Tag Archives: Putin

A Tale of Three Crises

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Back in 1938-39, Britain—heartland of the largest empire that ever was—found itself coming under attack in no fewer than three main theaters at once. One, the closest home, was Western Europe and the North Sea where Adolf Hitler was busily at work building up the Third Reich to the point it would be ready to challenge the empire. One consisted of the empire’s communications in the Mediterranean where Benito Mussolini was threatening to take over the Suez Canal, Malta and Gibraltar, “the bars in Italy’s prison,” as he called them. And one in the Far East where a succession of militaristic Japanese governments were preparing to attack Britain’s colonies such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Things came to a head in September 1939 when Germany, invading Poland, ignited a world war. By the time that war ended six years later Britain was lucky in that it could count itself among the victors. However, its relative power, military industrial and economic, had been shattered and would never recover.

The same year, 1945, also marked the peak of American power. Alone among the main belligerents in World War II—Germany, Britain, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Japan, and China—the US neither had any part of its territory occupied nor was subject to bombing. Its losses, especially in terms of manpower killed or badly wounded, were also much lighter. Calculated in terms of value, fifty percent of everything was being produced in the U.S. Throughout my own youth in the 1950s and early 1960s, the best most people could say about anything was that it was American. This was as true in Israel, where I lived, as it was in the Netherlands which I occasionally visited; of movies (and movie stars) as of automobiles. As if to crown it all, alone of all the world’s countries the U.S not only possessed nuclear weapons but also, which was almost equally important, a demonstrated willingness to use them as its leaders saw fit.

However, what goes up must go down. In 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first nuke. This proved to be the starting point of a profound, if unexpectedly slow, process of proliferation, each of whose stages marked a downsizing of America’s relative advantage over other countries. Accidentally or not, 1949 also marked the opening of a long period, still ongoing, during which America’s balance of payments has almost never been positive. The decision, made by President Nixon in 1971, to take the US dollar off gold, simply highlighted the change and made the situation worse. Currently the American Government’s debt both to foreign countries and to its own citizens is easily the largest in the whole of history. The trouble with debts is that they must be repaid; putting a heavy burden on every economic decision made in the country, large or small.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to create what, at the time, was known as a unipolar world. Some went further still, announcing not just the end of power politics but of history itself. But the respite did not last. By 2010 Russia was beginning to come back, ready to resume the expansionist policies that, starting with Ivan IV (“the Terrible” or “the Dread,” as he was sometimes known) and ending with Stalin had been such a resounding success.  By the second decade of the twenty-first century American economic supremacy, which starting in the wake of World War I had been undisputed, was also being challenged by China in a way, and on a scale, never before experienced.

Nor is the state of that other pillar of American power, its armed forces, much better. Alone of all the great empires in history, starting already in the second decade of the nineteenth century the US has been in in the enviable position of not having a peer competitor—as the current phrase goes—in its own hemisphere. This enabled it to make do with what, most of the time and sometimes for decades on end, were almost ridiculously small armed forces. Specifically land forces or, again as the current phrase goes, boots on the ground. It was only immediately before and during wartime that the situation changed and full scale mobilization was instituted. Culminating in 1941-45 when the US waged what later came to be known as 21/2 wars: meaning one in northwestern Europe, one in the far east, and one—the ½—in the Mediterranean.

Enter, once again, the Nixon administration. The “21/2” disappeared from the literature. Its place was taken by 11/2, meaning, one full scale war against the Soviet Union on “the Central Front” (Western Europe) plus a smaller half -war in some other place: either the Far East, presumably Korea, or in the Middle East on which much of the world relied for its oil. Needless to say, the figures were never accurate or even meant to be accurate. Their only use was as a very rough guide for comparison on one hand and planning on the other. Still they did provide an index concerning the direction in which things were moving.

Hand in hand with America’s declining military ambitions and expectations went very deep cuts in the size of the armed forces. The process got under way when Nixon—Nixon again—ordered an end to conscription and a switch to armed forces composed entirely of volunteers. The outcome was a 34-percent cut in the number of military personnel between 1969 and 1973. As a combination of technological progress and inflation drove costs into the stratosphere, the cuts in the number of major weapon systems—missiles, aircraft, ships, tanks, artillery barrels, briefly everything the Ukrainians are currently begging for—were, if anything, greater still. Come 1991, these forces proved adequate to fight and win a conventional war against a third-rate power, Iraq. That apart, though, almost every time they tried their hand at fighting a 1/2 war anywhere in the world they failed. So in Vietnam; so in Laos and Cambodia, so in Somalia, and so in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like Britain in the late 1930s, currently the US sees itself challenged on three fronts. The first is Eastern Europe where Russia’s Putin is trying to reoccupy a vital part of the former Soviet Empire and, should be succeed, get himself into a position to threaten any number of NATO countries, old or new. The second is the Middle East where Iran, using its vassals in Yemen and Syria, has been waging war by proxy on Israel while at the same time threatening Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean. The third is the Far East—where America’s main allies, meaning Taiwan on one hand and South Korea on the other, may come under attack by China and North Korea respectively almost at a moment’s notice.

Even for the greatest power on earth running, or preparing to run, three ½ wars at once is an extremely expensive proposition. Especially in terms of ammunition of which, in sharp contrast to 19141-45, there simply is not enough. So far the center, though experiencing growing domestic difficulties, has not yet caved in. With the wings tottering, though, how long before it does?

On Escalation

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To most people, whether or not a ruler or country “uses” nuclear weapons is a simple choice between either dropping them on the enemy or not doing so. For “experts,” though, things are much more complicated (after all making them so, or making them appear to be so, is the way they earn their daily bread). So today, given Putin’s recent threat to resort to nuclear weapons in case NATO sends its troop into Ukraine, I am going to assume the mantle of an expert and explain some of the things “using” such weapons might mean.

  1. Making verbal threats. Almost eight decades have passed since the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima (without any kind of warning, nota bene). Since then there have been plenty of occasions when countries, statesmen and politicians threatened to use the nukes in their arsenal. Eisenhower did so in 1953 in connection with the Korean War; Khrushchev in 1956 in connection with the Suez Crisis; Kennedy in 1962 in connection with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon in 1973 in connection with the Arab-Israeli War of that year; India and Pakistan in 1998 in connection with the Kargil War; and so on right down to Putin today. Some of the threats have been overt and rather brutal, others more or less secret and veiled. Some were delivered directly, others with the help of a third party.
  2. To put some muscle behind the threat, weapons may be moved out of storage and put on display. Normally everything pertaining to nukes is kept highly secret. Here and there, though, countries have allowed their nuclear warheads, or replicas of them, to be shown, photographed, and celebrated for what they might do to opponents. In particular Russia, China and North Korea like to parade their intercontinental ballistic missiles. True monsters they are, any one of which can demolish almost any city on earth within, say, less than an hour of the order being given. Some such displays are accompanied by verbal threats, others not. At times the sequence is reversed in the sense that display precedes threats rather than the other way around.
  3. Raising the state of alert. Again contrary to what most people think, putting nuclear weapons to use, in other words commanding and controlling them, is by no means simply a matter of pushing the proverbial button. First, those in charge of the weapons must make sure they are always ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Second, they must make sure the weapons are not launched by accident, or by unauthorized personnel, or by an authorized officer somewhere in the launching chain either deliberately disobeying orders or going out of his or her mind. The two requirements, speed (lest the weapons are targeted and destroyed before they can be launched) and reliability contradict each other; making the problem of nuclear command and control as difficult as any we humans have to face. Raising the state of alarm will cut through some parts of the problem—though just how, and to what extent, is rightly kept one of the most guarded secrets of all.
  4. Going a step further, weapons and delivery vehicles may be tested. Pace any number of computer models and exercises, ultimately the only way to make sure one’s nuclear weapons will work is to test them. Such tests, of course, may also be used in an attempt to influence the enemy’s behavior—as was notoriously the case when India and Pakistan both tested a number of weapons back in 1998. Some tests may be conducted in or over some outlying part of one’s own country as American, Soviet, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and North Korea ones all were. Others may take place over some part of the vast no-man’s world that constitutes the earth’s oceans; for example, the Israeli-South African bomb said to have been detonated over the Indian Ocean back in 1979. It is also possible to send some of one’s missiles hurtling over enemy country, as North Korea has often done in respect to Japan.Each of the above mentioned methods represents a different way of (hopefully) “using” one’s nuclear weapons in order to influence the enemy’s behavior without bringing about Armageddon. Historically all have been implemented quite often, some even as a matter of routine. The problem is that, since no country or leader has ever admitted giving way to a nuclear threat, it is hard to say how effective such threats were. There are, however, additional ways states might put their nuclear weapons to use.
  5. Launching a limited nuclear strike at some less important enemy target such as outlying, more or less unpopulated, spaces or else a ship at sea. All in the hope of scaring the opponents to the point where he’ll give way to one’s demands, but without, if at all possible, risking a nuclear response.
  6. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s nuclear or, in case he does not have them, conventional forces. Targets might consist of early warning installations, anti-aircraft and missile defenses, troop-concentrations, communication centers, depots, etc.
  7. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s industrial infrastructure.
  8. Launching a nuclear strike at all of the targets mentioned in bullets 5 to 7.
  9. Launching a full scale nuclear strike at the enemy’s main demographic centers.

One well known nuclear strategist, Herman Kahn, in his 1962 book distinguished among no fewer than forty different stages on the “escalation ladder.” In practice, there are two reasons why the ladder is largely theoretical. First, the various stages are likely to be hard to keep apart. Second, even if the side using the weapons does keep them apart in his own mind, the other is highly unlikely to share his views. In particular, a strike that one side sees as relatively harmless may very well be perceived by the other as a mere prelude. Thus bringing about the very retaliation he seeks to avoid.

As far as publicly available sources allow us to judge, up to the present Putin has limited himself to the first of these nine stages. That is less–considerably less–than some others have done before him. So the question is, will he stop there?

Victory for Ukraine?

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A year and a half after it got under way, the war in Ukraine shows no sign of coming to an end. Not coming to an end, it is interesting to explore what might happen in case Zelensky’s famous counteroffensive finally starts doing more than reoccupying half a godforsaken village here, half a godforsaken village there, but gains some real strategic traction instead. As, for example, by developing the following scenario.

In the flat, mostly open terrain that is Ukraine airpower ought to be the key to everything. Worried about Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses, Putin’s air force continues to make its existence felt mainly by its absence from the battlefield; a development which, ere hostilities broke out, few people predicted or would have predicted.

Next, so the scenario, Ukrainian forces put the Kerch Strait rail and road bridges out of action. Not just for hours or days as they have done at least twice in the past, but in such a way as to require extensive repairs lasting weeks or months. Armed, trained and supplied by the West, Zelensky’s troops break through key Russian fortifications somewhere along the front. They retake some occupied territory and cut their enemies’ land bridge that reaches from the Donbas along the Azov Sea coast all the way down to the greatest prize of all: the Crimea with its great port, Sebatopol.

With their logistics in a mess, and perhaps left without clear instructions from Moscow, major parts of Russia’s fighting force disintegrate. Others either retreat or surrender. Relying on combinations of modern technologies, including not just land-to sea missiles but perhaps unmanned surface vehicles too, Ukraine could blockade and barrage Crimea, trapping Russia’s Black Sea Fleet like bugs in a bottle. If Ukrainian forces appear to be preparing for a frontal assault on Crimea, risks of Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons might rise—with consequences that would require more than one separate article to think out.

Short of Putin resorting to the use of nuclear weapons a comparison of the forces on both sides, along with the outcome of recent combats, suggests that Ukrainian forces could prevail. Conversely, any major Russian attempt to take back even modest amounts of previously occupied territories would likely fail. Were Russia’s air force and antiaircraft defenses to suffer substantial losses, this could weaken the defense of Moscow or other Russian strategic assets.

Ukrainian forces appear not to be using Western arms to attack targets in Russia. However, with their home-manufactured weapons they are increasing indirect and direct fire strikes against headquarters and logistical facilities, transportation hubs, and troop formations deep inside Russia. Even early in the war, a Ukrainian Neptune missile was able to sink the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea flagship. By now even Moscow, almost a thousand kilometers in the rear, has been repeatedly hit by Ukrainian drones. Not that they caused any great damage; as is also the case with their Russian counterparts, the warheads they carry are too small to kill more than a few people (mostly civilians) here, bring about the collapse of a building there. However, their psychological impact is said to have been considerable.

Such, seen from the point of view of Kiev and its Western backers, is the optimistic scenario. Note, though, the elephant in the room: namely, the fact that it leaves the Donbas, its natural resources and its industry, in Russian hands. Heavily fortified–fortification is an art in which, as Germans of all people should know, the Russians are past masters—and containing quite some mixed-population cities, it is a tough nut to crack. Disorderly, to be sure, but packed not only with regular Russian forces but with every kind of militia under the sun. Just look at the weeks-long struggle for Bachmut. And behind those cities Russia’s endless spaces, soon to be enveloped in the arms of General Winter, will be waiting.

Such developments will no doubt reduce Putin to dire straits. They will not, however necessarily bring about the end of the war. That could be achieved only in case he and his clique finally give in and ask for negotiations—something which, as long as he remains in control, is unlikely to happen.

So everything depends on Putin being removed by his own people, likely either the military, the various security services, or some combination of both. Speculation about such a coup has been rife right from the first days of the “special military operation.” With the exception of the rather strange and ill-understood Wagner “Uprising,” though, there are few signs to show either that Putin’s will is weakening or that he is losing control.

My conclusion? Even if Ukrainian forces book additional military successes like those outlined above, the real decisions will be political and have to be made in Moscow and specifically behind the walls of the Kremlin. Until they are, the war will go on.

Stranger and Stranger

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Often the longer the time since a conspiracy – successful or otherwise – has taken place, the more details about it emerge. Not so in the case of Putin, Prigozhin and the latter’s supposed uprising against the former’s regime. Follow some of the questions that remain open, let alone provided with properly documented answers.

  1. Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? How on earth did he develop from a petty criminal, former jailbird and a street hawker of sausages into one of the most powerful and wealthiest persons in the whole of the Russian Federation?
  2. During his advancement, and just before he mounted his coup—if a coup it was—what was his relationship with Putin like? Who owed (or owned) whom, for what, and as a result of what?
  3. Is it true, as has been claimed, that America’s intelligence apparatus had advance notice of the intended coup?
  4. If America’s intelligence apparatus knew of what was about to happen, how come the Russian one did not?
  5. Did Prigozhin have allies within the Kremlin? If so, who were they and what role did they play?
  6. How were the spearheads of the Wagner Group able to advance as fast and as far as they did?
  7. Why was there scarcely any attempt at resistance?
  8. Where was Prigozhin himself at the time these events took place? Did he really believe that, with a force of just a few thousand men, he would be able to bring down Putin’s government and set up a new one in its place? If not, what on earth was he trying to achieve?
  9. Exactly what caused the coup—again, if a coup it was—to fizzle out and come to an end?
  10. Where was Putin during the coup? What exactly did he do, and with the aid of whom?
  11. How come Putin, not normally the most kindly-disposed character in the world, agreed to have Prigozhin’s men, as well as Prigozhin himself, cross into Belorussia where they would be immune from retaliation?
  12. Why, after that, were accusations against Prigozhin and his men dropped, and why was the former’s confiscated property handed back to him?
  13. If Prigozhin really sought asylum in Belorussia, how come he was later seen—or said to be seen—in St. Petersburg?
  14. What happened to the camps Belorussia prepared to receive Prigozhin’s men? Were they ever used? If—which seems to be the case—not, where did the men go?
  15. Does the Wagner Group, as a cohesive formation capable of carrying out organized military operations, still exist? If so, is Prigozhin still in command of it? If not, who is?
  16. Both before and during the coup, Prigozhin’s verbal sallies were directed not against Putin himself but against minister of defense Sergei Shoigu and chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Following the coup’s failure, what has happened to these two men? Are they still in charge of anything, or have they been effectively sidelined?
  17. Finally—how has the coup affected Putin and his government? Has his position been weakened, as some in Ukraine and the West in particular claim? Or has it become stronger? Or was the entire affair just a hiccup with no really visible consequences?

 It is as Churchill said of Russia: a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Guest Article: How Putin Enabled the Wagner Revolt

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by

Edward Luttwak*

Why do Russia’s wars always start with disaster? The answer is straightforward: because the autocrats who rule Russia — be they Tsars (with the exception of Napoleon’s nemesis Alexander I), Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Putin — appoint obedient toadies sadly lacking in military talent to command their forces.

And none is more out-of-his-depth than Sergei Shoigu, Putin’s minister of defense. Shoigu studied engineering and skipped military service altogether. Nonetheless, he was rapidly promoted all the way to full general and then minister of defense by Putin because of his uncritical loyalty, which was further guaranteed by his obscure Tuvan origins that gave him no Muscovite power base to threaten the Kremlin (his birthplace is much closer to Beijing than to Moscow).

As for Putin’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, his incompetence is of a very modern sort, indeed postmodern. Just like some telegenic US generals with PhDs but no actual hands-on combat experience, Gerasimov preached “post-kinetic” warfare, in which cyber war, “information war” or “hybrid war” replaced old-fashioned infantry, armor and artillery combat.

It was Gerasimov who cooked up the brilliant plan that so convinced Putin — as well as the CIA, the US director of national intelligence and their fashionably post-kinetic military advisors — that the air-landed seizure of the Antonov field on the first night of the war would open the door to Kyiv. Absent post-kinetic delusions, the overhead photography alone should have sufficed to tell US intelligence that the Russians would fail: they were invading Europe’s largest country with an army of less than 140,000 troops, as opposed to the 800,000 [500,000? MvC] who invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, a country one-fifth the size of Ukraine and with one-quarter of the population. And, of course, as perfect yes-men, Shoigu and Gerasimov never told Putin that, if he wanted to invade Ukraine, he first had to declare war and mobilize the Russian army.

Even so, what happened next came as a great surprise. The failure of Gerasimov’s dazzling plan and the ignominious retreat from the edges of Kyiv and Kharkiv should have been followed by the usual Russian remedy but nothing happened. In 1941, when the German army easily defeated the Red Army to swiftly conquer Ukraine and start its march to Moscow, Stalin’s favorite toady Marshal Grigory Kulik was dismissed and eventually shot. Others were shot right away, and were replaced by officers previously set aside because they were not yes-men. Some were rescued from prison to take up command at the front. (Konstantin Rokossovsky, who had been arrested, badly tortured and locked up as a traitor, was patched up and given an entire army to lead; he would finish the war a victorious marshal.)

This is what Yevgeny Prigozhin expected from Putin: the swift dismissal of Shoigu and Gerasimov and their replacement by officers old-fashioned enough to have “kinetic” skills, and who would focus on building up effective infantry, armor and artillery units to capture Kyiv and conquer Ukraine. Instead, with Gerasimov and Shoigu inexplicably still in charge, the Russians continued to rely on “information warfare” to demoralize the Ukrainians into surrender, with non-stop propaganda and terror air attacks against random buildings in Kyiv and most other cities.

Not only did this “non-precision” bombing fail to hurt morale — it never does — but it was also hugely wasteful. As Russia’s rockets and ground-to-ground missiles started to run out, they turned to expensive air-to-ground missiles meant for high-value targets, such as air-base installations or at least battle tanks. But their warheads were too small to make much of an impression in built-up cities.

This is when Prigozhin, with his mercenaries, started his own land-combat campaign, contracted as always by the Russian government, this time to fight in Ukraine rather than in Libya or Mali or ex-French Congo. But, a few months later, he very soon found himself competing for manpower with contract units that were raised by the Russian army itself. These official units offered good pay to ex-servicemen and therefore competed with Wagner — but without its cadre of experienced mercenaries, they achieved very little.

All of which was frustrating for Prigozhin, who started to voice his complaints increasingly loudly, eventually asking why Shoigu and Gerasimov were still in-command when they should have been shot for incompetence, or at least kicked out of their jobs. Inexplicably — not only to him — Putin failed to take advantage of his dictatorial power to get rid of the pair of failures.

It was then that Shoigu and Gerasimov hit back by denying artillery shells and small-arms ammunition to Wagner, even when it was Wagner that was doing all the fighting in Bakhmut. Ultimately, it was a struggle between a very talented maverick — Prigozhin had started as a caterer — and the dull bureaucrat Shoigu and too-clever-by-half Gerasimov.

Stalin greatly valued such competition; even at the very end in 1945, he made Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev race one another to reach the center of Berlin with their separate armies. But Putin is no Stalin. He is still, after everything, the bureaucrat he has always been. He would never have dreamed of promoting the talented Prigozhin to run his war, in the way that Lincoln promoted the hard-drinking Grant.

In the coming days, Prigozhin will be captured or killed. Any trial would compound Putin’s colossal embarrassment. The reason he must fail is that, in Russia, he falls into a specific category: like Yemelyan Pugachev, who rebelled against Catherine the Great in 1773, Prigozhin has no power base in Moscow, let alone in the military and security establishment he has so savagely ridiculed.

Yet there is also a lesson in this for Putin: if he does not fire Shoigu and Gerasimov and start anew with leaders plucked from the smart younger officers who have emerged in recent fighting, he will have to abandon the war that has become Russia’s misfortune.

  • Edward Luttwak is a Maryland based American strategist with countless books, articles and consultancies to back him up. The present article was originally published in UnHerd.com and is here reproduced with the author’s permission.

One Year Later

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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.

 

Between Scylla and Charybdis

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Almost a year after Putin launched his so-called special military operation against Ukraine, the war in that country has clearly turned into a struggle of attrition. Historically speaking, such struggles are by no means rare. Clausewitz, indeed, argued that any offensive that fails to break the enemy’s will and reach its objective within a reasonable time will end up as a war of attrition. In particular, two struggles are worth mentioning in this context. One was waged by Germany, Britain and France on the Western Front and lasted from late 1914 to the end of 1918. The other was waged by Iran and Iraq and lasted from September 1980 to August 1988.  With these and some other armed conflicts in mind, let us examine the courses Putin still has open to him.

First, he may simply allow the war to go on just as it has over the last few months. True, the ongoing hostilities as well as Western-imposed sanctions have not been without some, perhaps considerable, negative effect on the Russian economy. On the other hand, those in the West who hoped to use economic pressure to win the war relatively quickly and painlessly have been proved wrong. In part, this is due to Russia’s own enormous resources, especially energy, raw materials, and, as the Germans learnt in World War II, its sheer size; “don’t’ march on Moscow,” a maxim attributed to British Field-Marshal Bernhard Montgomery, is as relevant today as it was in the days of Sweden’s Karl XII and Napoleon. Putin may well hope that, simply by allowing the war to continue for as long as it may take, he will end by breaking Ukraine’s will and/or split up the coalition that is currently arrayed against him.

Second, he may mobilize additional forces, equip them with whatever weapons he still has in reserve or is able to produce, train them, and use them to launch more battlefield offensives. This is what both the Allies in World War I and the Iranians during their war against Iraq did.  In the first case it worked, though only after four years of ferocious struggle and only at a horrendous cost that left both France and Britain drained of manpower and treasure. In the second it did not work at all; masses of young Iranians, many of them wearing Korean-manufactured golden plastic keys to expedite them on their journey to paradise, proved no match for the firepower, provided by both East and West, the Iraqis were able to deploy.

Third, he may switch from trying to defeat his opponents’ armed forces in the field to attacking their rear. “To make a dessert and call it peace,” as the historian Tacitus, referring to Rome’s conquest of Britain, put it twenty centuries ago. At the moment this seems to be Putin’s preferred option. Compliments of Iran, his drones have been attacking Ukrainian cities and more may very well be on the way. On the other hand, whether such attracts can really be carried to the point where the Ukrainians’ will to fight begins to crack is doubtful. Starting in 1963 and ending in 1973, three times as many bombs (by weight) were dropped on Vietnam as on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Yet when the smoke cleared it was the US which withdrew and North Vietnam and the Viet-Cong which triumphed.

Fourth, bring in Belarus. Right from the beginning of armed conflict, belligerents of all times and places have always done their best to gain allies. Right from the beginning of the present war, Putin’s most important objective in this respect has been to get Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to assist him as much as possible. As a look at the map will confirm, such intervention may open a third, northern front against Ukraine in addition to the two, one in the east and one in the south, that already exist. Putin’s recent meeting with Belarussian dictator Lukashenko may be a big step in that direction. On the other hand, it may be a case of Lukashenko doing his best to stay out of the war without provoking Putin too much. He has been playing a dangerous game—so far, as far as anyone can see, with considerable success.

In one form or another, all four of these strategies are as old as history and may be employed both separately and together. What comes next, though, takes us into a really different world. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever defined “tactical” nuclear weapons as opposed to “strategic” ones. The former are said to be small and suitable for “battlefield” use, military bases and airfields presumably included. The latter are sufficiently powerful for use against cities and their civilian populations. In truth, the distinctions are almost meaningless. Depending on geography, terrain, the extent to which the enemy’s forces are concentrated or dispersed, and many other factors “battlefield use” may mean anything between no casualties and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them. What one side sees as a limited strike intended mainly to shock and impress the other may perceive as a deadly one that threatens his very existence. Even if retaliation in any specific war may be avoided, a country that uses nuclear weapons can expect them to be used against it; if not sooner, then certainly later when necessity compels and opportunity presents itself.

Next, the use of strategic nuclear weapons. From conventional weapons to tactical nuclear ones it is a huge step; from tactical nuclear to strategic nuclear, a much smaller one. Though no longer as large as they used to be when the Cold War ended thirty years ago, nuclear arsenals in the hands of both the US and Russia (soon to be followed by China in this respect) are sufficiently powerful to easily destroy the world several times over. That is why Putin, as long as he stays sane amidst the pressures to which he is subjected, will almost certainly decide not to use either them or the smaller tactical ones that lead to them.

Finally, conclude peace. Almost from the beginning of the war, Putin has had the option of halting his offensive, withdrawing his forces, and making peace. Such a move, indeed anything resembling it, would certainly bring about his fall as well as that of his clique. With only a slightly smaller degree of certainty it would also cause his country to fall to pieces—with consequences for Eurasia that are beyond his author’s imagination. That is why, at the moment, it seems the least likely possibility of all.

Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, Putin is.

West or East

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For a number of years now, I have been receiving regular emails from an outfit calling itself Russia Beyond. An offshoot of the government owned and run Russian news agency TV-Novosty, it specializes in what one could call “soft” propaganda—short, often quite amusing, stories about what life inside the world’s largest country is supposedly. One which, for good or ill, also happens to be one of the politically, militarily, economically, and culturally most important among them. Each issue is accompanied by the following warning:

Dear readers,

Our website and social media accounts are under threat of being restricted or banned, due to the current circumstances.

So far, I am very happy to say, this has not happened. This week the most important headline reads, “Is Russia Europe or Asia?” The text provides five short—a couple of hundred words each—vignettes of the lives and works of prominent Russian people who, each in his own time and his own way, have busied themselves with this question.

I quote.

1. Vasily Tatishchev (1686-1750) – Russia belongs to Europe.

This 18th century Russian historian and author of the first “Russian History” book was one of the first to argue that the hypothetical border between Europe and Asia should go through the Ural Mountains. Until then, it had been proposed that the River Yenisei or the River Ob should be the dividing line (and authors of antiquity even suggested that such a border should run along the River Don and through the Black Sea to Constantinople). Tatishchev, however, presented various arguments based on natural history to support his ideas – for example, beyond the Urals, even the nature of river flow patterns is different (and there are different fish species), while many trees that grow in Europe are not to be found beyond the Ural Mountains.

As far as Tatishchev was concerned, Russia was undoubtedly a European country, “just like the Kingdom of Poland, Prussia or Finland”. Describing the history of ancient Russia – before victory over the Khanate of Kazan and the conquest of Siberia – Tatishchev comes to the conclusion that, “on the grounds of natural circumstances”, Russia belongs “without a doubt to Europe”.

2. Historian Nikolay Karamzin (1766-1826) – Russia has almost caught up with Europe.

This historian, whose work spanned the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, is regarded as the author of the concept of the “Russian European”. Karamzin considers Peter the Great’s turn towards Europe as an unmistakable blessing for the country, given that Russia had succeeded in making use of the achievements of the European mind – primarily in the sciences, arts and military science and in terms of state structure.

“The Germans, the French and the English were ahead of the Russians for at least six centuries; Peter propelled us with his powerful hand and, in a few years, we almost caught up with them. All pathetic jeremiads about a change in the Russian character, about a loss of Russian moral physiognomy, are either nothing but a joke or come from a lack of thorough reflection. We are not like our bearded ancestors: So much the better!” wrote Karamzin as he traveled around Europe.

3. Writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) – a mistake to think that we are only Europeans.

After many years, when public opinion was preoccupied exclusively with Europe, Dostoevsky proposed that Russia’s view of Asia be “revitalized”. “The whole of our Russian Asia, including Siberia, still exists as a kind of appendage, as it were, in which our European Russia seems reluctant to take any interest,” laments the author.

“We need to dispel our servile fear that in Europe we will be called Oriental barbarians and described as being even more Asian than European. This shame that Europe will regard us as Asian has been dogging us for close to two centuries.” Dostoevsky calls this shame mistaken, just as mistaken as it is for Russians to consider themselves exclusively European and not Asian – “something that we never stopped being”. Dostoevsky was also irritated by the fact that Russia was “imposing itself” on European affairs and bending over backwards to get Europe to see us as one of their own “and not as Tatars”. Dostoevsky reaches the conclusion that it is perhaps in Asia that Russia needs to seek a path to a bright future for itself.

4. Historian Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841-1911) – Russia as a bridge between Europe and Asia.

Russia’s complex geographical situation determined its historical and cultural destiny, according to 19th century professor and historian Vasily Klyuchevsky. Russia had always experienced foreign influences – but these had invariably been reshaped and redefined on Russian soil. First, it had been Byzantium and the Christianity it brought to Rus’ and then, Western Europe, with its sciences and also the common political space which Russia only finally joined after Peter the Great. It was in the 19th century, according to Klyuchevsky, that Russia had started wondering about belonging to Europe, while forgetting its Eastern bearings. And the idea of Russia’s European character had become firmly established when a German by birth – Catherine the Great – had reigned for decades.

“Historically, Russia is not of course Asia, but geographically it is not Europe either. It is a transitional country, an intermediary between two worlds. Its culture has inseparably tied it to Europe; but nature has imposed peculiarities and influences on it that have always drawn it towards Asia or drawn Asia into Russia,” Klyuchevsky wrote in his ‘Course of Russian History’.

5. Lev Gumilev (1912-1992) – Russian Eurasians will overtake Europe.

The prominent historian and ethnologist Lev Gumilev (son of famous early 20th century poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilev) is famous for having coined the term “super ethnos” to denote a group that has emerged from a mosaic of ethnic groups within a single region. The Western European Christian world and the Muslim world were super ethnoses of this kind. The Russian people, too, which, until the 18th century, had encompassed other ethnoses with the progressive conquest of Siberia and Central Asia, had emerged as a super ethnos in the course of its historical development. The Russian ethnos was much younger than its Western European counterpart and thus found itself on a slightly lower rung of development – but, according to Gumilev, it was destined soon to experience an upsurge.

Gumilev was an exponent of “Eurasianism” – in other words, he believed that Western European culture was in crisis and that the East would take over its dominant position. The Russian super ethnos, combining European Slavs and the non-Slavic peoples of Asia, would become one of the standard-bearers of the culture of Eurasianism.

Lev Gumilev studied Asia for many years and was enchanted by its culture. “A banal Eurocentrism is sufficient for a layman’s comprehension, but it is unfit for a scientific understanding of the diversity of observable phenomena. After all, to the Chinese or Arabs, Western Europeans appear inadequate,” Gumilev wrote in his book ‘Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth’.

To which list I, Martin van Creveld (1946-), retired historian writing from Jerusalem, Israel, would like to add:

6. Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883-1954) – Russia is different.

 Russia and the West do not mix. On one hand, the country is too large and heterogeneous—in its current configuration, it comprises a hundred and five different nationalities, no less—to be democratically governed the way the West is or claims to be. On the other, it is the carrier of a civilization with differs from that of the West on many essential points. One that, seventy years of Communism notwithstanding, often sees itself as is religiously-minded rather than secular. Greek-Orthodox rather than Catholic or Protestant. Authoritarian rather than democratic. Community-minded rather than individualistic. Pristine and honest rather than hypocritical, oversophisticated and effete. To paraphrase a phrase which, a century and a half ago, some Germans used to apply to themselves: the Russian spirit will prevail—and, as it does so, cleanse the rest of the world of its numerous self-inflicted evils.

7. Finally: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (1952-present). Only a strong government with strong native roots can save Russia from losing its identity to the West.

If ever Ilyin had a follower it was Putin—who even paid for moving the great man’s bones from Switzerland, where he died, for reburial in Moscow. Based on several biographies of his I’ve read, the way Putin sees it Russia has long lagged behind the West which, in its turn, has looked down on Russia as a barbarous country hardly deserving to be called, civilized. Repeatedly, Russia saved the West from its own internal demons. So in 1814-15 when Tsar Alexander I headed the coalition whose armies entered Paris and did away with the remnants of the French Revolution. So in 1914-15 when German militarism almost succeeded in taking over Paris and, with it, the continent. And so again in 1941-45 when Hitler launched the greatest challenge of all and came within a hair not only of occupying the Kremlin but of putting an end to the West as we know it.

The immediate cause of the current war was formed by NATO’s efforts to incorporate Ukraine. Seen from a historical point of view, though, the war is but another phase in this great and holy struggle. One which, on pain of ceasing to exist, Russia must and will win—even if it takes decades, as Peter the Great’s struggle with the Swedes did.

On Escalation

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To most people, whether or not a ruler or country “uses” nuclear weapons is a simple choice between either dropping them on the enemy or not doing so. For “experts,” though, things are much more complicated (after all making them so, or making them appear to be so, is the way they earn their daily bread). So today I am going to assume the mantle of an expert and explain some of the things “using” such a weapons might mean.

  1. Making verbal threats. Almost eight decades have passed since the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima (without any kind of warning, nota bene). Since then there have been plenty of occasions when countries, statesmen and politicians threatened to use the nukes at their disposal: Eisenhower in 1953 in connection with the Koran War, Khrushchev in 1956 in connection with the Suez Crisis, Kennedy in 1962 in connection with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon in 1973 in connection with the Arab-Israeli War of that year, India and Pakistan in 1998 in connection with the Kargil War, and so on right down to Putin today. Some of the threats have been overt and rather brutal, others more or less veiled. Some were delivered directly, others with the help of a third party.
  2. To put some muscle behind the threat, weapons may be moved out of storage and put on display. Normally everything pertaining to nukes is kept highly secret. Here and there, though, countries have allowed their nuclear warheads, or replicas of them, to be shown, photographed, and celebrated for what they might do to opponents. In particular Russia, China and North Korea like to parade their intercontinental ballistic missiles. True monsters they are, any one of which can demolish almost any city on earth within, say, less than an hour of the order being given. Some such displays are accompanied by verbal threats, others not. At times the sequence is reversed in the sense that display precedes threats rather than the other way around.
  3. Raising the state of alarm. Again contrary to what most people think, putting nuclear weapons to use, in other words commanding and controlling them, is by no means simply a matter of pushing the proverbial button. First, those in charge of the weapons must make sure they are always ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Second, they must make sure the weapons are not launched by accident, or by unauthorized personnel, or by an authorized person either deliberately disobeying orders or going out of his or her mind. The two requirements, speed (lest the weapons are targeted and destroyed before they can be launched) and reliability contradict each other; making the problem of nuclear command and control as difficult as any we humans have to face. Raising the state of alarm will cut through some parts of the problem—though just how, and to what extent, is rightly kept one of the most guarded secrets of all.
  4. Going a step further, weapons and delivery vehicles may be tested. Pace any number of computer models and exercises, ultimately the only way to make sure one’s nuclear weapons will work is to test them. Such tests, of course, may also be used in an attempt to influence the enemy’s behavior—as was notoriously the case when India and Pakistan both tested a number of weapons back in 1998. Some tests may be conducted in or over some outlying part of one’s own country as American, Soviet, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and North Korea ones all were. Others may take place over some part of the vast no-man’s world that constitutes the earth’s oceans; for example, the Israeli-South African bomb said to have been detonated over the Indian Ocean back in 1979. It is also possible to send some of one’s missiles hurtling over enemy country, as North Korea has often done in respect to Japan.

Each of the above mentioned methods represents a different way of (hopefully) “using” one’s nuclear weapons in order to influence the enemy’s behavior without bringing about Armageddon. Historically all have been implemented quite often, some even as a matter of routine. The problem is that, since no country or leader has ever admitted giving way to a nuclear threat, it is hard to say how effective such threats were.

There are, however, additional ways states might put their nuclear weapons to use.

  1. Launching a limited nuclear strike at some less important enemy target such as outlying, more or less unpopulated, spaces or else a ship at sea. All in the hope of scaring the opponents to the point where he’ll give way to one’s demand, but without risking a nuclear response.
  2. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s nuclear or, in case he does not have them, conventional forces. Targets might consist of early warning installations, anti-aircraft and missile defenses, troop-concentrations, communication centers, depots, etc.
  3. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s industrial infrastructure.
  4. Launching a nuclear strike at all of the targets mentioned in bullets 5 to 7.
  5. Launching a full scale nuclear strike at the enemy’s main demographic centers.

One well known nuclear strategist, Herman Kahn, in his 1962 book distinguished among no fewer than forty different stages on the “escalation ladder.” In practice, there are two reasons why the ladder is largely theoretical. First, the various stages are likely to be hard to keep apart. Second, even if the side using the weapons does keep them apart in his own mind, the other is highly unlikely to share his views. In particular, a strike that one side sees as relatively harmless may very well be perceived by the other as a mortal blow or something close to it, thus bringing about the very retaliation he seeks to avoid.

As far as publicly available sources allow the rest of us to judge, up to the present Putin has limited himself to the first of these nine stages. That is less–considerably less–than some others have done before him. Still day by day his chances of winning” this war seem to dwindle. So the question is, will he stop there?

Who Done It?

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Right from the day when mysterious leaks appeared in Nord Stream 2, the pipeline that enables Russian gas to reach consumers in Western Europe, the question “who done it?” has been very much in the air.

It could be Putin. After all, he is well known to be a bad, bad man; with the result that when anything unpleasant happens people are likely to blame it on him. However, as these lines are being written on 28 September there appears to be not the slightest proof that he had a spoon (or a fork, for that matter) in the broth. Not a hint.

As Putin’s Ukrainian adventure proves, he is as liable to error as the rest of us. Still, given that he is already in full control both of the wells where the gas is being pumped out of the ground and the upstream valves through which it passes, I find it difficult to imagine any benefit he could draw from disrupting those lines. Perhaps to the contrary; should he or any of his successors one day wish to reopen the lines, which after all constitute an important source of revenue for Russia, they will find that doing so will be considerably more difficult, expensive, and time consuming.

It could be some terrorist organization. Long before the Ukrainian War broke out, the benefits of Nord Stream 2 were hotly debated in Western Europe, Germany in particular. People denounced Nord Stream for the same reason as they do so many other things; the impact on the environment, the need to leave some resources for the next generation, and so on. The difficulty with this interpretation is, first, that there is no proof for it. Second, that it would require very considerable technical expertise and preparation; and third that, had it been correct, the responsible organization would almost certainly have been more than ready to claim credit. After all, the lives of such organizations, their very existence, depends on the publicity they can get. Yet so far not one of them has tried to do so.

For much of the rest of the world—Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America—the issue is marginal. They have more important things to worry about than whether or not many, often elderly, Germans will spend the coming winter freezing in their homes. This leaves North America and, specifically, the US. For a number of years now the US, which starting in 1948 became a net importer of energy, has switched positions and started exporting it. Most of the exports consist of natural gas, a commodity of which the US is the world’s second largest supplier after Russia.

In dealing with its NATO allies, the US has never hidden its distaste for a pipeline that would fill Putin’s pocket while at the same time increasing those allies’ dependence on Moscow and thus make them more vulnerable to the Russian dictator’s demands. Such being the case, is it possible to imagine that its secret services, specifically the CIA, have something to do with the leak? While there is no proof of any kind, there have been two incidents that raised eyebrows. Or should have.

The first came from Victoria Nuland, Biden’s undersecretary of state for political affairs and thus a key player at Foggy Bottom. On 27 January 2022, i.e well before the beginning of the Russian invasion, she said that “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” At the time, most people took the statement as a prediction of events to come. Looking back it may well have implied a threat, however veiled.

The second came from President Biden himself and was much more explicit. Speaking at a White House press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, held on 7 February, he said: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?” Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Enough said.

* Thanks to my good friend, Larry Kummer, for inspiring this post.