Trained military observers watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold are finding themselves baffled by by both the scale of the operation and its seeming lack of coordination and effectiveness. Russia is a world power and its military is that of a world power. In the air and on the ground, not taking into account guerilla warfare, the Russians should be performing much better than they are. Particularly when it comes to the air war, there shouldn’t have even been one, the Russians should have been able to achieve total air superiority right from the start. The fact that the Russian forces still don’t have total air superiority is baffling trained military experts.

Some have suggested that the Russian assault, blunt as it appears, is actually part of a larger plan. For all we know that may be the case, but at the same time it is important not to overestimate the Russian military. Or to attribute the entirely ordinary reality of incompetence to some grand strategic plan.

The Russian military is impressive on paper, but historically much less impressive in action., There are a number of reasons for this beginning with the fact that totalitarian leaders are often paranoid about being overthrown by their own military, resulting in decisions that promote mediocre but politically reliable military leaders, rather than actual capable generals. Stalin in particular had made a point of purging Russia’s military leadership leading to a disastrous performance in World War II. Hitler, who did not do so in the same way, later faced threats of coups from the German military.

Putin has built a military that is politically reliable. He remembers quite well that when the old Communist leadership tried to order tanks into the streets to stop protesters, they did not deliver. For Putin, as for any totalitarian leader, the priority is a military that does his bidding, rather than the best possible military in the world.

That is something that Putin has in common with the Obama and Biden administrations who have striven to build a woke military that is politically obedient, yet militarily incompetent.

Watching Russia’s military muddle through the operation has echoes of similar incompetence by the Chinese when confronting India. But we should not feel too cocky. Like the Russians we have impressive technology, but we lack competent, innovative, and focused military leadership. Our generals would not be making the same idiotic mistakes that the Russians appear to be making, but as we’ve seen in Afghanistan they’re quite capable of messing up. And given a generation or even a decade during which wokeness becomes the pathway to promotion, in which identity politics decides who the generals are, we may end up with a military that performs even worse than the one being wielded by Vladimir Putin.