Wednesday, May 11

Andrei Martyanov to Pentagon: "Watch and learn how real war is fought"

Another Andrei bon mot from the same video report: "When you lie you have to lie professionally."  

Debunking (Some) Fakes. - YouTube:(May 9th, Zmeinnyi Island [Snake Island] fiasco, Pentagon, Fakes, Nuclear subs in Black Sea)

He has fun explaining in his caustic fashion basic military stuff (well, basic for anyone who knows what he's talking about) such as why, contrary to claims, the Ukrainians couldn't attack a nuclear submarine, Russian or otherwise, in the Black Sea.  

A note: he says what sounds like 'belling cat' a couple times. He's referring to a blog that became infamous during the Syrian War. Andrei along with many others who are very critical of the site considers Bellingcat a mouthpiece for Britain's MI6 spy agency; in any case it might as well be, is my two cents.         

Don't let Andrei's thick Russian accent mislead you. He is an American citizen with many old friends in the U.S. military and intelligence communities. He is not anti-American, but since the Russian operation in Ukraine he began explaining many facts about the war that have not made it into the mainstream press or got so mangled by reporters and 'analysts' they were useless.  

I think all of his observations are priceless. although the accent can take a little getting used to and his tendency to digress on occasion can be annoying for those who want him to get straight to the point. Those are quibbles given the educational value of his talks.   

In one discussion after another, he has pounded on his point that Americans today don't really know what real war is, and he extends the observation to many American military officials and their bosses in the U.S. Department of State, Congress, and White House. He has done this not to denigrate the United States, but to warn that Americans developed a skewed idea of war from a generation of fighting opponents that could only put up a token defense.

Speaking of his American friends, he has praise in the above discussion for one of Larry Johnson's writings, published May 9. What Larry has to say is very upsetting, but grown-ups in NATO countries need to watch the videos he includes in his article:

Is Ukraine Abandoning its Military Units? (sonar21.com)

But who is Andrei?  From the Clarity Press bio:

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.
[...]

From Pepe Escobar's sketch of him for the Asia Times published about a year ago:

Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse by Andrei Martyanov. Clarity Press (Atlanta), 246 pages. US$28.95

Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. ... arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere – living and working in the United States, writing in English for a global audience and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.

I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Martyanov’s previous two books.  In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, published nearly three years ago, he conclusively proved, among other things, that the missile gap between the US and Russia was a “technological abyss,” and that the Russian-made, air-launched, nuclear-capable Kinzhal missile was “a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically.”

See also Bernhard's review of Andrei's 2019 book:

MoA - Book Review: The (Real) Revolution In Military Affairs (moonofalabama.org)

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