The Ukraine War Day 12: What Comes Next?
It would be nice to say that there are reasons for hope that the bloodletting in Ukraine will end soon ... but things aren't looking good.
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This week, I’m writing a few pieces for MSNBC and The New Republic on Ukraine, so I’m going to take a few minutes to drop some thoughts on what’s happening in Ukraine and the trajectory of the war.
The Military Angle
I strongly recommend this excellent discussion at War On The Rocks between Ryan Evans and Russian military expert Michael Kofman. There are a few essential points from their conversation that I want to highlight.
There’s been a great deal of discussion about the poor tactics of Russian forces, but as Sun Tzu reminds us, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Ultimately, Russia’s problem in Ukraine is an unworkable military strategy. The assumptions that underpinned the war have proved to be fundamentally flawed. Russia seemingly expected to sweep through the country and quickly capture major cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv. They clearly didn’t believe that Ukrainian forces would put up much of a fight and may have even expected to be welcomed as liberators. All these assumptions have proved tragically wrong and have almost certainly doomed the Russian military effort.
But Kofman points to another significant problem: that Russian leadership failed to tell its own forces the nature of the mission in Ukraine. It appears that up until the last minute Russian soldiers were told they were conducting a training mission — and not invading a neighboring state. Junior officers may not have been informed that they would be crossing the border until hours before the incursion began. That has most certainly contributed to the low morale of Russian troops. They were not operationally and psychologically prepared to fight and die in Ukraine — and we are seeing the consequences of the Kremlin’s subterfuge in real-time.
Credit also must be given to the Ukrainian military. They have adopted the classic military strategy of a weaker force — avoiding set-piece battles and adopting hit-and-run tactics and ambushes, mainly focused on enemy supply lines. According to Pentagon estimates, more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have perished in the war so far, which (if true) is an astonishing number. To put this in context, the US lost 2,400 soldiers during 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.
Of course, there are a larger set of problems — for example, the simply bizarre use of Russian airpower. We are nearly two weeks into this war, and Russia still does not control the airspace over Ukraine. Frankly, Russia should have made degrading Ukraine’s air force the number one priority and dealt with it in the first hours of the war. Instead, two weeks in the airspace remains contested.
As for the current situation on the ground, Russian ground forces are making substantial progress in the south, even as their troops are bogged down in the north, around Kharkiv and Kyiv. But Kofman warns that Russia could be three weeks away from becoming a spent force, so Russian troops need to achieve their objectives sooner rather than later. That could lead to a substantial ramping up of aggressive military tactics. Right now, this has to be the biggest concern about the conduct of the war.
To that point, this morning Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified before Congress and made a rather disquieting statement about Putin’s mindset. “Our analysts assess that Putin is unlikely to be deterred by such setbacks and instead may escalate, essentially doubling down to achieve Ukrainian disarmament,” said Haines.
According to CIA Director Bill Burns, “Putin is determined to dominate and control Ukraine to reshape its orientation. This is a matter of deep personal conviction for him. He's been stewing in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years.”
All this suggests that Putin intends to win the war militarily — and by any means necessary. That could mean targeting civilians and razing Ukrainian cities (well more than what’s happened up to this point). My fear, and it’s one that Kofman raises, is that failure is not an option for Putin. For domestic political and reputational reasons, he is not willing to take the risk of suffering a humiliating defeat on the battlefield. With time potentially running out and convinced that he cannot fail, Putin has every incentive to use the type of tactics that Russian troops utilized in Chechnya and Syria — scorched earth.
He Can’t Win
The problem, however, is that ultimately Russia can’t win. Kofman argues that the Russians have a terrible military strategy that cannot succeed. I’d go even further in saying that the basic political strategy underpinning the war effort is unworkable — and was from day one. Even if Putin “succeeds” in defeating Ukraine, capturing Kyiv, and decapitating its leadership, he will lose.
Putin doesn’t have the resources to occupy and pacify Ukrainian resistance. How is he going to keep his occupation force supplied? How is he going to provide for the needs of Ukrainian citizens? How is he going to deal with the almost certain resistance — violent and non-violent — that will come from the Ukrainian people, which we’re already seeing in the occupied cities of Kherson and Melitopol? And he can only weather international sanctions for so long. The list of miscalculations by Putin is exceptionally and disconcertingly long, but high on the tally sheet is his underestimation of Western resolve in punishing him for invading Ukraine. Paradoxically, the better he does on the battlefield the worse it will be for him because every military success will harden the determination of Western governments to hold him accountable for his actions. Ultimately, it is the Western response to the invasion, combined with Ukrainian resistance that has doomed the war.
That brings us to Russia’s other major problem: the decision to go to war in Ukraine and violate the long-standing norm prohibiting inter-state war has prompted an historic international backlash. We’ve never before seen a war-making country so thoroughly ostracized, isolated, and punished. The last part is key. Before the war began, many commentators wondered how far the international community was willing to go in holding Putin accountable for his actions. The answer is: further than nearly anyone expected. Russia has been cut off from the SWIFT payment system; the ability of their key banks to access foreign reserves has been crippled; the ruble is in freefall, and now today, President Biden has announced that the US is banning all Russian oil and gas exports. In a matter of two weeks, the international community has battered the hell out of the Russian economy and turned one of the most powerful countries into a pariah state.
It’s not just happening on a government-to-government basis. Corporations and non-state actors are getting into it as well. Over the weekend Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia. BP and Shell pulled out of multi-billion dollar deals with Russian oil companies. Quite simply, the price of doing business in Russia is no longer worth it, at practically any price.
Amazing as it may seem, we need to start talking about whether it’s time to pull back the reins. International sanctions will overwhelmingly punish the Russian people and fundamentally damage the country’s economy for the foreseeable future. It’s understandable why these steps are being taken, and frankly, it’s hard to criticize them. What choice does the world have in the face of such naked aggression by Russia?
But these measures will take a toll. It is imperative that the West make clear to Putin that these sanctions are not permanent and could be lifted if Russia changes its behavior. It doesn’t mean he will necessarily take the hint, but perhaps those around him will hear it and, perhaps, be inclined to take measures into their own hands. At the very least, we do not want to get into a situation — seen in Cuba, Venezuela, and elsewhere — of putting sanctions in place that never get lifted. Sanctions are not supposed to be indefinite, and should not be punitive. Russia is too important to the global economy that it be permanently excluded from it.
How Does This End?
Up to this point, Putin has blown by every off-ramp that the West has given him. Putin could have declared victory once NATO leaders clarified that Ukraine membership wouldn’t happen anytime soon and that no Western troops would be sent to defend Kyiv. He chose not to. Russian officials do not appear to be seriously engaging on the diplomatic front or actively seeking a way out of the war. Putin has adopted a maximalist strategy — destruction of the Ukrainian state and the decapitation of its leadership -- and there’s no evidence that he has any inclination to waver from those positions.
So how does this end? The answer is: we don’t know. In a sense, what we’re witnessing in Ukraine is a race to see what happens first: Russia defeats Ukraine militarily or the cumulative effect of Ukrainian resistance and international sanctions craters the Russian economy, leads to a military collapse on the battlefield or finally convinces Putin that he must change course. A Russian battlefield victory seems most likely, but as noted above, that is not really a victory at all.
The other possibility is those around Putin decide the war must end, and that means getting rid of him. I don’t know enough about the Russian leadership to speculate about that happening, but it seems those with more expertise consider it a remote possibility. Though if things get decidedly worse on the battlefield and on the home front, one might imagine that the chances could increase.
Unfortunately, the most likely scenario — right now — is further bloodshed in Ukraine and long, drawn-out conflict on the ground as Russia tries to pacify a civilian population with little interest in being occupied by Russia. That’s a deeply depressing answer, but as long as Putin calls the shots, that appears to be where we are in Ukraine. As William Tecumseh Sherman reminded us more than 150 years ago, “war is hell … War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”
What’s Going On?
There are so many topics to address when it comes to the war in Ukraine, but here’s one that deserves more attention — the war has created a significant humanitarian crisis. More than 2 million Ukrainians have fled their country, and one million of them are children.
Lawrence Freedman wrote the book on strategy (literally), so it’s always a good idea to read his thoughts on the war.
Erik Sand and Suzanne Freeman look at the “risk” of success in imposing crippling sanctions on Russia.
Paul Miller helpfully reminds us that the war in Ukraine is not World War III.
An excellent Q&A from the International Crisis Group on why a no-fly zone over Ukraine is a terrible idea.
Musical Interlude
Forgive the video quality, but this version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” is truly incendiary.