The Ukrainian "first phase"

The Russian generals have declared the “first phase” of the Ukrainian invasion over, and now say they will focus on “liberating” the rest of the Donbas region, which they claim was their original intentional all along. So what does this really mean?

Well, certainly they are lying about their “original intentions”. Putin made a number of statements early on that made clear he intended to take over the entirety of the Ukraine and install a government favorable to Moscow. So this “first phase” talk is just a face-saving admission that the Russian military failed (miserably!) to achieve its goals of reaching Kyiv quickly and replacing Zelinsky and his government. 

But it does suggest that Putin has finally come to terms with his failures (or, as he no doubt sees it, the failures of his general officers and his intelligence agencies). This certainly doesn’t suggest he has had a change of heart. I assume he will pursue ruthlessly whatever goals he thinks he can still achieve in the Ukraine, and then spin their attainment as a “success”. So what might these be?

Probably it is true that he would like to take the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. His “little green men” held about a third of those regions before the invasion began, as the map below shows.

And if in the process his military could surround and capture the majority of the Ukrainian forces concentrated in those regions, that would be a bonus. The Ukrainians will have to make a strategic decision about that – hold fast and risk being surrounded, or withdraw and trade territory for a better tactical position.

There is as yet no indication that the Russians are withdrawing forces from around Kyiv or in the south to move them to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, so I assume they will just dig in and stay where they are to be a bargaining chip in later negotiations, or perhaps because Putin or his generals think that they may be in a position later to resume the advances in those regions.

So I assume Putin thinks his military can probably take more territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, keep the territory he has gained in the south, cutting off much of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea and giving him a land corridor to the Crimea, and continue to pin down Ukrainian forces guarding Kyiv. And meanwhile Russia can continue to shell and bomb cities and generally try to terrorize the population.

There really isn’t much the Russian military can do right now to improve its performance. About a third of its combat forces in the Ukraine are apparently poorly-trained 1-year conscripts (despite Putin’s assertion that there are no conscripts there), and they are getting their training the hard and deadly way. Russian has, according to most experts, already committed over half its available combat forces to the Ukraine, and to commit much more would leave other areas of Russia vulnerable. Ignore the propaganda about Russia having millions in reserve; they are mostly untrained and unequipped. The Russian NCOs (non-commissioned officers) are notoriously corrupt and poorly trained, which means the troops are poorly led, and that can’t be fixed in a hurry. Russian doctrine depends heavily on armored assaults, and there is no easy and quick way to remedy how vulnerable armor is proving to be these days to portable American Javalin and British NLAW anti-tank weapons. And finally the Russian system depends heavily on top-down commend; lower level troops have no authority or experience acting independently or taking initiative, and there is no quick way to remedy that either.

If the negotiations with the Russians get serious, I expect the Ukrainians could be persuaded to give up their claim to the Crimea, which after all was part of Russia until Premiere Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred it to the Ukraine in 1954, and which isn’t particularly important to the Ukrainian economy. But I doubt they would agree to give up the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and I would guess that Putin would not be willing to relinquish his goal of carving at least that much of the Ukraine off. So I don’t hold out much hope for a negotiated settlement soon, though that might come eventually.

What should the West do?  Well certainly we ought to continue to feed the Ukrainians weapons and ammunition, and let them bleed the Russian army as much as possible. We have done well by equipping them to neutralize the Russian armored forces. We ought also to better help them deal with the remaining primary threat they face by equipping them to better take out the long-range artillery and the air power that is shattering their cities.

And certainly we ought to tighten the sanctions and strangle the Russian economy as much as possible, all in the long-term interests of weakening Russia enough to dissuade Putin from moving on to attack a NATO country and forcing us into an all-out Russia vs the West war. Personally I think the West has been a bit too timid in opposing Putin; a bit too scared of “escalation”. It ought to be Putin who is afraid of the West escalating, since in fact Russia is by far the weaker party on all measures.

That doesn’t mean I think we ought to put US or NATO troops into the Ukraine, though if Putin resorted to more drastic measure, like chemical or biological or nuclear weapons, that might change. But I do think we could provide the Ukrainians with more and better weapons, and I do think the West ought to bite the bullet and cut off all gas and oil purchases from Russia, even though it would produce massive dislocation and economic problems in Europe. And America ought to step up to do much more to help the Europeans deal with that dislocation, even if it produces severe economic pain in the US.  Politics being what it is, I doubt we will do that, but perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised – who knows?

The Biden administration has done better than I would have expected thus far, and that is promising. But I think we are all thinking much too small, and are just reacting to events day-by day instead of proceeding with a rational long-range plan. Europe needs to get off of its addiction to Russian oil and gas. That will be hard, given the way they have built their economy, and requires thinking on a much larger scale.  We need a sort of "Marshall Plan" scale of thinking to help Europe though the transition.

And of course the elephant in the room is China, who is no doubt watching our reactions closely, and calibrating its future moves on that basis. A weak response to this crisis may bring serious problems for us later.

Intelligence failures

There is a piece in today’s Washington Post by Greg Jaffe and Dan Lamothe (two people I have been following on Twitter for Ukrainian updates). It is titled “Russia’s failures in Ukraine imbue Pentagon with newfound confidence.” The title alone reminds me, uncomfortably, that US intelligence agencies and military analysts seem to have been wrong a good bit of the time.

Only when the Soviet Union collapsed and we were able to examine their military up close did it become apparent that it was nowhere near as powerful as we had been led to believe by our experts. Then we misjudged our opponents seriously in Korea, in Vietnam , and in Afghanistan. Who can forget the recent confident assurances from our President, backed no doubt by his military and intelligence “experts”, that the Taliban couldn’t take over Afghanistan after our withdrawal, then that they would take at least 9 months to win because of the wonderful US-trained Afghan army, then that it would take a month – and in fact the nation fell to the Taliban in about a week.

Who can forget the even more recent “experts” who assured us that Kyiv would fall in 96 hours or less. Or the experts who, just last month, expounded on how Putin’s “modernized” Russian military would be such fearsome opponents.

This is not an impressive performance over the past decades. It seems to me some serious self-examination is required in the US intelligence community

Thoughts on week four of the war in the Ukraine

My own overall assessment is that somewhere between the second and third week of this invasion Russia lost the war. That doesn’t mean that Russia might not eventually manage by brute force to take over all of the Ukraine, or that Putin will “give up”.  There is no doubt a great deal of bloody and gruesome fighting yet to come – perhaps even years of it. But it means that Putin’s dream of reconstituting a mythical “greater Russia” is now permanently beyond his reach. Why?

First, the surprisingly strong sanctions that the West put on Russia’s already-fragile economy has already damaged it beyond recovery. Even if the sanctions were all dropped tomorrow, Western investors would probably be leery of investing in Russia for decades to come, and without Western investment and expertise and technological products, and given Russia’s steep demographic decline and the brain-drain of Russia’s best and brightest young people to the West which has already occurred, it’s hard to see how Russia can recover in this century. But in fact sanctions won’t be dropped tomorrow, and Putin’s aggression will probably result in even more severe sanctions in the months to come, speeding the decline.

Second, Ukraine’s move in 2014 to become Western and try to join the EU and NATO meant that Russia was already coming apart at the seams. The Ukraine is indeed a key part of Russia, including an essential part of its agricultural land, and Putin’s invasion has managed to turn that essential part of Russia from Russian supporters into Russian haters. After the brutality shown by Russian troops Ukrainians will hold this hatred of Russia for decades, or perhaps for centuries. I wouldn’t be surprised if other restive regions in Russia won’t begin to see an opportunity to get out from under Moscow’s thumb too, especially as Putin drains military units away from them to feed into the Ukrainian meat-grinder.

It also means that even if Putin’s military manages to “take over” all of the Ukraine, he will face a debilitating insurgency within his own borders that will probably make Russia’s failure in Afghanistan look mild by comparison, and will be a constant drain on his military and his economy, a drain he already can’t afford.

Actually a prolonged battle in the Ukraine may help the Western world. We, especially we Americans, but this applies to Europe as well, have a remarkably short attention span. Already the news about March Madness basketball and the Supreme Court hearings are beginning to get more news attention than the war in the Ukraine, even though they are inconsequential next to the implications of this invasion. Continuing Russian outrages might help to keep the world’s (meaning the media’s) attention on the ball, and Europe’s new-found solidarity in place.

I would judge that Putin’s difficulties in the Ukraine have substantially reduced the risk that he will push on into NATO countries. And I would guess that China, watching Putin’s military debacle and the strong Western sanctions that came as a result, may well have rethought any intentions of trying to retake Taiwan by force any time soon. China’s economy is much, much more vulnerable to severe Western sanctions than Russia’s.

But just because we are watching the death struggles of a dying nation doesn’t mean that it doesn’t remain dangerous in its struggles. It seems to me the West in general, and the US in particular, need to think through now our responses to the following possible nasty developments:

- Suppose Putin does indeed use chemical weapons in the Ukraine – a real possibility if he gets desperate enough. Is that a red line for us? Would that impel NATO to get more directly involved, and if so, how? If not, what is to keep Putin from using them again and again?

- If Russia moves on from the Ukraine to invade a NATO country, what will our response be?  By treaty of course we would be bound to help repeal that invasion, and given how poorly the Russian military has performed in the Ukraine, one assumes NATO would prevail. But what exactly does that mean? Do we bomb back into Russia to take out the supporting facilities (airfields, supply dumps, etc). Or do we restrict our attacks to within the NATO country itself, allowing the Russian military a “safe haven” across the border?
 
- If Putin decides to “de-escalate by escalating” with a low-yield nuclear weapon on some stubborn Ukrainian city, what should our response be? We certainly can’t accede to such blackmail or it will be used against us repeatedly. On the other hand, we don’t want to start a nuclear World War III.  (My own idea is that we match Putin 1:1. He takes out a Ukrainian facility with a low-yield nuclear weapon so we take one out too - I suggest the Russian naval base at Sevastopol in the Crimea.  That may be a good idea or not – I can’t quite decide.)

And how can we better penetrate the information blackout Putin has imposed on the Russian people? It seems to me this is an important piece of our arsenal that we ought to attend to more. When this is all over and Putin and his murderous regime – one way or another – is gone, we need to think about how best to bring the Russian nation back into the fold of civilization. We missed the opportunity back in the 1990s and are inheriting the results of that mistake; how do we not repeat the mistake

The attrition strategy

There is no doubt that the West, and the US in particular, has an implacable foe in Vladimir Putin. He hated us as a KGB agent, and he still hates us as President of Russia. As he himself once said, “there is no such thing as a ‘former’ KGB man”. And in his later years he seems to have formulated a wildly distorted view of Russia’s history, and apparently of his own military’s competence. It would certainly be convenient for everyone – Russian and non-Russian alike - if he were suddenly not in power anymore, by whatever means. But that seems unlikely. According to reports from inside Russia, most of the Russian populace is either unaware of what he is doing in the Ukraine, or simply won’t believe the Western news stories. But in any case, the regime is sufficiently repressive that it is unlikely – not impossible, but unlikely - that any public movement could unseat him.  The odds are somewhat better that the oligarchs who support him and are now having their toys and lifestyles taken from them by Western sanctions might remove him, but it is by no means clear they have the power to do that.

So the odds are we will have to live with him and his unpredictable actions for the foreseeable future. What is our best strategy?

Lenin said "They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.". It does seem rather stupid of the West, out of simple greed, over the past decade or so to have financed his military refurbishment and supplied him with the advanced components (like microchips) to put in the missiles he wants to fire at us. And we are now paying the price for that error.

Well, now finally we are on our way to crashing his economy. Do that enough, and for long enough, and he will have difficulty replacing the military equipment he is wasting in the Ukraine. It is in any case a holding action, because Russia is in a sharp demographic decline, and within a decade or two will have too few young people to amass much of an army. But that intervening decade or two may be quite dangerous, because I’m sure he knows this too, so he has a limited window in which to “restore” the extent of the “Imperial Russia” he so fondly remembers or fantasizes.

We need to walk a knife edge, because Russia is a nuclear power with what seems to be an unstable ruler, though he needs to remember that we (including the UK, France, and some other allies) too are a nuclear power, probably with better and more accurate delivery systems. Still, a nuclear exchange will be won by nobody, so it’s like (in fact it is) dealing with an armed madman – keep them talking and don’t make any sudden moves!

However the Ukrainian crisis is resolved – with a Russian win, a Ukrainian win, or a stalemate, we ought to have a long-term strategy of assuring that the West no longer finances or aids the current Russian regime. If we do that, probably the Russian military’s own obvious corruption and  incompetence will take its toll, and eventually reduce the magnitude of the threat. Painful as it may be to some corporations and nations, economic attrition is less damaging by far than military attrition.

About the nuclear threat

Putin has several times recently made nuclear threats, including his recent public instructions to his defense chief to put his nuclear forces on “high alert”. How seriously should we take these threats?

First of all, the claim that Russia has the “largest nuclear arsenal”, while true (barely), is essentially meaningless. Both the US and Russia have more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe each other, and almost everyone else, off the map. How many they could successfully deliver to their targets is unclear, but certainly enough in a full-out exchange.

All through the cold war the MAD (mutual assured destruction) principle kept both sides from taking things too far, though we apparently came close to disaster in the Cuban missile crisis. But in fact, both sides were risk-averse (much more so on the Soviet side than we knew at the time), and so were careful to never escalate too far.

But two things have changed. (1) Putin, at least lately, seems to gotten more reckless. Indeed, there are serious questions about his mental state, based on some of the uncharacteristic moody and rambling speeches he has given lately. And (2) published Russian military papers in recent years have discussed using low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons to “escalate to de-escalate”.  As near as I can make out, this means setting off a low-yield weapon or two in the battlefield to frighten the enemy into backing down – a sort of nuclear blackmail.

We need to think about our response to this, because if things go badly enough for him in this Ukrainian invasion he may try this. Clearly we can’t let this tactic work, or we will be helpless against any thug willing to use it. Paying off blackmailers never works; it just encourages them to do more. But if it is used, how should we respond?

The defense department has done the right thing in remodeling some of our nuclear weapons so that they can be “dialed-down” to low yields. That at least preserves the option to respond in more nuanced ways than just an all-out exchange.  One tactic would be to match him one-for-one if he tries this – he sets off a low-yield weapon so we set one off, meaning we don’t escalate, but we don’t back down either.

I’m sure there are other, and perhaps better responses.  We ought to be thinking about them. Tolstoy said “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”.  We may not be interested in using nuclear weapons, but Putin’s nuclear weapons may eventually be interested in us, so we had better think this through now.