A Comprehensive Strategy for Ukraine's Future

Julian Lindley-French

https://thealphengroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TAG-Ukraine-Strategy-PUBLIC-LAUNCH-VERSION-220223.pdf 

INTRODUCTION

It is my honour to share with you the TAG’s latest publication “A Comprehensive Strategy to Secure Ukraine’s Future”, The Alphen Group’s latest working project, which I have had the honour to lead.  

The Strategy has been prepared over several months with the support of experts from fifteen democracies, including Australia and Japan.  Signatories, inter alia, include one former NATO Secretary-General, two Deputy Secretaries-General, three former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commanders, former ministers, several Chiefs of Defence Staff, and senior diplomats, as well as many subject matter experts all of whom are members of The Alphen Group. Our aim is simple: to secure a legitimate peace for Ukraine as quickly as possible and secure that peace going forward. This blog summarises the main points of the Strategy the TAG believes should be adopted now by the community of democracies (the West for the purposes of the Strategy) that form the coalition supporting Ukraine.

2023 will be the decisive year of the Russian-Ukraine war. The prospect of a total Russian victory that would see the complete dismemberment of an independent Ukrainian state, although by no means impossible, seems remote. However, Ukraine will only prevail with sustained and extensive Western support.  Equally, continued Ukrainian advances and recovery of still-occupied territory cannot be assumed and Russia may have sufficient capability to repel Ukrainian offensives and force a stalemate. Russia enjoys far more strategic depth and industrial capacity than Ukraine which is precisely the reason why Western support remains indispensable. 

As Russia’s war of aggression enters its second year, the Western definition of success must remain the re-establishment of Ukraine as a secure and sovereign European democracy with all the rights and responsibilities that entails.  The critical issue the TAG Ukraine Strategy 2023 (the Strategy) thus addresses is the scope and extent of Western support required to reinforce that goal across the diplomatic, informational, military and economic domains.  For the purpose of the Strategy, “the West” encompasses the Euro-Atlantic Community and those members of the G7 and beyond, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the policies of which are largely aligned.

The specific aims of the Strategy are threefold: To bring the war to an end on terms acceptable to Kyiv that deny the Russians the fruits of aggression and ensure that Russia does not invade Ukraine again; to restore Ukraine as an independent state in full control of its internationally-recognized borders, with the capability to deter and defeat any further Russian aggression; and thereby, to demonstrate to any potential aggressors that the democratic nations will defend the rules-based international order.

 THE STRATEGY

The TAG Ukraine Strategy is established on the following principles:  Russian aggression and attempts to change borders by force must not be rewarded or legitimized in any way; Russia must pay reparations for the death and damage it has inflicted on Ukraine; there can be no de facto Russian veto over NATO’s support for Ukraine and no secret deals with Moscow that undercut Ukraine’s position; the lifting of sanctions on Russia will only come as a consequence of Russian action and only over time; the West must be able to determine the European security order on its own terms, including Ukraine’s place in it; and, a NATO-Russia war is avoided.

The Strategy has two phases: the short-term (2023) and the medium-to-longer term (2024 and beyond). Within the Strategy there are four lines of action: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) the main elements of which can be thus summarised:  

Diplomatic: issue a new “Declaration for Ukraine” to maximize Western cohesion and further deter Russia; pursue more vigorous diplomatic measures with China to seek their intervention to end the war;  clarify further for Russia the consequences of nuclear use or another massive invasion of western Ukraine; convene a “Conference of Democracies” to begin planning the post war order; maintain diplomatic contact with Moscow to the maximum extent possible;  provide all support necessary to support Ukrainian efforts to hold Russians accountable for war crimes.

Informational: Prepare western publics for the broad consequences of a protracted war; escalate the information campaign in Russia to counter the Kremlin’s narrative; maintain a high level of public support for assistance to Ukraine; and publicly define the meaning of a Ukrainian victory in which the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity is the goal. 

Military: Streamline decision-making on assistance to Ukraine; increase the pace and volume of weapons transfers to Ukraine designed to allow them to retake occupied territory, while refraining from attacks on Russian territory with western arms; seek to deter and prepare to deal with further Russian escalation should it come; take additional steps to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security, including security guarantees and eventual NATO membership; and, avoid the temptation to slow efforts to further strengthen the NATO alliance because Russia will rebuild its forces in its long-term struggle with the alliance. 

Economic: Maintain and further strengthen sanctions; there is much more that can be done; continue to provide short-term economic aid and budget support to Ukraine to counter Russia’s effort to undercut Ukraine’s will to fight; pass western legislation as needed to allow sequestered Russian financial reserves to be used for Ukrainian reconstruction; and prepare for a massive Marshall-style plan for Ukraine once the conflict ends.

 LESSONS FROM THE WAR FOR NATO

War is a giant black hole into which people and materiel vanish at an alarming rate far beyond that envisaged by peacetime establishments. Consequently, there are two overarching lessons for the Alliance from the Russian-Ukraine War. First, NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture across Central and Eastern Europe must be reinforced to frustrate possible future Russian territorial ambitions. Second, whilst NATO’s missions and tasks were stated clearly in the 2019 Military Strategy, the 2021 NATO Agenda and NATO Strategic Concept 2022 the Alliance must also learn the military-technical lessons already apparent.

The initial military-technical lessons for the Alliance can be thus summarised: the vulnerability of armour unsupported by infantry and helicopters in the battlespace; the vital need to dominate both fires and counter-fires; the vulnerability of deployed ground forces to expendable drones, strike drones and loitering systems allied to precision-guided munitions; the need for more robust logistics forward deployed, with enhanced and far more secure military supply chains; more ready-action materiel, most notably small arms and tube and rocket artillery ammunition; build more and rebuild infrastructure to accelerate military mobility in scale; remove all legal impediments to rapid cross-border movements in a pre-war emergency; and, improve force protection of deployed forces, allied to a particular need to reduce the detectability and thus digital footprint of force concentrations.

THE WAY AHEAD

The core aim of Western strategy must remain, and must continue to remain, the complete and irreversible withdrawal of Russian forces, an end to all shelling and rocket attacks on the Ukrainian people, and the restoration of normal democratic governance across Ukraine’s territory.

However, a wider strategy must also be embraced by the West. Russia is seeking to tear down the rules-based order with the massive use of Russian power and illegitimate coercion using all other possible means. It is precisely such coercion that the West is confronting in Ukraine with Ukrainians and which must be contained and then ended. History suggests that only when Russia has acknowledged the West’s countervailing power will rules and all-important institutionalised structure be re-established.  In Europe, such structure is particularly important.  

Therefore, when negotiations for an enduring and equitable peace agreement do eventually begin there must be no territorial compromise. That said, the West, in consultation with Kyiv, must also consider its minimum conditions for a peace settlement beyond a mere cease-fire precisely so that serious negotiations may begin.

Those conditions might include: Any eventual peace agreement would be linked to Russia's future behaviour, and not just to ending its use of force in Ukraine; effective security guarantees for Ukraine, as part of which the West excludes nothing in advance, including NATO membership, and with no repeat of the failed 1994 Budapest Memorandum; OSCE-guaranteed language and other 'rights' for Russian speakers in Eastern and South-Eastern Ukraine, in tandem with similar guarantees by Russia for ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars; a lease-back deal for the Black Sea Fleet’s base in Sevastopol could be considered,  coupled with guarantees that Crimea will not be used as a base for aggression against Ukraine as in 2014; reparations by Russia to Ukraine; and, an immediate and expanded Association Agreement with the EU and Ukrainian membership of both the EU and NATO by 2033. 

A much greater Western effort is also needed to convince the likes of China and India to further withhold support from Russia. At this year’s G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, China and India should be invited to join a G7-Plus Contact Group charged with both preventing nuclear escalation and returning the conflict to an institutional framework. A major diplomatic demarche is also needed towards other important democracies, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and South Africa.

Beyond the future of Ukraine, what is also at stake in the war is the West’s capacity to shape its strategic environment and shape the European security order on its own terms in a way that upholds the principles of the rules-based international order established following World War Two. All and any collective action will involve risk. A new European security system will be needed in order to restore respect for the principles of international law that Russia has violated and, over time, to lay the basis for a new relationship with Russia, whatever the outcome of the war. And, in the short term, it will also be indispensable in order to maintain a sufficient level of support from Western public opinion.

The Alphen Group, February 2023

 

Could China Invade Taiwan?

 “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we [US] will fight [China] in 2025”. General Mike Minihan, Commander, US Air Mobility Command

HMS Mallard

Lessons from the past

February 1st, 2023.  On September 17^th, 1940 Hitler indefinitely postponed Operation Sealion, the planned invasion of Britain. He had good reason.  None of the basic conditions for a successful invasion had been met. First, on September 15^th the Luftwaffe had received a mauling at the hands of the Royal Air Force which denied any chance the Germans could establish air superiority over the Channel and proposed landing grounds near Hastings. Second, the Kreigsmarine was in no position to escort the Wehrmacht across some 30 miles/40km of open sea under ferocious attack from the Royal Navy, world’s biggest navy at the time. The plan was to land three of the Wehrmacht’s best divisions on the southern English coast supported by paratroopers.  Had they tried it is likely all three divisions would have been destroyed.

Fast forward to 2023.  In late January a memo appeared online from General Mike Minihan warning US forces of a conflict with China as early as 2025, most likely over an invasion of Taiwan.  He warned that the 2024 Taiwanese presidential elections could be a pretext for invasion.  In August 2022, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a major exercise simulating just such an invasion.  That begs a question: just what would it take for the People’s Republic of China to successfully invade the Republic of China?   

History would suggest that President Xi would need to feel pretty threatened to undertake such a gamble. Any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be fraught with danger for Chinese forces.  Yes, in some ways such a massive air-maritime-amphibious operation would be different to those of the past.  It would doubtless be preceded by a massive missile barrage, as well as cyber and other information warfare attacks designed to take out critical Taiwanese infrastructures and people. However, it would not be THAT different.  

Plans, planning and experience

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said that, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force”. Take the D-Day maritime amphibious invasion of France in June 1944. Portsmouth to the Normandy beaches is a distance of 180km or 110 miles, whilst the distance between mainland China and Taiwan across the Strait of Taiwan is exactly the same. However, prior to D-Day Anglo-American forces had undertaken five major maritime-amphibious invasions.  Operation Torch in North Africa in November 1942, Operation Husky in Sicily in July 1953, Operation Avalanche at Salerno in October 1943 and Operation Shingle at Anzio in January 1944.

Experience gained is the best proof against such failure. Both Britain and the US were long-experienced blue water naval powers with corps of marines that had pioneered and were pioneering such operations both in the European and Pacific theatres of World War Two.  Even so, D-Day was a gamble, even though Nazi forces were fighting in Russia and the so-called Atlantic Wall spread thinly from Northern Norway to the Spanish border with France. And yet, five American, British and Canadian divisions landed on D-Day.  That D-Day was a success was in no small part because the conditions that were absent for Operation Sealion were in place for Operation Overlord: excellent intelligence, the support of the local population and undisputed Allied control of both air and sea.  The ‘only’ contest Allied forces faced was getting ashore and establishing quickly an unassailable bridgehead.  

No doubt the Chinese have studied the extremely extensive and intensive Chiefs of Staff Supreme Allied Command (COSSAC) plans that led to D-Day in their own planning, which they have clearly now completed.  However, recent exercises testing Chinese Naval Infantry suggest the force is neither big enough nor experienced enough to successfully assault Taiwan without being effectively destroyed in the process.  For all their burgeoning and impressive equipment the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its air force simply lack the experience of contested blue water power projection and/or massive joint maritime-amphibious operations. Therefore, at present, Chinese planning suggests more Operation Sealion, i.e. an attempt to force a settlement through the threat of invasion, rather than Operation Overlord, an actual invasion.

The First Battle of the Next War?

Early in 2023 Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released the findings of a series of war games entitled, “The First Battle of the Next War” they had conducted simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in which the US and Japan was engaged. They suggested that under any scenario the People’s Liberation Army and Navy would see at least 10000 troops killed with tens of thousands more taken prisoner. The Chinese would likely lose 138 ships and 155 aircraft.   However, both the US and Japan would also suffer very significant losses, with Taiwan losing its entire navy of destroyers and frigates.

There is an additional factor President Xi would have to take into account - the ferocity of the defence. This would certainly be the case given the past history between the Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party which retreated to then Formosa following the latter’s defeat in 1949. My father once told me a story that had been told to him by my grandfather. In the summer of 1940, at the height of the invasion scare, my grandfather was serving in a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Mallard, off the south coast of England. He told my father that they were ordered to intercept what appeared to be a commando-style raid by German forces. When they intercepted the German force they discovered they were in wooden boats and were about to take them prisoner when an order came through from the very top of government that there were to be no prisoners.  Rather, they were ordered to ring the German force in fuel oil and set it alight as a message to Hitler about the ferocity with which German forces would be met if they attempted to invade.  

My grandfather was not prone to telling lies, but I have never found any corroborating evidence in support of his story, although there are stories of burnt corpses of German soldiers washing ashore. Sadly, any ‘evidence’ if it exists has now been lost to the world of conspiracy theorists. If it is true, the information would probably be covered by a 100 year release restriction because it would have been a war crime, not dissimilar to the murder of 80 members of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment by the Waffen SS at Wormhoudt in June 1940. However, I do know my grandfather lived with the images of what he says happened for the rest of his life.  Chinese forces could expect a similar reception if they ever attempted to invade Taiwan.

It may be that General Minihan’s leaked memo is simply a general musing to keep his forces focused on their mission.  They do that. Still, the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a real one and must not be discounted.   

Julian Lindley-French