By Scott Graber
It is Tuesday, and I’m in Port Royal. This morning, I’ve got a book titled “From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life” by Jacques Barzun.
Pat Conroy gave me Barzun 10 years ago, and Jacques has proven to be a reliable resource in understanding Rabelais and Paracelsus and the big, revolutionary ideas that they (and others) introduced into the Western Canon.
“Dawn to Decadence” gives us the thinkers, artists and engineers during the last 500 years; giving short shrift to Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington and the generals who led young men into battle. But he could not completely ignore the shootouts that once were the organizational touchstone of every history book.
In one essay, Barzun writes that in the early days of World War I, each belligerent prepared their people for hostilities, the allies saying, “The Germans had always been barbarians, they had destroyed the Roman Civilization.” The Germans, citing Napoleon, saying that the French had routinely “ravaged, kept poor and divided the German peoples.”
In the subsequent war, every able-bodied man was fed into this yawning, people-eating machine, only the stretcher bearers getting themselves out of a shooting role.
“The German effort at Verdun in 1916 wiped out some 700,000 lives in four months.”
But after two and one half years of misery and murder, a mutiny broke out on the French front. And just when it looked like the French troops had had enough, the Americans entered the war extending the shooting by another couple of years.
All of which brings us to Ukraine and the fact that this war has devolved into the same kind of fixed, trench and artillery fight that was under way 100 years ago in France. The only real difference is that drones and satellites tell each side exactly what the other side is doing.
Airborne drones are also keeping the Ukrainian infantry in business as they make their 155 mm howitzers more precise, and drop hand grenades into the open hatches of Russian tanks.
But the big news involves naval drones that have removed the Soviet Navy — the second largest in the world — from operational effectiveness in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
The Magura V5 looks something like a sleek 1930s-era speedboat except that it is equipped with cameras, explosives and is connected to satellites orbiting in the sky. It travels at 50 mph; costs a “few hundred thousand dollars;” and is hard to detect on radar.
James Stavrides, a retired Navy admiral, tells The Washington Post that “We are at an absolute pivot point in maritime warfare. Big surface ships are highly at risk to air, surface and sub-surface drones. The sooner great-power navies like of the United States understand that, the more likely they are to survive in major combat in this turbulent 21st century.”
The Magura could make a huge difference in the defense of Taiwan should the Chinese decide to launch their long-anticipated 2,000 ship invasion. But, of course, there are those that love the aircraft carrier with its size and its F-18s roaring into the sky.
For years, dispatching a carrier (and its attendant frigates) to the Indian Ocean, or the South China Sea, was part and parcel of our “big stick” diplomacy. But this show of force may be the kind of ignorance and arrogance that foreshadowed the end of the British Empire.
If WWI is any guide, Zelensky knows that his people will eventually give way to exhaustion and despair after about three years. Eventually their loathing of Putin will give way to the desire for a boring, bloodless, non-violent life.
So this summer, Zelensky sent his weary infantry into the Southern part of Russian opening an entirely new “front” that will undoubtedly require redeployment of the Russian troops who are now stretched along Ukraine’s 1,000 mile-long eastern flank.
This move reminds us of Robert E Lee leading his troops out of Virginia and into the farm country just south of Harrisburg, Penn.; Lee gambling on a quick, humiliating strike that would dishearten the North and encourage Britain to recognize the Confederate government.
I don’t doubt that Ukraine’s drone warfare is being discussed at the at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.; these up-and-coming officers know this war — like the Spanish Civil War — is an opportunity to look into the future.
Dylan Porter — a Beaufort native who teaches Leadership and Ethics in Newport — is a young Commander trying his best to divine and define that future.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
