I am no expert on military operations. I have no background in warfare. I have been and remain a pacifist. But I have a bit of perspective to observe military operations. My father was a pilot in the US Army Air Corps during World War II. I have his uniforms and his lieutenants bars among the possessions that I don’t know quite what to do with. I also have the reserve parachute that he carried when he was forced to bail from a Bell P-39 Airacobra over California. The P-39 was the first fighter aircraft in the US fleet to have a tricycle landing gear configuration. It also had a unique design, with the engine amidships, right over the wing. the pilot sat in front of the engine with a long driveshaft running between his legs to power the propellor at the front of the plane. It also had a door for the pilot to enter in place of the sliding canopies that were common on other fighter airplanes. This design meant that when the engine of the plane he was flying failed, he was in a big problem. The location of the engine meant that the plane was not as nose heavy as some other designs. That meant a shorter glide ratio and the need for quick decisions. The location of the pilot in front of the engine made the pilot much more vulnerable in landing accidents. The door instead of a canopy made exiting for a parachutes landing difficult and risky. He did exit. He did parachute. He was hit by the tail of the plane as it went by. He survived. The experience, however, earned him a purple heart for his injuries. He suffered back pain for the rest of his life.

After his discharge, he left the army and military operations behind him. His experiences with war shaped his response to the subsequent wars of his life. He was skeptical about war in general and especially critical of wars fought without clear defensive reasons. I grew up with his sense of skepticism and his ability to question the decisions of leaders when it came to war.

My middle sister was an Air Force wife during the Vietnam War. We visited them when the lived on base at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois when it was the maintenance base for the Air Force One planes. Her husband served two one-year tours of duty in Vietnam.

I served 25 years in Rapid City, SD, home of Ellsworth Air Force Base. During those years I had opportunities to tour the base and see some of its operations. For a while I was friends with the commander of the base fire department and visited his work on occasion. Once, during a Leadership Rapid City class, I got 15 minutes at the controls of one of the base’s B-1 Lancer flight simulators.

When I grew up, our daughter married a career Air Force member. Our son in law has served for more than 20 years in the Air Force and his decisions about retirement from the service will be based on possible promotions in rank. He could serve nearly 4 more years and perhaps longer if he makes two more ranks. We have visited them and toured Whiteman AFB in Missouri, RAF Lakenheath Air Force in England, JASDF Misawa Air Base in Japan, and Shaw AFB in South Carolina. I have learned from my son in law and daughter a deep respect for the people of the US military, their dedication, training, competence, professionalism, and patriotism.

So, while I don’t understand all of the dynamics of military service, preparation for war, and the actual fighting of a war, there are some things I do understand. I am also an amateur student of history and history can teach a lot about many different subjects.

From my vantage point, it seems to me that Russian President Vladimir Putin is now learning something that other strongman dictators have learned in the past. When you unleash the dogs of war, especially a war of aggression trying to capture the territory of another country, those dogs can come back to bite you. I’m guessing Putin never thought that sending the Wagner mercenary group to fight in Ukraine might result in those same troops marching on Moscow.

Then again, Napoleon didn’t think invading Russia would lead to his exile and the restoration of the French monarchy. Hitler didn’t imagine invading Poland would lead to his suicide and the partitioning of Germany. Saddam Hussein didn’t think that invading Kuwait would lead, eventually, to the overthrow of his regime and his death.

War is unpredictable and risky. The consequences of war can never be seen fully in advance. This is one of many lessons from the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Being a superpower does not decrease the risk or make the outcome of war more predictable. Wealth, power, and a massive military-industrial complex do not make war more predictable. A dictator’s illusion of control can disappear in the chaos of war. A prolonged war, with a lot of bloodshed and death, like the war in Ukraine, has consequences that reach decades into the future. Like many dictatorships, Putin’s regime has turned out to be more brittle than it first appeared. He has maintained power by pitting oligarchs and various branches of government against each other, which makes him the arbitrator and final decision maker. That model has worked for two decades, but it is breaking down under the pressure of a losing war that is grinding up and destroying the Russian military.

2,000 tanks lost. 900 armored fighting vehicles destroyed, 35,000 soldiers killed, 154,000 wounded. These are the biggest losses since World War II for Russia. The the Russian populace has never seen this as a defensive war as was the case of World War II. Putin tried to sell it to his people as a civil war, but that image is wearing thin in the face of the devastating losses. Failures of the Russian military have forced Putin to rely on the Wagner mercenary group, which used convicts from Russian prisons in human wave attacks. Troops were kept in line by severe tactics, including being shown a movie of a supposed deserter being executed by sledgehammer blows to the head. It was a brutal business with little regard for the value of human life.

What Putin failed to see was that the head of the Wagner group, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, himself a convicted criminal, was building power in the private military group to take on the head of the Russian Defense, aiming at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of general staff. His power play within the Russian government was his true aim, not the war in Ukraine. He was willing to risk the lives of his troops in order to gain power in the Russian government. And he nearly pulled off his coup attempt.

He may have backed off for now, but Putin is learning a difficult lesson and the rest of the world is understanding how vulnerable he is and how tentative is his hold on the control of his position.

I may not know much about the military, but I’m keeping my eyes on Russia as history unfolds before us.