COL DOUG MACGREGOR: The Threat of Polish Involvement in Ukraine

“In economics,” wrote John Kenneth Galbraith, “the majority is always wrong.” Galbraith might have added that in military affairs, there is a mountain of historical evidence to suggest that American generals and military analysts are always wrong, too.

When the Spanish Civil War ended in March 1939 after three years of brutal fighting that saw Soviet, German, and Italian equipment, advisors, and troops in heavy combat, senior military leaders in London, Paris, and Washington found surprisingly little evidence to suggest a profound change in warfare. In fact, a U.S. Army officer who later became a major general witnessed the fighting and suggested that, “In Spain, the theories proclaimed for the devastating power of Panzer divisions and other massed armored formations used ‘independently’ are apparently refuted by actual events.” Five months later, events in Poland would repudiate these words, but at the time, his views were widely shared in the West.

The war against Russia in Ukraine is different from the Spanish Civil War. It’s a proxy war designed to employ the full range of American and allied capabilities against Russia in Ukraine. If Americans are beginning to wonder whether Washington’s enormous investment in Ukrainian assistance has colored the opinions of U.S. analysts and their evaluation of events in Ukraine, their suspicions are justified.

Within days of the war’s outbreak, President Biden signed off on an emergency spending package that included $13 billion in aid to Ukraine, half of which was allocated for military purposes. Combined with the recently promised $33 billion in additional military assistance to Ukraine, the total cost of U.S. taxpayer-funded military assistance to Ukraine in 2022 approaches the Russian army’s annual budget. Perhaps most important, in Ukraine, U.S. advisorsprovide intelligence and targeting guidance along with the rapid resupply of critical war-fighting equipment.

As the fighting raged in Ukraine, as if on cue, retired U.S. Army generals appeared on television to herald an imminent Ukrainian victory based on the country’s allegedly spectacular battlefield successes and Russia’s extraordinary incompetence. Russian forces, they argued, were doomed to defeat by serious tactical errors, logistical shortfalls, and weak execution. In retrospect, some of these comments involved “mirror imaging,” but much of the criticism almost certainly reflected the sunk costs of U.S. investment in Ukrainian military capability.

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