. Both sides must benefit (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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Professor Edward Luttwak
is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy,
geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.
April 26, 2022
On August 20, 1968, I happened to be in Prague when Czechoslovakia
was simultaneously invaded from East Germany, Hungary, Poland and
western Ukraine by more than 800,000 Warsaw Pact troops making any
resistance futile. By contrast, on February 23 this year, the day before
Putin launched his invasion of a country more than four times as big as
Czechoslovakia, Russian field forces numbered fewer than 140,000, a
figure that included field dentists and the like.
Even before the invasion was launched, it was already clear
that the Russians had made an elementary military mistake: their
generals, just like their American counterparts, were intoxicated by the techy verbiage
of “Fourth Generation”, “post-modern information”, and “hybrid”
warfare. Hoping to mimic their effectiveness in war games, cyberwar
attacks and social-media disinformation were to be artfully combined
with precision missile strikes to paralyse the Ukrainian resistance.
Hidden in all this was another delusion:
that fighting the Ukrainians would be no different than fighting the
sectarians the Russian officers had encountered in Syria and Libya. This
view was also shared by the US intelligence community, which was so
impressed by the Russian plan that it had frightened the White House
into evacuating its diplomats, dissuaded any last-minute airlift of
weapons as futile, and prepared to evacuate Zelensky.
That the same intelligence officials are still in charge is
unfortunate, for it appears they are again failing to report accurately
what is happening in this war — even though an elementary analysis of
published information is quite sufficient to reveal what is going wrong.
In short, increasingly uncontrollable escalation processes are
underway, bringing closer the danger that the Kremlin might even perhaps
consider detonating a nuclear weapon to stop the downward spiral of its
loss of power and authority.
Early on, the Biden Administration acted with great clarity when
rejecting demands for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. From the President
down, officials pointed out that in the absence of enough surface-to-air
missile batteries which would take years to deploy, the only way of
protecting Ukraine’s airspace was to patrol it with US fighters ready to
shoot down intruders, thus initiating direct US-Russian combat that
would breach the strongest barrier to nuclear escalation.
There is no such clarity now. When the Ukrainians deployed locally manufactured R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles to help protect Odessa
from amphibious landings that seemed imminent, they did not institute
command-and-control arrangements that would subordinate the local
battery commander to headquarters in Kyiv. Instead, identified Russian
warships were to be engaged without further ado, since any hesitation
could be fatal in the context of an amphibious assault that would
certainly be accompanied by aerial bombing and missile strikes.
As it happened, the imminent threat of an amphibious landing came and
went, but the arrangement that cut out Kyiv HQ remained in place. The
result was the destruction of the heavy cruiser Moskva, which
served as the Russian navy’s flag and command vessel in the Black Sea.
Given that the sinking was bound to provoke retaliation, Kyiv might have
preferred to let it be. But it was not consulted; had it been, it might
well have denied permission to engage, if only because a US Navy P-8 Poseidon
maritime reconnaissance aircraft was flying over the Black Sea at the
time — quite enough to inspire Russian accusations of complicity, again
raising the dangers of escalation at a time when Putin’s army is already
under great pressure.
At the time of writing, the Russian army has committed an
extraordinarily high proportion of its deployable combined-arms
battalion groups. Their grand total on paper across the vastness of the
Russian Federation comes to some 170, including low-readiness and
incomplete formations, with 120 a more realistic number. Of these, 76
were last counted inside the borders of Ukraine, not including an
unknown number withdrawn after suffering heavy losses of machines and
men (including the three that comprised the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade
commanded by Azatbek Asanbekovich Omurbekov, the Karakalpak colonel
accused of the Bucha cruelties and killings).
What this means is that the Russian army is greatly stretched,
already reliant on unwilling conscripts, very few of whom seem to be
eager to fight, while the much-filmed Chechens and rumoured Syrians can
only frighten unarmed civilians not fight in earnest. By contrast, while
Ukraine’s soldiers and gendarmes on duty at the start of the war have
been depleted by combat losses, accidents and disease, a great many
conscripts and volunteers, including returning emigrants, are
reinforcing their units. Compared to the start of the war, they are also
much better equipped, even though the just delivered weapons, US-made
M-777 155mm towed gun-howitzers (superior in range to their Russian
152mm counterparts), British AS.90 155mm gun-howitzers, Stormer vehicles with new anti-aircraft missiles, M113
troop carriers thinly armoured but better than nothing, are not yet in
combat unlike the ex-Soviet tanks from ex-Warsaw Pact countries, and the
shoulder-launched missiles made famous by this war.
Still, so much more could be sent, and that is the priority of the
growing Ukraine-victory lobby that stretches from the US to Finland,
with notable outposts in Germany’s once-pacifist Green Party and in
Downing Street. This loose but influential lobby holds that victory for
Ukraine is a victory for Nato and the West, so defeat for Ukraine must
mean their defeat as well. It follows that enough military support must
reach Ukraine to allow it to expel Russia’s forces, including in the
Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
For this lobby, the greatest short-term threat is a ceasefire or,
even worse, an armistice with Russian forces still in control of
Ukrainian territory, providing a dangerous bargaining chip for Moscow.
It sees a perilous contradiction between what satisfactory short and
medium-term results look like for Ukraine, and what many Western leaders
might accept to stop the violence, including allowing Russia to hold on
to the territory it gained. It sees Ukraine losing the war unless it
receives much more Western support, including heavy weapons with the
requisite training. And it sees Nato’s role as ensuring Ukraine drives
out all Russian troops, with the hope that Putin himself will be driven
out of office.
Unlike the victory lobby, I see the makings of a solidly satisfactory
outcome in the present situation, so long as enough aid reaches Ukraine
to keep up its strength — and that means reading the riot act to
double-dealing Chancellor Olaf Scholz — while vigorously proposing a
peace plan. After all, the two sides have already reached agreement on
the broadest issues: Zelenskyy has already stated that Ukraine will not
join Nato and the Russian side has already accepted Ukraine’s entry into
the European Union.
That leaves the disposition of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts,
substantial territories that Zelensky does not have the authority to
give up, and without which Putin cannot leave the table where he has
gambled and lost so much. While Putin cannot be given the two regions he
demanded before starting the war, he can be provided with something
that he can portray as a victory: plebiscites in both regions where
properly certified residents, including returning refugees, would be
allowed to vote on whether their oblast should remain Ukrainian or join
Russia.
Upon acceptance of the plebiscites in principle, a cease-fire would
come into immediate effect, with Russia’s respect of their terms
guaranteed by the ease of reimposing sanctions just lifted.
It is axiomatic that both sides must benefit if they are to end the war. For
Ukraine, this must include its unconditional recognition as an
independent state, as well as the cessation of hostilities that would
bring with it the return of millions of refugees and the arrival of a
flood of reconstruction aid from the EU, US and Japan. As
for Russia, the lifting of all sanctions would bring immediate benefits
across the country, from the re-opening of the McDonald’s in Omsk where
I once had the best meal the town could offer at 6am, to the resumption
of normality for the great number of Russians whose lives have become
international, whether they know it or not.
There is a model for this. Plebiscites proved
surprisingly effective after the Versailles Treaty in disputed
territories ranging from Belgium to Poland. In spite of the enormous
devastation and loss of life brought about by the Great War, and the
bureaucratic shortcomings of newly formed states, the votes in 1919 went
well enough to prevent further border wars. And with today’s fast
documentation techniques, they would be even more effective, allowing
Ukraine’s reconstruction to start without delay.
All of this is anathema for the victory lobby. But
its twin goals of driving out the Russians by force and bringing down
Putin in the process would only be desirable if nuclear weapons could be
un-invented. As it is, they offer Russia a court of appeal when facing
conventional defeat, in a manner that negates any conventional victory —
something that is surely infinitely worse than the outcome of any
referendum.
