A very interesting & informative article. Thanks! One correction, perhaps. You wrote: "With respect to the sheer intensity of the Ukrainian conflict, which most probably has not been equalled since the Korean War of the 1950s." — I think you overlooked the US war on Vietnam, including its interventions (which were quite massive) in Cambodia and Laos.
Vietnam wasn't really a peer to peer conflict, more the US and South Vietnam military against guerrilla forces. The Vietnamese freedom forces did try more mass tactics at times but were always defeated (except in the propaganda war). The Korean War was much more peer to peer, especially when China intervened. Five million died in the Korean War which lasted just three years, while in Vietnam plus neighbouring countries up to 3 million over at least ten years of fighting (excluding the Indochina War against the French). Ukraine is much more like Korea than Vietnam, the exception against both being that the Russians don't mass bomb civilians.
A fact that is very much overlooked is that it was the US mass bombing and slaughtering in Cambodia that lead to the Killing Fields, and that it was the Vietnamese that put an end to Pol Pot.
A very interesting & informative article. Thanks! One correction, perhaps. You wrote: "With respect to the sheer intensity of the Ukrainian conflict, which most probably has not been equalled since the Korean War of the 1950s." — I think you overlooked the US war on Vietnam, including its interventions (which were quite massive) in Cambodia and Laos.
Vietnam wasn't really a peer to peer conflict, more the US and South Vietnam military against guerrilla forces. The Vietnamese freedom forces did try more mass tactics at times but were always defeated (except in the propaganda war). The Korean War was much more peer to peer, especially when China intervened. Five million died in the Korean War which lasted just three years, while in Vietnam plus neighbouring countries up to 3 million over at least ten years of fighting (excluding the Indochina War against the French). Ukraine is much more like Korea than Vietnam, the exception against both being that the Russians don't mass bomb civilians.
A fact that is very much overlooked is that it was the US mass bombing and slaughtering in Cambodia that lead to the Killing Fields, and that it was the Vietnamese that put an end to Pol Pot.
Thank you very much, Roger.
Valuable insights - much appreciated.