By
“A
transition from sequential and concentrated actions to continuous and
distributed ones, conducted simultaneously in all spheres of confrontation, and
also in distant theatres of military operations is occurring.”
General
Valeriy Gerasimov
The War to
the East
In their very
legalistic way the decision by the German energy regulator to suspend the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline may just be
the first real evidence that Berlin is finally thinking strategically. If so it
is not a moment too soon. Europeans
urgently need to re-consider any policy that deepens Europe’s energy dependence
on Russia, even if that means missing carbon emission targets. It would be strategic
illiteracy of the worst kind to put the freedom of Europeans at risk simply to
meet arbitrary climate change targets, important tough they are.
President Putin
will always use the power he is given by Europe against Europe. The grand
strategic aim of the Kremlin is to force much of Eastern Europe, including the
Baltic States into a new Russian sphere of influence. That is why thousands of
desperate migrants are being used as human pawns and forced towards the Belarus
border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Belarus threatens to disrupt gas
supplies to much of Eastern Europe, Russian nuclear bombers fly down the North
Sea into the English Channel, and a Russian anti-satellite (ASAT) test scatters
debris in the path of the International Space Station (ISS) whilst some 90,000
troops of Russia’s most capable military units gather on Ukraine’s eastern and
northern borders. It is the Gerasimov Doctrine in action by which Moscow
simultaneously applies ‘strategic maskirovka’ (deception) and ‘desinformatsiya’
(disinformation) together with so-called ‘active measures’ to keep a deeply
disjointed and feeble Europe politically and militarily off-balance. The
immediate aim is to prevent Ukraine crossing a Russian ‘red line’ by moving
formally to join NATO. That was the purpose of President Putin’s September 2021
essay in which he denied Ukraine had ever been an independent state and was
thus an integral part of Russia. Therefore, even though President Biden
recently told President Zelensky that NATO membership is a long way off
Ukraine’s eventual integration into free Europe must now be a shared Allied
strategic aim.
The use of Maskirovka and desinformatsiya
is war that is short of war in the grey zone between war and peace. Former NATO
Supreme Allied Commander, General Phil Breedlove, says that Moscow already sees
itself at war with the West and that its chosen weapon is disinformation. It is
a purposeful 5D warfare strategy that combines implied destruction with
disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and deception and which is driven
from the very top of the Russian state through multiple messaging and by
ramping up the threat of force.
Appeasing Putin
With winter
coming and Europe in some disarray Putin may think he will never have a better
opportunity to exploit a sixth 'D', energy dependence. Indeed, a hitherto
craven Brussels has appeared terrified that Russia, and its puppet Belarus,
will cut gas supplies to much of Europe.
Moscow’s clumsy efforts of late to coerce the European Commission into
approving Nordstream 2 by hiking gas
prices on the spot market demonstrated exactly why Russia will never be a
reliable or trusted energy partner. Had
Germany led Europe to even greater reliance on Russian gas (it might still do) it
would have tied not just Berlin to Moscow in so many ways, but much of the rest
of Europe. One could almost hear the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
The ‘response’
from Brussels thus far has made a mockery of the empty rhetoric of EU
sovereignty. Indeed, the EU’s response thus far has been little short of
appeasement even though Horst Seehofer, the German Minister of the Interior,
last week said that the Kremlin was the architect of the current tensions. If
the EU cannot summon the diplomatic and economic power to pressure the Kremlin
to stop Belarus from turning desperate migrants into pawns, there is little hope
Russia can be dissuaded by Europeans from pursuing its grander ambitions.
Instead of
focussing on the minnow Lukashenko and Russia’s Belarus colony, the EU should
be directing its ire towards Moscow. Rather, the EU prefers to criticize the
Poles for how they are dealing with a desperate situation, just as Brussels
recently criticised Kiev for using drones to retaliate against Russia’s use of
artillery that killed Ukrainian soldiers. The threat of EU sanctions, including
on airlines flying migrants to Minsk is welcome, but in some respects it helps
the Russian cause by creating yet more tension with Turkey. There is also the
potential for a dangerous and rapid escalation of tensions, particularly if
Belarussian border guards trigger an armed confrontation close to the
strategically-vital Suwalki Corridor, which not only links the EU and NATO to
the Baltic States, but Russia with its armed enclave Kaliningrad. It is all too
easy to see Russia moving to resolve a “humanitarian crisis” in or near
Kaliningrad by engineering such a confrontation. Russian and Belarussian
Special Forces have been observed carrying out reconnaissance missions to time
the responses of Latvian security forces to attempted incursions by migrants.
Such actions have not gone unnoticed in Kiev. One only has to look at a map to
see how relatively easy it would be for Russian forces to the north in Belarus
and the east to attack the Ukrainian capital. It is almost as though Russia’s
recent Zapad 21 military exercise never ended and Russia is undertaking a dress
rehearsal for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine…or not.
Chess or Poker?
Will President
Putin invade Ukraine? Naturally, Moscow denies it has any intention to attack Ukraine,
but then the Gerasimov Doctrine might mean Russia does not have to. The threat
of force might well be enough to coerce a Ukraine that is profoundly uncertain
about the real strength of support from its European ‘partners’. However, Putin
has been building up Russia's military capacity around Ukraine's eastern and northern
borders for many months. Russia now has almost all the military pieces in place
so that should Putin decide to act he could.
What better way for President Putin to subjugate Ukraine, humiliate the
EU, divide NATO, and thus assure his legacy as a ‘great’ Russian who ‘saved’
Ukraine from 'Western incursions'?
It is also entirely
in President Putin’s gift to end the tensions now if he so wished. There is
still little chance he will. President Putin sees himself as a grand master of
grand strategic chess when in fact his real game is stud poker. The tragedy for the people of Eastern Europe
is that Russia’s apparent strength is primarily due to Western European
weakness and incompetence which has turned the reality of Russian weakness into
an illusion of strength. The Nordstream 2
decision may just be the first sign that Europe is prepared to raise the
stakes.
Power and
Strategy
Even if Moscow
does takes its foot off Kiev’s throat for the moment it is unlikely to mark a
new dawn in either Russia-Ukraine or Russia-West relations. The current crisis
is a clash of wills. Putin is calling Europe's bluff and seeking to demonstrate
an Atlantic Alliance divided. Have Europe’s political leaders the collective
courage and will to counter Russia? Europe’s growing energy dependence on
Russia is leading Moscow to believe it now has Europeans just where it wants
them and the 'weapon' to potentially decouple the US from its European Allies.
Not surprisingly, the US Administration is deeply concerned and both Secretary
of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin have made plain
those concerns.
Deterring Russia
from its strategic direction of travel will require Europeans and their North
American allies to collectively apply counter-pressure. That will only be
possible if the Allies adopt their own active measures in the form of a counter
5D warfare strategy with the main effort centred on NATO. In short, the Kremlin
needs to be made to understand it will pay a heavy price if it continues with
such aggression. Right now, that means facing down Russia, politically,
economically and militarily. Over the medium term such deterrence will require
effective counter-messaging, information operations, offensive cyber
operations, a new Allied balance between military power projection and
people/information protection, resiliency, robustness and redundancy in
defence, and an EU-NATO strategic partnership that can generate a range of
incentives and constraints on Russian policy.
Russia will only
be stopped when it is stopped and the Nordstream
2 decision might, just might, suggest European leaders now recognise
that. If not, then what is happening
today will just be the beginning of repeated Moscow-generated confrontations that
will demand of European leaders both the political will and the means to deter
Russia, something that for too long they have been reluctant to do. To do that
they will all need to grow up strategically and stop rendering Europe and
Europeans so systemically vulnerable to Russian energy. The American economist
J.K. Galbraith once famously said that power is as power does. President Putin
needs to understand that power, like gas, can flow two ways. Nordstream 2? Scrap it!
Ben Hodges and Julian
Lindley-French
Lieut. General (Ret.) Ben Hodges
is Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy
Analysis in Washington. Professor Julian Lindley-French is Chairman of The
Alphen Group
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