President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Looking at historic Russian anti-war art can provide an excellent start to examine today’s artists, and the works of Vasily Vereshchagin could be that point of departure. After all, if it is shocking enough to make Moltke the Elder clutch his medals, maybe we should all take a peek before it is too late.
Labeled an acute threat by the U.S. Department of Defense in its 2022 National Defense Strategy, the Russian military in Ukraine revealed itself as the flimsiest of paper tigers, a modern-day Potemkin army meant to prop up a faltering regime and its neo-imperialist visions. Where were the unmanned vehicles and the modernized tanks and the fire strikes employed in eastern Ukraine in 2014? Was that army actually a mirage, with the real army now being bled dry eight years later? There was no way that two disparate things, two photo negatives of each other, could exist at the same time. Can two divergent ideas—or two opposite armies—both be true?
A shroud of myth and legend surrounds Russian strategy. As far back as the 1980s, the U.S. began looking at the widespread use of precision-guided munitions and other associated technology because the Russians had an allegedly more advanced conception of their potential. In 1982, the operational level of war debuted in U.S. doctrine, allegedly because it existed in Soviet doctrine. The only way to combat such misconceptions is to take the Russians at their word. Specifically, by reading their words. Strategiya: The Foundations of the Russian Art of Strategy, edited by Dr. Ofer Fridman, Lecturer at King’s College London, is one of the best weapons available.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a war that has outlasted any realistic forecast. Why are these nations still engaged in a conflict that is so detrimental to both sides? Because these two countries have a shared history that includes scorched earth and the wilful destruction of personal property rather than forfeiture, the most likely outcome is either complete victory for one party, or regime change that brings the war to a rapid conclusion. Over a thousand years of invasions, occupation, and suffering have influenced the psyches of both the Ukrainians and Russians in ways that make only two outcomes likely.
In the lead-up to the February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Western nations threatened Russia with severe economic sanctions, export controls, and other punitive economic measures if it proceeded with an invasion. These threats were ignored. Over a year into the invasion, Russia’s economy and war-fighting capabilities are hurting. Punitive economic measures by the West have shut Russia out of the global economy and challenged its ability to profit from oil sales, import critical technology, and finance its war effort.
Faulty assumptions about the ideological realities on the ground, at both the popular- and elite-level, are not unique to the Russian case, but can be widely applied to current geopolitical concerns that attract the attention of U.S. policymakers, especially those which are hypothesized to potentially require future American military operations.
The proper lesson for us today to draw from history is that conflict abhors a vacuum, and threats will take advantage of whatever domain is available. Certainly an argument should be made for increasing traditional lethality in the force, but must that come at the expense of other required capabilities? If we believe that wars are prevented in competition and that adversaries will use all available ways and means in conflict, then the Army must consider diverse solutions to deter and win in both Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) and non- LSCO Multi-Domain Operations
President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Progress in Russia’s invasion of the sovereign territory of Ukraine is commonly measured in terms of land control. This metric does not paint the whole picture. The war has spilled over into the quasi-boundaryless digital realm where contests over the meaning and nature of the conflict rage. These conflagrations over issues of meaning are strategically significant; their outcome could mean the difference between winning in the court of public opinion, thereby obtaining much needed global support—or not.
First, by analyzing Russia’s past success in cyber and electronic warfare, this essay examines how Putin developed his assumption that Russian cyber operations would overwhelm Ukrainian cyber security measures. Second, it explores how these assumptions contributed to complacency and failure in the war in Ukraine. Finally, the essay discusses how Russia’s failures in Ukraine will shape the future of cyber and electronic warfare.
Those who advocate the continued arming of Ukraine should consider making the dual-track argument and approach this strategic conundrum by equaling the Russian pledge, signaling American willingness to deploy nuclear forces to Europe—just as in the Euromissile Crisis—should Putin go ahead with the mooted nuclear force deployment in Belorussia.
Russian and U.S. use of proxy strategies complement one another to fuel a war of attrition. Russia’s human wave response to expensive and limited U.S. firepower is not unreasonable, despite perhaps being quite cynical and fatalistic. Russia’s human wave proxy strategy both protects conventional Russian army forces by redirecting combat to disposable proxies and frees the conventional army to reinforce territorial and political gains along the Sea of Azov. Simultaneously, the U.S. proxy strategy is a logical response to an undersized and outgunned Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians fighting at distance with U.S. artillery, missiles, and rockets while using urban terrain to offset Russian strength makes complete sense. But the interaction of these two proxy strategies, both logical in their own right, fuels a devastating war of attrition, depletes weapon stockpiles, and generates significant numbers of casualties.
The conflict in Ukraine offers unexpected insight into a military construct that had previously been mostly theoretical. Ukrainian ground forces, fighting beneath an information domain dominated almost exclusively by American intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, while no U.S. forces fight in the conflict, is what military theorists and strategists in the 1990s described as a vertical coalition. They conceived it as the future of American warfare, during a brief period in which violent ground-based conflict among powerful states was believed, by some, to be vanishing from the world.
To mark the passing of a year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent return of high intensity conflict to Europe, we wanted to look to the recent past instead of to an unknown future. We asked: How then should we reflect on this experience? What happened to our previously held assumptions in the wake of Russia's aggression? Which assumptions were challenged; which were validated?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proved what can happen when international norms break down. The Western response to that invasion showed what the international community is able to do to enforce those norms. Reversing it in one place while allowing the norm to be violated in another sets a dangerous precedent that will lead to more adventurism and testing of what a regime can get away with when it chooses war to advance its policies.
A nation’s political and military leaders must objectively seek out and use history's lessons as guideposts, capturing and applying lessons learned from the most repeated, catastrophic missteps of others to remain adaptable to future warfare's most probable scenarios. History matters more in avoiding past catastrophes than predicting specific events years into the future.
In analyzing American and Russian strategic cultures, it is tempting to believe that once one determines how strategic culture shapes each nations’ preferences for decisions, one may also suppose that their strategic culture is somehow fixable. This sentiment is an intellectual dead end and entirely misses the point. Strategic culture is a package of robust variables and traits “not easily amended, let alone overturned, by acts of will.” As Gray points out, “even if you recognize some significant dysfunctionality in your strategic [culture], you may not be able to take effective corrective action.” Strategic culture’s persistence, however, does not mean it cannot or does not evolve.
Implementing a U.S. strategy for Africa that promotes the sustainable growth of African economies requires an approach focused on employing economic diplomacy at the continent level. Economic diplomacy provides a constructive way for the U.S. to positively influence African regional economic integration, the protection of human security, and African Union progression. Transnational threats, economic prosperity, and upholding a rules-based international order are issues that will continue to link African security with U.S. national security. An overarching strategy requires strong partnerships at the national level and leveraging U.S. strengths to increase pressure on great power rivals. This approach most effectively achieves African and U.S. economic and security objectives and counters the malign influence of China and Russia on the continent.
