Morale and Capacity to Fight

Even the dullest ends-ways-means strategerist admits the basic wisdom of balancing one’s capacity to fight with whatever he wants to do and how. There is no separate section on capacity to fight in On Multiform War, but maybe in the 2025 update. It’s efficient for the purpose of discussion to divide war-making capacity into four broad categories – capacity to create lethal mass; capacity to visit that lethal mass on the enemy; capacity to create influential ideas; and capacity to deliver those ideas to the right audiences. I usually don’t count resolve (morale, will, diligence) as a separate category. I prefer to keep that quantity aside as the psychological motor of the other four categories. No big deal, we could make resolve the fifth category, and we could even add deterring the other guy’s capacities as a sixth. Secrecy and spying might be a useful seventh category. With all that as a preface, let’s consider what Arthur Conan Doyle said of British resolve during the Boer War: “The deepest instincts of the nation told it must fight and win, or forever abdicate its position in the world.” Seems applicable. What do I really know about Russian resolve as to the war in Ukraine? Meh. You could easily have better information and insight. My just reading what Putin has to say is a sorely slim slice of input. Still, it seems that for Russia — that is, Russia the nation, the Russians of Russia writ large — losing the war is not an option; whereas for the nascent inchoate nation of Ukraine, losing sooner than later might be the preferred solution. (No, I don’t presume to speak for the Ukrainian nation any more than for the Russian.) What is the NATO level of resolve? It feels sketchy to even lend NATO enough person status as to assign it a level of unified will. As for battlefield morale, some units on the Ukraine side have excellent morale and discipline. Many do not. (Sadly, among the ones that do are some straight up Nazis. Odd that.) Russian battlefield morale has improved generally. So… looking at capacities overall, the Russian side can create more lethal mass and can move that mass. It has excellent spying capacity. Moreover, the Russians appear to have greater resolve at every level. As for ideas and the ability to deliver them to the right audiences, is there really any NATO advantage? What seems to be the NATO plan, execution now impending – is a summer offensive surge against the Russian lines.  It does not appear balanced with capacity, unless the ends are quite limited. The Russians have to see that. They know the means do not exist to kick them out entirely.