Monthly Archives: May 2022

The Iron Dice Keep Rolling

Posted on by

A question about the Ukrainian War that many Westerners have been asking—and that must have been haunting those hard-faced men in the Kremlin ever since they started their offensive on 24 February—is what they, the hard-faced men, have been doing wrong. Also, what the Ukrainians, waging war under the remarkable leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have been doing right. Focusing, as far as possible, on the military sphere as opposed to the political and economic ones, and recognizing that the time for a comprehensive analysis of the war has not yet arrived, the following represent some preliminary answers. Such as may also be useful to other militaries which are watching events and trying to draw lessons from them.

What the Russians have been doing wrong

First, the Russians have greatly underestimated the Ukrainians’ determination and willingness to fight. How this could have happened is anything but clear. Perhaps it was born out of previous Russian successes in Georgia (2008), the Crimea (2014) and Nagorno-Karabakh (2020). Or else they may have fallen victim to their own propaganda about Russians and Ukrainians having been one people for so long that the latter would not fight the former in earnest.

Second, and possibly because of the above, the Russians did not mobilize sufficient forces. The above apart, they may also have feared domestic problems in case they went too far in this respect. However that may be, contrary to the prevailing impression in terms of the number of available maneuver battalions the Ukrainians were not at all inferior to the Russians. Fighting on interior lines as they did, in places they may even have been superior.  Conversely, sheer lack of numbers seems to have played a major role in the Russian failure to capture, first Kiev and then Kharkov. To make things worse, most of the Russian ground forces consist of short service, insufficiently motivated and trained, conscripts.

Third, it would seem that the Russian General Staff was unable to decide what the most important objective (Schwerpunkt) of their offensive was going to be. As a result they tried to advance in no fewer than four different directions at once—from the north on Kiev, from the east on the Donbas, and from the Crimea both east and west. Later they even added another thrust, i.e the one on Kharkov. Had the Russians enjoyed a considerable numerical superiority, such a strategy might have been feasible; as I just said, however, of such a superiority there could be no question. As a result, out of the five offensives three, i.e the one against Kiev, the one against Kharkov, and the one reaching west towards Odessa had to be abandoned. Only the one against the Donbas really made progress—but only very slowly, and only at high cost. 

Fourth, the Russians chose the wrong season for launching their offensive: first snow, making movement difficult, then thaw, then mud. There is no question that, militarily speaking, it would have been better to wait another few weeks; why Putin did not do so is unknown.

Fifth, given the scale of preparations and the time it took to make them there was no question of the Russians enjoying the benefit of surprise. Conversely, the Ukrainians had all the time in the world to get ready.

Sixth, as the enormous traffic jam on the roads leading south from Russia to Kiev showed, logistic planning was totally inadequate. The outcome seems to have been on- and off shortages of fuel and ammunition (which, in any modern war, form the bulk of the troops’ requirements) and even food.

Seventh, contrary to expectations the Russians did not make extensive use of their superior air force. First, the attempt to end the war by means of a coup de main directed against a major Ukrainian airport on the outskirts of Kiev ended in failure. Subsequent air operations, all kinds of missiles included, appear to be scattered and ineffective. True, Ukraine’s armament industry has been destroyed. But Russian airpower does not seem to have availed them much against mobile Ukrainian forces in the field.

Finally, a “cyberwar Pearl Harbor,” as it has sometimes been called, did not materialize. To be sure, there has been a great many attacks some of which knocked out websites, disrupted communications, and the like. However, large scale anarchy, let alone paralysis, did not result. Whether that is because of insufficient preparation or because the other side was ready is not clear.

What the Ukrainians have been doing right

First, though both sides have relied on semi-regular militias (including, in the Russian case, mercenaries) to do part of their fighting, this form of military organization has played a greater part on the Ukrainian side than on the Russian one. Not only does this fact help explain the way the latter’s numerical superiority has been largely obviated, but it provided the Ukrainians with a certain kind of flexibility. Enjoying a large degree of autonomy as they do, the militias could not be neutralized simply by striking at central Ukrainian headquarters.

Second, whereas the invaders must generate their own intelligence, the Ukrainians can receive theirs from almost every man, woman and child in the country. The fact that, though the weapons used on both sides are often almost identical, the Russians have chosen to mark theirs with large letters Z helps.

Third, the Ukrainians have been making unexpectedly good use of modern weapons, especially the drones needed for in-depth reconnaissance behind the front. And including also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles generously provided by the West.

Fourth, on the whole they have not tried to stop the Russians by waging large sale warfare, army against army, in the open. Instead they defended the cities where winning requires the kind of numerical superiority the Russians do not have.

Finally, while the destruction inflicted on many of Ukraine’s cities has been terrible, wherever possible the Ukrainian military did not fight to the last man and the last bullet. Instead, it regularly left room for their forces’ more or less orderly retreat. Mariupol, where they allowed themselves to be put under siege, is the exception, not the rule. One which, in the future, they would be wise to repeat.

In summary

In summary the Russians, by underestimating the opponent and giving up on surprise, have committed the worst of all military sins. By contrast, the Ukrainians have exploited the Russian mistakes right up to the hilt.

However, two points are worth making. First, the available information is slanted, unreliable and, above all, extremely fragmentary. Nowhere is that more the case than in the number of dead and injured on both sides; as the saying goes, in any war the first casualty is always the truth. Second, this war is by no means over yet. The signs are that the iron dice will keep rolling for a long time, and how they will ultimately land is anyone’s guess.

Geopolitics

Posted on by

With the war in Ukraine spewing havoc, demand for geopolitics is high. However, the most clear-eyed writer on geopolitics was not Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). Nor was he Prof. Samuel Huntington (1927-2008). The former in his 1904 essay, “The Geographical Pivot of History” made the mistake of assuming that Eastern Europe—“The Heartland,” as he called it—would always remain the crucible of the world, thus entirely missing the gigantic, and still continuing, struggle waged by the US, Russia, Japan, and  China over the Pacific. The latter in his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations, focuses on cultural differences among the world’s most important seven civilizations but has surprisingly little to say about what the wars he fully expects would look like.

Yet there is a book that avoids both of these errors; one, moreover, that was authored not by a social scientist, as both Mackinder and Huntington were, but by a journalist and writer of fiction. His name was George Orwell and his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949, shortly before his death.

Follow some excerpts.

“The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century. With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Oceania and Eurasia, were already effectively in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct being after another decade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three super-states are in places completely arbitrary, and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines… In one combination of another these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been for the past twenty-five years.

War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was during the early decades of the twentieth century. It is warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary… such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one’s own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes…

To understand the nature of the present war… one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and their natural defenses are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants…

[Inside each super-state, the two aims of the ruling elite] are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the [elite] is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In so far as scientific research still continues, this is its subject matter. The scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned only with such branches of his special subject… the teams of experts are indefatigably at work. Some are concerned simply with planning the logistics of future wars; others devise larger and larger rocket bombs, more and more powerful explosives, and more and more impenetrable armor-plating; others search for new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents, or for breeds of disease germs immunized against all possible antibodies; others strive to produce a vehicle that shall bore its way under the soil like a submarine under the water, or an aeroplane as independent of its base as a sailing-ship; others explore even remoter possibilities such as focusing the sun’s rays through lenses suspended thousands of kilometers away in space, or producing artificial earthquakes and tidal waves by tapping the heat at the earth’s center. But none of these projects ever comes anywhere near realization, and none of the three super-states ever gains a significant lead on the others.

What is more remarkable is that all three powers already possess, in the atomic bomb, a weapon far more powerful than any that their present researches are likely to discover… atomic bombs first appeared as early as the nineteen-forties… The effect was to convince the ruling groups of all countries that a few more atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society, and hence of their own power. Thereafter, although no formal agreement was ever made or hinted at, no more bombs were dropped. All three powers merely continue to produce atomic bombs and store them up against the decisive opportunity which they all believe will come sooner or later. And meanwhile the art of war has remained almost stationary… Helicopters are more used than they were formerly, bombing planes have been largely superseded by self-propelled projectiles, and the fragile movable battleship has given way to the almost unsinkable Floating Fortress; but otherwise there has been little development. The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use. And in spite of the endless slaughters reported in the Press and on the telescreens, the desperate battles of earlier wars, in which hundreds of thousands or even millions of men were often killed in a few weeks, have never been repeated. None of the three super-states ever attempts any manoeuver which involves the risk of serious defeat. When any large operation is undertaken, it is usually a surprise attack against an ally. The strategy that all three powers are following, or pretend to themselves that they are following, is the same. The plan is, by a combination of fighting, bargaining, and well-timed strokes of treachery, to acquire a ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the rival states, and then to sign a pact of friendship with that rival and remain on peaceful terms for so many years as to lull suspicion to sleep. During this time rockets loaded with atomic bombs can be assembled at all the strategic spots; finally they will all be fired simultaneously, with effects so devastating as to make retaliation impossible. It will then be time to sign a pact of friendship with the remaining world-power, in preparation for another attack…”

Need I say more?

On Stalin (again)

Posted on by

Readers, please note: The following is the text of an interview about the book I did on 8 May with Mr. Pierre Heumann of the German-Swiss weekly Weltwoche. The translation from German is my own.

Heumann: Martin van Creveld, are you a Stalin Versteher (understander/sympathizer)?

Van Creveld: Writing a good biography of someone one hates is practically impossible. That is one reason why there are so many bad books about people like Hitler. And Stalin, of course. What Stalin was aiming at was a Soviet Union which would be shaped according to his ideas and would rule, as its acknowledged master: he himself. Considering his humble origins, I find the way he achieved those aims very impressive.

Heumann: What, in your view, was the heritage he left?

Van Creveld: It depends on whom one asks. In the West he is perceived as a monster. His regime is portrayed as extremely brutal, authoritarian and corrupt. All of which is quite true. However, in Russia the situation is different. Many people respect Stalin as a ruler who played a critical role in establishing the state, then went on to industrialize it on a vast scale, and finally saved it from collapse during the so-called Great Patriotic War.

Studying the material as I did, one thing that struck me was how little charisma Stalin had. His speeches were boring—not because he did not have anything intelligent to say, but because he spoke in a monotone and, unlike Hitler, never raised his voice. Nor did he have to. As his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, once said, “when Stalin says ‘dance,’ a wise man dances.” Everyone understood that Stalin brooked no opposition.

Heumann: Wat similarities do you see between Stalin and Putin?

Van Creveld: Both used the secret services as their primary instrument of government. And both saw themselves as men who had been called upon, whether by fate or by history. Stalin wanted to prepare the world for Communism. Putin wants to prevent or at least delay the collapse of Russia. And there is something else they have in common. To both of them, Russian history is a long story in which the Russians were always the victims. Why? Because Russia has always been backward. One outcome was, and still is, the West’s tendency to look down on Russia as a backward country. Putin personally has repeatedly referred this kind of inferiority complex his countrymen labor under.

Heumann: How do you see the war in Ukraine?

Van Creveld: Stalin, having come under attack by the German Reich, Stalin had no option but to defend himself.  Unlike him, Putin had the choice: to attack or not to attack. He decided to attack. Now Clausewitz’s words have come to haunt him: any attack that does not quickly attain its ends fairly quickly will turn into a defense.

Jason Pack, Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2021, 529 pages

Posted on by

Two basic ideas dominate this book. The first is that the post-Cold War era has definitely ended and that we have now entered the era of “the global enduring disorder;” a claim fully confirmed by recent events in Ukraine. The second is that Libya, which most people see as a failed state made up of oceans of high-quality oil, vast stretches of pitiless desert, and bands of fanatical Toyota-truck riding gangsters that keep on fighting each other both acts as a microcosm of that disorder and is playing an important role in extending it

Let’s discuss the first idea first. The way the author sees it, those who, during the early 1990s, predicted the emergence of a warless globe presided over by a world government have been proved wrong. Far from waning away, wherever we look states remain the most important players of all. Still they do not have the playing field all to themselves. Far from it! In many places their authority is being undermined, nay nullified by more or less well organized, more or less fanatical, groups of terrorists, insurgents, guerrillas, or whatever they may call themselves or be called by others. Nor is that all. Many multinational corporations have entered the fray, looking after their own interests which may or may not coincide with those of the states in which they are officially registered. The states themselves do not act like those proverbial billiard balls but are represented by any number of competing, not seldom conflicting interests and agencies. Some states, organizations and officials remain the same for more or less extended periods. Others are like some kind of super-chameleons that keep changing not just their spots but their very essence. Welcome, to use a title of an article I published in the summer 2000 issue of Foreign Policy, “The New Middle Ages.”

Second, the role of Libya in all this. Here it is first of all necessary to say that Mr. Pack is that rarest of animals: an American who is not just an accomplished Arabist but actually likes many things Arab. Not an aspect of Arab language, dialects included, that he does not know inside out. Including religion, art, culture, tradition, history, and what not. Having lived in several Arab countries (and got into trouble with the authorities of at least one of them), he has met and conversed with many of the principal actors; the 297-page list of sources alone is enough to kill an ox, if only an ox could read it. For about a decade and a half now he has focused his efforts on Libya. Visiting the country, writing, lecturing, and advising every kind of individual and organization with an interest in oil, of whom there are a great many indeed. To say nothing of the problems created by the country’s critically important geographical position on the shores of the Mediterranean opposite Europe; its tendency to spew out emigrants in all direction; and many other issues.

Briefly, if there is anyone who can even begin to make some kind of sense of the way Libya is going, both internally and in respect to its infinitely complex relations with the rest of the world, it is Mr. Pack. As the title of his book indicates, on the whole his vision of the future is not optimistic. Unless something dramatic (“global collective action”?) is done, Libya is likely to remain in as much of a mess as it has been at least since the beginning of the by now half forgotten “Arab Renaissance” in 2011. Unless something dramatic is done, too, that mess is more likely to spread to other countries—particularly in Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Europe–­than the other way around.

One final comment. Though part of the class known as academic literature, the book is well written. However, the vast panorama and superabundance of often obscure details means that it is by no means easy to read and, let alone assimilate. No more so than the works of Polybius, the Hellenistic historian whom Pack admires and quotes. Rather, doing so is a challenge; but for anyone interested in Libya and its relations with the rest of the world, it is also a must.