worldwide to continue pouring guns and money into a losing war while their domestic economies suffer.
/end

Toktee:
Total crap...

What did you take this morning?


Dried weed or Colorado?

Ferrytech:
bro i think he mix the two

Toktee:
Total crap...


What did you take this morning?



Dried weed or Colorado?

topcatking:


Why not counter him with your facts?

I actually found it an interesting read.

I would like to read your opinion also.

Toktee:

I am not into fiction... formulating things that doesn't happened is not my hobby.


You can go ahead and smook weed maybe you will do same.


Good luck.

topcatking:



Just as I thought. Another Ill mannered idiot, with nothing to offer.

Toktee:
Only an idiot can recognize one...