Incrementalism

This is a tale of two frogs, and how they were boiled. One of them was dropped directly into a pot of boiling water. The shock to its system stopped its heart and it died immediately. The second was dropped into a pot of cold water, that was slowly brought to a boil. While that was happening, the frog learned to swim, grew water wings, built a boat, and survived.

Incrementalism doesn’t work. We found that out in VietNam. We forgot it in time for Putin’s war on Ukraine.

A common problem amongst people who don’t understand how interactive systems work is the failure to account for the ways the system responds to their actions. If Coke spends 10% more on advertising and takes 10% of market share away from Pepsi, that doesn’t mean that doubling their advertising budget will drive Pepsi out of business, because Pepsi will just increase their own spending. In warfare, this is the meaning of the term The enemy gets a vote.

In VietNam, we started with a small ground contingent and limited air support inside the country, gradually ratcheting up to multiple ground divisions and a massive air campaign across four countries. This happened over a period of years. While we were doing that, the Viet-Cong and North Vietnamese were improving their ground and air forces, as well as dispersing their logistics system. The famed Ho-Chi-Minh Trail, for example, was actually a network of roads, tracks, and creek bottoms. By the end of the war, you could travel on a road,  under the canopy, the whole way. In 1965 there were a handful of SA-2 SAM sites around Hanoi. By 1968 there were over 200 across the country.

We are seeing the same thing happening in Ukraine. If the West had given Ukraine ATACMS, HIMARS, Bradley IFVs, and Stormshadow in the summer of 2022, does anyone doubt that the Russians would have been driven out of Crimea and the southern Kherson region by now?

Given most of the last half of 2022 and the first half of 2023 to prepare, the Russians have done what they excel at — preparing a defensive battlefield for a major armor battle. In particular, the Russians had time to place millions of mines, up to five mines per ten square feet, bogging down the Ukrainian armored advance. Without air superiority and with limited minefield breaching equipment, the summer offensive ground to a halt and became a war of attrition. As a result, with the defeat of the summer offensive, Russia sees no need to either change its goals or negotiate for peace. In fact, it seems to be more dedicated to moving beyond Ukraine, into NATO territory.

One of the reasons given for the laggardly delivery of new weapons to Ukraine is the fear that such actions might cross some sort of red line, that will cause Putin to go nuclear. This is not like strategic nuclear deterrence, where both sides know that a strike on the other’s homeland will inevitably result in a counterstrike. Instead, it is our estimate of the enemy leader’s mental state, something that is traditionally very difficult to do. So we have essentially deterred ourselves. Meanwhile, we have seen Ukraine, time and again, cross these supposed red lines with impunity.

Because of the dilatory nature of Western support, the job ahead will be more difficult and more costly, but we know that Ukraine can win if we provide the support. As Winston Churchill said Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

 

 

We are failing Ukraine

…and it looks like we’re doing it on purpose.

Ukraine is the poorest nation in Europe. After 1992 it struggled for decades to overcome the results of seventy years of Soviet misrule. Just as it looked like it was starting to get somewhere, Russian proxies invaded and occupied the most productive part of the country. Contrary to our promises, the West in general and the US in particular failed to provide the support needed to keep Ukraine free and whole. Nevertheless, Ukraine dug in, and held off the Russian proxies for eight years, meanwhile working to break the Soviet legacy of corruption and inefficiency and reform their government to European Union standards. Again the Russians invaded, and again, the West has provided less aid than was needed. Let’s break this down and look at some of the details.

In 1992 when the Soviet Union fragmented, the various component parts kept those forces and infrastructure that were within their new national boundaries. So, for example, Baikonur Cosmodrome was located in Kazakhstan, and so passed to Kazakh control. Ukraine inherited almost 200 ICBMs and another 200 medium and heavy bombers, with a total of 1700 nuclear weapons. They did not get the PAL codes, and so could not arm the weapons (although they might have used them as the basis for dirty bombs by using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive debris).  Those delivery systems, however poorly maintained, and those warheads, however impossible to use as nuclear explosives, provided the basis for a minimalist deterrent force against Russia. Under intense pressure from the US, Ukraine agreed to give those up, in return for security guarantees. They didn’t get them. What they got was security assurances, that the US would look very seriously upon any invasion of that country.

To get an idea of the level of support that is possible, I note that the first shipment of advanced weapons to Israel happened three days after the 7 October atrocities, and US airlift aircraft started regular deliveries on October, with a total of 11 C-17 cargo aircraft arriving in the next ten days. US aid included our entire stockpile of Iron Dome air defense munitions.

We have thousands of tanks in reserve (including 450 tanks the USMC decided they no longer need). We sent Ukraine 31. We waited months to finally approve the shipment of ATACMS missiles, and even longer to approve the delivery of cluster munitions. We still haven’t delivered any of the late model, long range ATACMS. The tanks are obviously excessive to our requirements. The ATACMS and cluster munitions are all end-of-shelf-live models that would otherwise have to be disposed of at great expense. They are mostly being valued at replacement cost, instead of the scrap metal prices we should be using.

Finally, both the US Senate and House are holding up additional funds, primarily as a way of hamstringing a Democratic President.

If we were really serious about all this, all these weapons would have arrived in May, and the Ukrainian summer offensive would have had a chance of succeeding. Instead, we have greater loss of life, and stalemate on the battlefield, stalemate that only leans in Russia’s favor.

Cluster Munitions — A Good Idea

The Biden Administration’s decision to supply Ukraine with the DPICM cluster munition (just the latest in a long line of such munitions) has generated a lot of controversy, much of it by people with little or no sense of military history.

Discussions started even before the decision was made, but after it was announced, knowledgeable commenters came out in favor of the move. Analyst Thomas Theiner made  a succinct case for using DPICM, although there are some valid technical issues with their use.

If you have a long attention span, and prefer your information in video form, Australian defense analyst Perun has an hour-long YouTube discussion of the artillery war in Ukraine and DPICM’s place in it. Among other things, he puts the Anti-CM treaty in perspective, noting that no country with a modern military and a sizeable artillery park has signed it, including none of the European countries that share borders with Russia.

As others have said, much of the bad rep that hangs around CM’s stems from problems with the early versions used in VietNam, over half a century ago, combined with their reckless, uncaring, and indiscriminate use by the Soviet Union and Russia in wars from Afghanistan to Ukraine. As an example of the cavalier approach of the Soviet Union to these kinds of munitions, their PFM-1 scatterable mine was modeled after the US BLU-43 Dragontooth. The major difference was that the Soviets didn’t waste any weight on self-inerting mechanisms like the US did, and put the weight saved into increasing the explosive yield. Both sides started the Russo-Ukraine war with stocks of Soviet-era CM’s. As far as we can tell, the Ukrainians limited their use to valid military targets, while the Russians used them indiscriminately against urban civilian targets. A dud CM is essentially a mine, and Russia has already planted millions of mines across Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine is running low on ammunition and its supporters are struggling to increase production.  The US has millions of DPICM shells in stock, enough to carry Ukraine until new production comes on line. The Ukrainians are using CM’s on their own territory, in defense of their own lands, and will be responsible for clearing any and all unexploded ordnance. Giving them DPICM and allowing them to use the weapon in their own country is the right thing to do.

Poland vs Russia

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The Defence of the West

Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island
Who rules the World Island commands the world

Halford Mackinder (1904)

World order is at stake.
Putin is trying to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R), SC

Herewith some thoughts on Putin’s War with Ukraine. Since he rose to power in 1999, Putin has been working towards one goal: to restore the Soviet Union. Not to restore communism, but to rebuild the territorial hegemony once maintained by the Soviet Empire. One short but plausible explanation from six years ago is that Russia feels threatened any time they don’t control all possible entry points to their borders. “Feeling threatened” does not, of course, justify killing your neighbor — unless you’re in Texas … or Russia.

Given that this is a long-term, persistent, overriding goal, it is foolish to assume that any half measures will appease the Russian desires for expansion. Any, any engagement with them will be just one more arena were they can work toward that goal. So, no cease fire agreement — the Russians will use that to build up and train their forces in preparation for a convenient end to that agreement. No “Territory for peace” deal — having a small chunk of Ukraine is but a step on the way to all of it. No negotiations to stop the war, as demanded by those who would have peace at any price — they have already displayed a congenital inability to negotiate in good faith. This is nothing new. We saw the same trends at work back in the days of the Cold War. Their approach to good faith was give me things I want.

The Russian word for compromise is компромисс (compromiss). It’s a loan word from French because the Russians don’t have that exact concept in their language.  Back in the day, the word we saw most paired with compromise in their writings was putrid.  Russians have always looked on compromise the way those of us in the post-WWII West look on appeasement.

As with their language, so too with their foreign policy. The Soviet approach was not like the Western one, focused on managing the relationships between and among nations. Instead, they treated it more like a military operation, always on the offensive, always seeking any little advantage they could exploit.

Russia’s goals in Ukraine are more than just securing all the territory of the two fake-breakaway regions. To hold the approaches to the Motherland, they have to hold all of Ukraine, and beyond.  If Russia wins, it won’t stop with Ukraine. Moldova will be next, or maybe Belarus. And then? Romania? The Baltics? Anything past those first two will mean a direct clash with NATO, but one could be excused for assuming that Putin doesn’t care. He may have started under the mistaken assumption that Ukraine would be a walkover, but Russia has always had an affinity for the long war. Russian despots have long proven themselves willing to accept massive casualties in order to achieve their goals.

Putin has already threatened to use nuclear weapons, and Russian doctrine includes the use of tactical nukes to solve battlefield problems. Given that the US is unlikely to be willing to trade New York for Warsaw, Putin may feel that he can use his tactical nukes under the umbrella of his strategic weapons. It’s the same thought process that allows him to threaten the use of tactical nukes whenever the West increases the sophistication of the weapons delivered to Ukraine. And of course, any use of nuclear weapons crosses a watershed, and threatens a slide into all out nuclear exchange.

If the West wants to minimize the chance of a nuclear exchange, the best way is to ensure that Putin doesn’t win in Ukraine. It is all very well and good to defend that country, but the real goal is to limit the possibility of a nuclear war between NATO and Russia. Defense of Ukraine is, in the truest sense, Defense of the West.

History Repeats

Sometimes History doesn’t repeat itself. Sometimes it picks up a club and says Weren’t you listening the first time? — Terry Pratchett

It’s been said that the reason we have a war every twenty years or so is because the younger generation forgets what it’s like. A corollary to that hypothesis is that the younger generation also forgets what the reasons for the war were. One of the few advantages of growing old is that one develops a sense of perspective on the events of the day. Sometimes this is an advantage, because it allows one to view the crisis of the day without panic. Sometimes it’s a disadvantage because you find yourself at the edge of your seat screaming at the monitor “Fools! Can’t you see what you’re doing?” The conservative reaction to events in Ukraine generates an example of the second type.

I grew up just after WWII, surrounded by participants, and with the events of the war and the years leading up to it as common topics of discussion. What would be called memes today were yesterday’s catchphrases. That’s why it is so frustrating to see history happening all over again.

Take Adolf Hitler. Remember him? Murdered six million Jews and caused the deaths of 50 million other people. Had a vision of the heaven-ordained dominance of Germany over the lesser races. Started out by nibbling away at bits of other countries with the excuse that he was protecting German ethnic minorities, and because those territories had been “traditionally” part of Germany anyway.

At the start the rest of the world (including the America Firsters) let him get away with it, claiming it wasn’t their problem, or that his meritless claims had some merit. That’s when he pushed harder.

When the other countries of Europe finally put their foot down he started WWII, and — just in passing — when Britain wouldn’t surrender he started terror bombing civilian targets. Europe today, tommorow the world. That Adolf Hitler.

Now we have Vladimir Putin. Has a vision of the heaven-ordained dominance of Russia over all the slavic and slavic-adjacent peoples. Started out by nibbling away at bits of other countries because they were “traditionally” part of Russia. [Another set of meritless claims. They were independent countries within the Soviet Union. That’s why Belorussia and Ukraine have their own seats in the UN General Assembly, and Texas and Georgia do not.] Putin’s war is not a repeat of WWII, but it has a surprising number of comparable situations.

Putin is demonstrably evil and he is at the head of a demonstrably evil system embarked on a demonstrably evil war fought by a demonstrably evil army. He is every bit as much a threat to the peace of the world as Hitler was. If he is allowed to win in Ukraine — and that’s what it would be, the West acquiescing to the takeover of a sovereign nation — there is no limit to his future goals. The Baltic States would be next, then Belorussia would agree to a merger, and then Poland would be at risk. And us oldsters remember what happened the last time Russia took part in an invasion of Poland.

There are some elements of the American political scene who decry support for Ukraine, comparing it to Vietnam and Afghanistan, either because their short-sighted perspective lets them believe what they say or because they are lying for  domestic political advantage. But the fact is, the only solution is for Russia to be totally defeated and driven from all occupied territories. There is no compromise with evil. There is no compromise with Putin. The only compromise* possible is to give him what he wants. The only alternative is to defeat him utterly.

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*By the way, the Russian word for compromise is компромисс (kompromiss). It’s a loan word, because they don’t have that concept in Russian.

 

Ukraine vs Russian casualties

One reason militaries today are reluctant to issue estimates of enemy casualties is that The Press and everyone else (hi me!) will immediately assume the estimate is rock solid gold and go on to draw all sorts of fantastic conclusions from it. So it is with the latest, unofficial, estimate out of the Pentagon, that Russia has suffered something approaching 80,000 casualties in the war. If we look at my earlier estimate, that RU KIA were ~20,000, that would give a killed/wounded ratio of just about 3/1, within reasonable historical bounds.

Simple arithmetic then says the Russians have been losing ~500 troops per day (killed and wounded), while the Ukrainian losses have been around half that — note that President Zelensky’s statement of 100-200KIA per day was during a much more intense period of the fighting.

In all of WWI, the French suffered something over 3000 casualties per day, more than six times the casualty rate of Ukraine, a country with roughly the same population.

Our conclusion is the same as before, Ukraine is doing much better than the French did in WWI, and  nowhere near running out of people to fight this war.

A long war

In earlier posts on the Russo-Ukraine war I noted that the latest phase was an artillery duel, particularly with Russia attempting incremental gains via heavy artillery bombardment of prepared Ukrainian positions. The question then arises of how long can the Ukrainian manpower resources hold out.

In WWI, our best known artillery-intensive conflict, France started the war with perhaps 1.3 million troops, and called up another 8 million during the war, not counting colonials. This, out of a population of just under 40 million. Ukraine, with a population of just over 40 million, started with an army of something over a million troops — so the two countries are roughly similar in demographics. The Russians, meanwhile, committed something over 200,000 troops (including surrogates) at the start of the invasion, reinforcing these numbers by an unknown amount as the conflict continued. I’m only going to mention Russian casualties in passing, because the politics and dynamics of their loss rate is totally different and deserves its own post.

WWI started in late July, so by the end of 1914 the war had been going on for about 130 days and France had lost roughly 300,000 KIA. This featured the intense initial clashes of the Battle of the Frontiers, up through the end of the Race to the Sea. This was mostly mobile warfare, and did not include any of the meatgrinder battles that were so typical of later years. Overall, in 1500 days of warfare along a 700km front, the French had 1.3 million military KIA, or almost 850 deaths per day.

The Russo-Ukraine war started at the end of February 2022, and 130 days later puts us into early July — right about now. In the first 130 days of the war, Ukraine lost at least 10,000 KIA, and Russia and its subject nations lost at least 20,000 KIA. President Zelensky has said that Ukrainian deaths have been running 100 to 200 per day — at most, a quarter of the French death rate, along a roughly 1700km front. I note that these numbers vary wildly by source and should be used only as a rough indicator of size.

Of course, it’s not enough that troops exist, they have to be trained. I haven’t been able to find out much about Ukrainian basic training. At the start of the war, one report said new recruits were sent to their units with two weeks training (although a lot of the ‘two week’ reports were about ATGM training in the UK not actual basic), while in the US a new recruit might spend 22 weeks from induction through both basic and combat specialty training. Still, whatever the length of training, be it two weeks or twenty-two, their training pipeline should now be full.

We can draw some insights based on all this. First, the war has not reached the same scale and intensity of WWI. Today’s troops may be tired, but they have not been subjected to the same level of carnage as we saw in WWI. Second, Ukraine is nowhere near running short of people of military age. France fought for over four years, and it looks like Ukraine has the people to do the same. There may be constraints on Ukraine’s ability to fight — weapons, ammunition, food to sustain its people — but lack of troops isn’t going to be one of them.