Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

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.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Ukraine

A Tale of Two Armies: #Reviewing Putin’s Wars

A Tale of Two Armies: #Reviewing Putin’s Wars

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?

History Points to the Most Probable Conclusion in Ukraine: Scorched Earth or Regime Change

History Points to the Most Probable Conclusion in Ukraine: Scorched Earth or Regime Change

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.

Does Economic Deterrence Work? Understanding the West’s Assumptions About Keeping Russia in Check

Does Economic Deterrence Work? Understanding the West’s Assumptions About Keeping Russia in Check

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.

Intelligence Failures and Political Misjudgment in an Age of Ideological Change

Intelligence Failures and Political Misjudgment in an Age of Ideological Change

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.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

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.

The Ethics of Meaning Making in War: A Framework for Understanding Ukraine

The Ethics of Meaning Making in War: A Framework for Understanding Ukraine

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.

Two Can Play That Game: Russia, the United States, and the Return of Great-Power Competition

Two Can Play That Game: Russia, the United States, and the Return of Great-Power Competition

It could be argued that analyzing great-power competition in the context of a war in which one competitor is not engaged militarily limits the ability to truly assess Russian-U.S. competitive actions. Yet, great-power competition is defined by both direct and indirect confrontation between nations.

Hype or Hoax: Are Russian Cyber Capabilities Robust Enough to Cripple Ukraine?

Hype or Hoax: Are Russian Cyber Capabilities Robust Enough to Cripple Ukraine?

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.

Strategic Echoes: Operation Unthinkable, Nuclear Weapons, and Ukraine

Strategic Echoes: Operation Unthinkable, Nuclear Weapons, and Ukraine

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.

The U.S. and Russia: Competing Proxy Strategies in the Russo-Ukrainian War

The U.S. and Russia: Competing Proxy Strategies in the Russo-Ukrainian War

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.

Partner—Proxy—Glitch: Vertical Coalitions and the Question of Sovereignty in Networks

Partner—Proxy—Glitch: Vertical Coalitions and the Question of Sovereignty in Networks

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.

Neorealism Realized in Ukraine: Another Notch in the Post for Realpolitik

Neorealism Realized in Ukraine: Another Notch in the Post for Realpolitik

There will likely never be a grand theory of international politics. However, some models remain more useful than others. None will be able to predict the exact where and when of the next war, let alone the outcome of that conflict. The expectations of neorealism, however, provide a parsimonious model with which to examine events and identify the most important variables which determine the causes, or triggers, of cooperation and conflict. Identification of such triggers can go far in informing foreign policy responses to prevent or mitigate conditions that lead to war.

2Q23 Ukraine 1 Year On: The State of Our Assumptions

2Q23 Ukraine 1 Year On: The State of Our Assumptions

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?

#Reviewing Inheriting the Bomb

#Reviewing Inheriting the Bomb

Inheriting the Bomb looks at the diplomatic process that led to the removal of nuclear weapons on the territories of newly independent Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, with a focus on the latter.  Inheriting the Bomb contributes to a resurgence of interest in Ukraine’s denuclearization in the wake of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Mariana Budjeryn highlights the complexity (a myriad of factors) rather than contingency (one factor) that affected Ukraine’s denuclearization.

The Armenia and Azerbaijan Conflict is a Test of International Norms: The United States is Failing

The Armenia and Azerbaijan Conflict is a Test of International Norms: The United States is Failing

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.

Historical Guideposts: Illuminating the Future of Warfare

Historical Guideposts: Illuminating the Future of Warfare

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.

The Nexus of Russian Foreign and Domestic politics through Diversionary Warfare against Ukraine

The Nexus of Russian Foreign and Domestic politics through Diversionary Warfare against Ukraine

Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine that followed negatively affected Russia’s international prestige. However, in contrast to the external reaction, the domestic population demonstrated higher support for national policies. Not only did the Russian public perceive the return of Crimea as a glorious military victory, the government-controlled narrative also managed to spread the effects of such success to positively perceiving the domestic situation as well.

Ukraine: The Epicenter of Hybrid Warfare and Why the West Must Win There

Ukraine: The Epicenter of Hybrid Warfare and Why the West Must Win There

The opportunities to reshape the Kremlin’s strategic calculations are clear and readily available in Ukraine. As the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe spelled the end of the Soviet Union, updating former National Security Advisor Brzezinski’s prescient comment for today’s struggle reveals the same opportunity—the survival of an independent and democratic Ukraine means defeat for Russia’s revanchist empire, and that will always be in the interest of the United States and its democratic allies.

Arming Ukraine: Practicalities and Implications

Arming Ukraine: Practicalities and Implications

Amid the fraught U.S.-Russia relations of late, it is vital for American policymakers to consider each geopolitical decision with the utmost care, ensuring the best interests of the United States and her allies are always kept in mind. An appropriate policy would include forgoing any further sale of lethal weaponry, replacing it instead with increased funds and non-lethal aid.