Over at Responsible Statecraft there is a symposium on the Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion and what it means down the road. I read all the entries and there is a general consensus that in the long run the incursion is more likely than not a strategic mistake. And then every single one of the commenters (except one) adds their “but” to the conversation. Obviosuly, I tend to see the world as John Mearsheimer does, but found the symposium a useful tool to gauge the thoughts of International Relations scholars across the spectrum. As I said, there is a general consensus. Give it a read, it’ll only cost you 15 minutes, tops.
Oakchair
the incursion is more likely than not a strategic mistake.
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Has Ukraine’s incursion
captured anything of strategic value?
inflicted economic damages?
inflicted military damages?
slowed Ukrainian losses in the south/east?
destroyed more Russian equipment than they lost?
killed more military personal than they lost?
The answer to all of those is no.
The fact that people think it has been anything, but a complete failure epitomizes how our society views everything as a highschooler internet feud.
However, the primary goal of the incursion was as a PR victory that would result in NATO sending Ukraine more in aid because Ukraine is utterly and completely depending on NATO aid. Excluding the areas Russian controls Ukraine’s pre-war GDP (PPP) was around 380 billion. During the war the west has sent 300-400 billion to Ukraine.
someofparts
The range of opinion, except for Mearsheimer, reads like a Monty Python script but without the humor.
Carborundum
I’m struck by how channelized everyone’s thinking is and how much generalist groupthink there is in there. I shouldn’t be by now, but I still find it absolutely amazing how people’s thinking is so self-derivative and folks are utterly unwilling to say “I don’t really know”. Just because you hold a named chair does not mean that are a flexible thinker, particularly when not anchored by timely, organized data.
I don’t know what Ukrainian thinking is here and I am very skeptical that we have a good understanding of what it is. What I do find interesting is that they’ve finally been willing to concentrate force, maneuver and execute some semblance of combined arms and assemble a task based force from many different contributor units while maintaining strategic surprise. If we see indications that these guys are able to withdraw in good order (I assume they aren’t going to try and hold this chunk of terrain indefinitely), this might well indicate a significant capability increase.
bruce wilder
The grand strategic problem for Ukraine is how to get to a peace worth living to and through. If they simply accept an armistice on Putin’s conditions: withdraw from the four oblasts (which means yielding up a couple of major west bank cities), and declare neutrality (no NATO), they would face state bankruptcy, abandonment by NATO and almost certainly the EU, and intense demoralization of the remaining population. In cost-benefit terms, that may be the “best” deal plausibly achievable, and objectively desirable over plausible alternatives because the killing and violence and wanton destruction stop. But, it would be crossing a threshold to a space with probably not a lot of options or opportunities, especially for elite actors called upon to govern in the aftermath. Russian help with reconstruction would come with conditions. Western help with reconstruction would probably not be generous, but would entail resolving enormous debt and impose limits on even necessary Russian involvement. The diaspora would mostly never return.
It is stupid to provoke an opponent with so much potential for escalation dominance. It is stupid to keep fighting with no opportunity within one’s grasp to improve the prospects for negotiated settlement. But, if you are not your own side’s main principal — and Ukraine is a tool, a proxy in this fight — it is not clear that agreeing to end the hot fight short of collapse is even an option for Ukraine.
I am not trying to be cute when I say that Ukraine’s end-game looks to entail carrying out its own state collapse as a kind of means to an end to the war. State collapse is a threat to both Russia, which may lack the capacity to occupy the whole of Ukraine, and to the Western powers, where the legitimacy of the neoliberal program and American imperium is collapsing in a competency crisis, which will only be reinforced by NATO losing and creating massive devastation.
Those are the thoughts that set of very brief short takes provoked: that Ukraine’s strategic position caught between the principal adversaries almost requires self-destructive gambits by its remaining governing elite. Those who opined that diverting “elite units” from defense to Kursk seemed unwilling to simply admit that Ukraine ought to simply stop fighting, but won’t for fear of losing Western backing. A mercenary state, they cannot retire.
Carborundum
If Ukraine is truly a proxy force, then all of the list of Western-related negatives set forth in the first paragraph are already certainties or near certainties. Abandonment once utility is expired is what proxies are for.
Having already seen exactly how willing the US is to cut them off below the ankles in the service of domestic political gamesmanship, the probability the Ukrainians aren’t acutely concious of this seems to me to be about zero. In sum, I don’t think fear of this fate is driving them to self-destructive action. To be clear, the actions may prove to *be* self-destructive, but the motivation seems likely to me to be something else, what I do not know.
bruce wilder
Does fear of the tragic fate of a proxy drive them to self-destructive behavior?
Well, what political dynamics drove them to become a proxy?
Curt Kastens
Bruce,
Perhaps, false promises, lies, bribes, and threats. Unless Ukraine is like Germany and everything gets decided based upon the strength of an arguement making a strong case for a good cost benefit risk reward ratio.
bruce wilder
Whatever the means or motivation that brought the Ukrainian state under Zelensky to this position of perilous and desperate extremes, the idea that an episode of “self-destruction” of some sort is hard to escape.
War is a method of political persuasion and strategy is about organizing the application of violent destruction to compel an agreement on some set of terms.
There are many tired tropes of persuasion trotted out in the collective effort to find or develop a strategy to persuade an opponent to surrender. Some of these are misapplied or misconceived in any particular circumstances.
The flood of propaganda makes it hard to perceive or confirm the strategic thinking organizing even the piecemeal efforts of the combatants.
“War of attrition” is a consensus label. Hard to know if that is a strategic choice because it paves a path to peace on desired terms or a strategic necessity imposed by constraints imposed by tactical technology and organizational capability.
My perception is that the West wants to destabilize Russia and bring down Putin’s regime. Could happen, I guess. But, Ukraine lacks the means to make it happen, imo.
Putin’s strategic vision has been clearly stated in terms of objectives but not in terms of means. I am not clear on how he hopes to get to some form of Ukrainian and/or Western “surrender”. One possibility is to press steadily on the military fronts until the Ukrainian state collapses and its military forces are incapable of resisting Russian advances. That is a lot of incapacity to ask for, to hope that Ukraine will not retain a capacity for guerrilla resistance, especially in big cities.
In the absence of extensive Russian occupation to fill the vacuum created by Ukrainian state collapse, however, such collapse puts pressure on NATO powers to take off the masks and stage humanitarian interventions to prop up the Ukrainian society. That seems to me to be a highly risky way to bring Western principals to negotiate a peace that reconfigures the Ukrainian state in ways that satisfy Russia.