Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

In the Middle East, the Alarm Bells are Ringing

Posted on by

In the Middle East, the alarm bells are ringing. In this post I shall make an effort to explain, first, why this is so; and second, what a war might look like.

*

In the Middle East, the alarms bells are ringing. There are several reasons for this, all of them important and all well-able to combine with each other and give birth to the largest conflagration the region has witnessed in decades. The first is the imminent demise of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, alias Abu Maazen. Now 88 years old, his rule started in 2005 when he took over from Yasser Arafat. Unlike Arafat, who began his career as the leader of a terrorist organization, Abu Mazen was and remains primarily a politician and a diplomat. In this capacity he helped negotiate the 1995 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Partly for that reason, partly because he opposed his people’s armed uprising (the so-called Second Intifada of 2000-2003) some Israelis saw him as a more pliant partner than his predecessor had been.

It did not work that way. Whether through his own fault, or that of Israel, or both, during all his eighteen years in office Abu Mazen has failed to move a single step closer to a peace settlement. Israel on its part has never stopped building new settlements and is doing so again right now. As a result, Palestinian terrorism and Israeli retaliatory measures in the West Bank in particular are once again picking up, claiming dead and injured almost every day.

Nor is the West Bank the only region where Israelis and Palestinians keep clashing. Just a few weeks have passed since the death, in an Israeli jail and as a result of a hunger strike, of a prominent Palestinian terrorist. His demise made the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza launch no fewer than a thousand rockets at Israel, leading to Israeli air strikes, leading to more rockets, and so on in the kind of cycle that, over the last twenty years or so, has become all too familiar. Fortunately Hezbollah, another Islamic terrorist organization whose base is Lebanon, did not intervene. It is, however, not at all certain that, should hostilities in and around Gaza resume, it won’t follow up on its leader’s threats to do just that. Certainly it has the capability and the plans; all that is needed is a decision.

Israel armed forces are among the most powerful in the world. In particular, its anti-aircraft, anti-missile, and anti-aircraft defenses are unmatched anywhere else. It may take time and here will be casualties. Still, unless something goes very, very wrong, Israel should be able to silence not just the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah but another terrorist organization operating out of Gaza, i.e Hamas, too. If not completely and forever, then at any rate partially and for some time to come.

However, two factors threaten to upset this nice calculation. The first is the possibility that, as hostilities escalate, the Kingdom of Jordan will be drawn into the fray just as it was both during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then during its 1967 successor. With Palestinians now comprising a very large—just how large no one, perhaps not even the Jordanians themselves, knows—percentage of the kingdom’s population, there is a good chance that the ruling Hashemite House will not be able to remain on the sidelines. Either it joins the fight, or it risks being overthrown.  Nobody knows this better than the Hashemites themselves. From the king down, not for nothing have some of them been buying property, including both real estate and stock, abroad. Currently Jordan is an oasis of stability and not at war with any of its neighbors. Should the regime fall and leave a behind failed state, though, it is likely that terrorists from all over the Middle East will flock to establish themselves there, setting off the powder keg.

The other possibility is more ominous still. Over the years Iran has been assisting various Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, providing them with money, weapons, logistics, training and more. In response Israel has been using its anti-aircraft defenses to bring down Iranian drones and its air force, to hit Iranian targets in Syria. As of today Iran lacks some of the elements that make up a modern air force, specifically including the all-important early warning systems. On the other hand, it does have the ballistic missiles and the drones it needs to reach and hit any Israeli target. Now Iran is a large country with 0.63 million square miles of land and a population of almost 87 million. Defeating it, if only to the extent of making it cease hostilities for the time being, will take more than just a few Israeli air strikes, however well planned, however precise, and however well executed.

*

To recapitulate, in the Middle East quiet, or as much of it as there is, is hanging by a thread. Israel, the occupied West Bank, the unoccupied Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iran are all at imminent risk of war. Not just with each other but, in at least some cases, war combined with struggles against all kinds of terrorist organizations. As history shows, wars of the second kind are particularly likely to last for years and end, to the extent they ever do, in chaos. All this, before we even consider the role nuclear weapons, both those Iran may develop and deploy and those Israel already has, may play.

It Will Survive AI Too

Posted on by

 

Over the last few months, the media have been positively bristling with so much hype about the coming AI Revolution as to make the heads of hundreds of millions spin. How it will completely upset the way things are produced and services, rendered. How it will increase productivity by anything between 40 and 1,200 percent (depending on whom you believe). How, it is “more powerful than Ukraine and Taiwan.” How it will upset the existing international order, assisting the US and India at the expense of China and Europe (Russia, apparently, does not count) and possibly saving the first-listed from what many people see as its imminent decline.

 

I am seventy-seven years old. I have never commanded a military formation, nor run a corporation, nor done research either in the natural sciences or in computing, AI included. In other words, my understanding of the issue is, let’s be charitable, limited. On the other hand, I feel that what little understanding I have of the way history works—an understanding I’ve been trying to acquire since I was ten years old—gives me some kind of handle when thinking about it. By way of a peg on which to hang my thought, I have chosen an article on the subject: S, Sharma, “8 Ways Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Help You Improve Productivity.” The AI Journal, 9/1/2023, at https://aijourn.com/8-ways-artificial-intelligence-ai-can-help-you-improve-productivity/

So here comes Mr. Sharma’s list of some of the things AI is going to do.

1. “Forecast Demand Accurately.” As any student of economics can tell you, demand—here referring exclusively to commercial demand, not to every other kind—depends on many different factors. Technological developments, as when new gadgets, e.g steam engines or automobiles or computers, appear on the market. Prices, especially relative ones, that go either up or down. Macroeconomic developments. Changing circumstances, e.g droughts, global warming, or the emergence of epidemics such as COVID. Changing tastes, habits and ideas which cause the public to prefer one product over another. The discovery of new resources or the drying-up of old ones. The outbreak of war. Trends, luck, and fate (whatever that is). Some of these factors are foreseeable to some extent, others not. Some can be quantified and made computable, others not. All interact, forming a tapestry infinitely more complicated than anything that ever came off a loom. As result, for every correct vision there are ten incorrect ones. Briefly, the future is as much of a mystery today as it was 2,000 years ago when the Roman orator and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero discussed the problem with his brother Titus. Ironically Microsoft Bing, asked what the future would be like, first told me there were too many different scenarios to count and then invited me to submit my own.

2. “Automatic Text Creation.” This is already happening. Indeed multinational companies, in need of multilingual catalogues to sell their wares in different countries, have been using something like it for years. However, as anyone with experience in the matter can tell you, the outcome is likely to be both error-prone and moronic. Error-prone, because the machine has no idea of what the words it manipulates actually mean and is therefore liable to come up with all kinds of absurdities. Moronic because, not having an idea, it strings them together on the basis of the order in which they have been arranged before. One is reminded of the story in Gulliver’s Travels where “the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labor, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study” by using a special table on which all the verbs, all the adjectives and all the verbs in all languages, written on rotating cubes, can be arranged into a text simply by turning a crank. And without in the least understanding what she (or he) has done, of course.

3. “Predict Maintenance.” With or without the aid of AI, predictions of maintenance requirements have been made for ages. At best, AI will make the process faster and more reliable. But I cannot help wondering whether AI will be able to come up with new and improved maintenance philosophies. If I am wrong, please let me know.

4. “Easy Data Extraction and Review.” This, too, has been done for ages. In fact every single ancient writing system known to us was designed specifically for that exact purpose. So in China, so in Mesopotamia, so in Egypt, so in the Aegean (Linear A), and so among the Inca (quipu). But whether General Motors e.g is better run today than it was at its heyday in the 1920s, long before computers and the current AI revolution, is doubtful. Why? Because demand adapts itself to the available supply. The more AI we have at our disposal the more complex and the more numerous the problems it is asked to resolve.

5. “Seamless interaction.” Attempts to achieve it, some successful, some not, have been going on for ages. The problem? Either changing external circumstances or the kind of human caprice known, euphemistically, as “the free will.” Or, not seldom, some more or less weird combination of both.

6. “Improve manufacturing processes.” This may be true, but it is certainly not new. As long as humans have produced anything—meaning, for the last few hundreds of thousands of years—they have also been trying to improve the production process. It worked: now slowly, now very fast.

7. “Automatic hiring.” AI may help employers go through the hiring process faster. However, often it does so only by making life for would-be employees much harder, as by having them fill far more questionnaires. All without any guarantee that things will work out better than they have done in the past or are doing now. For example, can anyone seriously argue that Julius Caesar was not as good in choosing his subordinates as George Marshal was?

8. “Social Commerce & Livestream Shopping.” This has been taking place at least since the first known cities, emerging some 5,000 years ago, set apart special spaces for—yes, you guessed it—“social commerce.” Indeed “commerce” itself stems from the Latin word cum, meaning “together.” AI may facilitated and extended it, but without changing anything really important.

Conclusion. In the words of Ecclesiastics “the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Mankind has survived the ice age when, if scientists got it right, at one point there were only 3,000-10,000 individuals left. It will survive AI too.

Tagged

When You Go to the Woman—Don’t Forget to Turn on Your Tape!

Posted on by

 

This week something extraordinary happened in Israel. A thirty-something old man was acquitted of having committed rape—would you believe it? As if to make the story more unbelievable still, the alleged victim was 1. Eighty-two years old; and 2.  A Holocaust survivor. Which, in this country and many others, automatically gets her a halloo and turns each word she says into gospel truth.

To make things still worse for the accused, he was an Arab—and thus supposedly more likely than others to suffer from sexual deprivation and commit rape. So how did he and his lawyer get him off the hook? Very simple. It turns out that the couple had been in touch for some time, using the telephone to arrange trysts—more than one—and have sex. She even promised to pay him for visiting her. The tapes were produced in court, and that was that.

As a famous seventeenth-century English lawyer, Matthew Hale, once said, of all crimes rape is the easiest to accuse a man of and the hardest to refute. With this in mind, I decided to repeat my warning by reproducing the list of idiots I first put on this website on 6 July 2018. Who knows: by so doing, I might even be saving a man’s life or two.

Who is in danger?

Any man who Approaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Assists women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Associates with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

.Any man who Befriends women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Believes in women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Buys women a drink, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Coaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Dances with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Directs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Employs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Flirts with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Gives women a lift, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Greets women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Instructs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Is alone with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Jokes with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.
Any man who Looks at women, for whatever reason, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Offends women, in whatever way, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Plays with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Praises women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Shakes hands with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Shows affection for women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Sleeps with women (apart from prostitutes, the only honest ones around), for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Studies women, for whatever purpose, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Talks to women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Teaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Touches a woman, even accidentally, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Treats women, whether for physical or psychiatric problems, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Trusts women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Works alongside women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time

*

Finally: When you visit the woman—das Weib is what the original German says—don’t forget to turn on your tape!

Head to Head

Posted on by

Ukrainian Blouse

Russian Blouse

Like almost anyone living in the West today, I am exposed to a flood of media accounts practically all of which explain how good and bad, respectively, Zelensky/Ukraine and Russia/Putin are. Unlike many people living in the West today, I have my doubts about this picture. Which is why I decided to take a look, albeit a cursory one, into the origins of the conflict that is now threatening to escalate to the point where it takes the world apart.

I History and Politics

Before 600 BCE. The land now known as Ukraine, previously inhabited by horse-riding, nomadic or semi nomadic, tribes known to the Greeks as Scythians, was occupied by tribes later designated as East (as opposed to North and West) Slavs. They lived in fortified settlements which, however, were few, small and scattered all over the immense country.

860-62 CE. Some of the country was unified under a leader named Rurik. What information we have about him is contained in chronicles written centuries later and is therefore not very reliable. However, most historians believe that he and his “Rus” followers were of Scandinavian origin. The term, Rus, originating in Old Swedish, means “men who row.” This would be consistent with the idea that the invaders came by river.

870s. Rurik’s successor, Oleg, establishes Kiev as his capital. In the chronicles, which continue to serve as our main sources for the period, the polity he and his successors headed is known simply as “Rus” (and not as “Kiev Rus.”).

988. The rulers of Kiev, now headed by Volodymyr the Great, reach the Baltic for the first time.

12th century. Various Rurikid princes start intermarrying with the rulers of Muscovy, thus gradually leading to the establishment of Rurikid rule there as well

1187. The term “Ukraine,” meaning “borderland” or “march” is mentioned for the first time in the so-called Hypatian Codex; a compendium of three local chronicles originating in three separate “Rus” cities that is the most important source of historical data for those cities. The term “Ukraine” refers to the principality of Pereyaslavl, located east of Kiev. 

1250s. The Mongol invasions end the independence of Kiev. However, Rurik’s descendants continue to rule as vassal kings both in Kiev and Moscow.

1335. Yuri II Boleslav, the ruler of the RuthenianKingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (the latter, a province of Russia), signs his decrees Dux totius Russiæ minoris. (Duke of all Minor Russians), thus for the first time distinguishing “Great” Russians from “Little” (i.e. Ukrainian) ones.

1383. The Kiev Rus revolt and defeat the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo Fields. This marks the beginning of the Golden Horde’s decline.

15th century. Present-day Ukrainian territories come under the rule of four external powers: the remnants of the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. Of those the last two would later unite, forming a huge commonwealth that reached from the Baltic all the way to the northern shores of the Black Sea.

1480. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy, whose known origins go back to the first half of the fourteenth century, throws off Mongol rule and gains its independence. Moscow assumes its historical role as the capital of Russia.

1610. The last Rurikid Tsar, Vasily IV, dies. The first Romanov Tsar, Mikhail I, succeeds to the throne.

1648. A Ukrainian (Cossack) rebellion against Polish-Lithuanian rule jump-starts a century and a half process whereby the tables are reversed. Poland, instead of ruling vast stretches of Russia and Ukraine, ends in 1798 by being partitioned between Muscovy/Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and Prussia.

1721. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy declares itself the Russian Empire and Muscovites are proclaimed to be Russians.

1768-83. A series of Russo-Turkish wars, launched by Catherine the Great and commanded by Alexander Suvorov, extends Russian, rule right down to the Black Sea. The conquest gives Russia access to the Bosporus, thus immensely increasing the strategic importance of Little Russia (Malorussia), as Russians call Ukraine.

1918-21. Well aware of what they called “the nationality problem” Lenin, and under him Stalin, seek to solve it by dividing the newly-established Soviet Union into Republics enjoying (rather limited) autonomy. In 1919 the “All-Russian Central Executive Committee,” as the responsible organ was known, created the broad outline of the Ukraine-Russia border by including in Ukraine, roughly, the former Russian imperial provinces of Volhynia, Kiev, Chernigov, Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav. It based this decision on the 1897 census which showed a majority of Ukrainians in each of these districts.

1932-33. These are the years of the Holodomor, the Stalin-inspired and enacted collectivization of farmland which involved the deliberate starving-out of perhaps 10 percent of Ukraine’s population. Memory of the Holodomor is held up as perhaps the most important reason behind Ukraine’s separatism and the current war with Russia.

1941-44. “The Ukraine” as it is known, is occupied by the Germans for the second time in a quarter century. As in almost every other occupied country, the outcome was not insignificant cooperation between occupiers and occupied, with the latter striving towards independence and the former steering an uneasy compromise between encouraging local nationalism and trying to suppress it. Still hatred for Stalin may have led to more collaboration in Ukraine than in most other occupied Soviet districts. World War II over, armed skirmishes between the KGB and various Ukrainians groups continued and only ended about 1950.

  1. For reasons unknown, Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev transfers the Crimea from the Russian Republic to the Ukrainian one.

II Religion and Culture

867. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, triggers the process that, over the next century or so, led to the Christianization of the “Rus” of Kiev

986. According to the Primary Chronicle, a document that covers the development of the Kievian “Rus” from about 850 to 1100, a Rurikid ruler known in Ukrainian as Volodymyr, in Russian as Vladimir, and in both as “the Great,” summons a conference to decide which religion he and his subjects should embrace, finally deciding on Eastern Christianity.

1299-1325. The Russian Orthodox Church moves its headquarters from Kiev, first to Vladimir, east of Moscow, and then to Moscow itself.

1325-1654. Various attempts to unite the Russian Orthodox Church with the Catholic one, imported from the West by way of Poland and Lithuania, were made but ended in failure. The process ended in 1654 when the Russian Church transferred its allegiance from Constantinople to Moscow, thus becoming autocephalous. Over the next two and a half centuries many senior “Russian” ecclesiastical posts were occupied by Ukrainians.

2022. As per a survey published by the Kiev International Institute of Society, 85% of Ukrainians identify as Christians. 72% call themselves Eastern Orthodox, 9% Catholics (8% Eastern-rite, 1% Latin-rite) and 4% Protestants or adherents of other Christian movement.

*

Russian and Ukrainian are similar, but they are not the same. Both grew out of Old East—as opposed to West—Slavonic. Their development into separate, though still closely related, languages started between 1,000 and 1,300 CE. While the Ukrainian alphabet is similar to the Russian one, it also comprises four unique letters to represent sounds specific to Ukrainian. The two languages are mutually intelligible, though often not without some effort. Partly as a result of having learnt it at school, Ukrainians are more likely to understand Russian than the other way around.

While it is always possible to find precedents—going back, in this ease, to the great 17th-century Cossack revolt against Poland/Lithuania—Ukrainian nationalism is mainly a product of the nineteenth century when country’s western provinces were strongly influenced by the Austrian empire. Much later this fact enabled Russian President Vladimir Putin to claim that it was not a native movement but an imported one.

In Ukraine as in other countries, initially nationalism was generated by a tiny urban elite of highly cultured literati by no means representative of the people as a whole. In Ukraine as in other countries, members of this elite sometimes went to the countryside in the hope of discovering and preserving “aboriginal” and “pure” traditions in which to anchor their views. In Ukraine as in other countries, some such traditions were invented almost ex nihil. Old or new, they provided people—mainly Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles—with additional reasons for fighting each other tooth and nail; nowhere more so than in the “Bloodlands” (historian Timothy D. Snyder) of Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, many famous “Ukrainian” (in the sense that they were born in Ukraine) writers actually wrote in Russian. Nikolai Gogol, the best-known “Ukrainian” writer of all, was born in Sorochyntsi, a Cossack village in what is now Ukraine’s Poltava Oblast, but wrote in Russian. The same applied to Anna Akhmatova and Isaac Babel (both from Odessa) and Mikhail Bulgakov (from Kiev). This list could easily be extended.

As per the latest census, 67 percent of Ukrainians use Ukrainian as their “native” language whereas 29 percent use Russian. Most Ukrainian speakers are concentrated in the west and center of the country; whereas Russian ones inhabit in a long arch that starts in the north, extends to the east, and ends in the south. Yet “native” does not necessarily mean day today, as many Ukrainians start using Russian either when they attend school—formerly, having to do so was part of Moscow’s attempts to Russify them—or, as adults, as part of normal social life. To add to the confusion, about 30 percent of the population use both languages interchangeably both at home and elsewhere.

III. The Current Crisis

The current crisis can be said to have originated in late 1989 when the East Block broke up. Since then both Russia and the West, the latter headed by the U.S, have been using all kinds of methods, fair and foul, to make sure Ukraine, a large and strategically very important country, should be on their side. Including, in 2014, the attempted assassination, probably by Putin’s agents, of a leading “Westernizer”, Viktor Yushchenkoof, who was then running for president. In 2019, the election as president of Volodymyr of Zelensky marked the West’s victory in this struggle.

On 9 February 1990, during a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, then US secretary of state James A. Baker promised that NATO would not expand past the territory of the former East Germany. Speaking in Brussels on 7 May of the same year, NATO’s Secretary General Manfred Woerner repeated that promise. Whether either of these promises was ever put in writing is moot. Certainly they were not made the subject of any treaty.

1991. In February the Warsaw Pact, the chief instrument long used by the Soviet Union to dominate the countries of Eastern Europe (and threaten those of the West), is dissolved. In July-December 1991 the same fate overtakes the Soviet Union. Its place is taken by a “Commonwealth of Sovereign Republics” of which, Russia apart, Ukraine is the largest and most populous. With Kiev as its capital, Ukraine for the first time in history becomes a unified country separate from Russia and under its own independent government. Reflecting the change, the term “Ukraine” takes over from “The Ukraine.”

1997-2004. A number of East European countries, emerging from the Soviet-dominated East Bloc, apply to join NATO and are accepted. To justify this expansion, it is claimed that the promises made by Baker and Woerner did not apply to the new circumstances. In 1997 then Russian President Boris Yeltsin personally expressed his unhappiness with NATO’s eastward expansion, calling it a “threat” to Russians security. Using less restrained language, subsequent Russian spokespersons have spoken of a Western “betrayal.” To Vladimir Putin, who assumed the presidency of Russia in 2000, his country’s collapse is the greatest disaster it has ever sustained and he vows to reverse it. The outcome is a series of relatively small wars: in Chechenia, in Georgia, and in Dagestan.

2014. The Donbas, which is part of Ukraine but has proportionally more Russian speakers than any other Ukrainian region, breaks into civil war, causing Putin to intervene on the Russian side. Other Russian forces seize a corridor from the Donbas to the eastern shores of the Black Sea and from there to the Crimea, which they occupy. This makes alarm bells ring not just in Ukraine but all over Eastern Europe as well as NATO.

2020. By then not only the signatories of the Warsaw Pact but all East European countries, including the newly-established Baltic ones, have joined NATO. The number of NATO members has gone up from 12 in 1949—the year it was founded—to 31. More than one Russian spokesman has said that the “betrayal” is part of a Western plot whose ultimate goal is to dismantle Russia altogether.

Meanwhile the distance between Moscow and its western security border has gone down from 2,000 kilometers during the Cold War to a mere 1,000 today. Should Ukraine’s request to join NATO be granted it will be down to just 850—rather less than it was in 1941 when Hitler attacked.

2021. As preparations for accepting Ukraine into NATO go ahead Russian’s leadership, President Vladimir himself included, repeatedly warns that their country is not going to accept such a move laying down.

2022. On 24 February Russia invades Ukraine. All hell breaks loose, without an end in sight.

Conclusions

Almost as far back as anyone can look, the histories of Russia and Ukraine have been closely intertwined. Now it was Kiev that was the senior partner, now—definitely since about 1500—it was Moscow. Culturally the two nations (a term used by the Russians, but denied by the Ukrainians) are both similar and different. The greatest difference is religion, followed by language.

Concerning the present crisis, the most important factor behind it are 1. The collapse of Russia’s western security zone; and 2. NATO’s eastward drive which Russians see, not without reason, both as a threat in itself and as a possible prelude to an effort to dismantle their country.

With rare exceptions—Sweden in 1905, Czechia in 1992—states are not in the habit of letting parts of their dominions go without a fight, often a very bloody one. Specifically, I am not aware of any great power allowing the zone between its security-border and its capital to be cut by over half without engaging in massive bloodshed. Not ancient Assyria. Not Babylon, not Persia, not Athens, Sparta and Rome. Not China. All used might and main to crush would-be separatists, sometimes with success, sometimes not. More recently, the same applied to Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The South’s attempt to secede led to the Civil War, AKA the War of Northern Aggression, which resulted in as many dead as did all of America’s remaining ones combined. As early as 1833, with a population of only 13,000,000 (including 2,000,000 slaves) the U.S had the unheard-of effrontery of claiming the entire Western hemisphere as its exclusive stamping ground.

I know: It is mostly power and interest, not justice and morality, which govern relations between nations and states. So it has always been, and so it will always remain. But I think that what we can do, and what I myself have been trying to do in this essay, is get rid of some of the ira et studio. Both of the lies and the idea that one side is completely right and the other, completely wrong. Whatever else, doing so may make reaching some kind of agreement that much easier.

Going On and On

Posted on by

Now that President Biden has given his European NATO allies the green light to provide Ukraine with “fourth generation” fighter aircraft, everyone and his cousin are talking about those aircraft. What “fourth (and first, and second, and third, and fifth) generation” means; what the aircraft in question can and cannot do; and the impact their participation in the war is, or is not, going to have on its conduct. Time to shed some light on these questions.

First, this “generations” business.  Starting with the German Me-262, the first three generations of jet fighters entered service in 1944-45 and ruled the skies until about 1970. With each “generational” change they grew faster, enabling them to seize the initiative and dictate the rules of engagement; but only at the cost of being less maneuverable and, to that extent, less suitable both for air-to-air combat and for air-to-ground operations. Starting around 1975, these problems led to a fourth generation of fighters. As the famous late USAF Colonel John Boyd, a fighter pilot who in some ways acted as the brain behind the idea, explained it to me many years ago, aircraft such as the American F-15, F-16, and F-18 were provided with computerized controls. So, somewhat later, were the Russian Su-27, the French Rafale, and the Anglo-German-Italian Tornado. The advent of “fly by wire,” as the system was known, greatly reduced the burden on the pilots, enabling them to focus on fighting rather than simply keeping their machines airborne. In this way, but also by enabling the aircraft to turn much faster than their predecessors, it gave them a decisive edge in combat.

Fifth-generation aircraft are characterized above all by stealth, a technology first introduced around 1990 that greatly reduced their exposure to radar. They also carry sensors able to identify and engage multiple targets simultaneously as well as long-range air-to-air missiles that enable them to take advantage of those sensors. Prime examples are the American F-35 and F-22 as well as the Russian Su-57. By contrast, all Ukraine has are some fourth-generation, Soviet-built, Mig-29s and Su-27s. Old as these aircraft are, just keeping them air- and combat-worthy represents a formidable task; let alone making them fight and defeat their most modern Russian opponents with their superior stealth characteristics, radar, avionics, and air-to-air missiles.

There is also something known as “4.5-generation” fighters, but since there are too few of them to be sent to Ukraine I shall not consider them here. Granted, supplying Ukraine with F-16s is going to solve some of the above problems. But not completely, and perhaps not even by very much. Many of the to-be-provided aircraft are early models built from 1976 on and still being provided to various, mostly third world, customers. Operated for many years—in some cases, decades—by various NATO air forces, making them fit for war risks becoming entangled in a logistic nightmare of different operational capabilities, different spare parts, and different training systems. Of the three, the last-named may well be the most problematic. Some of the sources I consulted say that a Ukrainian pilot accustomed to flying old Soviet-made equipment can be retrained in a matter of months. However, doing the same for the ground-crews may take a year or more.

Nor are those the only problems. At the beginning of the war many observers, comparing the mighty Russian air force (currently it is probably the second most powerful in the world) to the much smaller, in some ways outdated and rag-tag, Ukrainian one predicted a swift victory of the former country over the latter. Two factors explain the failure of Russian air superiority to have a greater impact than it did. First, there is Ukraine’s sheer size—about 600,000 square kilometers, twice as much as Germany—and the consequent dispersed nature of the fighting, much of which takes place not between mighty ground formations but between small and highly mobile teams operating now here, now there. Second, Ukraine’s ground-to-air defenses, particularly those brought into action not against Russian fighters but against cruise missiles and drones, have proved much more effective than anyone could have thought when the war got under way. True, command of the air, meaning the ability to fly where they want and bomb whom they want, has remained mostly in Russian hands. But never at any time has it reached the point where it was absolute.

Overall, the outcome has been and still remains a war of attrition. By definition, and if only because the belligerents tend to imitate one another, in such a war what decides is not tactics, nor even operational art. It is, rather, sheer endurance—a quality which itself is made up of adequate reserves on one hand and willpower on the other. In point of reserves, my prediction is that Western economic might will prevail over that of Russia, even that of Russia as receiving modest support from China. In point of willpower I am not so sure. Some of Putin’s collaborators, tired of the war they fear could end in the disintegration of their country, may band together to remove him and start a new policy. However, it is equally possible that, as happened in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the American people, media and Congress will become tired of the fight and compel the government to abandon it. The more so because an election year is coming up. Do I have to add that, without the US to provide the necessary physical and mental backbone, the rest of NATO is more or less useless?

But these are long-term considerations. My immediate prognosis: With or without the yet-to-arrive F-16s, expect the war, like the Energizer Bunny, to go on. And on. And on.

Where Does All That Put AI?

Posted on by

At some time between 2,000,000 and 500,000 BCE, men (and, lest we forget, women-lesbians-gays-transgenders-queer people-bisexuals-asexuals) exchanged animals’ cries/roars//barks/howls etc. for true speech with all its infinite nuances and complexities. Doing so, they became capable of much better interspecies cooperation and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 200,000 BCE they learnt how to control and use fire. Doing so they greatly expanded the range of possible habitats and edible foods and changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time between 500,000 and 100,000 BCE they invented clothing, enabling them to spread into a great many environments that had previously been uninhabitable and stay in them throughout the year, regardless of season or weather. Doing so they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 10,000 BCE they invented agriculture, enabling much larger numbers of people to live together and be fed. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

It is said that, at some time around 10,000 BCE, they invented war, meaning the use of coordinated violence by the members of one group of people against those of another. Doing so, they changed the course of history. Forever.

At some time around 4,000 BCE they invented the wheel, thereby enabling not merely people but much larger and heavier loads to be moved much farther, faster, and at lower cost. Doing so, they once again changed the course of history. Forever.

Around 3,500 BCE they invented writing, thus enabling much larger numbers of people to form polities, cooperate, and undertake tasks far greater than anything their predecessors could. This invention, too, changed history. Forever.

Around 2,500 BCE they learnt to work iron, thus laying the foundation of much subsequent technology and changing the course of history. Forever.  

And so on, and so on. Leading through the invention or discovery of bow and arrow (ca. 70,000 BCE), weaving (in eastern Anatolia, ca. 7,000 BCE), astronomy (in Egypt and Mesopotamia, ca. 4.000 CE), high-sea navigation (4,000-2,000 BCE), gunpowder (in China, ca. 1,000 CE), print (1450), modern observation-experiment-mathematics-based science (1650), the steam engine (1729), the railway (1825), the telegraph (1830), the dynamo (1831), the electric motor and internal combustion engines (1860 and 1873 respectively), the telephone (1875), radio (1895), quantum mechanics and relativity (1900 and 1905 respectively), heavier than air flying machines (1903), penicillin (1928), TV (1936), electronic computers (1948), and the structure of DNA (1953), to mention but a few out of tens if not hundreds of thousands.  Starting at least as far back as when the Emperor Vespasian had an inventor executed lest his invention, a new kind of crane, should rob many citizens of their livelihood, many of them were initially seen as absolutely catastrophic. The introduction of gunpowder, print, and mechanical weaving all brought about similar reactions (including some that were violent), by various groups of people. Ditto the advent of nuclear weapons (1945) which, many authors, both military and others, keep telling us will inevitably lead to Armageddon and must therefore be combatted by every means.

Fast forward to the present. Writing for the Economist Yuval Harari has put himself at the head of entire herds of pundits. His argument? Artificial intelligence, by learning to use language in ways that are sometimes almost indistinguishable from those hitherto reserved for humans, is on the threshold of doing so again. And, as it does so, may take the rudder out of our hands and lead us into a new catastrophe much worse than all previous ones.

Far be it from me to dispute the significance of these and any other number of ground-breaking inventions and discoveries. Had it not been for them, then presumably we would still have been living on the African savanna in nomadic or semi-nomadic groups of between 50 and 150 individuals. Gathering fruits, tubers and berries; hunting birds and small animals; trying to avoid being eaten by crocodiles as well as any number of big cats; and watching every second child die before it could reach puberty. Or else, going back still further in time, crying out to each other while swinging from tree-branch to tree-branch as some of our ape-like ancestors are believed to have done.

But consider.

First, suppose it is true that each of these and other inventions and discoveries has pushed history onto a radically different “new course.” In that case, how come that, after thousands upon thousands of years of innovation, so many of our earliest traits, both psychological and social, both individual and collective, are still with us? Including our need for company; our craving, partly successful but partly not, to try and understand how things work; our ability to recognize the comic and laugh; our enjoyment of play; our capacity for extreme cruelty; our ability to create artefacts of every kind; our attraction to beauty and to music; our frequent anxiety about what the future may bring; and as many others as you may care to list.

Second, suppose it is true that history’s course has undergone any number of truly fundamental changes. In that case, how come that some ancient items—e.g. Egyptian wall-paintings, the game of Go, the Bible, Greek art, the Platonic Dialogues, Confucius’ Analects, Laotzu’s Book of Tao, Euclid’s Principles of Geometry, Shakespeare’s plays, the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer, to mention but a few, are not only with us still but appeal to us just as much as they did to our ancestors?

In other words: Isn’t history a fabric made up of both the warp–the threads that run lengthwise — and the woof — the threads that run across? And isn’t it true that, without the both of them, it could not exist?

There have indeed been many changes: but have they really been as fundamental, let alone as disastrous, as the drumbeat of so many pundits suggests? If so, how did we increase from perhaps as few as 600 breeding individuals during the last ice age to 8 billion people today?

Where does all that put AI?

When Enough is Enough

Posted on by

The place: the area around Kursk, a Russian (formerly Soviet) city about 520 kilometers south of east of Moscow and 420 kilometers east of Ukraine’s capital Kiev. The time: spring 1943.

A few months earlier, on 2 February 1943, the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad. Some 90,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner; the total number of German losses may have been around 270,000. Perhaps even more ominously for the Germans, their remaining forces in the region, sunk as they were in sleet, snow and atrociously low temperatures, were confused, demoralized and disorganized. Nevertheless, thanks very largely to a single officer, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the German front held. Many considered him the mastermind behind the operation (“Case Yellow”) that had brought down France back in 1940; in truth, though, his performance on this occasion was even better.

By March/April the antagonists were once again facing each along more or less cohesive lines. At the center of the front, which reached from Leningrad to the Black Sea, was a huge Russian salient measuring some 250 kilometers from north to south and 150 kilometers from east to west. It was in and around this salient that the Red Army and the Wehrmacht deployed their most powerful formations, numbering about a million men on each side. In ordering the offensive Hitler was hoping to pinch off the salient while destroying as many Soviet as possible. That done, his troops would be free to move in any direction they chose. North towards Moscow, important because of its railway crossings and its arms industry; east to the Volga through which passed much of the American and Brutish aid to the USSR; and south toward Rostov, the key to the Caucasus where the Red Army got his oil.

It was not to be. Thanks partly to the fact that the German plans fell into Soviet hands, partly to Hitler’s hope that, by postponing the offensive, he would be able to bring up more of his new Panther and Tiger tanks, the Red Army was ready. Starting on 5 July, a week’s ferocious fighting did not lead to the desired result, forcing the Fuehrer to order his commanders to suspend their advance and switch to the defensive instead. But even if it had succeeded it would probably not have brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Given that, by this time, Stalin’s huge domain was fully mobilized and much of its industry evacuated hundreds of kilometers east towards the Urals, well beyond the Wehrmacht’s reach.

Almost exactly eighty years have passed. The forces on both sides are much smaller, so much so that they cannot form cohesive fronts but seem to be distributed in penny packets all over the huge theater of operations. However, the overall strategic situation is not dissimilar. This time it is the Ukrainian armed forces that are said to be preparing for a spring offensive. This time too any offensive that may be in the making keeps being postponed, allegedly because the Ukrainians are still waiting for sufficient weapons—tanks, ammunition, drones and anti-aircraft defenses—to arrive from the West. Whether the Ukrainians are going to attack eastward towards the Donbas and its industry, or southward, with the objective of cutting the narrow land corridor leading from the Donbas to the Russian-occupied Crimea, remains unknown. Finally, in 2023 as in 1943, whether a Ukrainian offensive, even one that is tactically and operationally successful, can be pushed to the point where the Kremlin is forced to give up the fight remains questionable.

Right or wrong, no one seems to be talking about a new Russian offensive. Possibly this is because Putin cannot muster the necessary forces; however, judging by events since 24 February 2022, such an offensive, even if it can be launched, is most unlikely to lead to a quick victory either. Overall the most likely outcome is a prolonged battle of attrition similar, say, to the one Iranians and Iraqis waged against each other from 1980 to 1988. And which will most likely be decided, not by events on the battlefield but by one of the two sides saying, perhaps after a more or less legitimate, more or less conspirational and violent, change of government: enough is enough.

Guest Article: Spotlight on German Defense

Posted on by

By

Gen. (ret.) Dr. Erich Vad*

Since Russia launched its full-blown attack against Ukraine in February 2022, Germany has become one of the Ukrainian largest arms suppliers — incurring costs in the billions of euros. This spending and the decision-making behind it have thrown into stark relief at least two things: major shifts in German security policy, and the difficult balancing acts facing the country’s leaders.

What the War Has Revealed About the State and Focus of the German Military

Starting in 2022, Germany has become the third-largest provider of military support for Ukraine after the US and the UK. It sent goods worth a total of €2 billion (~$2.2 billion). Including multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, and self-propelled, tracked, air defense systems. A further €2.3 billion (~$2.5 billion) in spending is scheduled for 2023. Including, this time, 18 modern Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks, former East German Mig-29 fighters, and Patriot air defense systems.

Coming on top of aid provided by other NATO countries, this largesse has had a tangible impact on the Ukrainian armed forces’ capabilities. However, it has also come at a significant cost for Germany’s own defense. So much so that Germany’s commitments to its NATO allies, as well as its ability to defend themselves, are now in danger of being compromised.

Even more important, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has fundamentally changed threat perceptions in Germany. For the first time since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago, German defense policy is once again focused on Central Europe. The era of German peacekeeping missions abroad–in the Balkans, in Mali and in Afghanistan—is over. However, while the focus of German security policy is changing, the Bundeswehr does not have the capability to back the change.

The list of problems is almost endless. Including a shortage of armored and mechanized units; inadequate stocks of ammunition; long-neglected, out of date, facilities such as barracks; to mention but a few. The new minister of defense, Boris Pistorius, is doing what he can to correct these deficiencies. Inevitably, though, doing so will take time.

Nor is the establishment of a special fund of €100 billion (~$110 billion) for military refurbishments going to be a game changer. By my estimate, to restore operational readiness three times that sum would be needed. The necessary ammunition alone would cost at least €20 billion (~$22 billion), while urgent fixes for the ailing infrastructure would call for an additional €50 billion (~$55 billion). And new frigates, tanks and F-35 fighter aircraft have yet to be paid for.

Beyond these hardware-related risks an even greater threat is looming: that of the dire shortfalls in personnel. Following German reunification the Bundeswehr had around 460,000 soldiers. Since then it has been gradually reduced in size until, today, only about 183,000 are left. Currently plans are aiming at an additional 20,000 in 2031—hardly enough to make much of a difference.

Restoring the Bundeswehr’s Operational Readiness Will Take Years

Starting in 1990, Germany believed it could afford to neglect national and alliance defense because the threat situation was quite different. In retrospect, this was short-sighted. The fundamental failure was that Germany “imported” much of its national and alliance defense security, primarily from the U.S. At the same time, it generated a considerable amount of its wealth in China, the geostrategic rival of the U.S, and the West more broadly. And it also imported cheap energy from Russia.

The Bundeswehr’s foreign missions, first and foremost in Afghanistan, dominated the political spotlight and had to proceed, while the rest of its commitments did not seem to matter. To meet ongoing foreign missions personnel and materiel were scrounged from hundreds of Bundeswehr locations. Meanwhile, armament procurement concentrated on armored transport vehicles rather than on battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. This and the ever-decreasing quantities of new equipment also led to reallocation and relocation measures on the part of the defense industry.

Again starting in 1990, every military reform in Germany has been intended, not to strengthen the Bundeswehr in terms of national and alliance defense but to make it smaller and cheaper. The Bundeswehr now has fewer battle-ready tanks than Switzerland and fewer ships than the Netherlands. The hasty phase-out of conscription in 2011 exacerbates the Bundeswehr’s personnel situation to this day. A return to compulsory military service is under discussion, but is not very realistic even though similar policies have been implemented in frontline states such as Lithuania.

At the time, the suspension of conscription at the time was supported by the military leadership because it freed up tens of thousands of professional and temporary soldiers — who had previously been bound by conscription as instructors — for deployment abroad. In the process, however, massive personnel problems arose: Today some 20,000 positions in the Bundeswehr remain unfilled, trend growing. This policy has been repeatedly and rightly criticized and is finally coming to an end. Leading, one can only hope, to the fastest possible rebuilding of Germany’s defense capability within the NATO framework.

What the Future Should Hold for NATO

It is foreseeable that NATO — including new alliance partners such as Sweden (yet to be accepted) and Finland (already accepted) — will have to build up a completely new front line of defense against Russia, and, still in the background, against China as well — from the North Cape to the Black Sea. This line must be capable of being defended if necessary. The NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, which commits the signatories to refrain from permanently stationing substantial combat forces, is hanging by a thread. Whether it will survive remains to be seen.

In any case, Germany will have to be prepared to deploy even more military forces to potential conflict regions in Eastern Europe than it did during the Cold War. In the future, the first priority will be to strengthen the “frontline states.” In all likelihood, Ukraine will — or may even already — be one of them, when it comes to the advance deployment of equipment, ammunition and material. Following NATO directives, Germany must provide about 30,000 troops and 85 aircraft and ships at high readiness for NATO’s defense of Europe by 2025. To this end, Germany would have to establish at least one mechanized division. In addition, it would have to provide a brigade for the Baltic States, which NATO now wants to be able to defend from Day 1, with a high level of readiness. Whether this is realistic remains to be seen. Certainly it will be an enormous feat. The more so because Germany and its European allies can no longer count on our most important ally, the U.S, whose focus is the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war shows that NATO’s easternmost member states — especially Poland, and certainly Finland in the future — will play a strategically more important role in the transatlantic alliance. Germany continues to be an important logistical hub for NATO’s European defense, but it is no longer a central frontline state as it was during the Cold War.

Time for reorganizing German and European defense is running out. The Russian-Ukrainian war has highlighted different threat perceptions and interests among the European allies, which will have to be balanced in the future. The new frontline states vis-à-vis Russia — above all Poland and the Baltic States — show very little willingness to compromise. Steering the opposite course, France in particular would like to enter negotiations so as to end the war as soon as possible.

While pursuing a substantial increase in the Alliance’s military capabilities, NATO strategists should also keep in mind that the integration of artificial intelligence as a universally applicable technology and robotics will change war to change. If we want to keep pace as a military power in the future, we must have technological leadership in the air, on and under the water, on earth, in space, and, above all, in cyberspace. Along with digitalization, space is becoming increasingly important for all major world powers. Satellites are intimately connected to the global web of communication. Recent developments in hypersonic weapons — which can penetrate all conventional defense systems — raise the relevance of space-based observation and cyber capabilities. Without space security, we cannot rely on digital security on earth. Technological leadership in networked digitalization will ultimately be decisive. However, Europe can only achieve this together with — not separated or autonomously from — the United States.

Limits of the EU’s ‘Self-Defense’

While calling for a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian war, France’s Emmanuel Macron has also been pushing for augmenting Europe’s ability to defend itself without American aid. Doing so would mean spending four to six percent of GDP on defense— as compared with the current two percent. At present, I don’t see sufficient political will among EU members to spend that kind of money, especially if ordinary European citizens learn what the oft-repeated demand for more European “strategic autonomy” would actually cost them.

EU states are already spending around 200 billion euros (~$219 billion) on defense every year. At market exchange rates that is about 3 times as much as the Russian budget and not much less than the Chinese one, though it bears noting that the European advantage would be less dramatic if one were to measure these counties’ defense expenditures with an eye to purchasing power parity (PPP). And yet no one is taking the Europeans seriously in the military field. Why? First, the EU states are wasting enormous sums in the defense sector through countless duplications of production lines, weapons programs, national certifications and general egoism — not to mention an overall lack of synergies. Combined, these factors result in constantly shifting security policies, to Europe’s detriment–obstructing its ability to act militarily and autonomously. Second, the EU is still a long way from achieving commonality in military equipment, joint logistics or coherent armaments cooperation. Third, the EU continues to lag behind the U.S in terms of military digitization, the use of space, communications and reconnaissance, and especially in strategic air transport capabilities.

Conclusion

Russia’s attack on Ukraine and Germany’s response to it, including the provision of military aid, much of which has come from Bundeswehr’s immediate inventory, to Kyiv, has highlighted the neglected state and outdated focus of the German armed forces. The war has spurred a much-needed change of this focus from peacekeeping missions to the defense of NATO and of Germany itself. As important, the German government has begun to invest in restoring the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr. But what has been pledged so far is not enough, for it will take years to restore that readiness at the current pace. More important, Germany cannot go it alone. Other European members of NATO should also up the ante to ensure their collective defense capabilities are adequate in the face of the new threats, especially as the U.S. focuses on the Indo-Pacific. In spite of this focus, however, the U.S. will remain indispensable when it comes to the defense of Europe. It is clear that without the United States, Europe cannot strategically balance powers like China or Russia, or even NATO partners like Turkey.

Europe, in my view, will continue to rely on America’s nuclear umbrella, its digital, technological and maritime leadership, and its capability spectrum in cyberspace and outer space for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, enhancements of military capabilities alone won’t make Europe secure either now or in the longer term. Thus, while continuing to aid Ukraine, Germany, France and other members of the EU should join forces in undertaking a political initiative aimed at ending the war and finding a sustainable solution to the conflict.

 

* Dr. Erich Vad is founder and owner of Erich Vad Consulting. A retired Bundeswehr general, from 2006 to 2013 he served as German Chancellor Angela Merkel`s military policy adviser. 

In War, Expect the Unexpected

Posted on by

Speaking of Clausewitz, everyone knows that war is the continuation of politics with an admixture of other means. What few people know is another, no less important, claim by the master. Hidden inside a rather abstruse discussion of the Character der strategischen Verteidigung of his great work) von Kriege (book 6, chapter 5) we read: “der Krieg ist mehr fuer den verteitiger als fuer den Eroberer da, denn der Einbruch hat erst die Vertetigung herbeigefuert und mit ihr erst der Krieg. Der Eroberer ist immer friedliebend…er zoege ganz gern ruhig in unseren Staat ein; damit er dies aber nicht koenne, darum muessen sir den Krieg wollen und also auch veorbereiten.”

As Clausewtiz also says, so it was in his own day when Napoleon regularly made peace offers, provided only he was allowed to keep the countries he had conquered, the crowns he had stolen, and reparations he had extracted. So, too, it was on 19 July 1940 when Hitler, following his victory over France, held a radio address in which he told the British people that he could “see no reason why this war should continue” and appealed to them to make peace with him. Many similar instances could be adduced, but the point is clear.

It did not happen then. Speaking of the Russian-Ukrainian War, neither is it going to happen now. Why? Because mistrust, built up over years of confrontation and fighting, is too great. So the question is, how could the War be brought to an end? It seems to me there are three, and only three, possibilities:

First, a great Ukrainian offensive followed by a complete Russian defeat. With 600,000 square kilometers of land, almost twice the size of united Germany, Ukraine is a large country. But not nearly as large as Russia with its 17.1 million stretching all the way to the Pacific. If only for that reason, and even assuming the West will provide the necessary hardware, a great Ukrainian offensive that will break Russia’s will and force it to sue for peace is almost inconceivable. Such an offensive could only succeed if the government in Moscow were overthrown and a new one put in its place. For such an upheaval to happen Putin would have to be incapacitated by disease, or toppled by a Putsch, or his army would have to disintegrate, or a popular revolution would have to take place first. As of the time of writing, and in spite of occasional claims by Ukrainian spokesmen on one hand and Western intelligence services on the other, there is no sign of any of these things.

Second, a complete Russian victory. Considering the apparent balance of forces, at the beginning of the war many observers, apparently including both Putin and his most important generals, expected Russia to prevail quickly and easily. For which purpose they first mounted an airborne coup de main against Kiev—which failed—and then built a 64-kilometer long convoy of vehicles stretching from the border all the way to the Ukrainian capital and drove towards it four abreast along a single road as if on parade. When that attempt also failed they settled down to a long war of attrition in the east and in the south. One which, thanks partly to Western aid to Ukraine but mainly to the latter’s own remarkable determination to fight and endure, is still ongoing. As things stand at present, though, a complete Russian victory seems quite as unlikely as a complete Ukrainian one.

Finally the only alternative to outcomes (1) and (2) would be to continue a long struggle of murderous attrition similar to the one that has surrounded the city of Bachmut for several months now. Hopefully to be followed, in the end, by some kind of negotiations leading to a compromise. Judging by Putin’s positive reaction to the utterances of his good friend Xi Jinpin, provided only he can point to some achievements he would jump at such an opportunity.

With Ukraine and NATO the situation is more complicated. The former insists on the Russians evacuating all the occupied territories first, and with very good reason. The latter is divided. Some of its members, notably those of Western Europe, realize that a complete victory is impossible and would like the war to end ASAP so they can save as much as possible of the comfortable lifestyle they have led for so long. At least one, Poland, harks back to 1919-20 when it defeated Lenin and the Bolsheviks and would very much like to repeat that performance.

Finally, the US. Not only is it the most powerful NATO member by far, but it enjoys the very great advantage of being far, far away from the center of hostilities. Such being the case it can afford to withdraw from the war, which indeed is just what some Republicans have been calling for. On the other hand, distance also enables it to adopt a more belligerent stance than the West Europeans. Some high-ranking Americans both in- and out of uniform look forward not just to a Russian defeat but to the disintegration of the Russian Federation. Never mind that, as I have argued before in this column, such disintegration would very likely cause much of Asia to go up in flames. And never mind that it would benefit China as much as, if not more than, the US.

How it will work out no one knows, but one thing is clear: in war, expect the unexpected.

One Year Later

Posted on by

Being a little out of sorts, as they say, it occurred to me to take a look at some of my old posts. Simply to amuse myself, and simply to see how things have worked out. More by accident than by design I hit on one I did early in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Here it is, re-posted without any changes except for the pic.

War in Ukraine

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 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.

* 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.

Not a bad job, I would say.