Synopsis
Time after time the American military has failed to match loftydeclarations about its superiority, producing instead a mediocrerecord of military accomplishments. Starting from the Korean Warthe United States hasn’t won a single war against a technologicallyinferior, but mentally tough enemy.The technological dimension of American “strategy” hascompletely overshadowed any concern with the social, cultural,operational and even tactical requirements of military (andpolitical) conflict. With a new Cold War with Russia emerging, theUnited States enters a new period of geopolitical turbulencecompletely unprepared in any meaningful way—intellectually,economically, militarily or culturally—to face a reality which washidden for the last 70+ years behind the curtain of never-endingChalabi moments and a strategic delusion concerning Russia,whose history the US viewed through a Solzhenitsified caricaturekept alive by a powerful neocon lobby, which even todaydominates US policy makers’ minds.This book• explores the dramatic difference between the Russian andUS approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the wholespectrum of activities from art and the economy, to the respectivenational cultures;• illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military andcultural realities and power are no longer what American “elites”think they are by addressing Russia’s new and elevated capacitiesin the areas of traditional warfare as well as cyberwarfare andspace; and• studies in depth several ways in which the US can simplystumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.Martyanov’s former Soviet military background enables deepinsight into the fundamental issues of warfare and military poweras a function of national power—assessed correctly, not throughthe lens of Wall Street “economic” indices and a FIRE economy,but through the numbers of enclosed technological cycles andculture, much of which has been shaped in Russia by continentalwarfare and which is practically absent in the US.
About the Author
ANDREI MARTYANOV is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog.
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