Category Archives: defense policy

Invading Ukraine is a Trap for Putin?

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That’s the thesis Christopher Hartwell has in his Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed. And he made a good case: Russia failed in a similar situation in Afghanistan; the “brother Slav” argument that Putin makes for Ukrainians coming into the Russian fold isn’t all that; the Ukrainians would mount a strong guerrilla war after losing the invasion war, making the total cost too high for a fragile Russian economy to survive. He concludes with this:

Russia can’t be an empire without Ukraine. But Russia will cease to be a great power if it tries to acquire the rest of Ukraine.

Hartwell, however, ignored a couple of key points, along with made a false comparison.

The false comparison is that of Ukraine and Afghanistan. There was far more enmity, especially fueled by culture and fundamentalist religion, between Afghans and Russians than exists between Ukrainians and Russians, for all the current “brother Slav” split.

Afghan geography lent itself far more effectively to guerrilla resistance than does Ukrainian territory.

The matter of experience: the Red Army, now Russian Ground Forces, gained quite a lot of experience at fighting against a guerrilla foe in Afghanistan, and those forces now are real-time combat experienced at prosecuting a guerrilla war in Ukraine’s Donbas region, the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. They’re conversant with both sides of the guerrilla question. They’re also gaining currency as an occupation force in Crimea.

The key points are these: regardless of how easy or hard it might be for Putin to conquer Ukraine (which conquering will be the easier for Biden-Harris’ refusal to arm Ukraine even with defensive weapons, much less offensive ones), Putin in the end will have Ukraine under his at least more-or-less control, and in the process, he will have completely denied Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

The other key point will be his success at humiliating Biden-Harris, adding to the Biden-Harris administration’s own destructive effects on American credibility. That alone is worth a pretty kopek in Putin’s geopolitical calculation.

Maybe an invasion wouldn’t be such a trap.

A PRC Anschluss

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Here is one Critical Item in Xi Jinping’s rationale for conquering the Republic of China and occupying the island of Taiwan. At the 19th Party Congress, in October 2017, Xi was quite blunt:

People on both sides of the strait are one family, with shared blood…. No one can ever cut the veins that connect us.

It doesn’t matter that the citizens of the RoC are proud to be of the RoC and not of the PRC.

No one can ever cut the veins that connect us. Sound familiar?

Where else are there significant Chinese-heritage populations? Here are the 15 sovereign nations with the largest such:

  • Thailand
  • Malaysia
  • Indonesia
  • Singapore
  • Canada
  • Myanmar
  • Philippines
  • Australia
  • South Korea
  • Japan
  • Vietnam
  • France
  • United Kingdom
  • Venezuela

All of these nations are under pressure of one form or another to, at the least, not interfere with PRC interests, and in many cases to accede to them. Will that be sufficient for Xi? It matters not a single minim that these populations are proud, loyal citizens of those nations: their blood is mainland Chinese, and no one can ever cut the veins that connect [them].

And the United States, with the third largest Chinese-heritage population—entirely loyal to and proud, successful citizens of the US, but also with, according to Xi, those inseverable blood ties to mainland China. The PRC is working hard to develop and deploy a world-spanning first strike capability for its PLA.

Dangerous Misunderstanding

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JCS Chairman General Mark Milley has a very serious and dangerous misunderstanding. He said, as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal,

China’s investment in its navy, hypersonic missiles, cyber, and other technologies are designed to ensure that it, along with Russia and the US, are world-leading nations.

This is a man who isn’t paying attention to what’s going on around him. The People’s Republic of China’s investments, along with its foreign policy initiatives, are not at all concerned with enabling the PRC to operate on an equal footing with us and with Russia.

The PRC’s moves are centered solely on that nation being the sole world power, with Russia as its sidekick and our nation subordinated to its bidding.

See, for instance, the PRC-Russia agreement allowing the PRC to exploit Siberian mineral, timber, and other resources. In executing this agreement, the PRC is allowed to colonize move hundreds of thousands of PRC workers into south central and eastern Siberia to carry out the exploitation, and then it will share some of the produce with Russia.

The PRC’s navy, hypersonic missiles, cyber, and other investments, many of which are coming to fruition, are intended to give the PRC a first-strike military capability so overwhelming that no second-strike response would even be possible.

Chit-Chat

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has some.

The secretary declined to detail potential US responses [to a Russian invasion of Ukraine] but said Mr Biden cited the potential for “high-impact economic measures.”

And

If Beijing were to decide to try to change the status quo [vis-à-vis the Republic of China] unilaterally by force, it would be a very serious mistake[.]

Sure. What exactly might those high-impact economic measures be, and on what basis does Blinken—or Biden-Harris, for that matter—think Putin cares about those, given that he’ll have Ukraine under his control? What evidence do Blinken or Biden-Harris offer to suggest Putin has cared overmuch about past “economic measures?”

Blinken and Biden-Harris are carefully silent on all of that.

Further, what do Blinken or Biden-Harris suggest would be their corrective action for Beijing’s “mistake?” What makes either of them think Xi Jinping would care about any correction, since he’d already be occupying the RoC?

More careful silence.

Advice

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Rebecca Grant, DC-based national security analyst, had some for President Joe Biden (D) vis-à-vis Russian President Vladimir Putin on the subject of the latter’s threatened invasion of Ukraine. The venue for that advice is the summit between the two men that occurred yesterday.

Grant is naively optimistic, though.

The 30-nation Euro-Atlantic alliance is primed to deter and counter rash Russian actions.

No, it’s not. Johnson is just posturing, and the UK, a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum (as is Russia), already has betrayed Ukraine by acquiescing to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine rather than enforcing the Memorandum. Beyond that, Germany is already in the bag for Russia, and France is carefully quiet.

America is already involved.

Indeed, we are. We’re also a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, and under the Obama-Biden administration, we’ve also betrayed Ukraine by declining to enforce that memorandum. Beyond that, ships in the Black Sea are ducks in a pond for any force on the shores.

Biden and NATO can do more to deter Putin.  Start with immediate air exercises in Ukraine with US and NATO aircraft.

It’s a start, did Biden have the integrity and moral courage to do so, but more is needed, a yet sterner test of Biden’s…strength. Economic sanctions are insufficient and unlikely to be enacted, anyway. The more that’s actually needed is moving US (because we can’t count on a NATO whose European members won’t even honor their own commitments to fund and equip the alliance) troops into Poland, south toward Ukraine and north toward Kaliningrad, and moving US naval forces to within air strike range of Kaliningrad.

Grant closed her advice with this:

Heat up one tank engine and we’ll know about it.

Certainly. But what will Biden do about it? Grant opened her piece with this:

Ukraine’s borders are a parking lot for Russian tanks, trucks, and artillery ready for a three-pronged blitzkrieg.

Even after that first tank has lit off and crossed the border, that parking lot, for the next number of days, will remain a parking lot of targets. Von Moltke learned that problem in 1914, and even though Putin’s generals likely will have learned from that, the same or worse bottlenecks exist in western Russia and eastern Ukraine.

Biden is unlikely to do any of that, though. He got his marching orders from Putin via Colonial Pipeline, and he already has kowtowed to Putin via Nordstream 2.

Biden will only kowtow again.

In any event, we’ll be hearing, today and in the coming days, the claims of the two participants. We’ll learn empirically, in the coming weeks and months, the outcome of the summit.