What are the Strategic Lessons of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War?
The West must not fail to learn the important lessons of the conflict.
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As of this writing, we are in Day 5 of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. To say that the invasion has not gone as Vladimir Putin expected would be an understatement.
Russia has failed to achieve its major objectives. The Russians have not yet established complete air superiority. The Day 1 offensive failed to cut off major cities. At this moment, Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, is under heavy rocket and artillery attack but not yet surrounded. Thermobaric rockets and bombs are reported en route. Kyiv has also not been surrounded. In the south, the important port city of Odessa remains outside of Russian hands. Ukraine’s lights are still on, as is its internet. Putin is now faced with the prospect of costly urban fighting, city by city, as his armored units seem to be taking heavy casualties. All the while, his supplies appear to be low.
Peace talks are underway on the border with Belarus, but there’s a strong possibility Putin is playing for time. These are the front lines as of the morning of Day 5:
(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, Viewsridge.)
The Ruble is now in free fall as the impact of the world’s sanctions on Russia begins to show. Europe, for the moment, seems to have finally broken out of its strategic laziness. The Continent is showing a once-unthinkable level of solidarity with the Ukrainians in their supplies for the country and their willingness to endure economic pain by sanctioning the Russians. Meanwhile, even China is tacitly distancing itself from Russia.
On the information front, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is building a legend around himself with his photo-ops and quips like, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition” in response to suggestions he should leave the country. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin looks isolated, angry, and losing sanity with his elevation of nuclear readiness.
Much of this presentation will be distorted by social media propaganda and “US intelligence” officials and other national security state bureaucrats whose pronouncements, especially on Russia and its leader, should be automatically presumed false until proven true. The Russian collusion hoax and other hysterical media narratives they sponsored over the last decade warrant no different stance. Nevertheless, attention and emotion are the critical parts of persuasion, and the emotional bases of attention that the two leaders have drawn up over the past five days have been stark contrasts. Zelensky is doing everything he can to stay present and lift his people’s morale, while Putin is retreating behind the walls of the Kremlin.
Has Putin overplayed his hand? It’s still early, but the past five days suggest that he did. He must have expected the economic sanctions, including on Swift and Russia’s central bank. He did not expect this level of Ukrainian resistance, which may explain why he held back on using his heavy firepower from the beginning. It proved a critical mistake. As the invader, he will have already earned the world’s ire. The expected capitulation and welcome by some parts of the country he assumed (for good reason) was deeply divided, linguistically and ethnically, never came. By holding back, he gave the defenders time to dig in, and the world time to respond. It is a mistake reminiscent of General Sir William Howe’s in 1776, when he held back from destroying George Washington’s army again and again, in the hope of negotiating a settlement with colonies he considered brethren once his superiority of force became apparent. The ultimate result was that by giving the enemy time to win the war, he lost it.
Those are longer-term considerations. Militarily, Russia will *probably* win the war and get the settlement it wants if it is committed. The question is, how high of a price is Putin willing to pay? The price is already high. His carefully-constructed reputation of being a great strategist, and a masculine macho man, one he spent 20 years building, has been seriously eroded over only five days.
Still, if Putin is willing to pay a high enough price, it could mean hundreds of thousands dead (or more), Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble, and mass poverty in Ukraine and Russia. Grozny’s example looms large. The West should try to prevent this, and the only way to do so would be to influence a settlement, hopefully, sooner rather than later.
What should such a settlement look like?
Ukraine as Neutral Buffer State
For all the talk about Vladimir Putin going crazy, he is doing what any Russian leader from at least Peter the Great onward would do. Russia cannot allow Ukraine to be used as a potential staging ground for a hostile alliance. There are other political, economic, historical, and religious reasons for this invasion, but the geostrategic considerations outweigh the rest.
To be clear, Putin alone is responsible for this war and all the destruction that follows. Nevertheless, this stage was set primarily because of repeated efforts by the United States to bring Ukraine into NATO. To a lesser extent, the attempt to integrate it into the European Union also provoked the invasion, but to quote the great John Mearsheimer, who predicted this tragedy to the letter, security considerations will always outweigh economic ones. The United States would react the same way and invoke the Monroe Doctrine if Mexico agreed to an alliance with China which could lead to potential troop deployments there, and rightly so. No great power can allow its backyard to be used as a potential staging ground against it.
Mearsheimer best described the situation in one sentence in a 2015 lecture that is worth watching in its entirety.
That was seven years ago. Since then, we have seen Ukraine used as a political and economic staging ground both against Russia and, as fate would have it, the American President who had given the country the arms it needed to defend itself against a Russian attack. Those arms are having an impact now.
To make a stable post-war Ukraine a reality, the West must stop leading that country down the primrose path. It must end the false promises that caused Ukraine to make repeat bad bets. The way to do this is to recognize Ukraine as a perpetually neutral buffer state.
The West must clarify to both Russia and Ukraine that the latter will never be part of the European Union and especially, NATO. Neither of these things was possible, to begin with, but the fantasy created a real tragedy. Such assurances will instill reality in the Ukrainians and stop antagonizing the Russians needlessly.
In return, Russia must respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The breakaway regions in Donetsk and Luhansk can be given some sort of autonomy, ostensibly still as part of Ukraine.
Both the European Union and Russia should then agree to develop Ukraine economically.
As for Crimea, the West will quietly have to recognize that Russia will never return it. It is too valuable a strategic asset. It may not lead to official recognition, but an informal arrangement will need to be made with this reality.
This settlement wouldn’t be the most romantic outcome, and the West would feel wounded pride about it because it would represent a check on its vision of a liberal world order. Nevertheless, it is tethered to reality, and it is one that Russia can live with, would serve most of America’s interests, and could save millions of lives.
As it did in the Middle East, The West is now seeing that dreams of a limitless empire always end tragically. The desire to bring Ukraine into NATO and the European Union was always a foolhardy imperial ambition. It is now time to formally recognize that and give Russia a way out of this impasse before the situation gets even more unstable. All should now agree that backing a nuclear power into a corner is a profoundly unwise idea. There are worse scenarios for Russia than the Putin regime, and we should try to avoid them.
Western Defense Posture, Post-Ukraine
Tragic as it is, the crisis may not come without its silver linings. These are as yet in embryo, but Europe made several important announcements over the last weekend of February 2022 and took bold action. Indeed, while the President of the United States remained out of sight in Delaware, the Europeans took the lead in punishing Russia and creating a new posture for the West. For the first time, the Europeans stepped to the forefront of the NATO alliance. Germany shook off some of its post-World War II demons and supplied weapons to Ukraine. The most shocking news of all was Germany’s weekend announcement that it would be boosting its defense spending to over 2% of GDP every year from now on. That this came from the new left-wing coalition government was even more shocking. It directly repudiated the doctrine held for so long by the supposedly conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and affirmed the otherwise loathed Donald Trump’s instincts.
(Image credit: Brian Wang: Next Big Future.)
These developments are obviously still in embryo. We have heard this talk from the Germans before, but there’s nothing like a war to set your priorities right. The Germans must commit, and the other Europeans must follow.
Nothing about this war has or should change America’s strategy going forward. China remains by far the most formidable geopolitical rival to the United States. So far, the results in Ukraine only reaffirm what we have known for years: Russia is a declining great power, and China is rising. America will need to draw down forces in Europe and shift them to the Indo-Pacific, the dominant theater in 21st century economic and geopolitical affairs. No state can maintain maximum strength in all theaters at once. With limited resources, each state must prioritize, and for America, that priority is the Indo-Pacific.
America’s European allies are far more capable of defending themselves against Russia than its Indo-Pacific allies are against China. The past five days have made this fact far clearer.
Europe increasing its defense posture is both necessary and inevitable. The Continent’s days of free-riding off the American security umbrella are coming to a close, a fact that the latter must make plain. Europe must shake off the World War II boogeyman and live in the present and future, not the past. Europe’s strategic laziness must end.
The free world requires a strong Europe, while America takes the lead in the Indo-Pacific. If we realize this now, instead of through a far more serious crisis, it will at least make the present war mean something.
Western Energy Posture, Post-Ukraine
In another shocking weekend repudiation of the supposedly conservative Angela Merkel’s policies, Germany announced that it would reconsider its planned shut down of its last nuclear reactors. Doing so would obviously reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas, which played a huge part in giving Vladimir Putin the power he relied on as part of his calculations in launching the invasion. If the reversal on nuclear happens, it would be a big part of a long-overdue reassessment of nuclear energy.
Germany’s announcement does not mean it’s a done deal. It just released a draft that would commit to 100% “renewable” energy by 2035 and Chancellor Scholz still chased the “renewable” unicorn in a speech to the German Parliament on Sunday.
Across the Atlantic, the gushing over “renewable” (solar and wind) energy was even more absurd, with Press Secretary Jen Psaki implicitly worshipping at the “green” altar.
Yes, this video is edited to make a political hit, but it is an easy summation of where things stand.
It is comparatively easy for European nations to realize that they need to spend more on defense. It is harder for certain powerful factions within Western civilization (and allied countries like Japan) to admit that “renewables” are a failure and a fraud. There is no other way to put it. Everywhere nuclear plants have been shut down in favor of solar and wind, coal or natural gas has been needed to make up for the shortfall, increasing the carbon emissions “renewables” were meant to cut.
The push toward “renewables” is in fact partially financed by Russia. Why? Because more “renewables” inevitably mean more natural gas.
Kâplan @KaplanBen_Fr
Dominique Reynié : "On a retrouvé des financements de Gazprom en particulier dans des ONG écologistes qui ont fourni des ministres à certains pays d'Europe comme la Belgique et qui ensuite sont embarqués dans une sorte de retour d'ascenseur en défendant la sortie du #nucléaire." https://t.co/PzvAdjb43FThe inherent problem is that no matter what happens, there will be long periods when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. There is no getting around this. Michael Shellenberger has written extensively on it, and interested readers are encouraged to get the details there.
To ensure national security, it is necessary to establish energy security. This must be a key lesson of this conflict. “Renewables” hinder energy security. To reverse course, the free world must invest in its energy production, first in natural gas, then in next-generation molten salt nuclear reactors, and finally in inventing a viable fusion reactor.
China is already attempting this while it sells its rivals solar panels made by Uyghur slave labor. If the “greens” get their way, the free world will be saddled with expensive, unreliable energy, while China and its allies will benefit from far greater sources.
This must not happen. The free world must make an immediate course correction on its energy policy. Otherwise, it will continue to rely on politically incorrect energy produced by despotic regimes while chasing the politically correct unicorn of “renewable” energy as a reliable source of virtue signaling.
Unfortunately, we now see that the age of virtue signaling is over. That is a luxury of peace and security. Great power competition is back. States and civilizations have resumed historic rivalries. The West and its allies must act like it to meet the present challenge.
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