Started to read Jacques Baud's book, The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat, and he writes very interesting things, especially about the Russian thought of Operational Art of War.
I remember my conversation on these pages with an Australian Bernd, where I tried to explain to him the operational level that sits between strategy and tactics. I don't think I managed to get my point through. But apparently - according to Baud - this level is entirely missing from the thought of Westerners, so maybe I haven't tried to describe something that he could have a picture of but he did not know about, but I tried to describe a picture that he never had the chance even to see in his life.
Very curious feeling because I'm fairly sure Western military writers, theorists and even officers who learn in military schools (such as West Point in the US) do know about this thing, and it's a normal way of conducting their "operations" so to speak.
I know Hungarians do, all my readings in my youth related to military topics based on the tripartite division of war: hadászati szint (strategic level), hadműveleti szint (operational level), harcászati szint (tactical level). Tho no wonder these authors know it, they had spent 40 years in marxists military schools learning the Soviet School of Thought.
I do remember tho mentioning that the Soviet developed the idea (I think general Tukhachevsky in particular).
Anyway I dl'd Gantz's book about the Soviet Military Operational Art too, gonna read sometimes in the hope I can convey the thing better in the future.

books very much related