WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- The central role played by Russian tanks in occupying one-third of Georgia in only five days teaches a very sobering lesson: The major wars of the 21st century will be a lot more like World War II than most fashionable pundits and military theorists have dreamed.

Therefore the for-so-long out-of-fashion artillery, infantry and armor specialists in the U.S. Army and the handful of unfashionable and old-fashioned military analysts who support them turned out to be right after all.

There is no substitute for having large numbers of troops on the ground to fight battles, occupy territory and make sure it stays pacified afterward. And there is no alternative to having the artillery and Main Battle Tank forces to produce classic Carl von Clausewitz concentrations of power and decisive ground route axes to win battles and conquer countries.

"Girlie" high-tech systems can't do any of that, and air power can be effective only when it is integrated with old-fashioned ground power.

These tough, ugly, uncompromising old truths also flatly contradict a lot of the Conventional Wisdom of the past 60 years about the nature of war.