Russian strategy, during the Ukraine War

19 December 2022

By way of Sun Tzu strategic exercise

Imagine yourself in Russian leadership's shoes.

How would you wage (or conclude) the Ukraine War?

An argument about levels of force — Paul Craig Roberts

Speaking to Mike Whitney, Paul Craig Roberts observed that:

Putin accepts provocations despite having declared red lines that he does not enforce.

[B]y his inaction Putin has convinced Washington and its European puppet states that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations . . . .

There is no need for him to send missiles into Poland, Germany, the UK, or the US.

Putin never needed to send any troops to the rescue of Donbass.

All he needed to do was to send the American puppet, Zelensky, a one hour ultimatum and if surrender was not forthcoming shut down with conventional precision missiles, and air attacks if necessary, the entirety of the power, water, and transportation infrastructure of Ukraine, and send special forces into Kiev to make a public hanging of Zelensky and the US puppet government.

The cost of messing with Russia would have been clear to all the morons who talk about Ukraine being in Crimea by Christmas.

Washington would have removed all sanctions and shut up the stupid, war-crazy neoconservatives. The world would be at peace.

There are some crazed neoconservatives in Washington who believe nuclear war can be won and who have shaped US nuclear weapons policy into a pre-emptive attack mode focused on reducing the ability of the recipient of a first strike to retaliate.

[T]he conflict in Ukraine can turn into a general war intended or not.

I think the Kremlin’s limited go-slow operation is a mistake. It offers too many opportunities for Washington’s provocations to go too far.

I tend to agree with Roberts' thinking . . .

. . . even within bounds of Russia's previously stated Ukraine goals. (Although I disagree with Roberts' debatably too-optimistic view, regarding how the West would react to what he proposes.)

Putin originally argued that Nazi Ukraine was an existential threat.

According to Putin, that meant that Ukraine would have to be death-purged of its burgeoning Nazi element, demilitarized and its borders shrunken. The diminishment in land mass occurring, so as to give Russia just enough time to detect and respond to missile attacks launched from Ukrainian ground.

Instead of achieving these goals, Nazis still run Ukraine. And only roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian soil is in Russian hands.

It is difficult to see much meaningful strategic accomplishment in any of what Russia has done so far.

With regard to Nazis, consider the fact that people reproduce. Not only do Ukraine's under-military age youth conceivably turn into another ready supply of Nazis, but so do (presumably many of) the babies that are being there spawned today.

The idea of clearing out potentially evil people by killing them off is a dubious proposition. It makes more sense to drive them, and their makers, out of the region that is being disputed.

Ergo, Russia would need to take over most of Ukraine, in order to achieve both its stated objectives. Either that or guarantee immediate destruction of what is left, when a foreseeably new crop of Nazis starts doing their own Evility Dance.

Doing all this as slowly as Russian leadership has accomplished to this point, has (demonstrably) invited Western counter-meddling. I increasingly see an actively disputed Ukraine lasting well into the future. Russia is underestimating the United States' power to propagandize and finance trouble wherever it wishes.

Recall that it was the West that kept Nazism in place, in Ukraine, after the end of World War 2.

And it was the United States, who installed a Nazi regime in 2014. And then happily watched those devils kill thousands of Russian heritage people in eastern Ukraine, afterward. With Russia and Putin doing essentially nothing to prevent this slaughter, until Ukraine began massing an army on the Donbass border to do more of the same.

Why our vast supply of American neocons would stop their neo-Nazi-supporting imperialism now, in the face of perceived Russian weakness and lack of serious purpose, invites disbelief.

In a similarly telling vein, capturing Odessa should have been one of Russia's main geostrategic goals, during their Ukraine-cleansing endeavor. Yet the lackadaisical way in which Russian leadership has left this to an apparently distant future, augurs poorly for its eventual achievement.

In short, none of what has gone on so far would impress any of the Soviet Union's World War 2 (preeminently successful) Red Army generals. And, for exactly the same reasons, none of it appears to be especially impressing the United States.

Exactly Roberts' point.

There are (of course) counterarguments

Perhaps Putin required a go-slow approach, so as to build favorable public opinion in Russia, China and India.

This is Mike Whitney's counter-Roberts argument. It is a sensible one. Arguably, it overlooks the strategic reality that the US presents with its perennial meddling.

Sometimes, we do not get the time that we might like, with which to pull off what we think is necessary to the national public's wellbeing.

Historically speaking, ask whether Stalin and Mao would have waited for favorable public opinion, before starting on their ways toward booting massed hostile forces out of their homelands.

Stalin did so with dictatorial brute force. And Mao, during and after World War 2, with a successful hit-and-run strategy.

Putin has managed neither, anywhere.

Putin's record — wherever his influence extends — seems to substitute a low-boiling pot for an outright disaster. Not exactly Alexandrian in its effort or scope.

How having a bubbling sore (Putin-style) on its border benefits the Federation, remains to be seen.

My view

Let us hypothetically grant a necessary political will-building period, from the Russian special military operation's outset.

That granted, when Russia did finally decided to mobilize about 300,000 troops (from civilian status) — I, as Putin Substitute, would have made the mobilization a full one. Thus allowing the West to see that bad things, for them, were about to happen.

And then (as Roberts suggests), my Putin Substitute would have seen to it that Zelensky and all his crowd — including participating NATO members in Kiev — were rounded up and Nuremberg-style executed for their warmongering Nazi ways.

Just to make a Great Patriotic War point about Nazism.

Last (and unlike Roberts) my Putin Substitute would have blasted Western arms Ukraine-bound shipments, just as soon as they approached Ukraine's borders. Thereby, letting the United States know that the Federation was perfectly willing to obliterate the United States, if more its neocon-sponsored murder attempts surfaced anywhere along the Russian periphery.

Saving one's life, often enough, requires hazarding it.

The moral? — Audaciously intelligent self-defensive action is . . .

. . . generally speaking, the mark of genuinely great national leadership.

Under Putin (as opposed to Dimitry Medvedev), Russia lacks this quality.

Then, there's the United States. Which for all practical purposes, is one of the most atrociously badly led nations on Earth.

No hope for change looms.

Accidental, neocon-inspired, world war increases in statistical likelihood.

PeteFree.com

Russian strategy, during the Ukraine War