Tag Archives: NATO

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

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.

From NATO to EUA (European Union Army)?

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1. The Historical Background

The idea of a united Europe, complete with a united European army, goes back at least as far as Napoleon. Not to mention Charlemagne a thousand years previously. In a certain way, Napoleon did in fact adopt the concept. Though he once boasted that he had an “income” of 100,000 solders a year, the Emperor was always short of manpower. Over the years the number of non-French troops who served with him ran into the hundreds of thousands. Among them were Dutchmen—the Netherlands were ruled by the Emperor’s brother, Louis, and later annexed to France—Belgians—even though, at that time, a country by that name did not yet exist—Italians, Germans, Swiss, and Poles.

Some of the men served as individuals, as the famous Swiss staff officer and military author Antoine-Henri Jomini did. Others formed units under their own officers. Some, the Poles in particular, did very well indeed. At the battle of Borodino in September 1812 Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother in law and the commander of his cavalry corps, encouraged a Württemberg battalion with the words, scheuss, brav Jäger, scheuss!

The spread of nationalism after 1815 made a pan-European Army all but inconceivable. Attempts to set it up had to wait until the establishment and expansion of the Waffen SS during World War II. There were some differences between Hitler, who focused on German interests, and Himmler, an incurable romantic who tended to think in terms of a Nordic race. The longer the war, though, the more both were united in the need for more and more manpower, origin and nationality be damned.

The outcome was entire divisions made of citizens of countries that were either occupied by Germany or allied with it. Including Scandinavians, Dutch, Walloons, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and Croats. Even Muslim Bosnians were welcomed, and some arrangements made to provide them with their own halal food and Imams! Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in Die Waffen SS, Hitlers ueberschaezte Praetorianer (2018) set out to shatter the “myth” of the army in question. With limited success; in March-April 1945 the last remaining defenders of Berlin were French soldiers of the Waffen SS division Charlemagne.

The war over, some former Waffen SS soldiers, both German and foreign, with nowhere to go joined the French Foreign Legion. “The White SS,” as one of its veterans told me, not without pride, as he and his comrades called it. Another force that has long represented a European army and, in its own peculiar way, does so still.

2.Putin ante Portas

Almost seventy-five years after the end of World War II, and thirty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the idea of a united European Army is back in the air. In part, that is because of the changing balance of forces. Back in 2000, with the failure to put down the Chechen rebellion of 1994-95 still fresh in people’s minds, the Russian armed forces were in a sorry state. Their equipment was out of date, so much so that some of their fighter aircraft were used to fly tourists as a means for attracting foreign currency. Their morale was as low as your living room rug, and their command structure corrupt from top to bottom.

Since then those forces, like Baron von Münchhausen, have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The resulting change is nothing short of dramatic. Modern tanks, modern aircraft, modern missiles, modern warships and submarines, and, above all, modern electronics have been coming off the assembly lines in growing numbers. In 2014 when Russia invaded the Ukraine and occupied the Crimea, the world got a foretaste of what these forces could do (these words were written before the latest incidents at the Kerch Peninsula). Russia has also re-established its pre-1989 presence in the Mediterranean where it uses the facilities of the Syrian port of Latakia. In October 2018 the Russians mustered 300,000 men to hold the largest military maneuvers of any country since the end of the Cold War. In response, all NATO was able to do was to concentrate 50,000 troops in Norway. As President Putin himself put it, quite correctly, now that Russia has a military again no one any more thinks they can ignore its interests. As they did, for example, when the countries of Eastern Europe started joining NATO from 1999 on.

While Russia has been making a comeback American commitment to NATO has been weakening. Even at the height of the Cold War there was always the question whether Big Brother in Washington would really put New York, and of course their own hide, at risk simply to save Hamburg and Munich. After 1989 the question went into abeyance; only to re-emerge twenty- something years later. The more so because, to counter what it sees as a growing threat, the U.S has been withdrawing troops from Europe and the Middle East and transferring them to East Asia. And the more so because it now has a president who has openly expressed his contempt for Europe as well as his determination to put his own country first.
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That Europe can muster what it takes to build powerful armed forces is beyond question. Even after BREXIT the EU has a population of 440 million, about three times that of Russia. It also has a GDP of about $ 16 trillion. By comparison, Russia’s GDP of about $ 1.6 trillion appears positively beggarly. As someone said, at bottom Russia really is nothing more than a gigantic Saudi Arabia with an arms industry. The scientific, technical, logistic, administrative and military expertise is also easily available. With Putin ante portas, all that is lacking is the will.

3. Obstacles

The first, and most serious of all, obstacle is the question as to who the most dangerous opponent is. For the East Europeans, the Scandinavians and Germany it is Russia. However, for Spain and Italy it is the south; whereas for Greece it is Turkey which itself is a NATO member. Whether these fundamental differences can be overcome remains to be seen.

Second, leadership. As long as the Cold War lasted, it used to be said that the real purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. This may have displeased some people; but at any rate it meant that, thanks to their vast preponderance of force over every other individual members and, by some measures, even all of them combined, the Americans were always there to tell the rest where to go and what to do.

Now that the Americans are getting out, more or less, the problem of who will lead the hypothetical European army will become acute. Both because of its geographical position and because it is the most powerful country of all, the natural candidate is Germany. Germany, however, still has the memory of World War II to cope with. As became clear, once again, when Greece and Poland said they wanted Berlin to compensate them for their suffering during that conflict. Besides, as Marx once pointed out, when French members of the First International (1864-76) addressed the meeting they insisted on doing so in French. The rise, in many EU countries, of the “extreme” Right will not make it any easier to find a solution.

Third, it will be necessary to set up a unified command structure that will serve all the countries involved rather than each one separately. Back in World War II Germany and Italy failed to do anything of the kind, badly handicapping their conduct of the war in the Mediterranean. The Western Allies did better; in his post as commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), Eisenhower once said that he did not mind anyone calling anyone a son of a bitch. What he would not tolerate was anyone calling anyone else a British son of a bitch. And the other way around, of course. Today, should the European army get off the ground, there will be entire crowds of sonofabitches, each with an ego as big as the Titanic, to cope it. Can it be done? Perhaps. Certainly it won’t be easy.

Fourth, it will be necessary to mount an effort to standardize equipment, set up a unified logistic structure, and adopt common methods and procedures of every kind. The cost will certainly run into the tens of billions, perhaps more. The following will illustrate how important, and how difficult, the problem is. Invading Russia back in 1941, the Wehrmacht used equipment, especially tanks and motor trucks, scavenged from all over Europe (mainly France and Czechoslovakia). The foreign armies fighting at the Wehrmacht’s side, including Fins, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and Italians, also made heavy use of French and Italian equipment. Under these conditions keeping the forces supplied and operational was a nightmare. It has been estimated that, had all the forces that invaded the USSR been entirely German in terms of personnel, equipment, and supply, their fighting power would have gone up by as much as 20-25 percent. Overcoming these obstacles may well take a generation or so. Assuming, that is, they can be overcome at all.

4. Conclusion

The American Empire is folding. Between 1990 and 2018 the number of troops it maintains in Europe, Britain included, went down from about 300,000 to 65,000. The clock is ticking, the hour for setting up a European Army has struck. If the idea makes Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump jump, then all that proves is that, their his eyes, the need to keep down not just Germany but the remaining EU countries as well remains as important as keeping the Russians out.

All the more reason to go ahead. But will the Europeans be able to gird their loins and do what has to be done? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Guest Article: Sarajevo in the Baltic?

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By

Karsten Riise*

Introduction

Ever since Russia took over Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014, Western analysts have often pointed fingers at Russia and its leader. Then US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton even compared Putin with “Hitler.” Enough of that; here I want to point out the strategic dilemmas Russia is facing and the consequences that may result.

New Sarajevo - NATO - RussiaTo start with, it ought to be clear that Russia cannot live with the fact that Ukraine is becoming an instrument in the hands of NATO. Russia could, should it want to, launch deep military pincer operations with the objective of taking control of that country. In my view, a Russian-inspired regime-change in the Ukraine must and will come.

The Baltic Countries May Become a Threat to Russia

NATO cannot possibly counter a Russian regime-change operation in Ukraine. However, it is also necessary to analyze the military pressures which NATO can build up against Russia in other theaters, especially the Baltic. The following are some of the possibilities:

  1. NATO, with bases in the three Baltic countries, can block international shipping and air traffic to St. Petersburg;
  2. NATO can blockade and starve-out Kaliningrad;
  3. NATO can build up its forces in the Baltic so as to threaten a coup de main-type attack against Minsk, which is only about 125 km from Lithuania.

Briefly, NATO, by reinforcing its military presence in the Baltic, can answer a Russian regime-change in the Ukraine by strangling Kaliningrad and threatening Minsk, the capital city of Belorussia, Russia’s closest ally. In the long term, NATO can also use its foothold in the Baltic to build up growing military pressure on St. Petersburg and Pskov. Seen form Moscow’s point of view such moves would be unacceptable, perhaps unbearable.

Western media, politicians and “experts” are forever pointing fingers at Russian “provocations.” They conveniently overlook the provocations which NATO itself is carrying out right now, as well as those it may want to carry out tomorrow. We should not be naïve. Back in the days of President Reagan the US carried out numerous simulated nuclear bombing attacks deep into Soviet territory. Had this become known at the time, the US would have denied it. NATO thinking is that these simulated nuclear attacks were helpful in causing the Soviet Union to break down.

Needless to say, what worked for the USA against the Soviet Union is something NATO would like to repeat against Russia today. Indeed it is possible that NATO is even now secretly continuing Reagan’s policy, using its forces in the Baltic to launch simulated air, sea and land attacks on Russia. Even if it does not, it may be only a matter of time before NATO has gathered enough strength to do just that.

Time for Russia to Take on the Baltic Countries is Running Out

A RAND study, completed in 2016, shows that NATO does yet not have sufficient forces in place to protect the Baltic countries. It would take Russian forces a maximum of sixty hours to reach the capitals of two of the countries in question. Such a Russian move would leave NATO with some bad, very bad, options.

Though NATO has begun to significantly upgrade its forces in the Baltic, its position there remains very insecure. Partly because the three Baltic countries are geographically isolated, and partly because, should there be a confrontation, NATO reinforcements passing through the straits of Denmark into the Baltic Sea could be interdicted by Russia. But Russia should not expect the window of opportunity to remain open for very long.

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Baltic Membership in NATO is Destabilizing

When both sides have good reason to feel insecure, the relationship between them becomes unstable and something dramatic may well happen. This is currently the case in the Baltic where Russia may feel an understandable need to take action to remove the future military threat from the three Baltic countries before proceeding to liquidate its unfinished business in the Ukraine.

Any Russian operation in the Baltic will have to take place before NATO’s growing presence there makes it too dangerous. By NATO Treaty, such an operation will be considered an attack on all NATO countries, the US included. But honestly: In such a case, will the US and Europe risk a nuclear war? Probably not. Thus Russia may bet on a limited conventional war; one which would lead to the end of NATO.

On 17 May 2016 one of Denmark’s largest newspapers, Berlingske Tidende, published an article by a retired NATO brigadier general. The article was written with some typical NATO rhetoric. But under the rhetoric the Danish brigadier general seemed to be genuinely scared. He fears that something violent may take place in connection with NATO’s maneuver, BALTOPS 2016, schedules to take place in the Baltic Sea from 3- to 19 June, as Russia’s window for action in that region may become smaller in the future. As I just explained, his worries are in line with own my analysis.

Russian Interest in (Temporary) Stabilization in Syria

The Russian operations in Syria bear strong similarities to those of the German “Legion Condor” during the 1930s Spanish Civil War. They enabled the Kremlin to test and train its most advanced weapons—and watch them working perfectly well. The lesson to NATO? Beware!

For a conflict in the Baltic, Russia will prefer to have all of its air force back after its success in Syria. Land operations in the Ukraine are better undertaken in the summer time, and a Baltic operation will have to take place before NATO builds up too many forces in the Baltic. Therefore Russia has an interest in reaching a settlement (at least temporary) with the West on Syria; one that may allow it to bring the rest of its military aircraft home. As NATO’s build up in the Baltic accelerates, Russia may only have short time left to act

A Sarajevo Effect?

A 2014 study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Business Assessment (CSBA) shows that China has enough missiles to wipe out all ports and airports on Taiwan, and destroy Taiwan’s air force on the ground. Several RAND studies, including a US-China military balance assessment published in 2015, show that the US no longer enjoys an advantage over China in the Taiwan Strait. America’s overall advantage over China is also shrinking. Accordingly, why should China not exploit a US involvement in a European conflict in order to take over Taiwan? And why should Israel not use such an opportunity to strike at Iran’s nuclear installations? And why should Turkey not use it to invade Syria and northern Iraq? Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and India, may also try to solve some issues the hard way. Insurgents in various North African, Central Asian and Southeast Asian countries may also seize the opportunity.

The price of oil has already started rising again. In a world such as the one we have just described, it may not stop at 50 or 100 or 150 dollars. It may go up all the way to 200 dollars, with gold rising in proportion. Stock markets have already peaked. If they cannot go higher, an insecure world will cause them to go off the cliff. And what about the dollar? The US can only finance its huge +3% foreign deficit and big public spending as long as its capital markets are safe and attractive, and the country itself is seen as a world-heaven of security.

Should the US turn out not to be strong enough to be on top of the situation, if conflicts explode in Europe, Asia and the Middle-East, trillions of dollars may flee the US, totally “reconfiguring” a world economy at war.

Welcome to the 21st century.

image001*Karsten Riise, M.Sc.(Econ) with a degree in Spanish, is former CEO of DaimlerChrysler Holding in Scandinavia and CFO of Mercedes-Benz in both Sweden and Denmark. Today he writes about international security, economics and politics.

 

Geopolitics and Today’s Foreign- and Security Policy – a German View

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by

Erich Vad*

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We all know: 100 years ago the First World War and 75 years ago the Second World War started. The lessons of both wars show us the importance of an early reconciliation of interests, a balance of power, and ongoing communication between the strategic players. Another lesson is that appeasement has its limits. Against totalitarian world views, appeasement has never been successful.

But what do these lessons mean with regard to current security questions? What do they teach us as we are being challenged by the Islamic threat and fundamentalism and movements like the Hamas, the Hizbolla in the near east, Boko Haram in Africa, Al Qaeda worldwide, and the reckless actions of the so called “Islamic State” Movement?

And what do these lessons mean with regard to the current Russian attempt to change the European order by annexing the Crimea and destabilizing the eastern Ukraine?

The world wars brought fundamental changes. They ended the German desire to achieve a hegemonic position in and over Europe as well as the Japanese attempt to extend their power and gain predominance over East Asia. Wold War II also terminated the worldwide supremacy of the British Empire and the dominant geostrategic position of Europe as a whole. The European era, which had shaped and characterised the world since the beginning of the early modern age, was finally over. A new geopolitical reality, a new “Nomos of the Earth” – as Carl Schmitt once puts it – was established by the victors in the Second World War, i.e. the USA and the former Soviet Union.

During the Cold War these strategic players divided Europe into two spheres of influence. The United States saw Western Europe primarily as its strategic bridgehead to Eurasia. Its leaders built up NATO and established close economic ties across the Atlantic. This enabled Western Europe to enjoy freedom, democracy, wealth and the rule of law and human rights. By contrast, Eastern Europe suffered under the strong and brutal rule of Communism.

In the end, it was the policies of Ronald Reagan which broke the geostrategic supremacy of the Soviet Union in Europe. Coming to power, Mikhail Gorbachv quickly understood that the USSR could never win the arms race and that only cooperation wih the west and political freedom for the Soviet sattelites could help Russia overcome the disastrous economic situation.

As we know, his opponents held a very different view. So does Vladimir Putin. They see the world in geopolitical categories which we Europeans thought had been overcome. It is Putin’s geopolitical aim to create a great power capable of competing with the US, the EU and China. The Russians’ problem is that all they have is their military; they do not have so-called “soft power” comparable to that of the rest. A modern world-power cannot simply threaten and intimidate its neighbors. It must also be attractive and innovative for other nations to accept it as a leading nation.

Reminding the world that NATO has already taken over the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, the Russians have made it clear that they will never accept a further extension of NATO (and the EU) eastwards. Also that, for specific economic, industrial and strategic reasons, they will only accept a neutral Ukraine. Accordingly the task is to weigh the justified desire and the right of sovereign states to freely select the alliances they wish to join on one hand and the preservation of geopolitical and strategic stability – in this case affirming the Russian sphere of interest in its neigbourhood – on the other.

It is not just Russia which understands the world primarily in geostrategic terms. The US, too, has long been aware of them. So far the emergence of the virtual world, important as it is, has made little difference in this respect. Ever since 1823, the basic Charter underlying US Foreign and Security Policy in Latin America has been the Monroe Doctrine. Both in the 19th and in the 20th century the Doctrine led to innumerable interventions, some of them involving the large-sale use of force, in many places around the world. Not only is geopolitical thought just as familiar to the US as to Russia, but its principles have remained unchanged. Neither developments in transport, nor in information processing, nor in money-flows, nor in military technology, have changed those principles one whit.

The violent reclamation of land, which Carl Schmitt once described as the “radical title,” seems to be back. With hindsight, one could argue that it has never gone away and that it was only the losers in the 20th-century’s geopolitical shifts who saw, or rather were forced to see, the world in more idealistic terms. Nowhere was this more true than in Germany. However, the victors continued to see the world in geopolitical terms. The same applied to other emerging countries such as China, Brazil and India which want to become global players.

Why should the Russian approach to their nearest neighbourhood and geostrategic sphere of interests differ from the US American one worldwide or the Chinese one in the South China Sea? How would the US act if, instead of an American fleet manoeuvring in the Black Sea, a Russian one did the same in the Caribbean? This does not mean that the Russian actions against Ukraine and the Crimea were right and legal. But considering that Russia is, and will continue to be, a world power with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a country with enormous resources, they are understandable.

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Some hawks in Washington today, such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezezinki, understand this very well. For them any powerful nation which intends to control Eurasia always presents a potential challenge to the US. In this respect little has changed from the first half of the 20th century when first Germany and then the Soviet Union represented the principal danger. Today their place has been taken by Russia and China; as to Western Europe, it is a strategic bridgehead and America’s closest ally.

But the European geopolitical perspective has to be different: for us Russia remains a powerful neighbour. A friendly relationship with it remains essential to our security and well-being. This does not mean that the Russians should be allowed to do whatever they want—their actions in the East Ukraine and in the Crimea are clearly unacceptable.

To deal with Russia we Europeans must do more than continue economic sanctions or show-the-flag operations. What we need is a double-track strategy. We must continue a straightforward dialogue with the Russians in order to convince them that they are not on the right track. On the other hand we must strenghten our defence posture and the deterrence capabilities of NATO, primarily in the east-European member states.

A successful defense of Eastern Europe against a conventional attack coming from the east is only feasable by using nuclear weapons, probably at a very early stage of the conflict. However, such an attack is unlikely. Most probably the Russians would not send tanks as they did in earlier their history. Instead they would use so-called hybrid methods of warfare: a combination of cyberattacks, destabilizing measures, secret service operations, and irregular fighters. A high probability exists that Russian aggression, if and when it comes, would strongly resemble the approach used in the Ukraine. The Russian minorities, for example in the Baltic States, could be very useful for them.

Ultimately we should not accept a division of the Ukraine. On the other hand, we should not kid ourselves that incorporating that country into the EU and NATO is still an option. One could even argue that Putin has deserved a NATO Order of Merit for strengthening the inner cohesion of the Alliance and motivating us to build up our deterrence, and spend more on defense.

The Russians have taught us Europeans a useful lesson concerning the true conditions and dangers of our international system. They taught us that peaceful dialogue, diplomatic interchange and permanent communications are not the only principles of international politics as many Germans believe.

The same applies to other critical hot spots of security worldwide. Take the South China Sea with its huge oil and gas resources and the straits where 80 % of world-wide oil deliveries have to pass. Here global players such as the US, as well as regional ones such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India wrestle with each other in an attempt to look after their geostrategic interests. In this dynamic economic region, the Indian and American interests are being challenged. The present situation shows very clearly that the political and economic sovereignty of the involved nations can only be sustained by military readiness and modern defense capabilities in the air, at sea, and on land.

The same is true in regard to the great challenge Islamic fundamentalism, especially the so-called Islamic State, poses to Western Civilization. In both Syria and northern Iraq, these warriors cannot be beaten by political or diplomatic measures alone. The delivery of weapons and airpower, on their own, are unlikely to do the job either. They don’t want to “engage” with us; that is why we have to respond to them in ways they can and will understand.  

Even in Europe we cannot survive without the political will and modern military capacities to defend ourselves. Not pacifism and antimilitarism and the typical German goodness, but the old Roman principle, “si vis pacem, para bellum,” continues to be valid.

Clausewitz wrote that it is not the aggressor who starts a war. Instead it is the defender. The former wants to occupy us without resorting to violence; the latter does not agree, resists, and by doing so the starts the war. Long after Clausewitz wrote, Lenin was deeply amused by this insight of the Prussian master.  

Geopolitics cannot be impartial or neutral. Instead they must be directed by interests. The latter in turn depend on each country’s perspective and are often embedded in a political ideology which, as in the case of the old colonial world, follows a historically-determined path. However, idealism and the way the adversaries of geopolitical thinking see the world, is also largely determined by historical experiences and ideology.

Today Germany, which in 1945 was defeated by a powerful worldwide coalition, has again turned into an influential economic and financial world power and is able to play a leading role in Europe. But this may no longer be the case in the future, because the German elites do not have the will and defense technologies and capabilities to prevail in the long-term and on a sustainable basis. Most of them have forgotten how to think in geopolitical terms such as strategic spheres of influence and national interests. That is why they cannot formulate a national strategy. This is the real challenge facing Germany, and indeed Europe, today: can they develop the political will and the necessesary means and capabilities to safeguard their freedom and way of life? We must define what keeps us together and which values and strategic interests guide and drive us. If we don`t, we will lose the future and our freedom.

 

* Dr. Brigadier General (ret.) Erich Vad is Angela Merkel’s former military adviser.