Toby Esterhase: “You’re an old spy in a hurry, George. You used to say they
were the worst.”
George Smiley: “Oh they are, Toby, they are.”
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Driven by an actuarial calendar possibly accelerated by illness, 69-year-old Vladimir V. Putin claims he attacked Ukraine to end the threat that membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership posed to Russia, and to defend ethnic Russians in the Donbas from the purported depredations of their Ukrainian neighbors.
In truth, the old KGB spy launched his war because the very existence of a free, democratic Ukraine on Russia’s borders is a challenge to his rule and to his (a)historical vision of the Russian state. It remains to be seen whether Putin’s war will be viewed by future historians as a conflict uniquely shocking to post-World War II Europe or as an event akin to Spain in the late 1930’s; the barbarous prelude to a far more horrific struggle.
What is clear is that (as predicted in The Cipher Brief in January) the 04 February 2022 summit involving two of the leaders of the emerging China-Russia-Iran Axis of Autocracies will be viewed as central to what took place thereafter.
That meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping on the margins of the Beijing Olympics produced a number of joint statements and economic agreements. Of far greater interest to posterity (not to mention to my former organization which hopefully already has unique insights into them) will be any classified addendums to those public pronouncements.
As was the case with the protocols appended to the Non-Aggression Pact agreed between Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart Vyacheslav M. Molotov on 23 August 1939, it is those confidential appendices that will reveal the actual threat today’s autocratic entente poses to the US and its allies (the secret texts included provisions on the fates of the Baltic states, the signatories’ respective spheres of influence in Poland, reciprocal emigration provisions and promised payments among other matters).
We can see reflections of those private compacts in Beijing’s continued support for Moscow and its refusal to fully comply with international sanctions against Russia. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) stood by its ally after Putin’s attempt to topple the Kyiv government by coup de main was defeated by brave and resourceful Ukrainians who the Russian leader, his intelligence agencies and military experts worldwide thought had little chance against their much more numerous and better armed adversaries. Xi was likely as shocked as his Russian counterpart when the latter’s euphemistically named “special military operation” did not result in rapid victory thus buying time for the US and its NATO allies to increase their support for Kyiv. The Chinese leader, consequently, must be much relieved by the recent improvement in Russia’s fortunes on the battlefield.
Russia’s capacity to adapt militarily in the face of initial defeat should not have come as a surprise. In keeping with the reactions of their Soviet and Russian forbearers to initial failure in Finland in 1940, disastrous defeats at the outset of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and the debacle of the first Chechen War of the mid-1990’s, Putin’s generals (or at least those still upright, given the reported losses in their ranks) responded to the bloody repulses they experienced at the outset of this conflict by heeding Stalin’s fittingly atheistic twist on Napoleon’s maxim that “God is on the side with the best artillery”. “Artillery”, the Soviet monster pronounced, “is the God of war”.
Capitalizing on its great advantages in the number of artillery pieces deployed and air sorties flown, Russian commanders have successfully shifted their axis of attack to the Donbas and are forcing Ukraine to fight on their terms. In so doing, they have adapted their tactics by augmenting the considerable flesh they invariably send into their attacks with a deluge of steel. Employing overwhelming, - and seemingly intentionally indiscriminate - firepower, Russian forces are making slow, steady territorial gains. They are turning targeted areas into wastelands and advancing thereafter into the ruins.
In the process, they are grinding their Ukrainian opponents down, bleeding them of experienced soldiers while limiting – albeit in relative terms given the heavy casualties they are reportedly still taking – their own losses. An influx of western arms, particularly advanced rocket and artillery systems, has given Ukraine renewed hope that it can halt the Russians or even reverse their gains. The Ukrainians appear able to use those weapons to strike Russian supply depots, command and control centers, air defense systems and troop concentrations. But that may not be enough to turn the tide in the face of the relative balance of forces available to each side and the Russian leader’s bloody-mindedness.
Putin’s recent assertion that his country hasn’t “yet started anything in earnest” militarily in Ukraine underscores the fact that for him, achieving something he can call success there remains an existential issue. And he appears willing to do whatever is necessary to secure that triumph.
The problem for Kyiv, as well as for the US and its allies, is that Putin has been deliberately imprecise as to what such a “victory” would look like. The Russian leader needs a prize that justifies the large - and growing - price his country has paid for it in blood and treasure. He clearly covets something considerably beyond his initial demands for a neutral, ‘denazified’ Ukraine.
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Harkening back to Peter the Great, Putin has tried to give his war an ideological framework and shown that battlefield gains grant him leave to speak more freely of what he has sought all along. Like his tsarist predecessor in the Great Northern War, Putin seeks to establish Moscow’s control over all lands where Russian-speakers live. Likewise, public discussion in Russian government circles of incorporating the lands of the Tsarist era “Novorossiya” (which included most of what is now Eastern Ukraine as well as considerable land west of the Dnieper River, to include Odessa) into Russia proper, indicates that Moscow aspires to push far beyond the western borders of Donetsk if the Ukrainians cannot stop them.
Putin likely wants to stay on the offensive into the fall until “General Winter” slows military operations and shortfalls in Russian gas deliveries start to make themselves felt in chilly European households. At that stage, he can call a unilateral ceasefire while holding population centers as well as economic and military targets throughout Ukraine as de facto hostages to the threat of long-range missile or air strikes. Thereafter, Putin can push for either a negotiated end to the war or – pardon the pun – a frozen conflict that leaves him in possession of vast swaths of Ukrainian land.
The ongoing extension of Russian administrative control over much of that occupied territory shows that Moscow has no intention of peacefully returning much, if any, into Ukrainian hands. Moscow likely views the Donbas; the hinterlands behind the Sea of Avoz that constitute the long sought-after land-bridge between Russia proper and the Crimea; and the areas of Kherson that link Crimea to the mainland and supply that peninsula’s water as non-negotiable war gains. Moreover, the establishment of “filtration camps” like those used during the Chechen wars to identify potential insurgents and the deportation of between 900,000 and 1.6 million civilians from occupied Ukraine to Russia - some to the Far East - in a manner reminiscent of the cruel Stalinist practice of depopulating regions to remove potential opposition to Moscow’s rule, demonstrate how ruthless the Russians will be in ensuring their hold on those captured lands.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov was reportedly treated like something of a pariah at the recent G20 meeting. But Moscow appears convinced that he will soon be busy hosting European guests as Western unity on Ukraine cracks. Putin’s closest advisor and fellow KGB veteran, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai P. Patrushev, has spoken about a ‘deep economic and political crisis’ confronting Europe. In so doing, he used much of the same stilted language invoked by the Soviet Communist Party’s chief ideologue, Mikhail A. Suslov, when he prophesized the always imminent but never realized ‘crisis of capitalism’ that would lead to the final victory of world socialism. It remains to be seen whether Patrushev will be any more prescient in his prediction that increasing inflation, falling standards of living, donor fatigue, unease over an influx of Ukrainian refugees and uncertain leadership will erode Western backing for Ukraine.
With Europe still reliant upon Russia for 30% of its energy needs, and the US seemingly unwilling to increase its own oil and gas production to help ease that dependence, Moscow has leverage over the continent it is increasingly exercising. The recent Russian decision to shut down the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline for ‘maintenance’ is indicative of things to come.
What is more, the Russian leader seems increasingly convinced that he is winning this war. Battlefield successes and the still relatively quiet, but increasingly discordant, voices in the Western camp over the course of the war surely encourage him in that view. Putin will do all he can to foster further division between those - principally the Eastern Europeans plus the US and United Kingdom - wanting to stand firmly behind Kyiv and those - most notably Germany, France and Italy - increasingly more amenable to a negotiated end to the fighting.
If Putin is successful in driving such a wedge into the Western alliance, the US will be forced to reconsider a strategy heretofore characterized by President Biden’s promise to stand by Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes”. The problem with that strategy has always been that the meaning of “it” has yet to be clearly articulated.
For some, “it” seemingly means a Ukrainian victory that removes Russians from every inch of pre-2014 Ukrainian territory. For others, “it” denotes rolling the Russians back to the status quo ante as it existed before Putin’s invasion. Given Russia’s improved military performance and unexpected resilience in the face of western sanctions, neither outcome seems achievable in the near to medium term. Absent such seemingly unlikely outcomes, the US could well be forced to choose between two unappealing courses of action.
The first would be to significantly step up support to Ukraine in a renewed, expanded effort to defeat Russia on the battlefield. This would require a much greater and longer-term US commitment to Kyiv in a time of economic downturn when we need to replenish our military stockpiles in anticipation of the growing Chinese threat.
The second option is to continue to support Ukraine at a level sufficient to allow it to maintain its independence, while at the same time, recognizing that this war is likely to end in a negotiated settlement or frozen conflict that leaves Russia in possession of significant territories that have heretofore been Ukrainian.
Neither alternative is attractive, but war often demands a choice between bad and worse. Whatever decision we take, we should also bear in mind that the longer this conflict goes on, the greater the danger of accidental or intentional escalation. Putin appears ready to run such risks. The question is how long the US and its allies are willing to chance direct conflict with a power that has repeatedly stated its willingness to use nuclear weapons in what it clearly believes to be an existential war.
At this point, the biggest winner in Ukraine is neither Kyiv nor Moscow. It is Beijing. Whatever the outcome, Russia will emerge from it heavily economically tied to, and in a deepened military alliance with, the PRC. The war has further served China’s interests by obviating any near-term possibility that the US can achieve what should have been a principal strategic goal of fostering division between Beijing and Moscow.
Finally, Xi has an opportunity to examine lessons-learned from Putin’s war as he considers how to deal with Taiwan. He will have observed that:
- Sanctions are an ineffective deterrent when crucial national interests are at issue and are, in any case, survivable absent broad adherence.
- In deciding whether and when to act militarily, it is prudent to consider the potential advantages of initiating action before external actors have an opportunity to assist the target in significantly hardening its defenses.
- In the run-up to and throughout any conflict, overt and clandestine influence campaigns must be mounted to achieve information dominance and to prevent the adversary’s counter-narrative from taking hold.
- If a decision to invade is taken, the force employed must be overwhelming at the outset to ensure success before the US and its allies can react.
- Decapitation of the target government is imperative so as to limit its ability to rally internal and external opposition to the attacker.
- Once a decision to use force is taken, the ability of external actors to deliver weapons and other assistance to the adversary must be cut off.
- The threat to use nuclear weapons works as the US will be hesitant to intervene directly in response to an attack by a nuclear power on a country it has not made an unambiguous commitment to defend.
Xi Jinping is not an old spy. Given the massive espionage assault he has unleashed on the world, however, he might as well be. And like his fellow 69-year-old counterpart in Moscow, he also has an actuarial calendar.
Xi has repeatedly promised to bring Taiwan under Chinese control during his time at the helm. Like Putin, Xi cannot indefinitely allow the existence of a vibrant democracy with intimate cultural, ethnic and linguistic ties to China for fear of its stark contrast with the autocratic nature of his own regime. Redirection outward of growing public unease over China’s economic downturn must also be attractive to the Chinese leader. Xi will come out of the Chinese Communist Party National Congress later this year, more secure in his position than ever after having been named to an unprecedented third term as Party leader. We should expect him to move against Taiwan sooner rather than later.
Stepped-up PRC naval exercises around Taiwan and incursions into the island’s airspace intended to increase pressure on the island are the necessary predicates for whatever is to come.
Xi and his military planners are obviously aware that the island of Taiwan, unlike Ukraine which has open land borders with friendly powers through which supplies can flow relatively unimpeded, can be cut off from external support by a Chinese blockade. They also know that any full-scale invasion of the island could be very costly in terms of both casualties and damage to the island’s valuable infrastructure. They could, accordingly, opt to begin a campaign to seize the island by declaring a sea and air quarantine with the aim of starving it into submission. Such an approach, accompanied by threats to use armed force – to include nuclear weapons – against any external power seeking to violate the blockade, would allow Beijing the option of escalating to a full invasion at its discretion, should a quarantine fail to force Taipei’s surrender.
With his American adversary mired in a post-COVID economic crisis, deeply divided politically, hobbled by enfeebled leadership, tainted by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and distracted by the Ukraine crisis, the Chinese leader will likely never have a better opportunity – even at the risk of conflict with the US - to bring Taiwan under his control and to unseat the US from its perch atop a “rules based order” in which Beijing has never believed.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Washington is “not looking for conflict with China or a new Cold War”. We would, nonetheless, be well advised to recall a quote often attributed to another famous communist leader. “You may not be interested in war”, Leon Trotsky supposedly said, “but war is interested in you”.
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