Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

What Putin Wants

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First, a disclaimer. President Putin has neither been whispering in my ear nor appearing in my dreams. Nor did his advisers, senior or junior, civilian or military, official or unofficial. Nor, on the other hand, do I necessarily trust any of the usual sources mentioned by Western media. Meaning, their own countries’ intelligence services, the reports of their journalists and cameramen on the ground, tales told by Ukrainian soldiers, tales told by local Ukrainians, tales allegedly originating in Russian POWs, and so on. All these different sources, and many others besides, have their limits. Many also have an ax to grind: either to deny Russian atrocities or to emphasize them as much as possible.  It is as people say. In war, any war without exception, the first casualty is the truth.

That said, and taking into account not merely Putin’s utterances but some knowledge of Russian history—as gained, among other things, by researching and writing my just-published book, I, Stalin—it seems to me that, in invading Ukraine, Putin and his advisers may be credited with a number of objectives. Here they are listed in what I think is an order of ascending importance.

First, wresting the Donbas away from Ukraine and establishing full control over it. As Lenin himself pointed out during his last years, the Donbas by virtue of its vast reserves of coal and iron ore has long had the potential to turn into a first-class industrial zone. To put those reserves to use, all that was needed was organization—Bolshevik organization.  Under Stalin, and starting with the adoption in 1928 of the First Five Year Plan, the wheels began to turn. Except during World War II, when the Germans occupied the region and razed it almost to the last brick and last metal pipe, they have kept turning right down to the beginning of the present conflict. Of all Putin’s objectives, this is the most likely to be achieved.

Second, establishing a land-bridge between Russia and the Black Sea. Long ago, it was Prussia’s Frederick the Great who said that a province to which one had access by land was worth ten times as much as one to which no terrestrial link existed. Russia’s difficulties in reaching a year-round, ice-free port are a matter of historical record. Occupying the corridor between Mariupol and the Crimea will go a considerable way towards solving the problem. It will also greatly complicate any future Ukrainian attempt to regain the Crimea, which back in 2014 the Russians annexed. I consider it just possible that Putin will achieve this objective.

Third, on the way to achieving these objectives, making sure that any future Ukrainian regime will always serve Russian interests first and foremost. Presumably this would mean a. Some kind of collaborationist government in Kiev; and b. Setting up military bases within the country so as to better control it if necessary. Briefly, something similar to the system the Soviets used between 1945 and 1989 in order to govern their East European vassals. As things look at present, this objective almost certainly will not be achieved.

Fourth, never forget that Russia without Ukraine is a country; Russia with Ukraine is an empire. As Putin has said many times, his objective is to reverse the “catastrophe” of 1989-1991 when the Soviet Union, lost its security zone to the west as well as vast other territories. Nor is this a trivial matter. During the Cold War the distance from the River Elbe, which marked the border between East and West, and Moscow was around 2,000 kilometers. With the former East Germany, the Baltic Countries, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldavia all having escaped Moscow’s control, that distance was cut by half; should the Ukraine too become part of NATO,  it will be down to about 850. Now a security zone 850 kilometers wide may seem plenty to most non-Russians. Certainly it does so to an Israeli who grew up in a country only 16 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. But perhaps the Russians, who twice during the twentieth century saw their country invaded and who suffered tens millions of dead as a result, may be forgiven for thinking differently. Certainly Putin is not the only one to think in such terms. Surfing the Net, just recently I came across an alleged American plan to occupy Mars as a necessary step towards protecting the U.S against a combined Russo-Chinese attack launched from the moon. Or was it the other way around? Anyhow. This objective, too, almost certainly will not be achieved.

Fifth, securing for Russia the kind of respect to which, by virtue of its size and power and development and cultural achievements, it feels it is entitled. The West’s chronic underestimation of, and contempt for, Russia, which it perceives as a backward country lacking both good government and many of the amenities of civilized life is also a matter of historical record. Starting some three hundred years ago, the Russian intelligentsia—roughly translatable as that part of the population which has some education and is interested in ideas beyond those directly tied to people’s own daily worries—have been aware of it and resented it. This objective, too, will not be achieved; if anything, to the contrary.

Sixth, as a direct result of all these, securing for Putin personally what he sees as his rightful position as the heir of Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Dread (not the Terrible, I am told), Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Stalin. Nevsky, for beating back the Estonians, Swedes, Danes, and the Teutonic Order. Ivan, for defeating the Livonians and the Tatars as well as effectively founding the Russian State with its center in “The Third Rome,” as Moscow is sometimes called. Peter, for beating back the Swedes and the Persians as well as his heroic efforts to pull up a recalcitrant Russia and modernize it. Catherine, for annexing the Ukraine (it was under her rule that Russian power first reached the Black Sea) as well as the lion’s share of Poland. Stalin, because it was under his regime that Russia/the Soviet Union reached the peak of its power, making the rest of the world tremble in front of it. Of all Putin’s objectives, this one is the least likely to be achieved.

A final point. Seen through Western eyes, these and all other Russian rulers were autocrats of the worst kind whose most important instruments of (miss) rule were the knout, the labor camp, and the hangman’s noose.  But that is not how Putin himself sees things. According to him, Russians do not need either liberalism or democracy. The reason being that, unlike Westerners, they trust their leaders.

So, he claims, it has been in the past. And so, no doubt, he hopes it will be in the future.

Goodbye, Corona*

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A few days ago someone asked me whether our children will ever be able to imagine a world without corona virus. In response, I told him about an American lady who has two children. One nine, the other eight. Neither of them is able to remember the pre-corona world. For them, as for as many as a billion others of similar age, life with the “pandemic” is normal.

Being almost 76 years old, I can remember some things many others have forgotten—if, indeed, they knew them in the first place. Back in 1980 I spent two months in Washington, DC, where I lived not far from Capitol Hill. Entering the Library of Congress, which I did almost every day, security was practically nonexistent. They checked your briefcase on the way out—you might have stolen a couple of books. But never, never, on the way in. Nor was there any question of having to put your things away in some locker, etc.

The same applied to other buildings. Right next to the Library is the House of Congress. Being a dedicated jogger, I used to run the stairs up and down almost every afternoon. Right at the top were the doors—which yes, you guessed it, were completely unguarded. No previous appointment with a Congressman (or staff member) needed. No telephone numbers to be called, IDs to be presented. No one to frisk you or check your bag. Believe it or not, all this even applied to the Pentagon where, at that time, I was a fairly frequent visitor. Four decades later I am no longer certain just how it worked. I do, however, remember that you could enter the building on your own without either going through a magnetometer—that only came some years later—or being assigned an escort.

Fast forward to the present. The Library of Congress is not a terrorist’s priority target, or so I would think. As to the other abovementioned buildings, though, anyone trying to enter them without following the proper procedures first would be quickly arrested at best and shot dead at worst. The same is true at airports and countless other public buildings across the country, which have been turned into veritable fortresses. In many cases even schools and clinics are not exempt. And yet we live with this kind of security. Not only do we live with it but, having long forgotten its origin, we take it for granted. So much so that, should it be suddenly lifted, some of us might feel surprised, annoyed, or even frightened.

Now let’s look at it from the other end of the question. Sooner or later this pandemic—which, by the way, so far has killed fewer than 1 in 1,000 of the planet’s human population, hardly enough to make a real demographic difference—will go away just as all previous ones did. Whether due to natural circumstances or changing habits or medical advances or some combination of all three, who can say? To be sure, some of the changes it did bring about will stay, at least for a time. Fewer and smaller crowded indoor meetings, perhaps. More people working from home and, as a result, a rise in the prices of large houses and apartments as opposed to those of smaller ones; that extra bedroom is going to come in just handy. More online, as opposed to ordinary, shopping. A little less traffic, commuter traffic in particular, leading to less crowded roads and a modest decline in gasoline prices. Less air pollution, especially in the cities. More parents who prefer homeschooling for their offspring. More—even more—government interference in people’s lives, including their right, or lack of it, to do with their bodies as they please. An increase in the size, power, and, not least, cost of the medical establishment.

However, the spread and eventual decline of corona is only one out of a vast number of processes that shape social life. As time passes, telling them apart so as to determine the impact of each one will become increasingly difficult, indeed impossible. As time passes, too, memories of the old normal will fade. If only because more and more people will experience the new normal as normal, normalcy will return.

Albeit that it will not be the same.

* Thanks to Prof. Sofia Simitzi, from the University of Ioannina, whose email, coming out of nowhere, inspired this post.

Guest Article – The Ghost of 1914

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By

Bill Lind*

World War I ended with a global pandemic.  Has the next world war begun with one?  I pray not, but no historian can look upon the war in Ukraine and not see the ghost of 1914 rising wraithlike from it – a ghost which, I fear, bears a striking resemblance to Conrad.  When was Przemsyl last in the news?

When we think back to World War I, to its origins, its course and its consequences, the parallels are frightening.  The first is that, in 1914, no one expected war or wanted war – at least a general European war.  Kaiser Wilhelm II certainly did not.  On the contrary: as soon as he realized, too late, where events were leading, he made desperate efforts to head them off.  He ordered a cable sent to Vienna telling Austria to take Belgrade and then stop, but the German Foreign Office did not send it.  Tsar Nicholas only approved the order for mobilization with great reluctance; his war and Foreign Ministers acted before he could change his mind.  The Kaiser even halted his army on the Belgian frontier when the British Foreign Secretary hinted Britain might stay out – but then Grey pushed the British cabinet in.

Are events today again running away from those who seek de-escalation?  Russia expected a quick victory (like everyone in 1914), but now finds herself bogged down in a stalemate with no clear exit.  As wars go on, they tend to spread.  The West is upping the ante in the help it is extending to Ukraine.  At what point does Russia start hitting Western weapons shipments while they are still on NATO’s soil?  How long can China remain on the fence when Russia is her principal ally?  If Russia uses chemical weapons in urban combat, does the U.S. wrongly declare them “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and thereby open the nuclear Pandora’s box?  There are a lot of ways for this conflict to get bigger, fast.

The parallels do not end with the merely military.  In 1914, the world had a global economy.  Only in the last decade did the value of global trade reach 1914 levels, as a percentage of the global economy.  But even before Russia invaded Ukraine, America’s use of economic sanctions as weapons was swiftly undermining Globalism, as did the Coronapanic and its effects on global supply chains.  Now, every country is striving to “re-shore” whatever it can, in a security-driven race towards autarky.

World War I ended with the destruction of three great, Christian, conservative empires, the Russian, the German, and the Austro-Hungarian, with ongoing consequences for Christendom.  What states may fail as a result of the war in Ukraine and its potential expansion?  Then, the old empires reformed as republics.  But now, we live in a time when the state is in decline and non-state entities are rising.  Fourth Generation War theory says that a defeated Russia might break up still further, as the Soviet Union did, to become a vast stateless region with lots of nukes and delivery systems floating around.

What then, Russophobes, which is to say the Blob, the neocons, and the neo-libs?  You destroyed states such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya and have not been able to put them back together.  What is your plan for a stateless region running from the Polish border to the Pacific Ocean?

The political establishments in Washington and the EU would be wise to remember that World War I brought a wholesale collapse of establishments.  The monarchies in Russia, Austria, and Germany were swept away, replaced in the first by Bolshevism and the latter two by socialism.  Shortly after the war, in 1922, the Italian political establishment was replaced by Fascism, and in 1933 in Germany by National Socialism.  Do the cultural Marxist elites that now rule in Washington and most European capitals think they are likely to survive a cataclysm they created? (I promise them their replacements will come from the right, not the left.)

If those establishments want to survive, they need now to bend every effort to de-escalate the war in Ukraine, to build a golden bridge Russia can withdraw over without humiliation, one where the Kremlin can claim some sort of victory (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO and Crimea is recognized as Russian) and all Western sanctions are quickly removed.  The U.S., the E.U., and Russia then join to rebuild Ukraine.

In 1914, the post-1815 European order sleepwalked itself into a world war that swept it from the board.  In 2022, the post-1945 world order is on the verge of doing the same.

 

* William S. Lind is a long-time American defense analyst and social critic. This article has been previously published in Traditional.Right.

The Guessing Game

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There are two cardinal reasons why President Putin has almost certainly lost the war he launched over a month ago. Both are as old as history, and both were set forth by Clausewitz around 1830. First, a military operation, large or small, is much like pouring water from a bucket (the metaphor is mine, not Clausewitz’s); the further away from its point of origin it flows, the more momentum it loses and the more vulnerable it becomes to counterattacks directed both against the spearheads and against the attacker’s lines of communication. Just think of Napoleon in 1812. Having invaded Russia with 600,000 men, by the time he reached Moscow he only had 100,000 left; all the rest had either perished by battle, disease and fatigue or been left in the rear to garrison key positions there. 100,000 troops were not nearly enough to force a decision, let alone hold the country down. And so all it remained for him was to retreat.

The second and even more fundamental reason is that time works against the attacker. Why? Because, under most circumstances, conquering and appropriating is harder, and requires greater force, than holding and preserving. An offense that does not attain its objective—from the attacker’s point of view, that would mean a better peace—within a reasonable amount of time is certain to turn into a defense. Think of Hannibal in 218-17 BCE, think of Hitler in 1941-42. Again this applies to any military operation, large or small, old or new.

So far, Putin’s war has proceeded in four stages. First, a combination of geography and numerical superiority enabled his forces to operate on external lines and invade Ukraine from four different directions (northwest, north, east and south) at once. Second, enjoying both numerical and technological superiority, and some logistic problems notwithstanding, those troops pushed the Ukrainians aside and reached the outskirts of the most important Ukrainian cities such as Kharkov, Kiev, Kherson, and Mariupol (important because of its command of the Sea of Azov as well as the road from the Donbas to the Crimea) and put them under siege. Third, especially at Kherson and Mariupol, they tried their hand at urban warfare. Only to find, as countless others before them have also done, that such warfare tends to be very bloody and very destructive. The difficulty of obtaining intelligence, the excellent shelter cities provide to those who defend them, and the way rubbish-filled streets canalize and hamper the attacker’s movements all contribute to this result; between them they cause cites to swallow up armies the way sponges take up water.

Fourth, and rather predictably, the Russians switched from attempts to capture Ukrainian cities to subjecting them to artillery bombardment. Just as, some twenty years ago, they did in Grozny. In Kherson and Mariupol the tactic worked, at any rate up to a point. However, Kiev and Kharkov are much larger than either of those. Besides, Ukraine itself is a large country with many urban areas, large and small. Not even the Russian army, famed for its reliance on artillery, has enough guns to take them on all at once; whereas doing so one by one will require enormous amounts of time which, for the abovementioned reasons, Putin simply does not have.

Fifth, the offensive having exhausted itself, stalemate will set in if, indeed, it had not done so already. Stalemate having set in politics, which right from the beginning played a very important role, will start playing an even more important one. All sides will have a strong interest in ending the war. Hence attempts will be made to do so on terms all of them —Russia, Ukraine, NATO—will find more or less acceptable or at least capable of being presented as such.

Just what the final settlement will look like is impossible to say; most probably, though, it will include the following elements. First, there can be no question of doing away with Ukraine as an independent country and nation. Second, there will be no subservient government in Kiev as there is in Minsk. Third, Russia will make no important territorial gains beyond those made in 2014 and even its ability to hold on to those is in some doubt. Fourth, Ukraine will not officially join NATO, let alone have NATO forces stationed on its territory; but other, more limited, forms of cooperation between the two entities will certainly be established and maintained. Fifth, Putin may, but not necessarily will, lose his post.

Finally, never forget that war, though it makes use of all kinds of physical assets such as numbers of troops, weapons, equipment, roads, communications, topographical and geographical obstacles, and so on, is a human drama above all. As such it is critically affected by every kind of human, often incalculable, drives and emotions; which, collectively, shape the fighting power of both sides. Taking all this into account, it becomes only too clear that anything that can be said about the way future campaigns will develop is no more than what Clausewitz calls a calculus of probabilities.

So it has been, and so it will remain

Spring

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A lawn full of colorful crocus in Copenhagen, Denmark. Similar:

Like everyone else, I am looking for some good news in a world seemingly gone mad. Alas, I am no poet. Or else I would have used my own words to celebrate the coming of spring. Before I serve you another person’s flowers, though, I want to tell you of something I used to do many years ago. You think it is funny, you think it is weird? Honi soit qi mal y pense.

Along with my young family, I spent the years 1969-71 and 1975-76 in London. First, working on my dissertation (Hitler’s Strategy, 1940-1941: The Balkan Clue). Later, on sabbatical writing Supplying War. Though the landlords were kind—I have nothing but good memories of them—the lodgings were, by today’s standards, quite miserable. We did not even have a toilet to call our own, sharing the one we used with another couple instead. Rent being cheap, though, we were able to afford a little Hillman Imp. Second hand, of course, white, with a red stripe along the side. It had two doors and an opening rear window. I still remember the registration number—DKM-789-C. During the eighteen months or so we had it it broke down many times. Nevertheless, never did I enjoy a car more. Probably not a country house within a hundred miles of London we did not visit!

However, its most important use was to take me a couple of miles northeast from Kilburn to Hampstead Heath where I used to go running two or three times a week. Each year, come late February/early March the crocuses, yellow, blue and white would show themselves. Just as in the pic. And you know what? Coming back from my run, I used to lie down on the ground and kiss them. Yes. Kiss them.

With that off my chest, here is my favorite description of spring (by a lady, unknown to me, who identifies herself as Lhtheaker):

 

The grass is green across the hill,
But yellow blooms the daffodil.
It’s sunshine on a little stalk,
A friendly flower, I bet they talk…

Of little kids, too long inside
They burst outdoors to play and hide.
Tracking mud and bringing bugs.
Look, there’s footprints on the rug!

Tiny whirlwinds, these little tykes,
They skin their knees while riding bikes.
They rip and roar, they’re running wild!
What fun it is to be a child.

It grows warmer every day.
Shoo the children out to play!
Pick the flowers, play in mud.
Too much rain, here comes a flood!

My snowy, winter days are gone.
I mourn them, but I hear a song
Of birds in trees; wind chimes ring.
I guess it might as well be spring!

Chaos

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As far as anyone can make out, the situation in Ukraine is nothing if not chaotic. Russian forces are said to be advancing on all fronts. Ukrainian forces claim success after success in slowing down the aggressors or even halting them. Now cities are said to have been cut off, now it appears that, in reality, they are not. Cities are occupied, or else they are not and the two sides keep fighting over them. Convoys seem to be get stuck for days on end, but no one knows why. The Russians are running out of supplies. The Russians so far have only committed about three quarters of their forces. The Russian air force is said to be either held back or ineffective, yet President Zelensky keeps begging the West to impose a no fly zone.

Both sides accuse the other of committing war crimes and provide casualty figures; but neither is at all complete or reliable and there is good reason to believe that many are neither. A maternity hospital is said to have been hit, but whether it was done deliberately or as part of what is euphemistically known as “collateral damage” is obscure. The Western sanctions on Russia are working, or else they are little more than a nuisance that can be taken care of with Chinese help. The Russians are running out of young soldiers (hard to believe, since Russia’s birthrate, while below the replacement figure, is actually higher than that of Ukraine). Putin is winning on all fronts. Putin knows he has bitten off more than he can swallow and is desperately looking for a way out. Putin is ill. Putin is mad. Putin is about to be deposed, though no one knows by whom.

Millions of messages are being sent, intercepted, recorded, decrypted, stored, and analyzed by every possible means from artificial intelligence down. Some are even being falsified. To make things worse still, joining the Niagara of words is a tsunami of images. Attempting to prove their claims, both sides are publishing countless photographs, clips, videos, or whatever they are called. And that does not even include the millions of images sent out by the media on their own initiative. However, most of the time it is impossible to say who took them, when, where, in what context, and for what purpose. To say nothing of the fact that, since the uniforms worn by both sides and much of the materiel they use are broadly similar, it is often impossible to say what is what. One gets to see a shot up vehicle; but who destroyed it impossible to say. One sees wrecked building; but who wrecked it and why is impossible to say. A corpse is shown lying on the pavement; but whose corpse it is, and who killed him, is anything but clear. Briefly, it is not true, as Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used to say, that bilder luegen nicht. Indeed that itself is perhaps the greatest lie of all.

Except for the sheer amount of information being passed around, there is nothing new or exceptional about all this. Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese soldier-scholar who probably wrote his Art of War around 500 BCE, says that all warfare is based on deceit and that, of all the ways to defeat an enemy, tricking him is the swiftest and the best (also in the sense of being the least bloody). Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general and military theorist who wrote vom Kriege during the 1830s, says that, in war, almost all information (Nachrichten) is contradictory, false, or both. Napoleon, who though neither a theoretician nor a writer was one of the greatest commanders who ever lived, adds that making sense of the confusion is a task not unworthy of geniuses such as Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler. He himself, incidentally, was a master of deceit—a talent he displayed not just on campaign, as by “stealing a march” on his enemies, but while playing cards as well.

For all the vast technological apparatus it uses, modern war has not been exempt from these problems. To the contrary, in some ways it has made them worse than ever. One factor responsible for this is the sheer amount of information in the hands of, or being generated by, decision makers, soldiers, intelligence services, the media, and individuals on all sides. Let me provide just one example of what this may mean. Back in 1991 headquarters US Marine Corps, preparing to invade Kuwait, received a million and a half satellite-images of the terrain in front of it. This, on top of other kinds of information too numerous to detail here. So enormous was the flood that the images were almost entirely useless—the manpower, the expertise and the time needed to make them useful where simply not available. Since more was being added every hour, processing all of them would have lasted literally forever. The development of artificial intelligence may have alleviated some of these problems. But certainly not all.

A second problem originates in the illusion that we are in full command of our faculties, meaning that our senses provide us with a realistic idea of the world around us. In fact, however, this is by no means always the case. Our minds are colored by fear, elation, hope, despair, disappointment, and a thousand other emotions. Coming on top of this, often what we see depends, not on incoming information but on what we are; as shaped by education, training, prejudice, and so on. No two people, no two organizations, are the same or see the world in the same way. Which means that, even if all the relevant information is available, the task of entering into the enemy’s mind and guessing his intentions is very difficult, not seldom impossible.

Third, in war all these problems are exacerbated by what Clausewitz calls its Strapazen. War is the most strenuous activity any human can engage in by far. To those who have not gone through it the mental and physical stress are simply unimaginable. Partly because of the ever present danger to limb and life, one’s own and those of others; and partly, at the upper levels, because the fate of countries and populations may very well depend on it. Such is the strain that it often causes even the very bravest and most stable to behave somewhat strangely. If not all the time, then certainly some of it. Under such conditions no wonder (as Napoleon said) that false reports proliferate. Some people see entire armies where, in fact, there are none; others don’t see armies even when those armies are right in front of their noses. 

A final point that, as far as I am aware, analysts have raised rarely if at all. It goes without saying that, ceteris paribus, the chaos of war affects both the conqueror and the conquered. However, as a rule creating order out of chaos—the conqueror’s task—is a lot harder than doing the opposite; think, for example, of building a new wall brick by brick as opposed to taking up a sledge hammer and bringing it down. Without imposing order on a recalcitrant country, the Russians cannot win. As a result, this factor will probably work in favor of the defender. The Israelis in Lebanon, the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Americans in both Afghanistan and Iraq all tried their hand at this game. Ultimately, to no avail.

Ukraine is a large country with long, hard to seal, borders as well as tens of millions of able and highly motivated inhabitants. Chances are that the same will happen in this case.

When the Guns Fire

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Two weeks into the war—no need to explain which war I am referring to here—the situation appears to be as follows.

 

 

General

Contrary to the view of some of us, who considering the military balance predicted a fast and fairly easy Russian Blitzkrieg, this is turning out to be a prolonged and quite bloody war. Unless some miracle happens, it will get worse before it gets better.

Military Operations

Russian military operations are being conducted in full force and with few if any restraints. 

 

Coming from several directions at once, they have succeeded in occupying one important city (Kherson) and are currently besieging and shelling several others. As one would expect from the side that is short of almost everything, Ukrainian resistance, though deserving of all respect, appears to be sporadic and ill-coordinated with each city and each force acting more or less on their own. Though Russian airpower does not play as much of a role as most people thought it would, it does dominate the sky. Still the Russians have not yet got even close to breaking the Ukrainian will to resist and fight. Perhaps, to the contrary.

Spread and Escalation

Contrary to many predictions, too, so far the war has remained inside Ukraine and did not spread to neighboring countries such as Moldavia and Poland.

Nevertheless, spread (“horizontal escalation, as it is sometimes called) and escalation remains very real possibilities. Suffice a single mistake, most likely in connection with NATO aircraft overlying Ukrainian territory (either deliberately or by accident) or with a Russian attacks on NATO attempts to assist Ukraine, to set Europe aflame and perhaps bring it to a glowing end. No wonder NATO is resisting President Zelensky’s calls for the establishment of a 

 

non-flight ban over his country. But it is not going to happen.

The Situation in Russia

The sanctions are really hurting Russia’s population. Not so much because people are starving, as they were during under Stalin in 1930-31 as well as during and immediately after World War II. But because of their sense of being cut off from the world. Including news emanating from any sources except their own government, not known as the most truthful in the world. The oligarchs have also taken heavy losses.

On the other hand, there is no sign of serious opposition to Putin. Claims about him being angry with his generals—at any rate, angry enough for it to make a difference—also seem to be without sufficient foundation in fact.

Economic Impact

The sanctions on Russia apart, the impact of the war on the global economy has been very serious. Production is down, inflation is up. That is especially true for such products as energy (oil and gas) and wheat. Gold is king. As always, though, there are those who prof

 

it. Including, above all, owners and producers of the commodities in question. And including arms manufacturers in many places around the world.

On one hand, the international rating agencies keep announcing Russia’s imminent bankruptcy. On the other, Russia is among the greatest profiteers. Not only is it among the largest producers of both energy and wheat, but it sells them dear to whomever will buy. Primarily, it seems, China. Now even Germany has announced it cannot do without Russian gas. Which of these two trends prevails we shall see soon enough.

As I am writing these lines on 9 March the Euro is slightly up against the dollar whereas gold and gas are slightly down. Are people getting used to the new reality? Again, we shall see soon enough.

International Impact

The Russian attack on Ukraine has brought almost all of Europe’s remaining countries closer together. Countries that always refused to join NATO and/or the EU (which is also an alliance against attack, albeit that it is seldom mentioned) are now actively considering doing just that. Good; but one doubts whether it can last.

Some false prophets notwithstanding, so far the war has not led China to mount an attack on Taiwan. Instead, the Chinese leadership seems to be weighting its options. There is a good chance that, if the war continues as it almost certainly will, China will emerge as the great tertius gaudens. Without firing a shot, what is more.

 

Attempts to End the War

So far, none of any importance. But clearly any solution, even if it does not fully meet Putin’s initial demands, can only come at the expense of Ukraine. Given how fearful NATO is, such a solution is not impossible. But it will take time.

 

Varia

Following decades of neglect, events are forcing Europe’s politicians as well as its populations to take war and the military seriously. There is even occasional talk of a return to conscription. However, it probably won’t happen. Even if it does, putting the necessary arrangements in place, procuring the necessary weapons and equipment, and organizing the necessary training will take years.

Following decades of feminist b.s, it turns out that few if any women participate in combat either on the Ukrainian side or, much less so, the Russian one. Ukrainian men are expected to fight and are barred from leaving the country, which some consider a violation of their human rights; Ukrainian women are not. Had events not been as tragic as they are, one could almost have said, “alles in ordnung” (everything is OK).

To Sum Up

The first casualty is the truth. Which incidentally means that there is no way to verify the casualty figures published by both sides.

Ukraine, Russia, Europe and the world are in an even greater mess than usual.

When the guns fire, the children cry.

Just Published!

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Exactly 69 years ago:

Gentlemen of the celestial assembly!

I am standing here today in front of you. Not because I wanted to—it is you who have dragged me here. Not to express my regrets—my second wife’s death apart, regrets I have none. Not to justify myself—I need no justification. Not to prevent future historians from spreading even more lies about me—being dead, what do I care? Not so that you may acquit me—I know full well you won’t. Not because I believe you exist; as a historical materialist, I do not. To quote the great Marx, religion is the opium of the masses. Heaven and hell are but fables the self-styled “upper classes,” using those lick-spittles, the priests, have invented to keep those masses in their place.

And not to glorify my own role in history, not inconsiderable as it may have been. But solely to help ensure, as far as I can, that memory of the way the first-ever government of the proletariat, by the proletariat, for the proletariat, came about, overcame all obstacles, and triumphed, should not perish from the face of the earth.

So I hereby submit my res gestae. A summary, unembellished but truthful, of my deeds in the material world, the only really existent one. From this time forth I never will speak word.

 

6 March 1953

A Very Bad Man

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The war in Ukraine goes on and on. Though analysts are as numerous as flies on a heap of you know what, the truth is that one knows how it is going to end. Such being the case, I want to put my latest thoughts on record.

First, Putin may be a very bad man. However, there is no point in continually saying so. Based on historical reasoning, he is doing what he believes he must on behalf of his country. That historical reasoning itself is neither better nor worse than any other reasoning of this kind; part reality, part myth, part propaganda. Never mind. To cope with him, it is first of all necessary to understand what he thinks, why, and what can and cannot be done about it. The more so because he has enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world.

Second, this is a war of survival not only for Ukraine but for Russia as well. In the case of Ukraine, that is because defeat would reduce it to a Russian province. Much as it used to be since 1793 when Catherine the Great joined Austria and Prussia in partitioning Poland, a move which for the first time took Russia to the shores of the Black Sea. In the case of Russia it is because, should this struggle be lost, the country can expect to disintegrate into who knows many warring fragments. Just as happened in 1990. Recovery, even supposing it will be possible at all, will take decades. See, as an example of what it may be like, The Time of Troubles (1598-1613).

Third, this is going to be a long and bloody conflict. Albeit that it may have taken a little longer than was originally planned—not something at all unusual in war—the Russians have reached Ukraine’s most important cities and put them under siege. They have not, however taken them. As I have written before, urban warfare is perhaps the most difficult form of war an attacking force can engage on. Just think of the months-long battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43, and you’ll know what I mean.

Fourth, even if the Russians do succeed in occupying the cities, the war, taking the form of insurrection, guerrilla, and terrorism will go on. As, to mention but two recent examples, it did in both Afghanistan and Iraq. True Ukraine, being flat, does not present the best terrain on which to wage these forms of warfare. Compared to many others, the Russians also enjoy the important advantage of being able to understand the language. But two factors are working in the other direction. One is the sheer size of the country and the population, which threaten to swamp any occupying force (that is why, back in 1793, the Russians were able to occupy it in the first place was because it was practically uninhabited). The other, the ready availability of every kind of assistance from NATO, which can only increase as time goes on.

Fifth, Putin’s forces are said to be using some unorthodox weapons capable of causing many casualties and inflicting immense damage on buildings in particular. Particularly important are so called thermobaric weapons that operate by detonating a mixture of air and fuel, resulting in an extraordinarily powerful explosion as well as extremely high temperatures. But Putin is not the only one to use them.  Americans did so both at Hue in 1968 and at Fallujah in December 2004; and both the Americans and the British used them in Afghanistan. So who are they to complain?

Sixth, whether Russia will break under the sanctions is uncertain. My own guess it that it won’t. Partly that because the Russians can take almost anything. And partly because Germany e.g depends on Russia for 51 percent of its oil and gas; without them, German industry will soon come to a standstill. Vice versa, the one certainty is that the war will break the economy of the Ukraine.

Seventh, the only way Putin can win this war is by finding some Ukrainians able and willing to set up a government that will collaborate with him. That, however, seems unlikely to happen.

Finally, in this war as in any other the first casualty is the truth. That is one reason why anyone who believes he can see into the future is welcome to try and so so.

 

War in Ukraine

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Asked to predict the future of the war in the Ukraine, I took another look at a book I wrote a couple of years ago. English title, Looking into the Future: A History of Prediction. Working on it taught me two things. First, as everyone knows prediction is extremely difficult and often misses the mark. Not seldom with disastrous consequences; as happened in 1914 when statesmen and soldiers predicted a short and easy war (“you will be home before the leaves fall form the trees,” the Kaiser told his soldiers) but found themselves involved in the largest, most deadly, armed conflict in history until then. And second, the methods we use today—questionnaires among experts (the so-called Delphi method), mathematical models, artificial intelligence, what have you—are no better than those that people used thousands of years ago. Such as astrology (Babylon), manipulating yarrow stalks (China), watching birds and consulting oracles (Greece), reading the entrails of sacrificial animals (Rome), interpreting dreams (in all known civilizations), and so on.

I am a historian, so readers will have to forgive me for basing my thought on historical methods. Primarily analogies on one hand and trends on the other.

Here goes.

* Ukraine is surrounded by Russia on all sides except the west, where it borders on Poland, Moldavia and Romania. It consists almost entirely of flat, open country (the famous “Black Earth”). The only mountains are the Carpathians in the southwest and the Crimean Mountains in the extreme south along the coast. There are some large rivers which can form serious obstacles for an attacker. But only if they are properly defended; which, owing to their length, would be hard to do. Here and there are some low. One also encounters quite a number of deep ravines, the best known of which is Babi Yar. But neither form serious obstacles to traffic, particularly tracked traffic. The roads are better than they used to be during World War II and there are more of them; however, with just 2.8 kilometers of them per square kilometer of territory (versus 1.5 in Germany) they are still not up to West European standards. The climate is continental, meaning hot and dry (often uncomfortably so) in summer, extremely cold (with lots of snow) in winter, and rain spread during most of the year.

* Russia has nuclear weapons, whereas Ukraine does not. That is a pity; had it had such weapons as well as a secure second strike force of vehicles to deliver them, war would almost certainly have been out of the question. However, for Putin’s present purpose it does not matter. The last things he wants to do before he occupies Ukraine is to turn it into a radioactive desert. Thanks in part to the help they get from NATO, during recent years the Ukrainian armed forces have grown considerably stronger and better equipped. Fighting morale, based primarily on popular memory of the way Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians in 1930-32, is said to be high. Nevertheless, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively are the forces in question a match for the Russian ones.

* Initially at any rate both sides will rely primarily on the usual conventional weapons: aircraft (which are particularly useful over open terrain as opposed to such as is mountainous or forested), tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery, as well as the motorized columns they need to sustain them. However, they will also make heavy use of less traditional methods. Such as maskirovska (deception), signals warfare, electronic warfare, and, last not least, cyberwarfare. All these are fields in which the Russians have specialized for a long time past and in which they are acknowledged masters; in this respect they are in tune with their master, Putin, who himself rose by way of the intelligence services.

* At the moment the Russians the Russians are attacking Ukraine from all directions simultaneously without any clear Schwerpunkt. The Donbas apart, objectives include Kharkov, Kiev, several other key cities, and perhaps the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts. Faithful to their long-standing doctrine of “battle in depth,” the Russians attack not just at the front but far behind it as well.

* The Russians will not find it too difficult to “overrun” (whatever that may mean) most of a country as large and as sparsely populated as Ukraine. However, taking the most important cities—Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa—will be a different matter and will surely only be accomplished by heavy and very destructive fighting. Followed, most probably by guerrilla and terrorism. The way, say, things happened in Iraq.
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* Forget about sanctions. They will not deter the Russians. Just as Stalin used to give enormous banquets even during the height of World War II, so Putin and his clique will barely notice them. Whereas the people are used to make do without almost everything. Except vodka, of course, and even consumption of that is said to have fallen over the last few years.

* NATO, with the US at its head, will be involved in the war, but only marginally and without sending troops to participate in the fighting. Instead it will dispatch “defensive” weapons (whatever those may be), provide supplies and intelligence, and perhaps help evacuate some of the wounded as well as assist Ukrainian refugees. All the while continuing to tell anyone who wants to listen, and some of those who do not want to listen, how bad the Russians are, etc. etc.

* China can be expected to make some sympathetic noises. That apart, it will get involved only lightly by expanding trade so as to offset some of the sanctions. It may also use the opportunity to do something about Taiwan. Or not.

* Should the war turn into guerrilla and terrorism, as it very likely will, it may very well open the door to the death of perhaps fifty Ukrainians for every soldier the Russians lose (in Vietnam the ratio was about 75 to one). Even so Putin will still be unable to end the war, which he can do only by setting up a new collaborationist Ukrainian government.

* Though it is likely to happen later rather than sooner, there is a good chance that Putin will find Ukraine stuck in his throat; to quote a Hebrew saying, neither to swallow nor to puke. Given enough time, the outcome will assuredly be to make the war less and less popular inside Russia itself. The Russians will end by withdrawing.

* Just as the defeat in Afghanistan played a key role in the collapse of Communism, so a defeat in Ukraine will almost certainly mean the end of Putin’s regime. Much worse for Russia, it may well cause it to fall back into one of those terrible periods of anarchy it has gone through in the past and which it is Putin’s supreme objective to prevent. He can barely conceal his anxiety in this respect; as by assuring his listeners that 2022 is not 1919 (the year in which Lenin and the Bolsheviks came closest to defeat).

Finally:

Though based on history, in truth all this is little better than guesswork. It is as Woody Allen said: Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him about your plans.