NATO: Time for Resolve

 “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

Winston Churchill

March 21^st, 2022

The Few

As of March 18^th, the Ukrainian General Staff claimed to have shot down some 95 Russian aircraft and 115 helicopters since the start of the invasion. On September 15^th, 1940, at the climax of the Battle of Britain, the RAF claimed to have shot down 185 Luftwaffe aircraft for the loss of 25 Spitfires and Hurricanes and 13 pilots killed. In fact, the Luftwaffe had lost 61 aircraft and the RAF 31. Still, the attrition on Russian airpower is clearly significant. However, Ukraine has also lost at least 20 aircraft in combat and on the ground. This matters. According to the IISS Military Balance at the start of the conflict the Russian Air Force had 1,172 combat aircraft, whilst Ukraine had 124. This imbalance is why the Poles were so keen to transfer Mig-29s to the Ukrainians.  Crucially, Russia started this war with 399 attack helicopters, whilst Ukraine had none.

The March 19^th Intelligence Update from the British Defence Intelligence Agency states, “The Ukrainian Air Defence and Air Defence Forces are continuing to effectively defend Ukrainian airspace. Russia has failed to gain control of the air and is largely relying on stand-off weapons launched from the relative safety of Russian airspace to strike targets within Ukraine. Gaining control of the air was one of Russia’s principal objectives for the opening days of the conflict and their continued failure to do so has significantly blunted their operational progress”.

When the history comes to be told of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine one group will stand out for particular praise, Ukraine’s pilots and its air defenders.  Their achievements evoke memories of the Royal Air Force and “the Few” during the 1940 Battle of Britain. Unlike the RAF, the Ukrainian pilots do not benefit from the world’s most advanced air defence system, arguably the best defensive fighter in the Spitfire, or the Channel.  However, this war is yet to become history and given that hard reality there is an equally hard question Ukraine’s friends must now ask: is Ukraine winning and how best can NATO and the Allies help?

No Fly Zone?

President Zelensky’s appeal for a NATO-enforced No Fly Zone over Ukraine makes perfect sense because Russian forces can just about afford to lose aircraft at the rate they are losing them. It also raises some uncomfortable questions for NATO. 

First, what would it require to enforce an Allied No Fly Zone against the Russian Air Force so close to Moscow’s Western, Central and Southern Military Districts and their air bases?  In spite of the degradation of Russian air power for such a No Fly Zone to work NATO would need to enforce it where it matters, east of the Dnepr River right up to the Russian border.

Second, what would be the objective of a NATO air campaign? A specific objective could be to protect the bulk of Ukraine’s regular army in the Joint Force Operation area so that it can continue to conduct manoeuvre operations and to prevent it being encircled and destroyed by a third echelon Russian attack. 

Third, what level of NATO airpower would be required and at what cost? Given the short lines of operation from Russia’s Western, Central and Southern Military Districts such a campaign would inevitably bring NATO airpower into direct conflict with Russian air defences, both air and ground-based. To prevail, NATO would need to deploy its most advanced air assets, most notably F-35 aircraft and sustain them over the entire operational area. NATO would also have to accept significant losses, much like the Luftwaffe operating over southern England in 1940. Given that 70% of advanced Allied airpower is American it would involve an air campaign between the United States Air Force and the Russian Air Force with some limited support from some NATO Allies, most notably the Polish Air Force and the Royal Air Force.  Much of the rest of what might be termed NATO’s offensive air power would simply be too vulnerable to Russian air defences.   

Fourth, would a No Fly Zone work? Only if the Americans were willing to deploy a very considerable bulk of their air power and destroy Russian air bases inside Russia. A No Fly Zone over Western Ukraine might work, but it would have limited strategic value and have little effect against Russia’s increasing use of stand-off hypersonic missiles, such as the Kinzhal (NATO codename Dagger), although how many such missiles are operational and whether Russia has really deployed them is open to debate.

Fifth, would such a No Fly Zone really lead to World War Three?  The answer to that question is one of strategic judgement and this unknown.  It is unclear how far Putin is willing to pursue this war of aggression or whether or not he would really be willing to take on the US and its Allies, even in his own strategic back yard. President Putin is driven by nineteenth century, Great Power Russian revisionism. So long as he is in power he will continue to seek to undermine, and if possible conquer, those countries he believes should be firmly under the Russian yoke.  At the very least NATO leaders must end any delusions they have that somehow Putin can ever be a reliable partner. He must now be left in no doubt that should he ever contemplate attacking NATO territory it would really mean war and that he would lose. Russia’s armed forces will learn from its mistakes in Ukraine precisely because Putin is incapable of learning from his own geopolitical folly. There must be no complacency amongst the Allies that the incompetence of the Russian military today means the pressure will be off NATO and its citizens tomorrow.

Defence or pretence?

This war is not yet another so-called war of choice. It is the first twenty-first century geopolitical war by proxy and is as much about Russia’s relationship with democratic Europe as it is about the future of Ukraine. As such, it poses the Alliance another fundamental question. Is the reason NATO is reluctant to enforce a No Fly Zone over Ukraine really about the utility or otherwise of such a campaign, or because the strategic culture in Western Europe is now so weak that making eastern European allies live with the risk Putin poses better than confronting Moscow under virtually any circumstances? If it is the latter then the Alliance is in real trouble.

Last week, President Zelensky addressed the Bundestag and gave one of the most succinct and powerful addresses any foreign leader has ever delivered.  In a few short words he destroyed decades of German foreign, security and defence policy and Berlin’s belief in Wandel durch Handel (Change through Trade).  Chancellor Scholz’s decision to create a €100 billion fund to rescue (for that is what it is) the Bundeswehr from its appalling state and bring German defence expenditure up to the NATO Defence Investment Pledge of 2% GDP is to be welcomed. However, will Scholz’s defence pledge survive the German political process? It will take much more than the planned investment to bring the Bundeswehr up to a level where it could again take its proper place at the heart of NATO’s land and air deterrence on the Alliance’s eastern flank. 

Whilst Britain has stood up sending weapons, expertise, cyber support and intelligence, London’s much vaunted 2021 hike in defence expenditure is already being eaten away by inflation. Much of Britain’s armed forces remain too small AND hollowed out, and needs to really begin to match rhetoric with real resources.  France? Pre-election President Macron has been grandstanding as usual by banging on (again) about European Strategic Autonomy which can only happen if Europeans match words with real power. What he should really be concentrating on is fixing the many problems of the French armed forces, not least the very weak stock of ammunition and supplies.

Dire straits

As NATO Heads of State and Government meet in Brussels this week they must for once show real resolve.  The fear of a third massive (possibly nuclear) war in Europe in just over a century is legitimate, but as President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.  This is because such fear not only undermines NATO deterrence, it also reinforces Putin’s mix of paranoia and false superiority, not least because he believes Russia’s missile and nuclear superiority in Europe has made it ‘safe’ for him to attack Ukraine with conventional force.   What is needed now is a process of considered, controlled and limited escalation by the Alliance to force Putin to the negotiating table.   

First, keep the pressure up on Russia. The Turks suggest there has been some modest progress in the peace talks they are hosting in Anatolia. If that is the case then it is vital the Allies keep Ukraine in the fight by giving the Ukrainians all the tools they need to do the job so that any cease-fire and eventual peace is not dictated solely on Russian terms.

Second, the Alliance must apply the principles of the rules-based international order. In the absence of any cease-fire NATO should bottle up the Russian Black Seas Fleet and prevent Russian amphibious ships en route to the Black Sea from entering. The 1925 Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits governs the passage of belligerent warships through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Preferably with the support of NATO Ally Turkey those members of the Alliance that are signatories of the Convention (Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, Turkey and the United Kingdom) should now give due notice to Russia that they intend to enforce it. This step should be taken with the support of the Alliance as a whole.  

Third, if Turkey does not support this move then the Alliance should impose a distant blockade. If Russia continues its offensive, particularly indiscriminate shelling of civilians, NATO should also confirm that it will soon move to prevent Russian warships, or civilian ships carrying materiel for the conduct of the war, from entering the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar.

Fourth, NATO must reinforce the Black Sea Region by moving forces and resources to Bulgaria and Romania and strengthen its partnership with Georgia to prevent it becoming a Russian lake.

Fifth, NATO should embark on a major information offensive into Russia to challenge the state-controlled media, with a particular focus on the cost of this war to the ordinary Russian conscript Putin is using as NLAW fodder. This offensive should take place in conjunction with a warning that any and all Russian cyber-attacks on Allies will be countered.

Sixth, NATO leaders must take further measures this week to reinforce deterrence. Putin is driving Russia into a political, economic and military corner in which his own personal position could also become increasingly perilous.  Whatever happens now Putin’s regime will be weakened which will make him more not less dangerous. However, the Alliance must not expect a change of course. Rather, Putin is likely to double down on the securitisation and militarisation of the Russian state, just like Stalin.  

The future? The forthcoming NATO Strategic Concept must confirm the creation of a powerful European-led Allied Mobile Heavy Force that can properly support all and any NATO Allies under threat from Putin.

Such a clear statement of intent would be a start, just a start. However, it would also send a clear and unequivocal signal to Putin.  Credible deterrence requires effective risk management.  Appeasement is not deterrence.  Therefore, to honour the sacrifice of Ukraine’s ‘Few’ the assembling NATO Heads of State and Government must answer the very question Ukraine’s pilots are answering with their lives: what price are we willing to pay to defend our freedoms? This is because whatever happens now Ukraine’s ‘Few’ should be remembered, like their RAF forebears, as warriors who defended not only a country, but freedom itself.

Julian Lindley-French   

 

Kulminatsionny Moment?

 Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French

“Everything…depends on discovering the culminating point by the fine tact of judgement. Here we come upon a seeming contradiction. The defence is stronger than the attack; therefore we should think that the latter should never lead us too far, for as long as the weaker form remains strong enough for what is required the stronger form ought to be still more so”.

Karl von Clausewitz

March 15^th, 2022. Idus Martiae! The race to the culminating point of Ukraine’s tragedy is on! Possible Chinese support notwithstanding the next ten days or so will prove critical. The Russian war of conquest in Ukraine is now entering a critical phase; a race to reach the culminating point of Russia’s offensive capacity and Ukraine’s defensive capacity.  That is why it is vital the West reinforces Ukraine’s capacity to resist and why Russia has started attacking supply bases through which Western lethal aid is passing. The next week or so could prove critical.  

The culminating point is reached when a force can no longer conduct operations. For a force engaged on offensive expeditionary operations that point is reached when a force simply can no longer advance. In the wake of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24^th, several constraints on the capacity to conduct a Blitzkrieg became immediately apparent. The moment Russian forces crossed the Ukrainian border a large gap appeared between the scale and quality of the Russian forces needed to maintain offensive Russian military momentum and the force available given the capacity of Ukraine’s capacity to resist and the space in which to conduct defensive operations on their own terrain. 

It also became rapidly clear that the basic operational and tactical planning of the Russian General Staff was inadequate. Much of the intelligence underpinning the campaign was either faulty, out-of-date, or just plain wrong; mission goals and areas of responsibility between Battalion Tactical Groups had not been clearly established or delineated; secure communications between headquarters and forward deployed forces failed often; force protection was virtually non-existent; joint operations between air and ground elements were rendered extremely difficult by a lack of co-ordination and communications, and the Russian practice of ‘seeding’ regular army formations with conscripts led to rapid deterioration in the morale of the force in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance. Above all, the lack of sufficient Special Operating Forces and Specialised Forces, allied to a lack of precision-guided munitions in sufficient quantity, rendered the original strategy of decapitating Ukraine politically and militarily impossible to realise. 

The result is becoming increasingly self-evident for a poorly-planned and executed Russian military campaign in which incompetence marches side-by-side with costly but stalled momentum with Russian forces forced to adopt a campaign of attrition against Ukrainian civilians for which they are not designed.  Attrition warfare requires time, manpower, ammunition and resources.  The Russians are rapidly running out of all three which is why they are recruiting Syrians.  One lesson they should have drawn from their major VOSTOK and ZAPAD exercises is that the consumption of combat ammunition always exceeds ready stocks, particularly in urban warfare.  Sanctions have accelerated this by blocking the delivery of munitions to Russia from places such as Finland and Slovenia. This is why Russia has turned to China. 

The Ukrainians have excelled as a defensive force and as the morale of Russia’s forces has plummeted the defenders have seized the moral high ground.  Lessons-learned from Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea are apparent in the way the Ukrainians have successfully conducted information operations and managed to get inside of the Russian command loop.  Reinforced by Western real-time intelligence and advanced anti-air and anti-tank munitions the Ukrainians have been able to maintain a mobile defence hitting Russian formations when and where it hurts.  However, this heroic defence has come a great cost to Ukraine’s embattled regular forces and the many irregulars who have joined the fight.

For Clausewitz the successful application of military force requires both the moral and the physical to be superior to that of an enemy.  Russia began this war firm in the belief that the physical superiority of its forces over their Ukrainian enemy would prevail. As the war shifts from one of movement to one of attrition it is vital the West reinforces the capacity of the Ukrainians to resist. In practice, that means supplying them with sufficient lethal aid to fight the Russians to a standstill and pose the Kremlin with an acute dilemma: order general mobilisation to fight a long war and risk the wrath of the Mothers of St Petersburg and beyond or come to terms with the Ukrainians.  Either way the political price for Putin will be high given the human cost of his strategic folly.

In two months in 1982 Britain successfully re-took the Falkland Islands from the Argentinian occupiers.  To do so the British had to undertake the longest seaborne invasion in military history.  Whilst Argentina was only 400 miles from the Falklands the British were over 8000 miles distant.  The sheer distance meant the size of the Task Force sent was limited in scale. However, it prevailed because the force was of such a higher level of technological and force quality compared with the bulk of its Argentinian opponents that it was able to exert both physical and moral superiority over a larger defensive force. Russian forces lack both the quality and the quantity over their Ukrainian counterparts to establish physical or moral superiority. The war in Ukraine is thus testament to the abject failure of the Russian General Staff to modernise the Russian Army in particular.  Consequently, Putin’s entire political strategy of using coercion and implied threat of force to extract concessions from his neighbours already lies in tatters. Does that mean the end of Putin and bully Russia?  No, far from it.

What must the West now do?  First, accelerate and expand the delivery of capabilities and weapons specifically intended to help Ukraine destroy Russia's land and sea-based artillery, rocket and cruise-missile launchers.  This means more intelligence, more counter-fire radar, more long-range systems, more ammunition, and more anti-ship, and naval mines. Second, look to the future. Both China and Russia will already be deconstructing this war to identify and implement lessons for the future. So must we!

Putin? Beware the Ides of March, Caesar!

Ben Hodges and Julian Lindley-French

LTG (Ret.) Ben Hodges is the former Commander, US Army Europe. Julian Lindley-French was Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy. They are co-authors with Gen. (Ret.) John R. Allen of the book Future War and the Defence of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press) and both are members of The Alphen Group. This book has just been published in German by Kosmos

 

Putin's Great Illusion

 

“The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events”.

J.K. Galbraith

February 28^th, 2022. War is a consequence of events. The cause of the 2022 Russo-Ukraine War, like most major wars in recent European history, involves the wilful unhinged militaristic design of an autocrat impervious to guidance, the denial and distraction of Europe’s democratic leaders, and an over-reliance on economics as the defining change factor in international relations.

In 1910, economist Norman Angell wrote The Great Illusion in which he argued that the interdependence of the economies of Edwardian Britain and Wilhelmine Germany whilst not making war impossible would make it plain stupid as both would suffer. He was right. Unfortunately, Angell had not counted on the power of the emotive nationalist extremism of the Prusso-German military elite and the growing internal struggle over the future of Germany to overcome his economic logic. This Analysis charts the events that led to Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine and how once again the mistaken belief in the corridors of power that globalisation and economic interdependence would again make major war in Europe impossible.

The end of history?

President Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine began with the 1989 end of the Cold War, if not before. In the 1980s an orthodoxy took hold of the political class in Europe that globalisation and growing economic interdependence would promote both political convergence and geopolitical coherence.  In 1991 the European Community was renamed the European Union and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  The assumption was that the Realpolitik of old had been replaced by a new sense of international community and with it the establishment of a rules-based order that also reflected the belief system of the victorious liberal order. The most eloquent exposition of this belief came in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, who famously wrote of, “not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” 

Fukuyama’s primary assumption was not that events, such as the invasion of Ukraine, would or could no longer happen, but that over time (i.e. history) states would inevitably move towards liberalism, free markets and democracy. Fukuyama’s thesis was equally famously countered in a 1993 essay (which became a book in 1996) by Samuel Huntington entitled The Clash of Civilizations.  Huntington said that civilizational clashes would replace any ideological struggle and that the dominant civilisation would ultimately impose its form of government.  Huntington cited Salafist Islamism as potentially the most powerful opponent to Fukuyama’s thesis, but Putinism, to the extent it exists, is an attempt by a Russian autocrat to re-establish a form on ‘Near Abroad’ imperialism based on his own interpretation of Russian dominance. In other words, a clash within a civilisation over the nature and direction of it.

Euro-world and Russia

Today, Europe and the wider world sits somewhere between Fukuyama and Huntington.  Ever since the end of the Cold War European leaders have taken geopolitical peace for granted to such an extent that they created a ‘Euro-world’ in which the only real struggle of worth was between the member-states who created the European Union and the Eurocracy who run it over where power should rest and who should control it for best effect. The argument of the latter was that a Europe whole and free and the peace and prosperity it offered could only be guaranteed by ‘deepening’ European institutions and the rules they uphold. However, the historical moment also demanded that deepening take place in parallel with widening. This led to successive enlargements of the EU between 1981 and 2007, much of it to countries that had formerly been part of the Russian-dominated Warsaw Pact and Comecon.  In the wake of the Cold War, particularly after 1997, EU enlargements took place in parallel with the enlargement of NATO to former Warsaw Pact countries.

Unfortunately, whilst the Euro-world banished war by institutionalising state power, the world beyond did not.  During the 1990s the Western Balkans descended into the most brutal of wars that despite claims (from the Prime Minister of Luxembourg) that “this was the hour of Europe”, and in spite of high-sounding policies such as the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, was only brought to an end when the US acted decisively. Still, the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession also established a crisis management template for ‘war’ in post-Cold War Europe. Europeans might not, after all, have banished war from Europe, but should they happen they would be ‘small’ wars of choice, not large wars of existence.

And then there was Russia.  In the wake of the Cold War and the retreat and dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia came close to civil war.  In August 1991. a failed coup attempt by old Communists to re-seize power brought Boris Yeltsin to power.  The hope of many Russians was that their country would move westwards and become more open politically and economically.  That was also the promise many in the West held out to Russia in the early 1990s.  However, a mix of incompetent Western (mainly Harvard) economists and even more incompetent Russian political leadership saw the ‘privatisation’ of Russian state assets turn Russia into a kleptocracy.  The only beneficiaries were the Russian political elite, the Russian mafia and a few oligarchs close to the Kremlin with the real losers the Russian people.

The chaotic interregnum (for that is what it was) between Soviet order and Putin’s ‘order’ was also an interbellum because it created ‘in-between’ states, such as Belarus and Ukraine.  States that had formerly been at the heart of the Soviet experiment were now outside the collapsed Russian sphere of influence. Russia is nothing if not a vision of its own history, and those around Russia too often its victim. In December 1922, Lenin had created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by merging the Belarus and Ukrainian Soviets with their Russian counterpart.  It is clearly no coincidence that in 2022 Putin is seeking to ‘de-communise’ both states by forcing them back within the latest old/new Russian empire.

In the 1990s realising such an ambition seemed impossible for Russia.  However, power is relative, particularly military power, and the 1990s saw the beginnings of geopolitical trends that would lead to today’s tragedy. First, Western Europe de-militarised. Massive defence cuts began in 1990 with the so-called “defence premium”.  Throughout the 1990s half-hearted efforts were made to pool what European forces were left, often under ambitious sounding EU and NATO acronyms that never quote seemed to be realised, such as the Petersberg Tasks, European Security and Defence Policy, European Security and Defence Identity, Berlin-Plus and host of other relatively empty gestures. 

Assumptions were also made about the nature of future war, which Europe’s leaders behind that if they happened at would just be the ‘cheapest’ and shortest, such as the 1999 Kosovo War.  The future of war, if it had any such future, would be a distinctly Hobbesian ‘war amongst the people’ in which European forces would reinvent themselves as a kind of latter day imperial policing force. Crisis management thus became the be all and end all of ‘European’ security and defence policy, in spite of the 1991 Iraq War which was fought by Europeans with their equipment legacies from the Cold War. The Americans were even concerned that the EU would replace NATO. How quaint that now seems.        

Accelerants

And then came the accelerants. First, there was 911 and the apparent fulfilment of Huntington’s prophecy.   The day after, NATO declared an Article 5 emergency and triggered collective defence in support of the Americans.  In truth, 911 also marked the beginning of the great divergence between the Americans and their European allies, first in Afghanistan and then in 2003 in Iraq. Europeans were simply unable and unwilling to fight the war against Al Qaeda in the way the Americans wanted to fight it forcing the Americans to do ever more of the heavy lifting for both expeditionary operations and NATO defence. Even the British.  Then came the 2003 Iraq War which tore the Western Alliance apart and badly damaged the credibility of its two erstwhile leaders, the US and UK. 

Second, the 1999 launch of the Euro saw a recently re-unified Germany retreat into mercantilism and effectively abandon its role as the core land defence component of NATO.  An abandonment that was only brought to an end yesterday with the announcement that Berlin is to invest €100 billion on modernising the Bundeswehr and would (finally) move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence and thus meet its commitment under NATO’s 2014 Defence Investment Pledge.  Germany’s abandonment of its Cold War role whilst annoying to the Americans was not really crucial for much of the interbellum between the end of the Cold War and the 2022 Russo-Ukraine War as they found the Allies more of an encumbrance than a support in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Not anymore.

Third, in 2000 Vladimir Putin came to power.  His mission was to end the chaos of the 1990s and restore order and the power prestige he believed Russia had lost, mainly at the hands of a perfidious West. In his KBG-trained mind a West that had ‘promised’ in 1990 (it had not) never to enlarge NATO to former members of the Warsaw Pact.  Full of a self-important sense of grievance Putin’s chosen method was to rebuild the Russian security state and over time the Russian armed forces by using the increasing dependence of European states on Russian oil, gas and rare metals, most notably mercantilist Germany.   

Fourth, Afghanistan and Iraq reinforced Putin’s growing sense of a divided West bogged down in a global counter-insurgency it could never win and led by people who lacked either the political will or determination to prevail. 

Fifth, the 2008-2010 Western banking and Eurozone crises effectively destroyed the financial stability of many welfarised European states and forced them deep into debt. This forced many to make a profound and dangerous choice between social security and national security.  Many Europeans, including Britain and France, slashed the budgets of their fragile Bonsai militaries were even as their task lists expanded to meet the rigours of the Afghanistan campaign.  It also reinforced an American sense that they were on their own, to all intents and purposes.

Sixth, the war in Syria post 2011 and the September 2015 deployment of Russian forces in support of the Assad regime coincided with the crossing of several of President Obama’s so-called ‘red lines’.  Once again, the West was demonstrating that it was neither united nor resolute in the face of determined action by an autocrat, something Putin was only too willing to exploit.  

Seventh, in 2014 Putin undertook his first invasion of Ukraine by seizing strategically-vital Crimea. This should have triggered a fierce Western response. In 1994, the US, UK and Russia, together with China and France, had signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances guaranteeing the borders and security of both post-Soviet Belarus and Ukraine.  In 2014, the West effectively did nothing thus undermining the very utility of such agreements and with it weakened the entire post-Cold war European security architecture. 

Eighth, the 2016 election of President Trump, allied to Brexit and Britain’s vote to leave the EU convinced Putin the West was dissolving. Not only did the great age of American internationalism seemed to be coming to an end, the White House incumbent seemed to prefer the company of the Russian autocrat to European democrats. 

Ninth, the implicit non-aggression pact Putin secured with fellow autocrat President Xi of an increasingly militaristic China removed for the time-being any direct threat to Russia’s Far East and enabled Putin to concentrate his armed forces on his Western flank. 

Tenth, COVID. The pandemic forced many European states even further into debt and deepened tensions with China, the power source of globalisation, over human rights and Chinese policy in Hong Kong and elsewhere.  It also revealed a fundamental and dangerous contradiction in European ‘policy’, dependence on states, the values of which Europeans reject, for much of the materials and supplies Europeans needed to fight a virus that had originated in China.    Not so much interdependence as dependence.

Putin’s great illusion

In August 2008, President Putin ordered his forces to invade Georgia.  Whilst the invasion was ultimately successful it also revealed profound shortcomings in the training, quality and equipment of the Russian armed forces.  Given that for Putin military power is the currency of power action had to be taken and he set about modernising the Russian military. As his forces became more powerful he also began to flagrantly break the 1990 Conventional Forces Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.  This brinkmanship was further encouraged by Europeans retreating ever more into a legalistic view of international relations.  In Putin’s mind brinkmanship became his own great illusion as diplomacy was replaced by his own hubristic Realpolitik.  A world view reinforced by the yes men he surrounded himself with.  

In the wake of the 2014 NATO Wales Summit the Western Allies slowly began to confront the danger of Putin’s brinkmanship, but also made themselves ever more dependent on Russian hydrocarbons which the construction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline has come to symbolise.  Then Chancellor Merkel’s decision to scrap German nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster only made the gap between intent and reality in European defence seem ever wider.   The result was an absurd situation in which Europeans were funding the very Russian forces that were increasingly a threat to fellow Europeans.  Those of us who repeatedly warned of this danger were accused of being hawks and of failing to understand the unerring logic of globalisation and interdependence that made war in Europe impossible.  To rebuff this nonsense in early 2018 General John Allen, Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges and I began writing Future War and the Defence of Europe.

And then came COVID 19. Like so many pandemics before it COVID 19 accelerated conflict by both destabilising societies and systems and by forcing states to invest in short-term health security at the expense of long term national security. COVID 19 also skewed further an already fast skewing balance of power in favour of the autocracies as economic and military power shifted away from Europe to Asia. 

At the same time, the slump in economic activity and the crash in the price of oil and gas also stalled the modernisation of Russia’s armed forces.  This created a situation in which Putin would both never have a better window of opportunity to force both Belarus and Ukraine into some form of Union State with Russia, but also only a relatively short such window. A post-pandemic Europe would sooner rather than later begin to offset his temporary nuclear and missile dominance by re-capitalising their own armed forces as part of a new ‘contract’ with over-stretched Americans that would be vital to keep NATO credible as a defensive alliance.   In other words, Putin had to act now or never.   He did. As I warned he would.           

The tragedy unfolding in Ukraine today is not so much the end of history and clash of civilisations but rather the end of a phase of history and a clash within European civilisation.  It is also Putin’s great illusion for he has embarked on a war that he simply cannot win.  Sadly, it is likely to be as long war in which tens of thousands of fellow Europeans die.  Therefore, European leaders would do well to remember the 1919 words of Winston Churchill (Boris???) “The task upon Ministers of the Crown at the present time is really a very heavy one indeed. But at any rate, the difficulties we have to face are only the difficulties of circumstances, and the opposition we have to encounter—the only opposition we have to encounter—is the opposition of events. It is well that that should be so, because the tasks are heavy and formidable.”

This is just the beginning not only of a war but a Second Cold War. It is also the clash of several great illusions. After all, ill-judged wilful power and wilful weakness, and the miscalculations that inevitably drive it, is not only the very stuff of history it is as old as Europe itself.

Julian Lindley-French

Ukraine and a NATO Theory of Victory

 

February 23rd, 2022

“You want decommunisation? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunisation would mean for Ukraine. Going back to history, I would like to repeat that the Soviet Union was established in the place of the former Russian Empire in 1922. But practice showed immediately that it was impossible to preserve or govern such a vast and complex territory on the amorphous principles that amounted to confederation. They were far removed from reality and the historical tradition”.

President Vladimir Putin, February 22^nd, 2022

 

The following Lindley-French Analysis is based on my speech yesterday to the RUSI Missile Defence Conference in London.

Putin’s sledgehammer

For President Putin history is a sledgehammer. On December 30^th, 1922 Lenin’s held his first “Council of People’s Commissars,” or Sovnarkom, and created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In December 1922, there were only four Soviet republics represented, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Transcaucasian Republic. By December 2022, will there be four Russian Federation ‘republics’?  If so, to paraphrase Lenin, what is to be done?

 

In light of the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine there are two strategic questions that need to be answered and a third that must be confronted urgently if NATO operations, capabilities and capacities are to meet the challenge Putin and Russia’s armed forces have thrown down to free Europe.  One only has to look at a map to see the implications for the Allies if Putin should succeed in establishing a Belarus-Ukraine salient in the heart of central Europe.

My contentions are twofold.  First, that Russia is moving to seize all the territory claimed by the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists and given Putin’s very particular interpretation of history could go further. Second, what we are witnessing is a high-end force the spearhead elements of which re in transition towards strategic integrated fighting power.

1.                  As alliances such as NATO update their warfighting concepts, how should these concepts and the national capabilities underpinning them adapt to a changing threat environment?

My focus is NATO 2030 and beyond. My defining message is unapologetically ‘si vis pacem, para bellum’. Let me be blunt: President Putin is trying to drive a T-14 Armata through NATO’s political ends, strategic ways and operational means, given the fast pace of the shifting balance of military power in Europe and the wider world, and whatever the sophistry is employed about Ukraine not being a NATO member. With all due respect to and cognisance of the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine Russia’s invasion is also about the future democratic defence of a Europe in which Russia enjoys missile and nuclear dominance and can establish an effective air and missile defence bubble against much of Europe’s capabilities pretty much, as, when and where Russia chooses.  We, the collective Allied ‘we’, with our talk big, deliver little political and strategic culture, if that is what one can call it, have let him do that.

Therefore, everything I am going to say is set against the true test of the future credible defence of Europe in the face of a determined and clever nationalist autocrat; a demonstrable and communicable NATO theory of victory. A theory of victory is a set of propositions about how and why the behaviour of one belligerent affects the behaviour of others in a desired manner. A credible theory of victory demands a continuity between threat, policy and strategy driving the ends, ways, and means of defence and deterrence.  Do we Europeans even have a theory of victory?  President Putin and General Gerasimov do. Are there any links between ends, ways and means in Europe?

Then bottom-line is that if we do not get our warfighting thus deterrence act together and fast the strategic space for President Putin to exploit with his theory of victory can go far further than Ukraine.  He must be countered and contained. This challenge is set not just in the here and now context of Future War and the Defence of Europe but the now and hereafter.  Specifically, the specific concepts, capabilities, capacities and structures that will be needed when Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, Big Data, hypersonic missiles, swarming, Nano-tech and quantum computing become the very stuff of a not-so-far future integrated strategic warfighting concept. What must NATO have in place to credibly deter and defend in such an eve-of-war battlespace, as well as what level of command and force interoperability and standardisation would be needed to make NATO’s warfighting and deterrence concepts real given the fast changing character of war and the scope and nature of the threats with which we require our Alliance to contend. 

In that light MY essential warfighting concept, and thus what I believe must be NATO’s minimum deterrent, must be designed around a core multidimensional and multi-domain manoeuvre force able to operate across air, sea, land, cyber, information and knowledge based on a sea-bed to space tech-led manoeuvrist approach. Such a force would be an extension, albeit a radical extension, of current NATO warfighting doctrine which is designed to apply critical strength against critical weakness using surprise, deception and applied power.

In a 21^st century high-end All Arms Battlespace Allied forces will soon need to act at machine-led hyper speed of relevance in critical places at critical times, learning and adapting as well as engaging, operating and creating to generate multifarious unexpected problems for an enemy to resolve. The unexpected must be a primary Allied strategic enabler because for far too long President Putin and General Gerasimov have become far too comfortable in their assumptions underpinning their theory of victory.  Relevant and timely Allied fighting power will be crucial fused with real-time information for people trained and equipped to fight and win on a ‘battlefield’ that is very different from the insecure spaces of the past thirty years or so.

 2.                  What areas ought to receive priority with respect to restoring deterrence, and what does a theory of victory against adversary standoff entail?

First, back to basics: deterrence is the use of demonstrably relevant capability and capacity to strategically communicate high threshold cost and risk to an enemy. Or, as Thomas Hobbes famously said, “Covenants without the sword are but words and of no use to any man’. The very concept of who it is that must be deterred demands a profound set of changes to the idea of deterrence that will demand the demonstrable capacity to use first strike in information and cyber war and maintain a second strike capability in conventional and (Heaven forbid) nuclear war. Only then will NATO match the escalation continuum that has been designed by an intelligent aggressor for engagement in ‘perma-war’ across the mosaic of hybrid, cyber and hyper war.  Such a new idea of Allied deterrence will not only need credible conventional and nuclear forces, but also offensive and defensive information effects and cyber effects. People protection and force projection are now two sides of a three sided deterrence, defence and resilience coin.

In NATO’s contemporary, fast approaching and very REAL world the successful deterrence and defence of our defensive Alliance any theory of victory must be specifically designed to complement, counter, confuse and confound that of the enemy if the Alliance is maintain stand-off, which is the essence of deterrence, prior to mutually agreed force reductions. Let me be controversial, NATO could well lose the next big war because it does not yet know how collectively to win, where, with what and with whom. It is working towards such a posture but it needs to go faster and harder. This is not the fault of the Alliance. Rather, most European political leaders and their defence planners in Europe have for too long failed to understand, or are not allowed to understand, the fundamental and evolving character of war and the nature of future conflict against enemies capable of all-domain, trans-regional escalation, nor how to shape the dynamics of such wars to safeguard Allied interests, nor have they been willing to bear the costs required.  Too many Western European leaders in particular, the drivers of European defence, have for too long been locked in denial about the possibility of a major future pan-European war leading to false assumptions and thus higher risk being invested in both policy and planning. For too long, European leaders have only been willing to recognise how much threat they believe they can afford after every other national contingency or policy has been paid for in the endless pursuit of electability and under the ruthless tyranny of the here and now.  Now? Given COVID 19?

Next Steps

Given events in Ukraine the next steps on the road to new Allied theory of victory and with it a transformed Allied deterrence and defence posture must be the re-establishment of a demonstrably credible operational-capability balance in the eyes of any potential enemy. Over the short to medium term if NATO is to develop a relevant warfighting concept it must do it on the run by reinforcing the Eastern Flank of the Alliance. That means the strengthening of the Enhanced Forward Presence; the acceleration and expansion of the NATO Readiness Initiative; and by moving HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (HQ ARRC), NATO’s most capable non-American deployable corps headquarters from England to near Warsaw reinforced by American, British, German and Polish forces and in support of the EFP forces, HQ Multinational Corps (Northeast) and supported by the Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC). 

HQ ARRC must now be designated as the command and development driver for a new European-led first responder, high end multi-domain Allied Mobile Heavy Force (AMHF) heavy enough to fill the 1500 km gap between MNC (NE) the Black Sea and the Baltic States, manoeuvrable enough to both deter a high-end aggressor such as Russia, heavy enough to also support front-line states facing terrorism, as well as capable enough of holding the European theatre across the hybrid, cyber, hyper war spectrum in an emergency if US forces are simultaneously engaged in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. The AMHF is the centre-piece of the new Alphen Group’s Shadow NATO Strategic Concept and it should be front and centre of the forthcoming NATO Strategic Concept.

The NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept (NWCC) must also become the driver of an effective shared methodology for guiding and coordinating investment choices. The list of strategic tasks is continuing to expand, whilst the number of nations able to undertake them over time and distance and under high-end attack continues to shrink. If not, then all-important NATO high-end force interoperability will become ever harder to maintain and vital future technological coherence as difficult to generate as political cohesion.

Can European Armies organise for the 21^st Century fight, or are the requirements and costs simply beyond them?

THAT is THE multi-billion dollar, euro, pound question. Future high-end force interoperability will be THE sine qua non of NATO. No ifs, no buts.  Ask General Gerasimov.  It will be the very cornerstone of future NATO deterrence and defence, particularly if Putin succeeds in establishing a new Belarus-Ukrainian salient. NATO must thus assume that its forces will need to fight to deter a 190,000 strong force in which quantity is indeed its own quality (like Russia’s 8^th Combined Arms Army) and which is not only lethal but capable of free-thinking. A force steeped in the offensive and built to turn a very particular theory of victory into a real victory with long-range fires, mass, manoeuvrist and multi-domain power are combined to strategic effect in Europe with rapid sensor to shooter/fires capabilities at scale and distance, strong manoeuvre forces and the aggressive use of Special Purpose Forces in the Rear Area.

In any such fight, NATO forces will need a resilient interoperable C2 system, the synchronisation of multi-domain lethal and non-lethal effects combined with aggressive Find and Fires capabilities, allied to the intelligence-led use of Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA) via a concept of force convergence. That highlights the importance of speed, simultaneity and a relentless focus on the deep battle as a way of presenting the enemy with multiple dilemmas at such a tempo that it creates decisive advantage and/or windows of opportunity thus enabling the Allied Mobile Heavy Force to be a decisive element in realising NATO’s theory of victory if needs be. Anything less than that is co-operability NOT interoperability and will not withstand the test in a high-end future fight and instead become an open invitation to an intelligent enemy to engage to effect in war at our many seams, both civil and military. 

Ukraine and a NATO Theory of Victory

To conclude, let me quote my friend and fellow member of The Alphen Group, General Sir James Everard. “NATO now recognises the complex nature of modern warfare as a contest where deterrence demands a demonstrable ability to defend, and defence is based on controlling geography and the all the domains of warfare simultaneously (allied of course to the ability to deliver forces). Many allies are also embracing the new methodology during their peace-time activities, with the UK leading the way”.  Amen to that!

Europeans are falling far behind in the battle for strategic thought dominance which is a vital driver of policy, strategy and structure and thus ends, ways and means. That is precisely why they urgently need a new theory of victory. It is high-time that the NATO European Allies faced future war intellectually and politically, which is why General John Allen, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges and I wrote Future War and the Defence of Europe and why General Lord Richards and I will be hosting the high level Future War and Deterrence Conference at Wilton Park in October.

Julian Lindley-French

 

-           

 

 

 

Frozen War: The Whiff of Munich?

 

“It may be that he [Putin] just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West”.

Rt. Hon. Ben Wallace MP, UK Secretary of State for Defence

Blitzkriga!

February 15^th, 2022.  This Analysis will consider Putin’s options in the coming days and the geopolitics of the current crisis and endeavour to think beyond convention.  For those in denial about the nature of another major European war let me first offer a vision of the nightmare that might engulf Ukrainians at any moment.

A second Russian invasion of Ukraine (the first was in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea) could come as early as Wednesday according to some Western intelligence sources, although given the very tight nature of high-level Russian command structures it would be interesting to know how such Intel was garnered.  If war does come it will not be the stuff of X-Box or Play Station. For most people war is a very intimate place where geopolitics of those in power meets the personal terror of those they command.  The Russian way of war is particularly brutal and extremely offensive, the twenty-first century equivalent of a medieval chevauchée. It will start with a large-scale ‘Blitzkriga’ long-range missile and air attack designed to cut Kyiv off from its forces, possibly in conjunction with a decapitation strike on President Vlodomir Zelensky and his governing circle.  Strikes will also be made on bridges near Ukraine’s western border just in case the US and its NATO allies try to intervene. Russian Special Forces (Spetsnaz) will strike deep into Ukraine at critical infrastructures and against other critical people, sowing confusion and panic. 

Ukrainian soldiers and citizen reservists a few hundred kilometres/miles from where I am writing will die in their tens of thousands during the first wave of strikes in the most brutal way imaginable. Many now waiting in trepidation in dark bunkers, cold slit trenches and foxholes will be blown apart or funnelled into ‘killing zones’.  Everything around them will suddenly erupt, even the ground upon which they stand, nothing will be still.  People and parts of people will fly through air in which super-heated air and cold fear fuse and in which every breath hurts. Wooden planks and metal poles will become projectiles impaling, wounding, and killing. For a moment in time shock will strike and each and all will gasp for lost breath.  The senses will be overwhelmed by violence in which only bloody serendipity will decide who lives and who dies. Some will see their ‘oppos’, the man or (since 2018) woman next to them decapitated, mutilated, or both. Some will simply vanish. If they are ‘lucky’ some will die immediately, whilst some will die slowly trying to reinsert their disembowelled intestines back into their torn bodies. Others will wonder around in shock looking for an arm that has been blown off before they fall. Others will be left screaming as they are blinded in an instant or their legs are reduced to bloody stumps. Many will simply bleed out beyond any help other than the mercy of Morphine, as desperate medics are forced to play instant God deciding who might live and who will die.  Even those lucky enough to survive the initial assault will face the Spetsnaz and GRU (Russian military intelligence) troops and their ghastly array of killing techniques even before the ‘stormtroopers’ of the one hundred or so Russian battalion tactical groups (BTGs) over-run their positions. Few prisoners will be taken. Some will break, and those who stand will only do so because their fear of failing their comrades is marginally greater than the fear of being torn apart. After the initial shock strike aircraft and armed drones will target any Ukrainian formation of any size that tries to coalesce and counter-attack, cutting them down from multiple directions in a multiplicity of ways.

Those who ‘survive’ the war will never escape it. They will wear their pain as a badge of honour but they will be in pain. They will live out their broken lives haunted by very personal sights of very personal carnage.  Many will often awake deep into the night with the transparent burning flesh of their long-dead comrades forever entombed in their sub-conscience.  Others will be plagued by the never-ending background tinnitus of the battlefield, constant and occasional, near and far, which will play on their forever fried nerves and re-fried visions of death and maiming, ‘living’ over and over and over again that unique experience of hell unleashed in the exploding cauldron of chaos from which there can be no release other than their own eventual demise.   A cauldron in which hours of tense boredom and the dark, fearful humour it sires suddenly be mutilates into an abject fear that rents the soul. When only the ingrained rigour of training enables each of them to put on foot before an another, when every aching sense in one’s aching body is screaming ‘get me out of here’, which afterwards leaves every fibre of every nerve twitching and shaking uncontrollably. Then there is the smell. That life-pervading sickly sweet smell that merges with the strange odour of charred plastic, burning wood and hot concrete dust into AA bouquet of death that pervades the senses creating a permanent barrier of consciousness between the warrior, their loved ones and the society for which they sacrificed.   Just so you know.

Option One: Minsk 2.5

The geopolitics?  If 911 changed the world, a Russian invasion of a central European country will change Europe. In suggesting there was a “whiff of Munich in the air” the British Minister of Defence Ben Wallace was referring to the September 1939 Munich Agreement between Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, the sell-out of Czechoslovakia, and what happened thereafter. In March 1939 Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march into Prague and seize the rest of Czechoslovakia. At Munich, Hitler had been gifted the Sudeten region and much of the advanced Czech armaments industry.  However, by marching on Prague and breaking the Munich Agreement Hitler crossed a red line, convinced that Britain and France would continue to appease him. In fact, the seizure of Prague was the moment the two Western powers finally realised that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable.

Putin might well be hoping that having already seized much of eastern Ukraine he can engineer some kind of Minsk 2.5 agreement that would not only force Kyiv firmly back within Russia’s sphere of influence, but re-establish the utility of armed coercion in European ‘security’. My personal view is that citing ‘Munich’ is a bit strong and that President Macron, Boris Johnson and Wallace himself are right to be making every effort to avert war for all the reasons stated above. However, Putin must also be left in no doubt that NATO’s unwillingness to fight for non-NATO Ukraine should not be misinterpreted by Putin as proof of NATO’s unwillingness to defend any Allied country. After all, Ukraine has now called for a meeting with Russia and hinted it might formally commit to never joining NATO. 

Minsk 2.5 alone would confirm Putin at home as a ‘Great Russian’ because once again it would demonstrate his capacity to humiliate a feckless West by taking successfully calculated risk.  However, he seems to want something more, a real demonstration of Russian power. Some intelligence reports warn of a pending ‘false flag’ operation whereby Moscow will use maskirovka (deception) to create a casus belli so that the Kremlin can accuse the Ukrainians and no doubt ‘the fascist West’ of committing an atrocity against Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine.  It is certainly possible.  Putin really does not care whether the West believes him or not. He is far more concerned with overcoming understandable nervousness both at home and growing resentment in eastern Ukraine.  A lot of Russians still have painful memories of the Russian war in Afghanistan and Putin’s two Chechnya Wars.

Option Two: Invasion

If Putin orders his forces to invade Ukraine the geopolitical precipice upon which free Europe stands will suddenly be all too apparent. Putin is clearly convinced that European leaders will do what they always do at such moments of intense crisis; wring their hands, impose some already planned for sanctions, but do little more.  There will of course be hubble, bubble, toil and trouble in the European body politic and an invasion will force upon European leaders a profound choice, but will they all make the same one?  Some continental Europeans, with France again to the fore, will emphasise the EU route to future geopolitical influence. They will point to the forthcoming EU Strategic Compass.  Sadly, the history of such demarches suggests that the Compass will generate far more political heat than geopolitical light.  There is a revealing clue in the very name Strategic Compass because by pointing in four strategic directions at once (resilience, crisis management, partnerships and capability development) there is a danger it will actually point to no strategic direction at all.

There is an alternative emerging.  Several European countries, with Germany apparently and interestingly to the fore, are calling for the creation of a European Security Council with Britain invited to play a prominent role.  For all the current political turbulence in London Britain has demonstrated once again that it can take action in a crisis, not least because of its intelligence capability.  The Ukraine Crisis is also demonstrating the danger of a Mackinderesque failure by leaders to grasp political geography and the danger that over time the EU’s four major peripheral powers, Britain, Russia, Turkey and the US, come to define themselves at odds with Europe’s continental core. This would be particularly dangerous for European security and defence if some in the EU seeks to imply ‘Europe’ is implicitly anti-American, anti-British and anti-Turkish. Something for President Macron to ponder?

A European Security Council could act as a vital bridge between the EU and NATO and harmonise the American-led deterrence and defence of Europe with the EU-led effort to strengthen European resilience in the face of Russian hybrid and cyber war.  Clearly, for NATO to do its job Mackinder will need to be shackled. As The Alphen Group says in its just launched Shadow NATO Strategic Concept https://www.gmfus.org/news/tag-nato-shadow-strategic-concept-2022-preserving-peace-protecting-people whatever happens in Ukraine these coming days and weeks European security and defence is in urgent need of a profound re-think.

Option Three: Frozen War  

What if President Putin, Generals Shoigu and Gerasimov are telling the truth? Russia has no intention of launching a full-on invasion of Ukraine and that Moscow is simply carrying out ‘drills’.  In that case, Moscow have another option – frozen war. The cleverest strategy Putin might adopt is to not quite invade Ukraine allowing coercion and the threat of invasion to keep Europe politically off-balance and the wider transatlantic alliance divided.   

Putin is no fool and he knows there is no guarantee Russian forces would not become bogged down in a war in Ukraine if Russian forces fail to win quickly and overwhelmingly. Ever since Peter the Great Russian history is replete with examples of tsars (both ‘white’ and ‘red’) who have started wars that do not end well. In any case, even if Russia does not invade Ukraine Putin is well on the way to achieving not just the effective Finlandization of Ukraine, but the psychological Finlandization of much of insecure Europe, with the possible exception of Finland itself.

If Putin could maintain a large rotatable force frozen at high readiness close to Ukraine poised to strike indefinitely the geopolitical benefits would be manifold.  Belarus would have no alternative but to finally accept its fate as a Russian vassal state. Kyiv would face a choice between invasion and accepting a Minsk 3 which would effectively give Moscow a veto over the very existence of the Ukrainian state.  Putin’s logistical lines of supply and re-supply would be shortened increasing the threat his forces already pose to the Suwalki corridor between Belarus and Kaliningrad. The three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, would be left unsure and feeling ever more vulnerable to Russian coercion whatever assurances they were given by the US and the rest of NATO.  

Frozen war would also force risk averse European leaders with their outmoded Bonsai armed forces, COVID economies and fin de siecle populations to choose between expensive and dangerous confrontation and appeasement.  It would reignite the German Question as Germans were once again forced to face possible trauma in the future and the deep, dark traumas of the past.  There is no guarantee that German angst would automatically lead to greater resolve to strengthen NATO.  Frozen wat would also create a new information war designed to stoke a new culture war similar to the public fear which greeted the 1983 deployment of Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles and the mass demonstrations in Western Europe it provoked.  Putin is no Gorbachev and the former would like nothing more than to weaken the already frayed political bonds between the US and its Allies, humiliate NATO, and if possible ‘decouple’ the Americans from the defence of Europe.

Helsinki or Yalta?

At the heart of this crisis are two very different Euro-world views. Whilst many Europeans remain implicitly committed to building a Europe whole and free that realises the vision of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, President Putin is equally determined to realise his vision of Yalta reborn in which the strong do what they do, and the weak do as they are told.  The irony (if that is what it is) is that Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union of the late 1940s, but rather the illusion of Soviet peak power manipulated and focussed in such a way as to force many utterly risk averse European leaders to comply with Putin’s interests.

The crisis has not only revealed the soft under-belly of European security but also a profound failure of strategic imagination with many commentators suggesting that Putin is going vaguely mad as the only explanation for his actions.  What if the geopolitical benefits of maintaining such coercion outweigh the costs? After all, there is an Olympic-sized game-changer in this crisis - China. The de facto non-aggression pact between Putin and Xi is enabling Russia to station the bulk of its forces (possibly as many now as 150,000 troops) in Russia’s western, central and southern military districts, threatening both Ukraine and much of Europe beyond.  China might also have agreed to cover some or most of Russia’s crisis costs. What if Ukraine is not the real objective at all and that the geopolitical aim is to test Western resolve, European responses and, above all, to pin/fix elite US forces in Europe protecting weak Europeans whilst China increases pressure on Taiwan? Frozen war might be the stuff of grand strategy but then this crisis is grand strategy and if China can help by increasing pressure on US forces in the Indo-Pacific then for Putin and Xi Ukraine might become geopolitics as usual.

Ukraine, Europe and the fall of Singapore

Eighty years ago today British Imperial and Dominion forces surrendered to their Japanese conquerors.  It was perhaps the worst British military defeat in history.  Much has been written about the fall of Singapore and the incompetence that led to it. The real reason was that by 1942 Britain was heavily engaged in multiple theatres from the Atlantic to North Africa and was simply unable to defend the eastern Empire.  Had it not been for the bravery of the British 14^th Army (the Forgotten Army) which was comprised of African, Australian, British, Indian and Australian and New Zealand forces, as well as the British Pacific Fleet of 1944 to 1945, the disaster might have been far worse.

Singapore became a metaphor for decline and marked the real beginning of the end of the British Empire which by 1942 had become a hollowed out façade of power. Ukraine? In late 2011, I sat on a podium next to British Minister of Defence Philip Hammond at the Riga Conference. In my hand was an empty tube of Pringles crisps (chips in American) which I held upside down. The British Government had just slashed the British defence budget right in the middle of a major campaign in Afghanistan in which British forces were engaged in perhaps the most dangerous province, Helmand. The empty tube was to demonstrate the fate of European defence if Western European powers continued to load tasks onto their hard-pressed armed forces whilst slashing their budgets.  Five years ago I made a short movie for the Johann de Witt Conference in Rotterdam to demonstrate to the politicians and others present what a major war in Europe would look like.  Last year, I published a major new Oxford book Future War and the Defence of Europe which warned of just such a crisis.

That Putin is even contemplating such a war – frozen or hot - is due in no small part to the strategic illiteracy of too many Western European leaders. Yes, there was the 2008-2010 financial and economic crisis and, yes, we have just faced the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is the disastrous pieties of the post-Cold War which for too long Britain, France and Germany have clung to, which has led Europe into this new age of danger which has just dawned.  It is the profoundly mistaken belief to which for too long political leaders have clung that geo-economics will trump the dark side of geopolitics.  That they need recognise only as much threat as they thought they could afford politically or financially. It is the absence of leadership in Europe which has created the opportunity for Putin to impose his fiat on other Europeans. One can only hope that if Russia does force such a dreadful war upon Ukraine it would finally begin the long overdue bonfire of strategic illusions that has underpinned the denial which has afflicted Western Europe and its leaders. 

The West will not intervene with force in Ukraine but Putin must be seen to pay a heavy price and that means real sanctions and the strengthening of NATO’s defence and deterrence posture so that there is no Alliance bluff Putin can also call. If President Putin succeeds in destroying Ukraine do not for a moment think his ambitions will stop there. Ukraine may be not be the whiff of Munich, but it has the scent of Singapore. It is time for democracies to stand firm, and together.

Julian Lindley-French