OPINION — Ukraine’s dogged defense against Russian aggression has enabled battlefield innovations that are transforming warfare as we know it—this much is obvious to most observers. Less well known, is Ukraine’s novel theory of victory: a smart and aggressive strategy of simultaneously winning a war and rejuvenating the economy and national infrastructure.
This evolution in thinking is about “resilience,” which focuses on prosperity in the present and future, as opposed to “reconstruction,” which focuses on restoration of the past.
Ukraine’s dual-pronged approach, if successful, is its fastest path to securing its borders and earning an enduring and prosperous peace.
Ukraine’s U.S. allies have not yet recognized today’s dynamic, blended, digital realities of society and conflict. The old thinking is perpetuated by ossified bureaucratic structures and norms unsuited for this new reality. Leaders who cling to a traditional, deeply bifurcated, sequenced concept of war and peace will be left behind in tomorrow’s asymmetrically lethal wars.
The nature of war has changed, and Washington must change with it.
In Ukraine, the U.S. must lead NATO to provide comprehensive air defense capabilities that not only provide a battlefield advantage but also protect all strategic Ukrainian infrastructure (not just in Kyiv). This must happen in concert with the development of new energy production and resilient grid networks.
Ukraine’s Energoatom power company is already working with Westinghouse to develop nationwide nuclear power, including 11 new nuclear plants and 2,000 safe micro-reactors that will revolutionize their energy industry.
And Ukraine’s KyivStar telecommunications giant has built resilience by adding generators to power 14,000 cell towers, independent of grid outages. With this version of an “iron dome,” Ukraine can serve as a model for air defense, resilient energy innovation, and energy sovereignty.
Read also The Ukraine Diaries: Ukraine Embodies the Values We Were Raised to Believe In by former senior CIA Officer Glenn Corn exclusively in The Cipher Brief
Washington also should support the rapid development of national communications and digital systems that both address the wartime necessities of intelligence, air defense, and cyber operations while fusing core civil services like healthcare, emergency response, education, and anti-corruption transparency.
In this way, Ukraine is ahead of most allied countries, having established a Ministry of Digital Innovation in 2019, which serendipitously, has been crucial to its liberalization, civil-military collaboration, and battlefield success to date.
Civic society has been essential to Ukraine’s intelligence collection, especially in the first months of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, by tapping into the national digital infrastructure to report Russian tactical dispositions, which enabled Ukraine’s earliest strategic victories.
Ukraine applied these lessons and deployed a homegrown battle management software known as Delta, which debuted in 2021. A year later, the software now aggregates data collected across Ukraine and the broader internet, for analysis and decisions down to the tactical level. Delta harnesses Ukraine’s culture of digital innovation, off-the-shelf technologies like Starlink, and institutionalizes Silicon Valley–style agility into nearly every layer of Ukrainian national security.
Read also The Future of Cyberwar is being Shaped in Ukraine by Cipher Brief Senior National Security Columnist Walter Pincus
These civil resilience efforts are modernizing Ukraine’s defense industry (MDI), to include curriculum development and training. Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries already has a proven track record, recruiting civilian private-sector technologists to enable the production of twice the amount of ammunition in all of 2022 thru May of 2023, alone. (For its part, the United States will not reach similar growth metrics for munitions production until 2028.)
Ukraine’s MDI, manifested as exported products and services, also generates national revenue while contributing to overall Western security and defense.
This approach demands that the Ukraine’s allies forsake the conventional, bifurcated notion of a war that is only followed by economic development. The West can leverage this new blended concept of building civilian resilience and winning at war, if only Washington recognizes its possibilities.
It’s an ambitious overhaul that requires the United States and its allies to rethink current aid amounts and distribution, which are currently parceled out in chunks across scattered domains.
Ukrainians have demonstrated, in ways that nobody in the West predicted, that their national integrity remains intact and that they can win the war and with continued Western support, they can also secure the peace.
Follow Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly for a series of Behind-the-Scenes images from The Cipher Brief’s Trip in Ukraine on LinkedIn
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field?
Send it to [email protected] for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
