The destruction of hundreds of Russian tanks in Ukraine does not signal the end of the need for armoured vehicles in future warfare, says one of the Australian Army’s key capability specialists.

Brigadier Ian Langford, the army’s acting head of land capability, used a speech at the Australian Defence Magazine conference this week to set out the case for the purchase of up to 450 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to replace the army’s 60-year-old M113 armoured personnel carriers.

The war in Ukraine demonstrated the need for the army to be able to fight and survive in intense, high-threat combat, Langford said.

Langford noted that while the army had to prepare for such contingencies, its wide range of duties included responding at home to pandemics and disasters such as fires and floods flowing from climate change—’a demand we can expect to increase over time, especially within our region.’

On the human cost of the conflict, Langford referred to a report on The Strategist that one-third of Ukraine’s population has been internally or externally displaced, that the war has resulted in thousands upon thousands of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, and that this year alone, Ukraine’s GDP is expected to collapse by 45%. ‘These numbers should belong to history,’ Langford said. ‘Regrettably, they do not.’

He quoted Alex Vershinin of the Royal United Services Institute arguing that the Ukraine war proved that the age of industrial level warfare is still here and the West’s recent legacy of low-intensity conflict has distorted the notion that wars can be won through a single technology or domain.

Langford said the war was providing unique insights into the nature and character of war and Australia’s army was studying this conflict very closely. ‘Of particular note, the army’s future investments in capabilities to include operational-level, long-range offensive fires, a resilient digital battle management system, a world-class aviation system and a credible close combat system are being informed by these real-world events.’

He said the IFV was at the core of the Australian Defence Force’s ability to deploy and sustain a land force as part of a joint, integrated team. A decision on the IFV project is due to be made by the government this year. This important decision would bear on the ADF’s ability to generate a credible land combat system, Langford said.

‘It will determine to a certain degree how government chooses to project military power, operate in high-threat environments, prepare for all ranges of contingencies, achieve deterrence, balance its force structures and prepare for the type of future conflicts envisioned like those currently being witnessed in Ukraine,’ he said.

‘Just this week, British PM Boris Johnston predicted that this conflict will likely lengthen in duration and increase in intensity over the coming months. Russia’s forced adjustments to its war aims, originally designed around a short, rapid seizure of the Ukrainian capital followed by the rapid defeat of its military, now instead plan on a long, bloody conflict. The ensuing rate of high civilian casualties and significant destruction to Ukraine’s infrastructure are ultimately intended to exhaust Ukraine into a negotiated settlement which might include Russia’s reclamation of Ukrainian territory, allowing the pyrrhic victory that it now seeks in order to justify its “special military operation”.’

Langford said the IFV appealed to the promise of unprecedented firepower, protection and mobility for the army and could be employed alongside a combination of tanks, infantry, and a range of other joint capabilities and emerging technologies.

The future IFV did not represent the totality of the army’s land capabilities—which included combat aviation, land combat, protected manoeuvre, amphibious and littoral forces, engineer, ground-based air defence, offensive strike, logistics, health, special forces and domestic security task forces, he said.

‘This capability nonetheless is the core of the close combat team as it relates to the task of closing with and killing or capturing enemy forces, and its existence in part acknowledges the myriad of threats that now exist on the battlefield, including the presence of improvised explosive devices like those experienced in Afghanistan through to the prevalence of loitering munitions which, according to some, may pose an entirely new lethal threat to soldiers who lack the levels of protection, manoeuvre and firepower necessary to survive in modern warfare.

‘Many either see this role as confronting, distasteful or no longer relevant to war with the advent of modern technology. And yet, what we see in theatres such as Ukraine suggests otherwise. The army must be able to fulfil this role given that there is no viable alternative in the short to medium term.’

Langford asked rhetorically if the conflicts in Ukraine and earlier between Azerbaijan and Armenia meant modern armoured vehicles were at such risk of defeat by a lightly armed foe with drones and modern guided weapons that they should be abandoned.

‘The short answer is no,’ he said.

‘Drones and anti-armour systems are contributing to this war, but so are the infantry, armour and artillery as well as the naval, air, space and informational power of both sides. Equally, it is hardly surprising that late-model drones and the best anti-armour weapons that the Western world manufactures, designed with sophisticated target-acquisition sensors, guidance systems and advanced warheads, are defeating tanks and IFV developed four decades ago, if not earlier.’

Langford said the majority of Russian vehicles in Ukraine lacked equipment that enabled modern armour to survive such as soft- and hard-kill active protection systems (APSs) and the benefits of integrated command, control and communications systems, which were vital for mobile forces to operate under an effective air-defence umbrella.

‘There has not been a single APS-active armoured vehicle destroyed in Ukraine,’ Langford said.

Russian tactics there were conceived around numbers with less regard to survival, he said. ‘Additionally, Russian vehicles are so obviously poorly sustained, maintained and operated it is little wonder that they are presenting so many targets to Ukrainian forces who are being well equipped by the collective capacity of NATO and others to destroy these antiquated Soviet-era capabilities.’

Langford quoted analysis by Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute highlighting the doctrinal and procedural issues hampering Russian combat performance:

Russian military performance has been spectacularly poor in Ukraine. At the tactical level, Russian units have showed an inability to follow basic military procedures. They have failed to prove routes, have advanced in densely packed groups of vehicles, have tended to lose momentum when engaged, and been road bound, neither screening their flanks with patrols nor setting up their air defences. The force has shown a very limited capacity to operate in combined arms groupings.

‘The ADF’s land force is not the Russian Army,’ Langford said. ‘It operates in a different way which leverages strengths, and offsets weaknesses.’

Looking at the 2020 Armenian conflict, the Center for Strategic and International Studies identified that armour and other heavy ground units would remain vulnerable to drones until mobile short-range air-defence systems improved and proliferated. But it warned that while drones played a large role, their capabilities ought to not be exaggerated and they were highly vulnerable to air defences designed to counter them.

They were not necessarily the ‘wonder weapons’ they appeared to be at first glance, Langford said.

‘As a first-world nation, the acquisition of both tanks and IFVs reflects on a nation that understands that it must conduct these inherently dangerous roles but that it also places high value on protecting the lives of the soldiers that it asks so much from in high-threat environments.’

As we reflect on the 100-day mark of the Russo-Ukrainian war and what we’ve learned, we need to understand that the West has fundamentally misunderstood Russia and continues to do so, argues Kyle Wilson, visiting fellow at the Centre for European Studies and former Australian diplomat who had postings in Russia, China and Poland.

This is why many in the commentariat are failing to appreciate that Russian President Vladimir Putin is probably happy with how his invasion of Ukraine is turning out, he says.

The Western foreign policy community has assumed for a long time that Russia under Putin had similar notions of what it means to be a world power, had more or less accepted the rules of the post–World War II international order, and was moving—albeit with setbacks—on a similar neo-liberal economic trajectory.

But, argues Wilson, something completely different has been going on in Putin’s mind. He has only been marginally interested in building stability and prosperity as the West would understand it.  Rather, his entire project has been about building Russia’s ability to be a coercive, expansionist and undeniably great power, with control concentrated in the hands of one person.

The Russian translation of ‘great power’ is velikaya derzhava, the second part of which is a cognate of a verb that means to seize or to hold, and Putin’s worldview represents a continuum of Russia’s imperial mythos.

Wilson points to the work of historian Stephen Kotkin, who has calculated that, over a period of about 450 years, Russia expanded outwards at a rate of 100 to 150 square kilometres a day, in the process engulfing 184 different nationalities or ethnic groups.

And that expansion continues, Wilson says: Russia now claims roughly half of the Arctic.

This imperial worldview has always been in evidence, he says.

For example, in 2005, Putin established a commission to rewrite Russian history textbooks. ‘It produced a textbook for history teachers. In that book was the remarkable paragraph that said most of the Russian politically conscious class rejects the present boundaries of the Russian Federation. They are inadequate to protect Russia’s security.’

Then, in 2008, Putin invaded Georgia and seized territory. And the Russians continue to ‘gradually move their barbed wire further and further into Georgia,’ says Wilson.

Six years later, in 2014, Putin invaded Ukraine for the first time, and Russian forces shot down a Malaysian commercial passenger jet, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in the process.

‘Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was then the secretary-general of NATO, goes to Moscow, and says to Mr Putin, “I’ve come with a package of proposals to reform Russian NATO relations.” And Putin says to him on camera, “I don’t want to reform Russian NATO relations. I want NATO abolished.”’

Also in that year, Wilson notes, a senior Russian official came to Chatham House in London. The official said, ‘Putin is not so silly as to think that he can recreate the Soviet Union, but there is a core of the former Soviet Union that is properly ours—Belarus, Ukraine and northern Kazakhstan. And it would be nice to have it back.’

In 2018, Putin unveiled what Wilson describes as a ‘rather frightening array of new doomsday weapons, including a nuclear-armed torpedo that says, “You didn’t listen to us. Look at these weapons and listen to us now.”’

All of this was accompanied by ‘lurid and strident propaganda 24/7 on Russian television, pushing anti-Western messages,’ explains Wilson. An important part of this propaganda campaign was the idea that Ukraine is not a country or a people. ‘Putin said that very early on to George Bush. Again, we didn’t listen,’ he says.

During the past decade, Putin also accelerated the remilitarisation of Russia.

‘Under Putin, the military receives one in five roubles of revenue, but the security services and the national guard—a 350,000-strong riot police—also receive the same. So essentially three out of every five roubles of state revenue is going to control: an army to smite your foreign enemies and a domestic army to smite the traitors, the fifth column within.’

It’s therefore likely that Russia believes it is now demonstrating strength on its own terms by being able to wage what Wilson refers to as the ‘Russian way of war’.

‘There’s an expression in Russian that translates as “To be tender-hearted does not become a sword”,’ says Wilson. What this means in practice is the exercise of extreme brutality towards civilians, combined with an indifference to Russia’s own casualties.

Putin is likely to be equally indifferent, at least in the medium term, to Russia’s sanctions-induced economic suffering. Wilson argues that we shouldn’t be defining the health of the Russian economy in GDP terms.

‘Russia occupies about a fifth or a sixth of the world’s land surface. According to BHP Billiton, Russia sits on between 5% and 25% of almost everything on the planet, with exceptions like uranium and rare earths. Lake Baikal contains one-sixth of the world’s fresh water.

‘Oil and gas will remain important sources of revenue for the next 30 years. And the decline in Russia’s labour force is compensated for by Central Asian migration.’

On the economic front, while Russia has two big weaknesses—corruption and the brain drain of the best and brightest—Wilson says it is dangerously self-delusionary to argue that Russia has a weak economy.

Putin will also be encouraged by cracks in European support for Ukraine, as well as by the distinct lack of enthusiasm for Kyiv’s struggle among much of the developing world.

This will be feeding into the perception, endlessly peddled by Russian propaganda, that democratic nations don’t have the stomach for the Russian way of war and that Russia, as part of its exceptionalism, has an ability to suffer in a prolonged way that Western countries simply don’t have, Wilson says.

So right now, Putin may not be feeling dissatisfied with the way things are going, despite all the assertions that the invasion is a disaster for him.

According to Wilson, Russia’s Black Sea blockade and destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure means that what Putin has achieved is the probable end of Ukraine as a viable nation-state.

‘Yes, the losses have been far higher than expected, in terms of both manpower and material. Yes, the attempt to take Kyiv was a notable failure. But if you look at how Putin defines winning, it would be, if Ukraine can’t be reintegrated back into the Russian empire, then no one will have it.’

As Russian missiles pound Ukrainian cities, and as Ukrainians fight to defend their country, some avowed realists might say, ‘So much for soft power’. But such a response betrays a shallow analysis. Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes you want. A smart realist understands that you can do this in three ways: by coercion, by payment or by attraction—the proverbial ‘sticks, carrots and honey.’

In the short run, sticks are more effective than honey and hard power trumps soft power. If I want to steal your money using hard power, I can threaten to shoot you and take your wallet. It doesn’t matter what you think and I get your money right away. To take your money using soft power, I would need to persuade you to give me your money. That takes time and doesn’t always work. Everything depends on what you think. But if I can attract you, soft power may prove a far less costly way to get your money. In the long term, honey sometimes trumps sticks.

Likewise, in international politics, the effects of soft power tend to be slow and indirect. We can see the effects of bombs and bullets right away, whereas the attraction of values and culture may be visible only in the long run. But to ignore or neglect these effects would be a serious mistake. Smart political leaders have long understood that values can create power. If I can get you to want what I want, I will not have to force you to do what you do not want to do. If a country represents values that others find attractive, it can economise on the use of sticks and carrots.

The war in Ukraine is bearing out these lessons. The short-run battle has of course been dominated by hard military power. Russian troops swept into the country from Belarus in the north and from Crimea in the south. Ukraine’s ability to protect its capital, Kyiv, and to thwart the invasion from the north was determined by its military effectiveness and the invader’s mistakes.

Russia is now seeking to take Ukraine’s south and east, and it remains to be seen how events will play out in this phase of the war. In the near term, the outcome will be determined by military force—including the equipment being supplied by the United States, NATO countries and others—and by the exercise of hard, coercive economic power. While threats of trade and financial sanctions did not dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching his invasion, the sanctions that have been imposed have had a damaging impact on the Russian economy, and the threat of secondary sanctions has deterred countries like China from assisting Russia militarily.

But more to the point, soft power, too, has already played a role in the conflict. For years, US officials had pressed Germany to abandon the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, warning that it would make Europe more dependent on Russian natural gas, and that its route under the Baltic Sea would weaken Ukraine. Germany refused. But then came the shock of the Russian invasion. Atrocities against civilians have made Russia so unattractive to German public opinion that the government suspended the pipeline.

Similarly, the US had long pressed Germany to honour a NATO commitment to increase its annual defence expenditures to 2% of GDP. Again, Germany had been dragging its heels until the invasion, which forced it to reverse its position almost overnight.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has proved especially adept at wielding soft power. When the US offered to spirit him out of the country, he famously replied that he needed ammunition, not a ride.

Zelensky’s prior experience as a television actor has served him well. With his informal attire and constant communication with Western media and parliaments, he has succeeded in representing Ukraine as an attractive and heroic country. The result was not just Western sympathy but a substantial increase in deliveries of the military equipment that Ukraine needed for the hard-power task at hand.

In addition, the disclosure of Russian atrocities against civilians in places like Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, has reduced Russia’s soft power and reinforced Western sympathies for Ukraine. The longer term effects on Russian soft power remain to be seen. UN member states have already voted to condemn Russia’s actions and to expel it from the UN Human Rights Council, though nearly one-third—including many African countries—abstained.

India, the world’s largest democracy, has refrained from criticising Russia. It does not want to jeopardise its supply of Russian-made military equipment, nor does it want to reinforce Russia’s ties with China, which it sees as its major geopolitical threat. As for China, while it abstained from the UN vote condemning the invasion, it voted against Russia’s removal from the Human Rights Council, and it has lent its formidable media resources to supporting Russia’s propaganda campaign.

How this will play out in the long term will depend in part on the outcome of the war. Sometimes, memories are short. For now, however, Russia and China seem to have suffered a loss of soft power. In the months prior to the invasion, the two countries solidified their axis of authoritarianism, and China proclaimed that the east wind was prevailing over the west wind. Today, that slogan has become much less attractive.

Wars seldom end in military victory so complete that losers simply accept the victors’ terms. The war in Ukraine is unlikely to end that way. Fighting will cease only if some agreement, formal or informal, is reached between the warring parties.

Most speculation about an agreement has focused on strategic, political and territorial issues. What territory, if any, would Ukraine renounce? Would this satisfy Russia? If a separate Ukraine survives, how independent would its government be? Assuming Ukraine could not join NATO or have NATO forces on its territory, what security guarantees would the West offer to ensure Russia doesn’t invade again? When and how would economic sanctions be lifted?

These obstacles to a settlement are daunting enough, but there are other intractable issues—war crimes, reparations and repatriation—that will compel Ukraine and its allies to contemplate difficult compromises.

Russia is committing appalling war crimes in Ukraine and there’s consequently much enthusiasm to pursue Russian criminality by legal means. With ample proof of killing of civilians, Russian forces can probably be shown to have attacked non-military targets deliberately or recklessly on a large scale. Counterclaims by Russia that the killing of civilians was staged or committed by Ukrainians themselves, or that Ukrainian forces were using schools, hospitals and so on for military purposes, simply do not stand up.

Wider allegations have also been mooted, including massive breaches of human rights, genocide and conducting a war of aggression. Yet there are enormous problems with all such charges. Determining or establishing an appropriate forum to hear charges is one, while getting the accused to court is another (though trials may take place in absentia).

A major problem is to determine those against whom charges should be levelled. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself is not immune, as the prosecution of another head of state, Slobodan Milosevic, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia demonstrates. Putin, however, though clearly responsible for setting in train the ‘special military operation’ and its foreseeable consequences, is likely to prove more elusive. The generals and members of the officer corps who directed operations are also open to charges, as are the low-ranking soldiers who actually fired the guns, shells and missiles. Wherever the line is drawn, many of the guilty will escape and this will be obvious to all.

A further dilemma is that the more vigorous the campaign to pursue war crimes charges, the more Russia’s willingness to negotiate will diminish. Russia vehemently denies that it has committed such crimes and will not readily accept that its leaders and its armed forces could face charges at the end of hostilities. However strongly Ukraine and its allies believe war crimes charges are justified, such a stance makes a settlement more problematic. The price of reaching peace may be granting immunity from prosecution for war crimes to a government and military that are as guilty as any in history.

The issue of reparations for the enormous damage Russia has inflicted on life and property in Ukraine has received little attention—so far. Ukraine could justifiably demand recompense for the losses it has suffered. As the innocent victim of aggression it will have the sympathy of many, but it’s hard to imagine that an impoverished Russia would be willing or even able to pay up. On the contrary, it is likely to continue to blame NATO and Ukraine for the war.

At most, Russian assets confiscated by Western and other countries could be diverted to Ukraine or reparations in kind such as gas or oil could be demanded. Private prosecutions might also be launched, though they’d have little chance of success. In the end, however, it is wealthy Western nations that will likely be called upon to foot the bill.

Repatriation issues could also prove thorny. Russia is reported to have moved some 400,000 Ukrainian civilians, including 80,000 children, into its territory. It’s possible Russia will claim they do not wish to return or will use them as bargaining chips in any settlement. The same could apply to Ukrainian citizens living in Russian-occupied territory.

A few small-scale exchanges of prisoners of war have apparently taken place. But problems could arise if captured Russian soldiers don’t wish to be returned to Russia. Would Ukraine be willing to return unwilling Russians if this was a key Russian demand in a settlement? At the same time, Russia may assert that captured Ukrainian soldiers, particularly Russian speakers, do not want to return home. Again, hard choices would have to be made.

War is easily begun, but its settlement creates legal and ethical dilemmas that have to be resolved, compromised or ignored once the shooting stops. Ukraine and its supporters will face distasteful and costly choices. Or the war may drag on indefinitely.

Mariupol is Russia’s theory of victory for its invasion of Ukraine. This strategy aims to break Ukrainian resistance by turning Ukraine’s cities into charnel houses through artillery bombardment and forcing the survivors into submission through a campaign of terror.

It could work. While Russia’s troops lack the ability to decisively defeat the Ukrainian army in the field, weight of numbers may enable them to get close enough to key Ukrainian cities to repeat the Mariupol strategy on a larger scale. Ukraine cannot defend its civilians against overwhelming artillery bombardment.

The West can prevent a Russian victory through atrocity by imposing a red line of its own: a campaign of atrocities will result in direct Western intervention sufficient to ensure that Russia loses. Since Russia has no other path to victory, this red line will—if respected or enforced—force the war into a stalemate and a negotiated peace.

To be respected or enforced, this red line needs to be credible. It will be credible only if it can be enforced and as long as enforcing it when called upon to do so is sensible from a risk–return perspective.

Russia’s principal military advantage lies in its artillery, and Russian forces suffer from poor logistical support. Consequently, a Western aerial campaign that degrades Russia’s artillery and logistics would ensure that Russia cannot win. This aerial campaign wouldn’t require maintaining air supremacy over all of Ukraine all of the time (unlike a no-fly zone). It would simply require getting Western planes close enough to Russian targets to launch their strikes (which rely heavily on stand-off precision-guided munitions).

To prevent this campaign from succeeding, Russia would need to establish a no-fly zone of its own. Based upon the performance of the Russian air force and air defence network to date, trying that will get them slaughtered.

So, this ‘no atrocities’ red line could be enforced. But enforcing it would obviously involve war with Russia (to acknowledge the giant bear in the room). That being the case, would enforcing it ever actually make sense?

The principal argument against any direct Western intervention in Ukraine is that it will create the risk of a nuclear war. And since running that risk can’t possibly make sense, no Western red line in Ukraine will be credible.

If you find that argument persuasive, then I have really bad news for you. The US (along with the UK and France) doesn’t run a ‘zero risk of nuclear war’ policy. The simple fact that the US, UK and France maintain a policy of nuclear deterrence means that we are at risk of a nuclear war with Russia right now. Plausible estimates suggest that the cumulative probability of nuclear war over the next 75 years exceeds 50%.

Short of unilateral nuclear disarmament by the West, then, a ‘no risk of nuclear war’ option is just not on the table.

Instead, the West must decide whether an option is sensible by considering both its immediate effects and its marginal impact on the cumulative long-run probability of nuclear war relative to alternatives.

A ‘no atrocities’ red line will save Ukraine and could well induce Russia to honestly enter into negotiations to end the war. Of course, if Russia pursues an atrocity strategy and the West does intervene, the immediate risk of nuclear war would undoubtedly increase. That said, Matthew Kroenig’s examination of the outcomes of 52 nuclear crises (some of which involved direct conventional clashes) in his book The logic of American nuclear strategy suggests that both sides in these crises behave rationally. And destroying the world to prevent a negotiated settlement to the Ukraine war is not a very rational choice.

However, any immediate increase in the risk of nuclear war that this red line will create must be weighed against the long-run impact on the risk of nuclear war that allowing Russia to triumph would create.

In this world, Russia will know that nuclear blackmail enabled it to win a brutal war against a country in which the West invested enormous amounts of diplomatic and political capital. The lesson that Russia and other hostile regimes will draw is that nuclear blackmail is a carte blanche to pursue revisionist policies. A Russian victory will inevitably lead to both nuclear proliferation and brutal conquests backed by threats of nuclear war made by regimes that believe that the West will always fold in the face of such threats. The cumulative long-run risk of nuclear war in this world is far higher than in the world where the West stops Russia now.

So, while there is no risk-free option for dealing with an expansionist and tyrannical nuclear power, imposing a ‘no atrocities’ red line for Ukraine offers the best prospect of both preventing a second Holodomor and minimising the long-run risk of nuclear war.

The West should declare a ‘no atrocities’ red line now.