By now, the war
between Russia and Ukraine has been going on for almost forty days. It remains difficult
to get an accurate picture of the situation on the ground, largely because all
of the information coming out of Ukraine is being filtered through thick clouds
of propaganda. Go to BBC or CNN and you will see one story; go to SputnikNews,
and you will see a completely different one.
Still, I happen
to think that, owing to Russia having had a much stronger military position to
begin with, Sputnik’s version of the story is closer to the truth.
I suspect that
a large part of the collective West’s inability to think rationally about this
conflict – even to the point of imagining that the Russian offensive is on the verge
of collapsing when it clearly isn’t – stems from the West’s lack of imagination
regarding war aims.
To begin with,
it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that at least 90 percent of the
rhetoric about war that you hear in the West is based on comparisons drawn from
a single historical event – World War II. And World War II was an existential
war: the regimes on its losing side did not survive to the present day in any
way, shape, or form. Generally speaking, this was a good thing, because if
Germany, Italy, and Japan had won… well, suffice it to say that a world remade in the image of the Axis powers is not one that you or I would wish to live in.
Such is the
nature of the conflict from which most Europeans and Americans get 90 percent
of their ideas about war.
Also, our
collective pop culture is totally dominated by existential wars in which the
bad guys are obvious stand-ins for the Nazis. Whether it is Star Wars or
Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or The Hunger Games or
what have you, whenever we go to the movies or crack open a bestselling
adventure novel, we are looking at a situation in which the heroes are forced
to wage total war against an evil enemy who desires the complete destruction of
their way of life. And the conflict cannot end until one side or the other is
stomped into the mud.
The trouble is
that, in the real world, most wars are not like that. If you look at the last
few hundred years of Euro-American history, then what you see most often, in
international wars, is a situation in which two countries – neither of which is
wholly good or wholly bad – somehow come to blows, and fight until the stronger
side achieves its war aims. And these war aims usually consist of disarming the
losing nation’s military, extracting indemnities/reparations, and possibly
seizing a disputed piece of territory (usually one in which there is already
some degree of popular agitation for a change in ownership).
You can make a
long list of wars that went down like this; it would include the Mexican-American
War, the Crimean War, the Schleswig Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the
Spanish-American War, and World War I, to name a few.
In comparison,
situations in which one side’s war aims include the complete destruction of the
enemy nation, the enslavement of its people, the extirpation of their language,
culture, and religion, or the systematic execution of civilians are much rarer.
But it so
happens that this second, smaller category happens to include the one war that
gets more media exposure than all other wars put together, and which has also
been used as a template by the creators of pretty-much every epic
fantasy/adventure franchise in the modern world.
So what does
any of this have to do with the situation in Ukraine?
Well, if you assume
that Russia has the same war aims as Nazi Germany – the complete destruction of
the enemy nation/ethnicity/religion – then it looks like the Russians are doing
a poor job of it. Forty days in, they still have not taken the capital. Many of
Ukraine’s roads remain open, so that refugee caravans and trucks carrying food
and other essential supplies can traverse them freely. Also, Putin and Shoigu have
recently withdrawn some of their troops from central Ukraine and redeployed
them in the east, in a move that the Western press is portraying as a retreat.
But what does
the situation look like from the point-of-view of a Russia with more limited
war aims – i.e. where the goal is simply to demilitarize Ukraine, prevent it
from ever joining NATO, and secure the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk
People’s Republics? Well, in that case it looks like Russia is winning.
One other
potential consequence of the West’s lack of imagination concerning war aims – a
hazard which I am glad to say ended up sputtering out – was the casual attitude
toward guerrilla warfare held by some Ukrainians, and also by what seems like a
majority of the Western press.
In short, it
was very common, in the early days of the war, to read stories about how
Ukrainians of all ages and sexes were going out to fight the Russians with no chain
of command and no uniforms, using whatever improvised weapons they could get
their hands on.
On the one
hand, this is the sort of thing that looks great in an action-adventure movie
like Avengers or The Hunger Games. On the other hand, in real
life it is a good way to get a lot of a civilians killed – first, because a
disorganized, untrained, and poorly equipped fighting force is weaker,
man-for-man, than a professional army, and second, because abolishing the
distinction between soldiers and civilians is a good way of ensuring that a lot
of violence will be done to civilians.
This is why the
matter of francs tireurs – men (and a few women) who would dress in
plain clothes, sneak up on an advancing enemy column, fire as many shots as
they could get away with, and then melt back into the countryside – has been
such a hot controversy in wars like World War I. When you’re a soldier, and you
have good reason to believe than any civilian you encounter might be about to shoot
or bomb you, then your own survival is likely to depend on your willingness to
strike first.
In other words,
if everybody is a potential combatant, then everybody is a target.
Fortunately, the blithe promotion of guerrilla warfare that was so common early on
seems to have won only a few converts, and most (though by no means all) of Ukraine’s civilians have
proven content to keep behaving like civilians, or even to flee the country outright.
Now, there are
situations in which guerrilla warfare makes sense – when the war is
existential, and when the invaded nation has no conventional means of resisting
the enemy. Again, think of World War II – if you are a Jew, or one of the Slavs
whom Hitler and Himmler plan to work to death in vast slave-labour camps, and
you’re hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, and your chances of being
liberated by the conventional army are uncertain, then engaging in irregular
combat makes sense.
In most other
situations, it doesn’t. But Western pop culture pays little attention to most
other situations.
Insurgencies,
though quite costly in terms of civilian life, do in some situations have a
proven record of working. (I trust that my audience does not need me to
summarize the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars). Suppose, then, that the Ukrainians
decided, like Ho Chi Minh and the Taliban did, that losing a lot more lives
than the other side is an acceptable price to pay for ultimate victory. If they
made this decision, and fought for long enough, could they win in the end?
Well, if Russia
decided to set up a puppet government over all of Ukraine, then it’s likely
that after a few years or decades of guerrilla warfare, it could be defeated,
once the Russians decided they didn’t care about propping it up as much as the
Ukrainians cared about tearing it down.
But yet again,
we are projecting an imaginary set of war aims onto the enemy. Because if the
Russians don’t want to control all of Ukraine – if they only want to
secure the independence of the Donbass – then a Ukrainian insurgency is
completely useless. After all, the whole reason this war happened was because
the inhabitants of Crimea and the Donbass refused to accept the legitimacy of
the new Ukrainian government which came to power after the 2014 coup, and have
been fighting back, with Russian aid, ever since.
In conclusion,
Russia’s position – thanks to Russia’s modest war aims – is much stronger than
most people in the West are willing to admit. Yet this shouldn’t really surprise
anybody.
After all, as the old saying goes, “politics is the art of the possible.” War, of course, is simply the “continuation of politics by other means,” and in both politics and war, the victory will often go to the side that does a better job of choosing attainable goals.
Very pertinent, and something which, as you say, has been completely missed by the commentariat.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think it's true that Putin -- if indeed his goals are a neutralized Ukraine and absorption of the pro-Russian part of it -- has said some unwise things, that have been seized upon by his enemies. Things that imply that Ukraine is not really a nation, that those Ukrainians who think it is are just Nazis, etc.
Of course if Joe Biden can mis-speak, impelled by emotion, so can Putin. But statements like some of those he has made play right into the hands of the pro-war faction in the West.
Doug,
ReplyDeleteYou are right that Putin has said some things that imply that Ukraine as a whole has no right to exist. But you've got to also look at what his negotiators are actually demanding at the various peace conferences, like the latest, IIRC, being the one in Istanbul a few days ago. What they are consistently asking for is a commitment that (1) Ukraine must never join NATO, (2) No foreign troops or weapons are to be hosted in Ukraine, (3) Ukraine is not to develop a WMD, and (4) The Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples' Republics are to be left alone.
Since these are the things that Putin can reasonably expect to get in a quick, decisive war, and since Putin has a pretty good track record (at least, when compared with America's recent leaders!) of choosing wars that can be resolved quickly and decisively, I'm going to keep predicting that this is his end goal.
Of course, there is a chance I could be wrong - after all, I was wrong when I predicted at the beginning of this year that Putin would keep trying to apply pressure through non-military means and wait until 2023 at the earliest before invading. But we'll see.