On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 10:31 PM Mark Baugher via groups.io <mark= [email protected]> wrote:I can list a dozen writers from Ilya Budraitskis (https://spectrejournal.com/against-putins-war-in-ukraine/) to Petr Akopov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Akopov) who believe that Russia's aim was to take over the entire country. They were marching to Kiev in 2022. It may no longer be a realistic aim of Russia to occupy the country in the near term. But there's no doubt that was Putin's original intent and long-term goal. Putin wanted a multi-polar world. If Putin held that view, the numbers of troops deployed were far from adequate. According to standard counter-insurgency formulas how many troops would have been needed to invade and occupy Ukraine in 2022? Pre-invasion at border <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine>: 150,000–200,000[5]
"Over the last eight years, one question has repeatedly come up in regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: How many soldiers are enough' The question was first raised before the Iraq war started, with highly publicized disagreements between senior military leaders regarding the number of forces needed to secure Iraq after the invasion. The debate reached another peak when the "surge" strategy was announced. It has once again become the subject of national discussion, this time with respect to Afghanistan. Despite years of debate, our understanding of force requirements for counterinsurgency has advanced little since 1995, when James Quinlivan of RAND published a seminal article on the subject. The current article describes work done by the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) to better inform the discussion by examining historical data related to counterinsurgencies. The intent is not to make any policy recommendations. Nor should this analysis be interpreted to suggest that force levels alone are the key to victory in counterinsurgency. Having enough military forces is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for success. The twentieth century is replete with examples of counterinsurgents winning Pyrrhic military victories that resulted in political losses. The French in Algeria and the Portuguese in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau prevailed militarily but ultimately acceded to the insurgents' demands for independence. The British devoted enormous forces to Cyprus and suffered relatively few losses but nonetheless had to give up control of most of the island. That said, however, force levels do matter, and history can provide a guideline for force requirements in counterinsurgency. The analysis described in this article shows that there are three major drivers of military requirements. First, as previous studies have argued and current doctrine emphasizes, security forces have to be sized relative to the population. Second, the more intense the insurgency, the more forces are required to reverse increasing insurgent violence. Third, the larger the percentage of personnel that are drawn from the host nation, the fewer forces will be needed overall. Before detailing the exact relationships between these factors and force requirements, or discussing their implications for US policy, it is appropriate to briefly review the current state of the debate. Past Efforts Current doctrine as contained in an Army and Marine Corps field manual says the following about force levels in counterinsurgency:. . . [N]o predetermined, fixed ratio of friendly troops to enemy combatants ensures success in [counterinsurgency] . . . . A better force requirement gauge is troop density, the ratio of security forces (including the host nation's military and police forces as well as foreign counterinsurgents) to inhabitants. Most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 residents in an [area of operations]. Twenty counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective [counterinsurgency] operations; however, as with any fixed ratio, such calculations remain very dependent on the situation. These ratios appear to be based on Quinlivan's work. He emphasized, though did not originate, the idea of sizing security forces to the population rather than the enemy. Further, the recommendation of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents appears to be based at least in part on his observations that British forces in Northern Ireland and Malaya peaked at about 20 per 1,000 residents, and that international forces in Bosnia and Kosovo reached levels between 20 and 25 per 1,000.3 As Quinlivan noted, however, those cases represent only part of the scale. History also includes cases such as the postwar occupation of Germany, where successful stability operations were mounted with only 2.2 security forces per 1,000 residents. In contrast, the counterinsurgents under French command in Algeria peaked at nearly 60 per 1,000 residents, and the Russians committed more than 150 soldiers per 1,000 residents in Chechnya in 2003...." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40742): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40742 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117833155/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
