Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…id it and you could not get stuff in. What the United States was trying to do... The British thought we were insane. They're probably correct. We were flying things over the Himalayas called the Hump. Great, you're going to fly in aviation fuel to land? That's going to be the same aviation fuel that's going to get you back. However many other bombers that you can deal with in China, it's not workable. Russia, even though it got a lot less than Britain because it's not getting ships, is getting equally valuable useful things. For instance, Russia produces a lot of planes, but it doesn't produce adequate high octane aviation fuel. The United States had loads of that. The United States produced all kinds of vehicles, all kinds of rolling stock locomotives. This is what Russia used to transport everything. The United States prevented Russia from going into a famine in the winter of 1942-1943. We fed them with this Spam in a can. This is Hormel Foods' contribution to the war. Everyone had much Spam during the war, they never wanted to see it again. But a little can of pork goes a long way and it doesn't spoil in a can. A quarter of this Lend-Lease aid goes through Murmansk. A lot of it gets sunk up there and not reliable. Quarter of it goes through Persia and then half of it goes over the Trans-Siberian. You go, “Well, what's this Axis alliance about? Why aren't the Japanese sinking any of this?” Talk about a dysfunctional alliance. This is to tell you what happened with those Arctic convoys. You can see in 1942, a tremendous number of them were sunk. These are fully-laden ships with scarce war materiel. We and the British called them off for most of 1942 and most of 1943. Stalin was beside himself. In 1943, he's sending out feelers to Hitler trying to make a separate peace. Luckily Hitler was not interested. Hitler wasn't wasting his time with targeting empty ships on the home voyage. He was only going after the laden ones. What is all this Lend-Lease aid support? What does it add up to? Well, in Barbarossa you got 3+ million Russians going after 3 million Germans. That's a lot of people to supply and tie up. As you watch that go, the Axis is killing Russians or making them POWs by the millions, but it's suffering 15% losses of its forces. It's going to add up. When you get to August 1941, that's when the siege of Leningrad, St. Petersburg begins. By December, the Axis is within 25 miles of Moscow. It’s not looking good at all. But once the United States is in the war, you can start doing peripheral theaters like in North Africa. Then these casualties, while they aren't as significant as what's going on on the main front, it's cumulative. Stalingrad, the largest battle of the war, is going on. You got North Africa. Then when you have Kursk, which is the largest set piece battle of the war, a big tank battle. This is when Sicily's happening and moving up the Italian peninsula. You can see the cumulative effects of these sequential operations and how they’re adding up, both the main theater and the peripheral theater. When you get to Normandy, the Russians are tying up 228 Axis divisions. e cumulative effects of these sequential operations and how they’re adding up, both the main theater and the peripheral theater. When you get to Normandy, the Russians are tying up 228 Axis divisions. There are only 58 Axis divisions in Western Europe, Italy and everywhere. That's what makes Normandy possible, the Russians really holding onto things. When you start looking at the main front, peripheral operations in Italy and then Normandy, and then you have additional fronts in France and then the Balkans, this continental cancer goes into remission. The Germans just can't sustain it. To summarize, before Britain had allies in this war, it was in a world of hurt. It was just losing one thing after another. But once you get the big continental buddy—don't dismiss the importance of a big continental buddy—that is in the area where the fighting is taking place, not separated by the seas, but there with a big army, that was essential. Then once the United States gets in with its big productive base, then you can really start doing things. Because if you can command the seas—that's what the Battle of the Atlantic is about—then you can connect the world and connect allies, theaters, resources. Here are the operational effects of these peripheral operations. You start with one where you can. If you win there, it'll open up a menu of more promising locations. All the while, you're attriting your enemy's forces. Also, if you're doing it right, you're relieving pressure on the main front for Russia, which is doing the heavy lifting. The strategic effects—if you can do this successfully—are that you're going to control resources for yourself, deny them from people you don't like. This will help put time on your side. You're strengthening your alliance system because you're essential to each other's survival as you coordinate things and you're dividing your enemy's attention among multiple theaters, overextending them. You start by trying to contain the problem, and as things go on, you try to roll it back, and then you go for regime change. You're producing cumulative effects from these sequential operations. That's how it works. Churchill, the great wit, talked about the hassles of dealing with allies. These are high stakes discussions. They don't always go pleasantly. But his idea is that there's only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that's fighting without them, because you’ll be toast. You need these complementary capabilities, different locations, and coordinating it to gang up on your continental problem. Also, if you stick with it, you can help establish precedents, laws, institutions that'll hold the peace after the war. That's his take. I've given you a big exposition on maritime solutions to continental problems. In a global war you go for blockade, and then counter their commerce raiding, peripheral operations, massive production, and then joint and combined operations. time solutions to continental problems. In a global war you go for blockade, and then counter their commerce raiding, peripheral operations, massive production, and then joint and combined operations. So that was then. How about now? This is what NATO looks like. You can look at the United States with our western and eastern coasts that are unencumbered. You wouldn't be able to blockade those. The two narrow seas are the Sea of Labrador and the Caribbean, but it’s basically hard to imagine that the United States Navy wouldn't be able to deploy in wartime. The same thing is true on the big peninsula of Europe. Turkey may not be able to deploy, but Spain, France, and Norway, there are these unencumbered coastlines. They'll probably get their navies out. Eurasia is a completely different story. This is where China and Russia live. No one's done this to them. This is just the way it is. It's all of these narrow seas that become kill zones in wartime. I've described it to you how it works. I get it there's the Arctic up there, but there's no economic activity or population. Being able to run things in the Arctic doesn't do you very much good. Nature naturally contains both Russia and China. It's just the way it is. Let's start with Putin here, Vlad the Bad on his little Mongol pony, a continental mode of transport. If you live there, what can you get out of it? It's a long horse ride if you're going to do it that way. Whom can he blockade? Well, he's got one aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, which has been under repair since 2018. Long time to be in the shop. It required the largest dry dock that Russia has to repair it, and then it flipped the dry dock, which then gashed the hull. There's been all sorts of charges of embezzlement, various fires on board. It's not getting repaired anytime fast. It's just like an occupational hazard problem. That one's not doing him any good. Putin has got two liquid playgrounds that he likes. One's the Black Sea. Before he got involved with Ukraine, in theory he could have blockaded Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Georgia if he wanted to. That was why he's interested in the Kerch Strait, which would blockade the Sea of Azov, because he wanted to take Ukraine from east to west. That was part of the plan. He used to have, maybe still does, it’s unknown, one overseas base, Tartus in Syria. Talk about a garden spot. I guess if you want to go bomb civilians, that would be a location for you. But now that Bashar al-Assad has moved to Moscow, it's unclear how that works. In any case, it's a useless base because in wartime, no one gets through the Dardanelles. That place can be shut down with mines. The Ukrainians have shown that you don't even need a navy to stop a navy in narrow seas. It should be a real wake-up call to anyone on a narrow sea. Just by using drones and shore ordnance and planes and things that you can wreck navies. In fact, the Russian naval base used to be at Sevastopol in Crimea. Putin's had to move it to Novorossiysk. Great, he can't do too much there. Have fun with that one. There are many fewer possibilities for him nowadays. His second favorite liquid playground is the Baltic.…

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