Tag Archive for: Russia

What if Putin’s plan for a quick victory in Ukraine had succeeded?

Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t met any of the strategic objectives he alluded to when he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago. In fact, no reasonable person can deny that the war so far has been a complete debacle for Russia.

Still, it’s worth considering the counterfactual. What if Russian forces hadn’t bungled the invasion? Where would we be now if the Ukrainian resistance had collapsed, or if the West had responded not with unity but with confusion and disarray?

Through quick, decisive action by special forces—and perhaps with the help of collaborators on the ground—Russia would have gained control of Kyiv within a day or two, proceeded to install a puppet government and held victory parades. In this scenario, Ukraine’s duly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, most likely would have been murdered by Russian special forces or incarcerated after a swift trial. At best, he would be leading a government in exile from Warsaw or somewhere else.

Meanwhile, the flow of refugees fleeing the country would have been an order of magnitude larger than it was. There would now be perhaps 20 million Ukrainians scattered across Europe and the West, dwarfing all other recent global refugee crises combined.

Aside from a handful of rogue countries, no one would have recognised the puppet authorities in Kyiv. In due time, they would probably simply disappear as Ukraine was incorporated into Russia as a collection of new federal districts. Ukraine as a political entity would have ceased to exist, returning to the status that it held under the Russian imperialism of the 19th century—which seems to be Putin’s model. Still, most of the rest of the world would have continued to recognise a Ukrainian government in exile, and many would be prepared to lend it support for more or less open military operations against the Russian occupiers.

The Russian effort to control Ukraine would have been exceedingly brutal. Judging by what happened in Bucha, Irpin and many other Russian-occupied towns, there would have been summary executions of many thousands—perhaps even tens of thousands—of Ukrainian politicians, journalists, local officials and others. This isn’t merely hypothetical: Russia already had long lists of Ukrainian officials drawn up before it launched the invasion.

Tens—or hundreds—of thousands of other Ukrainians would have been sent to so-called filtration camps, where they would have been subject to interrogations, torture and brutal treatment by Russian security forces. In many cases, children would be separated from their parents and sent to Russia to have their Ukrainian heritage expunged through re-education. Again, we know this because it is precisely what has happened in the few territories that Russia currently occupies.

In this situation, the sanctions against Russia would probably be even more extensive than they already are, because it would have been much more difficult for countries like India and South Africa to justify their continued trade with the aggressor. Also, the direct costs associated with occupying Ukraine would have been enormous. Last September, Putin ordered a massive mobilisation of Russian conscripts following the failure of the initial invasion—and evidently is mobilising many more for a possible spring offensive. But that would have been necessary even in the event of a successful operation, just to hold the country. With Ukrainians continuing to wage an insurgency, maintaining the Russian army’s morale would have grown only more difficult with time.

For the rest of Europe—especially those countries nearer to Ukraine—a successful Russian invasion would have introduced the imminent threat of further aggression against Moldova, Poland or the Baltic states. All these countries would be on full wartime footing, and a substantial number of US and other European forces would be permanently deployed to bolster their defences. The remaining Ukrainian forces would have retreated across the borders with Poland and other neighbouring countries, where they would remain fully determined to continue the fight. Europe today would be on the verge of a much, much larger war.

Putin’s decision to invade was truly insane. His war of aggression has been a massive strategic failure, and it’s bound to get even worse for him. But this is no time for complacency or self-congratulation. Had Russia succeeded, it would have been an unmitigated disaster from every conceivable point of view. Continued support for Ukraine’s defence of its freedom is essential to European security and to the preservation for all people of the bedrock principle of international law—the prohibition of aggressive war.

Mercenaries and massive troop call-ups won’t win Putin’s war

Fresh threats of a major military offensive and the use of mercenaries, many recruited in Russia’s jails, are unlikely to bring victory to Vladimir Putin a year after his invasion of Ukraine, says retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan.

Ryan tells The Strategist that it’s clear Russia wants to launch a major offensive in Ukraine—but there’s less evidence that it can carry out such a campaign. ‘We need to temper our expectations. Size does not imply quality or capability about the Russians.’

Russia has moved trains full of old tanks into the pro-Moscow nation of Belarus, north of Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean it will invade from there, says Ryan. ‘It’s evidence that the Russians are conducting a deception campaign to draw more Ukrainian forces to the border.’

Putin’s mobilisation of men for his war in Ukraine would give Russia some capacity to undertake offensive operations, he says, ‘but it does not give you the ability to do the complex planning and orchestration and execution of large-scale military offensives. So they will be able to undertake some offensive activities in a couple of locations concurrently, maybe. But I think the expectation that the Russians have now built this big army of mobilised troops is just not reality.’

However, Putin is clearly putting a lot of pressure on his military commanders to launch a major offensive, says Ryan. ‘Putin has no military knowledge, as has been very clear over the last year, and he thinks just because he’s mobilised 150,000 troops, all of a sudden that gives him this massive capability to conduct operations to take the provinces he annexed. Once again, he’s demonstrating the massive disconnect between politics and military capacity in the Russian system.’

Days ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force, claimed success in Ukraine’s Soledar area and had himself photographed there with some of his troops in a cave some distance from the front. Ukraine insists it has not been defeated at Soledar. ‘We should be very careful about Russian claims,’ Ryan says. ‘They are desperate for some kind of victory.’

Three weeks ago, the Kremlin announced that the chief of Russia’s general staff, General Valery Gerasimov, had been appointed to lead Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Gerasimov replaced General Sergey Surovikin, who became commander of the operation only in October.

Decision-making in Russia is ‘pretty murky’, says Ryan, and anyone who says they know the exact reasons behind the latest change probably doesn’t. ‘We can speculate on potential reasons. Personally, Putin remains dissatisfied with the pace of progress in Ukraine, and as he comes up to the first anniversary, he wants to show some kind of decisive victory. Even dictators have domestic audiences they must please to ensure that pretenders to the throne aren’t able to get some breathing space,’ he says.

Putin and his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, might well be putting the pieces in place to have a good fall guy for all the disasters of the past year, says Ryan. ‘It has to be someone senior who’s also dispensable—and who’s more senior and dispensable than the commander-in-chief of the military?’

And, says Ryan, there’s clearly palace intrigue going on. ‘The Russian military versus Wagner is a significant issue now, not just on the battlefield, but in Moscow. At the battle for Soledar, you’re seeing Prigozhin basically saying, “This was all Wagner Group. We did it ourselves.” That could make him more powerful, but it could also make him more dangerous to Putin, and more vulnerable to Putin striking out as well. So, I think there’s a whole range of reasons here. I think battlefield reasons are less of an issue. It’s more politics in Moscow than anything else.’

After being used in Russia’s overseas operations in Africa, Syria and elsewhere, the Wagner Group has become extraordinarily powerful, says Ryan. It’s influence in Ukraine is growing and Putin has given it the power to go into Russian prisons, recruit inmates and give them pardons. That’s probably about 80% of the group’s main power now. ‘They have a constituency among young bloggers and others in Russia and, to be fair, Surovikin and the Wagner Group got on reasonably well. They are an alternative source of violence for Putin to use in other scenarios, beyond Ukraine.’

The fighters in the Wagner Group are much better equipped than the troops Putin has mobilised in recent months. They are probably at the equipment level of an elite Russian organisation like the airborne forces, Ryan says. That would give them sufficient small arms, tanks, artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and helicopters to be a fairly powerful combined-arms force on the battlefield.

Could the Wagner Group be a match for Ukrainian forces in a way that the Russian forces are not?

Ryan thinks not. ‘The Wagner Group has the same problem that the Russian army has: what’s the motivation for it being in Ukraine? It will never have the same motivation as the Ukrainian army, so there’s certainly an asymmetry there. And the Ukrainian military is becoming better equipped while the Wagner Group and the Russian army are not. I think that asymmetry will play out.’

In addition, says Ryan, the Russians have used up much of the reserves of equipment created over decades of the Soviet system and they have the industrial capacity to replace some, but not all of it. This has become a battle of industrial systems, and if Europe and the US decide to scale up their commitments, there’s no way Russia could compete industrially.

In the weeks after the invasion, the world saw lines of wrecked and rusted Russian armoured vehicles and the Ukrainians seemed to be knocking them out at will. Now Ukraine is pleading for more tanks. What does this say about the use and the future of armour in battle?

Yes, says Ryan, lots of tanks were knocked out. But lots of helicopters were shot down and many soldiers were killed, yet ‘no one’s talking about the end of helicopters or the end of soldiers,’ he points out.

The Ukraine experience provides no evidence that the era of the tank is over, Ryan says. ‘There is evidence that we will need to change how we use them, that’s obvious. But everything on the battlefield is vulnerable if it’s used stupidly.’

He says he would like to see a debate in Canberra on the future of crewed aircraft penetrating enemy airspace. ‘There’s none of that going on, even though there’s more evidence that crewed aircraft are far more vulnerable now than tanks are. You’re not seeing the Russians fly crewed aircraft over Ukraine, because of the very good air- and missile-defence regime it has.

‘If you are looking at tanks, you need to look at a whole range of battlefield systems. I think attack helicopters are very vulnerable and have an uncertain future. I think crewed fighter aircraft are unlikely to penetrate enemy airspace and complex air-defence regimes in the future. I think that’s an important conversation to have.’

Ryan says the role of autonomous systems should not be overemphasised because over the past two decades investment has gone into autonomy and not counter-autonomy.

‘Smart countries will look at this and see they have counter-autonomy systems that are cheaper than the autonomous systems being used against them. Clever nations will come up with counter-autonomy systems that are cost-effective against those who decide to heavily weigh towards autonomous aircraft or maritime systems.’

Ryan says no army on earth is better at all forms of military operations at the moment than the Ukrainians. ‘When they are begging for more tanks, maybe that should be an indicator that they still have a future.’

Overshadowing the conflict from the start has been the possibility that Putin might resort to using tactical nuclear weapons to overcome a level of Ukrainian determination on the battlefield he didn’t expect.

How likely is that now?

Ryan says Russia’s military doctrine contemplates the use of these weapons in defence of Russian territory and some have proposed that the five areas of Ukraine annexed by Russia now fall under that definition. ‘I think that’s a long bow to draw at this point,’ he says. ‘Even Putin has walked back the nuclear sabre-rattling of earlier in 2022. But you can never take your eye off nuclear weapons because they exist, and when people have them you must consider the implications of their use.’

Ryan believes there’s a very low probability of Russia using nuclear weapons at this stage unless there’s a major incursion into Russia, and ‘the Ukrainians are just not going to do that’.

If Putin does opt to cross that nuclear threshold, Russia is likely to use enough bombs to achieve its military aims, given the international sanctions it would suffer, he says. ‘If they were to use them, they would not, as Michael Kofman has said, just use one.’

The international community would be likely to respond with a whole range of mechanisms. ‘Even the Chinese have made it clear they’re not keen on the Russian use of these weapons to break all kinds of international norms, and the last thing we want is for it to establish a new normal in conventional operations.’

It’s likely, says Ryan, that the Americans have war-gamed many different options on whether Russia might use nuclear weapons, and what might follow if it did. Other nations might opt to obtain nuclear weapons. ‘There’d be follow-on impacts that would be surprising in very unpleasant ways.’

Ten lessons from the return of history

Few will miss 2022, a year defined by a lingering pandemic, advancing climate change, galloping inflation, slowing economic growth and, more than anything else, the outbreak of a costly war in Europe and concerns that violent conflict could soon erupt in Asia. Some of this was anticipated, but much of it was not—and all of it suggests lessons that we ignore at our peril.

First, war between countries, thought by more than a few academics to be obsolete, is anything but. What we’re seeing in Europe is an old-fashioned imperial war, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to extinguish Ukraine as a sovereign, independent entity. His goal is to ensure that a democratic, market-oriented country seeking close ties to the West can’t thrive on Russia’s borders and set an example that might prove attractive to Russians.

Of course, rather than achieving the quick and easy victory he expected, Putin has discovered that his own army is not as powerful, and that his opponents are far more determined, than he—and many in the West—had anticipated. Ten months later, the war continues with no end in sight.

Second, the idea that economic interdependence constitutes a bulwark against war, because no party would have an interest in disrupting mutually beneficial trade and investment ties, is no longer tenable. Political considerations come first. In fact, the European Union’s heavy dependence on Russian energy supplies likely influenced Putin’s decision to invade, by leading him to conclude that Europe wouldn’t stand up to him.

Third, integration, which has animated decades of Western policy towards China, has also failed. This strategy, too, rested on the belief that economic ties—along with cultural, academic and other exchanges—would drive political developments, rather than vice versa, leading to the emergence of a more open, market-oriented China that was also more moderate in its foreign policy.

None of that happened, although it can and should be debated whether the flaw lies with the concept of integration or with the manner in which it was executed. What is clear, however, is that China’s political system is becoming more repressive, its economy is moving in a more statist direction and its foreign policy is growing more assertive.

Fourth, economic sanctions, in many instances the instrument of choice for the West and its partners when responding to a government’s violations of human rights or overseas aggression, rarely deliver meaningful changes in behaviour. Even aggression as blatant and brutal as Russia’s against Ukraine has failed to persuade most of the world’s governments to isolate Russia diplomatically or economically, and while Western-led sanctions may be eroding Russia’s economic base, they haven’t come close to persuading Putin to reverse his policy.

Fifth, the phrase ‘international community’ needs to be retired. There isn’t one. Russia’s veto power in the Security Council has rendered the United Nations impotent, while the recent gathering of world leaders in Egypt to contend with climate change was an abject failure.

There is, moreover, little in the way of a global response to Covid-19 and few preparations in place to deal with the next pandemic. Multilateralism remains essential, but its effectiveness will depend on forging narrower arrangements among like-minded governments. All-or-nothing multilateralism will mostly result in nothing.

Sixth, democracies obviously face their share of challenges, but the problems authoritarian systems face may be even greater. Ideology and regime survival often drive decision-making in such systems, and authoritarian leaders often resist abandoning failed policies or admitting mistakes, lest this be seen as a sign of weakness and feed public calls for greater change. Such regimes must constantly reckon with the threat of mass protest, as in Russia, or the real thing, as we have seen recently in China and Iran.

Seventh, the potential for the internet to empower individuals to challenge governments is far greater in democracies than in closed systems. Authoritarian regimes such as those in China, Russia and North Korea can close off their society, monitor and censor content, or both.

Something closer to a ‘splinternet’—multiple, separate internets—has arrived. Meanwhile, social media in democracies is susceptible to dissemination of lies and misinformation that increase polarisation and make governing far more difficult.

Eighth, there is still a West (a term based more on shared values than on geography), and alliances remain a critical instrument to promote order. The United States and its transatlantic partners in NATO have responded effectively to Russian aggression against Ukraine. The US has also forged stronger ties in the Indo-Pacific to address the growing threat emanating from China, principally through an invigorated Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the US), AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the US) and increased trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea.

Ninth, US leadership continues to be essential. The US cannot act unilaterally in the world if it wants to be influential, but the world will not come together to meet shared security and other challenges if the US is passive or sidelined. American willingness to lead from the front rather than behind is often required.

Lastly, we must be modest about what we can know. It is humbling to note that few of the preceding lessons were predictable a year ago. What we have learned is not just that history has returned, but also that, for better or worse, it retains its ability to surprise us. With that in mind, onward into 2023!

A lousy year for autocrats, theocrats and would-be despots

A pundit’s privilege at year’s end is to pronounce on the progress of presidents and princes and point the paths of power.

Wield a broad-brush broadsword to dub the winners and smite the losers.

The message of hope is that 2022 was a lousy year for autocrats and theocrats and would-be despots.

The hard men tripped over and stuffed up in all sorts of heartening ways.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s great blunder in Ukraine is a cautionary tale of autocratic arrogance. The war he boasted would be won in 10 days has hit 10 months. The would-be conqueror has been branded as a war criminal. He has deeply damaged Russia’s interests and reputation.

Putin quickly found the limits of the ‘no limits’ partnership he announced with China’s Xi Jinping in February. It became a limited-liability deal with Russia a liability. The limited future confronting Russia is as China’s vassal.

Putin is fresh evidence of the dangers autocrats pose to life and peace—their whims can become war. Behold the Putin proof of ‘democratic peace’ theory: democracies are less likely to go to war because of institutional checks and balances. And because of the power of the people, democracies kill far fewer of their own people than authoritarian regimes.

The power of the people confronted China’s surveillance state with the largest and most politically charged protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Xi should have been basking in his other ‘no limits’ moment this year, the Chinese Communist Party congress where he became emperor for life. No term limits for him. Yet the tides beat against Xi. China’s Covid-19 reckoning is the immediate crisis. The middle-income trap snaps. The demographic reckoning looms. Debate rages about whether we’re approaching ‘peak China’.

Xi’s junking of collective leadership took me back to a key judgement made in 2003 by one of Australia’s great China scholars, Ross Terrill. Surveying the CCP as the latest in the line of dynasties, he wrote: ‘Legitimacy and succession problems were the two fundamental problems of the Chinese polity.’

Xi has smashed the succession process and fractured the party’s ‘social contract’ with the people.

The Terrill judgement preys on Xi: ‘Still today, in the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese autocracy is without an answer to the challenges—made more acute by an international environment that is increasingly democratic—of legitimacy and succession. In truth, legitimacy and succession must always be time bombs in a dictatorship.’ In 2022, the ticking got louder.

Legitimacy leaks, too, from Iran’s theocratic regime. Demonstrations have erupted in every corner of the country—1.6 million battles or protests in 130,000 places. Protest movements as deadly as Iran’s often end in revolution or civil war.

The headline ‘lifting the veil’ has many meanings for Iran’s clerics, as the regime dithers about whether to disband the morality police who enforce the mandatory wearing of hijabs. The symbol of the struggle is women taking off their headscarves in public or even burning their hijabs.

In a tough year for would-be despots, former US president Donald Trump took hits. Trump’s post on 3 December declared that even the US Constitution should not stand in his way: ‘A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “founders” did not want, and would not condone, False and Fraudulent elections!’

So, throw out the constitution and annul the 2020 election. US voters (‘we the people’) have two years to ponder whether Trump should ever again hold power. Because he’s demonstrated that if he does get power again, he won’t let it go next time. Never letting go is what autocrats do.

Across the Americas, in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, the US and Peru, ‘the guardrails of democracy’ have held, James Bosworth writes: ‘Institutions can restrain populist leaders who abuse their authority. Hyper-presidentialism, in which the executive can do whatever it pleases, is not guaranteed. Checks and balances can work.’

A tough year for tyranny throws contrasts with the power of its opposite—democracy.

The Putin proof points to a unique feature of democracy’s software: a leader and a government can be removed without violence. With a simple vote, the people approve or punish; then, at the same instant, they set a new course. Tested repeatedly for centuries, the software offers an extraordinary combination of flexibility and strength.

Angst for autocrats should start the pushback against the ‘global expansion of authoritarian rule’. Freedom House’s 2022 report charts 16 years of democratic decline:

Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. In countries with long-established democracies, internal forces have exploited the shortcomings in their systems, distorting national politics to promote hatred, violence, and unbridled power. Those countries that have struggled in the space between democracy and authoritarianism, meanwhile, are increasingly tilting toward the latter. The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.

As the authoritarian model shows its flaws, the Churchillian truth is burnished anew: ‘[D]emocracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.’ The joy of this truth is its nod to the clash and confusion of the democratic contest as well as the freedoms.

The line that ‘The best argument against democracy is a five–minute conversation with the average voter’ is also credited to Winston Churchill. But the great man was usually positive about voters while despairing at democracy’s slowness in confronting threats. The politician’s ache at the voters’ lash is expressed in Churchill’s wonderful line, ‘Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets’—and the old warrior certainly knew how dangerous a place a Cabinet could be.

Autocracies proclaim their strength but their foundations are weak—the problems of legitimacy and succession and how to change a leader who veers towards disaster.

Democracy is loud and messy. Certainly when compared to the ‘order’ despots always promise. But democracy’s messy combination of flexibility and strength confers great power on the people and the government they create.

A lousy year for autocrats is a good moment for people and freedom.

Russia’s war on Ukraine: a view from the Czech Republic

President Vladimir Putin dared to invade Ukraine because he was confident that a large majority of Russians would back his attack. And removing the Russian autocrat would probably not bring the war to a swift end.

These assessments were delivered in Canberra by Vaclav Malik, a long-time Czech intelligence officer who is now a senior analyst with the European Values Center for Security Policy, a Prague-based non-government think tank.

Malik believes that if Putin isn’t repelled in Ukraine, he will come after other nations including Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic. ‘They are all vulnerable.’

He believes the problem is bigger than Putin. ‘It is not Putin’s war,’ Malik says in an interview with The Strategist. ‘It’s Russia’s war. Even if you get rid of Putin, the war will go on. And Putin is using the sentiment in Russian society. If there was no hunger for the war, or if they were not eager to conquer, especially Ukraine, he would not dare to do that. You can’t start such a war if you’re not one hundred per cent sure the population is behind you.’

Despite the casualties suffered by poorly equipped Russian forces, support for the war remains high among Russians—and not just among Putin’s messianic supporters, says Malik. Strong support is clear in social media traffic within Russia, Christmas greeting cards celebrating Putin’s ‘special military operation’, and other sources of information.

The Free Russia Foundation, consisting largely of political exiles, said in May that all Russians must accept responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by their authorities. ‘Even the Russian opposition accepts that “we are all guilty”,’ says Malik.

Russians originally backed Putin because they regarded this as a campaign to conquer Ukraine and get rid of ‘Nazis’, Malik says. Now they continue to support the war despite humiliating defeats because they believe it is them against the West. ‘It’s this fallen empire and nostalgia to be an empire again. That’s why there is a huge support.’

Putin is prepared to wage a long war of attrition, and because of battlefield failures he’s spreading the blame to his generals and other political leaders including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Another target for blame is General Sergey Surovikin, who was recently made commander of Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. ‘He’s creating a pool of people responsible for an unsuccessful war.’

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has been charged with shifting Russia’s economy to a war footing and Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, oversees troop mobilisation.

Neither side releases casualty figures, but, according to various estimates, between 78,000 and 100,000 Russians have been killed so far. The US has estimated that 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed.

Malik expects Putin to order another wave of mobilisation, no later than March. Russia has an estimated 145 million people, so conscripting another 300,000 is nothing, he says.

Despite Russia’s losses, Malik doesn’t see any likelihood of a military coup in the near term. And Shoigu, who controls the army, is Putin’s close friend. There was, of course, a precedent in 1917 when dissatisfied soldiers returned from the war against Germany and organised the socialist revolution. ‘So you cannot exclude it, but I believe the probability is low,’ Malik says.

Russia’s many security agencies compete, so there’s little likelihood of them uniting against Putin, he says. Even if they do unite, any new administration will struggle to establish legitimacy in the face of agencies protecting Putin.

Malik doesn’t doubt Ukraine will fight on through winter. Soldiers have been supplied with winter clothing, much of it from Canada. ‘When you check pictures of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, you see the huge difference in how they’re equipped for winter.

‘In Russia, it’s impossible to get winter clothes for the soldiers. They’ve signed an agreement with North Korea to provide them with some kind of clothing, which is crazy. They’ve even asked Turkey to provide thousands of sets of winter clothing. The Russians are just not ready for it, but the Ukrainians definitely are with all the necessary equipment.’

Ukraine is determined not to negotiate, says Malik. ‘They want to fight while they feel they have momentum. The leaders in Kyiv are convinced that if they agree to talks, Putin will use the respite to prepare a new offensive.’

A pause for talks would just be time given to Putin to produce more tanks and continue his aggression, says Malik. ‘So, they are absolutely against any kind of negotiations unless Russia agrees to pull back to the borders of, not 2014, but 1991.’ That would include Russia returning Crimea to Ukraine.

Malik believes the war will continue until at least the middle of 2023.

Asked how Putin might escalate his attacks, Malik says Russia still has stockpiles of ground-attack missiles, as well as air-defence missiles that could be used against ground targets. He doesn’t believe Putin will use nuclear weapons at this stage.

And despite Ukraine’s determination to fight, Putin’s massive attacks on its energy infrastructure have placed the country on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. ‘Every week it’s getting worse. There are no spare parts for the transformer stations. The electricity grid is disconnected from those in the EU. Russia is targeting even the entry points connecting Ukrainian power lines with European transmission operators to stop them exporting electricity to Ukraine. This will be a very difficult time.’

Malik says Surovikin use the same strategy when he commanded Russian forces in Syria. ‘They’ll take out the critical infrastructure, attack civilians and use the time they have to try to build up desperation in the Ukrainians.’

Ukraine is getting ready for that, says Malik. Some of the population is likely to go to neighbouring countries for the worst of the winter.

During the last mobilisation, Putin put at least 250,000 men into uniform and immediately threw around 70,000 of them into the fighting, mainly in Donetsk to try to stop the Ukrainian offensive.

‘Those people were slaughtered by the Ukrainians because they were not trained, not equipped, just with a Kalashnikov and two magazines.’

The rest are now being trained, some of them in Belarus, which still has non-commissioned officers and higher ranking officers available, Malik says. Russia’s more senior soldiers are on the front lines preparing for a spring offensive. ‘They will try to exhaust Ukraine by killing its manpower, and to exhaust the West through inflation and high energy prices.’

Energy shortages are already having a negative impact on many European countries. ‘Russia is using this, organising protests through proxies.’

Malik says that when almost 70,000 people protested in Prague, it was clearly a pro-Russian demonstration. ‘The organisers are the usual suspects, we know, who are connected to Russian influence groups. This is the state of the game now, this kind of escalation.’

So, will Ukraine and its European neighbours persevere?

They have no choice, says Malik. ‘It’s not about if they can; they must.’

If Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky opted to negotiate to stop the war, it would be difficult for him to survive politically, he says. ‘They must continue. The red lines are crossed. The West is also heavily invested in this process.

‘It’s difficult, but it’s necessary; otherwise, we are next.’

Putin, he says, will only give up the war when he’s sure he can survive any deal. ‘He started it to get rid of Ukraine as a positive example of Westernisation of a former Soviet Union country. It was a good example of a positive impact on former Soviet states, and he hated it. He’s been afraid that people at home will ask him, “How come Ukraine has nothing, but their standard of living is three times higher than ours, and we have all the natural resources?”

‘This was a pre-emptive attack and that’s why he insists also on destroying the critical infrastructure, to annihilate Ukraine so the Russians are happy and see that they have a better life than those in Ukraine. It’s about his political survival, political and economical of course.’

Malik says Ukraine and its allies appreciate Australia’s help.

But there’s also much at stake in the Indo-Pacific. ‘China is watching closely and is surprised that the West stayed united and is protecting and helping Ukrainians. In terms of any Chinese adventure against Taiwan, it’s a good deterrent. If we now back down, it’ll send a bad message to Beijing.’

The ballooning costs of the Ukraine war

The Ukraine conflict is exposing the massive costs that accompany a relatively small and contained war—one in which the military action is entirely confined to one of the poorest nations in Europe.

Although Ukraine has a population of 45 million, the annual output of its economy before the war was just a little larger than that of New South Wales, and that’s after accounting for differences in purchasing power of the two currencies. Pre-war Ukrainian incomes were on a par with those of Paraguay or Fiji.

The OECD estimates that the world economy in 2023 will be US$2.8 trillion smaller than was estimated in December 2021, before Russian troops and tanks swarmed into neighbouring Ukraine. It is a cost estimate that’s about five times the entire size of the Ukraine’s pre-war economy.

The costs—both financial and human—are obviously monumental for Ukraine itself. The US military estimates that 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in addition to perhaps 100,000 Ukrainian military casualties. About 6.8 million Ukrainians have left the country, while around 6.6 million are internally displaced.

An analysis of the economic costs conducted jointly by the Ukraine government, the World Bank and the European Commission estimated that the direct damage was just under US$100 billion. Damage to housing accounted for US$39 billion, to transport infrastructure, US$30 billion, to commerce and industry, US$10 billion and to energy, US$3 billion. The analysis was released in August, before the intense Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that began last month.

In addition to the direct damage, there are indirect losses stemming from lost agricultural production, land contamination and dislocation of the population. The total losses reach just over US$250 billion. The cost of rebuilding and decontamination reach US$350 billion, with the most urgent needs costing an estimated US$105 billion.

There has been significant Western budgetary support for Ukraine, in addition to the flow of military equipment. Analysis by the German Kiel Institute estimates that bilateral financial support reached US$37 billion between January and October, while humanitarian aid totalled US$15 billion. Military aid was US$40 billion. The US has provided 44% of the budget support, 66% of the humanitarian aid and 71% of the military aid. President Joe Biden’s administration asked Congress this month for a further US$37 billion in emergency aid.

The aid still leaves a massive budgetary gap. Ukraine’s tax revenue has fallen by 27%, yet its spending, including on the military, has risen by 40%. The government has been issuing war bonds to help finance its military, but it has also sought direct funding from the Ukraine National Bank. By the end of June, central bank support of the government had reached US$7.7 billion. Direct funding is contributing to inflation of 30%, which makes it harder to sell the bonds.

The cost of the war to Russia is minor by comparison—indeed the Russian government has sought to project a business-as-usual picture of life for the average Russian citizen. The International Monetary Fund has upgraded its estimate of Russia’s economy, and now predicts a fall of GDP this year of only 3.4%, compared with an estimated drop of 8.5% in April this year. (The IMF has made no forecast for Ukraine, but private estimates are for a 30% to 40% fall this year.)

However, the cost of the war to Russia is growing and will eventually have a major impact on Russian living standards. In the short term, there’s the direct budgetary burden of supporting a major military operation, and Western sanctions are squeezing both exports and imports.

The Russian government last week raised the equivalent of US$13.6 billion in bonds to help fund the military effort. UK Defence Intelligence updates note that Russia’s declared ‘national defence’ spending for 2023 has increased by more than 40% to the equivalent of US$84 billion from estimates made in 2021, before the war.

The impact of sanctions is showing in unexpected ways. The lack of heavy-duty ball bearings, all of which were imported from Sweden and the US, has forced Russian railways to withdraw 10,000 rail freight wagons from service. Russia’s National Transport Company has warned that the national fleet of 200,000 wagons is at risk. Rail freight is a pivotal economic service in such a vast country.

Russian motor vehicle production, which was just under three million units in 2021, dropped to just 281,000 units in the first half of this year. Mobile phones, computers and whitegoods are all in short supply. The cancellation of aircraft leases and maintenance contracts has resulted in the collapse of domestic aviation. Other signs of economic pressure include a 33% increase in bankruptcies and a 40% fall in consumer borrowing.

The loss of access to Western technology will have long-term effects. At the consumer level, Russians have lost access to Spotify, Airbnb, eBay, PayPal and a host of games providers. South Korea’s Samsung and Taiwan’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company have both stopped supplying Russia. More fundamentally, Russia has lost access to Western software critical for a vast range of business operations. Research collaborations with Western counterparties have also stopped. China will fill some of this gap—Huawei can provide smartphones and communications infrastructure.

The energy crisis precipitated by the Ukraine invasion has enabled Russia to maintain export revenue in the face of declining export volumes. Russia’s energy exports were not initially covered by Western sanctions. Russia attempted to use Europe’s dependence on its gas as leverage, unilaterally cutting gas flows ahead of the northern winter in the hope of undermining public support for Ukraine. Russian gas supplies to Europe have dropped to 20% of pre-war levels.

The major European nations appear to have this winter’s needs covered. Germany this month opened its first import terminal for liquefied natural gas, and a further expansion in its ability to use US LNG is scheduled over the next year. The G7 nations will impose sanctions on Russian oil from 5 December, banning the supply of insurance and trade finance to ships carrying Russian oil, unless it has been loaded at below a G7-specified price cap. There have been warnings that the plan could backfire if Russia refuses to sell oil on these terms.

The biggest long-term cost to Russia will come from the loss of its European Union market which, before the war, accounted for 37.9% of its exports and 36.5% of its imports. Having used its gas exports as a form of economic warfare, it is hard to imagine Russia gaining the trust of European customers again. Despite spanning half the globe, Russia is overwhelmingly oriented, both economically and population-wise, towards Europe, not Asia.

For the world at large, the biggest costs from the Ukraine conflict come from rising energy and grain costs, particularly the US$2 trillion transfer of wealth from consumers and business energy users to fossil-fuel producers. The shifts have added to already intense inflationary pressure and contributed to the rapid rises in official interest rates that are squeezing the global economy.

Ukraine’s drone raid on Russian naval base was tactically innovative but not revolutionary

Last week the naval war in Ukraine came back to international attention. In a theatre that first defined by the Russian assault against Snake Island in the early stages of the invasion and then by Ukraine’s sinking of the cruiser Moskva, Russian sources report a new blow. This time, Ukrainian surface and air drones conducted a daring raid on the Crimean port of Sevastopol where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based.

Authorities in Moscow claim that the uncrewed capabilities involved in the attack were all neutralised, though they also admitted minor damage to a minesweeper and to harbour defences. With limited information available on overall battle damage, unlike in the Moskva’s case, the extent of the Ukrainian success this time remains unclear.

Nonetheless, unverified video footage of the events suggests that the attack was much more consequential than Russia claims. Images show uncrewed surface vessels reaching their targets, including the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship since the Moskva was sunk, the frigate Admiral Makarov. Images on Russian social media in the aftermath of the raid show the frigate damaged at sea. If confirmed, this would indeed be a significant result.

The attack was conducted solely by drones, which in turn prompted analysts to speak of a revolution and ‘a new age’ in naval warfare. In a technological triumph of David versus Goliath, small and affordable Ukrainian drones would seemingly be able to destabilise the more powerful and capable Russian fleet. Is this really the case? Do recent events allow us to infer that technology is yet again changing the character of naval warfare?

One should resist the temptation of conflating the revolutionary character of what drones may or may not have achieved. Tactically, Ukrainian maritime exploits were inventive and innovative. Operationally, they were audacious. However, they did not amount to a revolution. Crucially, this technologist focus obfuscates the more important observation that events as we know them may actually indicate a shift in the Ukrainian operational approach to the maritime theatre.

Uncrewed surface vessels to strike a fleet, whether at sea or in the safety of a naval base or a sheltering inlet, are a long-established choice in naval warfare. They conceptually draw upon the use of fire ships from the age of sail. These were small, uncrewed vessels packed with explosives—or fire—which were released against surface combatants to damage, disable or, in the most successful case, sink them.

The Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels in this raid add a contemporary expression to the tradition of the fire ships of ages past. They are innovative solutions to an established practice. Indeed, they speak to the Ukrainian forces’ increasing proficiency in integrating affordable, off-the-shelf military- and non-military-grade technology to exploit asymmetry in capabilities with Russia to maximum effect. If anything, these vessels are a powerful reminder of the crucial primacy of the people behind any piece of technology in imagining its military applications.

This leads to the real operational significance of the Sevastopol raid. Ukrainian forces conducted an offensive operation, striking at the heart of where the Black Sea Fleet felt the safest, its main base. This audacious move, if it weren’t an isolated event, would indicate a shift to assertive operations in line with the wider Ukrainian push to regain control of lost territories, including Crimea.

Previously, notably in the case of the sinking of the Moskva, Ukrainian forces could only deny their opponent freedom of movement across the Black Sea. Now, they are seemingly ready to actively seek out the enemy at a place of their choosing. Such a shift will come at increasing potential costs, with Ukrainian vessels such as tugboats, which are believed to have been involved in deploying drones, likely to become Russian targets.

This naturally leads to another conclusion. Technology does affect the conduct of operations, but sound strategy is crucial to make the most of its effectiveness, especially when one party possesses fewer capabilities. This latest Ukrainian success—once fully appraised—does not undermine or invalidate the value that modern and advanced capabilities possess in shaping a maritime theatre.

Indeed, the Russian navy in the Black Sea is today less safe and secure, but it still retains a capacity to influence the dynamics in this theatre. The naval war in the Black Sea is far from over, and it might be punctuated by more frequent attacks on both sides. Russia’s superiority in this theatre, though, is especially important because of its capacity to influence the unimpeded shipping of grain, and the use of ports and ships under Ukrainian control.

Thus, as tempting as the quest for silver technological bullets to argue for revolutions in naval warfare is, it is all but premature to claim at this stage that this raid was such a new occurrence. Several pieces of the operational puzzle are missing. The lack of evidence about Russian passive and active measures to defend against drones are of particular relevance, especially since images of similar uncrewed vessels washing up in the vicinity of Sevastopol circulated already in September.

It would appear, instead, that the Clausewitzian trinity of skill, luck and audacity delivered a blow—a mix hardly unheard of in naval history. Crucially, though, months from now, the raid on Sevastopol might very well be remembered for what it told us about where Ukraine was aiming to go operationally, rather than where technology leads naval warfare.

India’s Russian arms imbroglio

The abysmal failure of Russia’s weaponry in President Vladimir Putin’s brutal and ill-conceived war on Ukraine should compel a reconsideration of India’s traditional overdependence on Russian armaments.

A dossier compiled by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence reveals that Russia’s weapons, many of which have been retrieved from the battlefield, have been ineffective, obsolete and unreliable, and don’t meet the requirements of modern warfare. Its armoured vehicles and helicopters have wilted under fire, and its missiles have missed around two-thirds of their targets.

The situation was made more dire after the US-led West imposed economic sanctions on most Russian arms vendors following Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in southern Ukraine in 2014. These punitive measures were ‘massively expanded’ upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, when the Western powers added a significant number of individuals and entities to the sanctions list and adopted unprecedented measures with the aim of significantly weakening Russia’s economic base and depriving it of critical technologies and markets. These sanctions are expected to remain in place for years, if not decades.

Clearly, India’s policy of not recognising unilateral sanctions, meaning those not imposed by the United Nations, cannot stand up to the might of the US. American sanctions carry the heft of the US dollar in international finance, and any country, corporation or other entity contravening them can be blocked from the US financial system and, by extension, from global markets.

India and other buyers of Russian arms may also be drawn under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), the US law that provides for economic and financial penalties against any nation transacting on arms with Russia, Iran, Venezuela or North Korea.

Falling foul of CAATSA could cripple India’s defences by cutting off access to international arms markets. One casualty could well be the country’s newly commissioned 43,000-tonne indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, whose aviation facility complex was to be supplied by one of the sanctioned Russian companies, Nevskoe Design Bureau.

These issues may be compounded by the fact that more than 450 foreign-made components have been detected in Russian weapons recovered in Ukraine, originally sourced from American, European and Asian companies. A recent study indicates that 27 of the recovered weapon systems, ranging from cruise missiles to air-defence systems, relied primarily on Western components.

Russian air-defence systems and cruise missiles are very much part of India’s arsenal, as are a range of other crucial systems that arm its three services. However, with the US, France and Israel aggressively building largely transactional partnerships with India, Russia’s share of India’s arms imports declined from 69% in 2012–16 to 46% in 2017–21. India accounted for the largest share of major arms imports, of 11%, in the 2017–21 period.

Other countries evidently have also diversified their arms imports. Russia’s arms exports fell by 26% between 2012–16 and 2017–21, and its share of global arms exports decreased from 24% to 19%. Russia delivered major arms to 45 nations in 2017–21.

Russia has had to suspend multimillion-dollar arms contracts with other nations, either because of the sanctions or in order to replenish losses of combat equipment in what it calls its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.

Its overstretched arms production has caused a delay in the setting up of an Indo-Russia joint venture for manufacturing more than 600,000 AK-203 assault rifles costing over US$607 million in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Similarly delayed has been the delivery of four follow-on Talwar-class guided-missile frigates for the Indian Navy, two of them to be constructed in Kaliningrad and two in Mumbai. Russia has also deferred supplies to India of systems and spares for its Kilo-class submarines and its MiG-29 fighters and Mi-17 transport helicopters. Also delayed are five S-400 Triumf missile-defence systems.

Uncertainty in arms supply led India to suspend negotiations with Rosoboronexport, the export arm of Russian defence conglomerate Rostec, and its sister concern, Russian Helicopters, for 10 more Kamov Ka-31 helicopters costing US$520 million. The Indian Navy currently operates 14 Ka-31s, four of which were inducted in 2003, five in 2005 and five in 2013.

A superpower that had ushered in the Cold War era, Russia is now seeing its sphere of influence crumble as its forces persevere with a dispiriting battle and Putin tactlessly threatens the nuclear option as the military advantage slips from his grasp.

These issues have been testing India’s foreign policy, which has been guided by panchsheel, Hindi for five principles—respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence.

India seemed to have overlooked them all when it abstained from criticising Russia at both the UN and Quad forums. Prime Minister Narendra Modi heartened the US-led West, though, when he told Putin at their meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan in September that the ‘era of war’ had ended. The Russian leader, however, lauded the comment as an expression of concern about the war. Yet, within a month, at the 13 October emergency special session of the UN General Assembly, India had abstained from voting on a resolution condemning and rejecting Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, when 143 states voted for the proposal.

It’s unclear whether India will escape CAATSA if it accepts delivery from Nevskoe Design Bureau of the aviation facility complex for INS Vikrant that’s scheduled for the end of next year. The bureau was among 29 entities of Russia’s defence establishment sanctioned by the US State Department in April. An aviation facility complex is a crucial assembly that supports an aircraft carrier’s air wing, and without its integrated airpower the Vikrant will remain essentially a floating hull.

India is nevertheless hopeful of following through on the deal in the same way it managed to secure a CAATSA waiver in 2018 on its US$5.3 billion order with Russia for the five S-400 Triumfs. In July, the US House of Representatives passed an India-specific waiver under CAATSA by 330 to 99, while sanctioning Turkey, a NATO member, under the act for the purchase of the same Russian systems.

A country like India, however, can’t procure vital armaments on the basis of hope. Yet it appears that India’s reliance on foreign arms and ammunition will remain high. Modi’s keenness to boost domestic manufacturing of defence systems has been creating gaps, and Indian industry is not yet in position to produce high-technology military systems that can prove to be appropriate import substitutes.

The stress on indigenisation is preventing India’s air force, army and navy from importing certain critical weapons systems to replace ageing ones, leaving the country critically short of helicopters by 2026 and with an enormous shortfall of fighter jets by 2030. The prime minister’s proposal mandates between 30% and 60% of homemade components, depending on the nature of the military purchase and where it is sourced from.

What caused the war in Ukraine?

Russia’s war in Ukraine is the most disruptive conflict that Europe has seen since 1945. While many in the West see a war of choice by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he says that NATO’s 2008 decision in favour of eventual Ukrainian membership brought an existential threat to Russia’s borders, and still others trace the conflict back to the Cold War’s end and the failure of the West to support Russia adequately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How can we discern the origins of a war that may last for years?

World War I occurred more than a century ago, yet historians still write books debating what caused it. Did it start because a Serbian terrorist assassinated an Austrian archduke in 1914, or did it have more to do with ascendant German power challenging Britain, or rising nationalism throughout Europe? The answer is ‘all of the above, plus more’. But war was not inevitable until it actually broke out in August 1914, and even then it was not inevitable that four years of carnage had to follow.

To sort things out, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate and immediate causes. Think of building a bonfire: piling up the logs is a deep cause, adding kindling and paper is an intermediate cause, and striking a match is a precipitating cause. But even then, a bonfire is not inevitable. A strong wind may extinguish the match, or a sudden rainstorm may have soaked the wood. As historian Christopher Clark notes in his book about the origins of WWI, The sleepwalkers, in 1914, ‘the future was still open—just’. Poor policy choices were a crucial cause of the catastrophe.

In Ukraine, there is no question that Putin lit the match when he ordered Russian troops to invade on 24 February. Like the leaders of the great powers in 1914, he probably believed that it would be a short, sharp war with a quick victory, somewhat like the Soviet Union’s takeover of Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968. Airborne troops would capture the airport and advancing tanks would seize Kyiv, removing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and installing a puppet government.

Putin told the Russian people that he was conducting a ‘special military operation’ to ‘denazify’ Ukraine and prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s borders. But given how seriously he miscalculated, we must ask what he was really thinking. We know from Putin’s own writings, and from various biographers like Philip Short, that the intermediate cause was a refusal to see Ukraine as a legitimate state.

Putin lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he had served as a KGB officer, and, owing to Ukraine and Russia’s close cultural affinities, he considered Ukraine a phony state. He also thought Ukraine had been ungrateful, offending Russia with its 2014 Maidan uprising, which removed a pro-Russian government, and its deepening of trade relations with the European Union.

Putin wants to restore what he calls the ‘Russian world’, and, as he has approached the age of 70, he has been thinking about his legacy. Earlier leaders, like Peter the Great, had expanded Russian power in their own time. Given the weakness of the Western sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Putin seems to have asked himself: Why not go further?

The prospect of NATO enlargement was a lesser intermediate cause. While the West did create a NATO–Russia Council through which Russian military officers could attend some NATO meetings, Russia expected more from the relationship. And while, in the early 1990s, US Secretary of State James Baker had told his Russian counterpart that NATO would not expand, historians like Mary Sarotte have shown that Baker quickly reversed his verbal assurance, which never did have a written agreement behind it.

When US President Bill Clinton discussed the matter with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, there was grudging Russian acceptance of some NATO expansion, but expectations on both sides differed. NATO’s decision at its 2008 summit in Bucharest to include Ukraine (and Georgia) as potential future members simply confirmed Putin’s worst expectations about the West.

Still, while NATO’s decision in 2008 may have been misguided, Putin’s change of attitude predated it. He had helped the United States following the September 11, 2001, attacks, but his 2007 Munich Security Conference speech shows that he had already soured on the West before the Bucharest summit. The possibility of NATO expansion thus was merely one of several intermediate causes—one made less salient soon after the Bucharest summit by France and Germany’s announcements that they would veto Ukraine’s NATO membership.

Behind all this were the remote or deep causes that followed the end of the Cold War. Initially, there was a great deal of optimism, in both Russia and the West, that the Soviet Union’s collapse would allow for the rise of democracy and a market economy in Russia. In the early years, Clinton and Yeltsin made a serious effort to develop good relations. But while the US provided loans and economic assistance to the government of the acting Russian prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, Russians expected much more.

After seven decades of central planning, a sudden transformation into a flourishing market economy was impossible for Russia. Efforts to force through such rapid changes could not fail to produce enormous disruptions, corruption and extreme inequality. While some oligarchs and politicians became wildly rich from the rapid privatisation of state-owned assets, most Russians’ standard of living declined.

At Davos in February 1997, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Boris Nemtsov (later assassinated), reported that no one in Russia was paying taxes, and that the government was behind on paying wages. Then, in September of the next year, the liberal parliamentarian Grigory Yavlinsky told a dinner at the Harvard Kennedy School that ‘Russia is completely corrupt and Yeltsin has no vision’. Unable to cope with the political fallout of deteriorating economic conditions, Yeltsin, then in declining health, turned to Putin, the unknown ex-KGB agent, to help him restore order.

None of this means that the Ukraine war was inevitable. But it did become increasingly probable over time. On 24 February 2022, Putin miscalculated and lit the match that started the conflagration. It is hard to see him putting it out.

Why the US nuclear umbrella underpins non-proliferation

On 27 September 1991, US President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation to announce a milestone in nuclear disarmament, which included the full withdrawal of shorter-range nuclear weapons—so-called tactical, theatre or non-strategic weapons—from US Navy vessels and foreign countries, albeit with some caveats in Europe.

Bush’s bold action rested on the assumption of an improving strategic environment, including reciprocal arms reductions by the Soviet Union, which were continued by Russia, Ukraine and other Soviet successor states for a while after 1991. It also assumed that the remaining US nuclear forces would be sufficient to deter an attack on the US or its allies, including Australia. Today, Chinese and Russian actions are undermining those assumptions, with dangerous implications.

Confronting the growing risk of nuclear war, Australia is rightly working with Japan and others to rejuvenate global momentum on non-proliferation and disarmament. This is vital work. But such efforts can only succeed if the international community recognises the positive role that the US nuclear umbrella—more formally called extended deterrence—continues to play in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and calls out destabilising conduct by China and Russia.

To appreciate the contribution to non-proliferation made by the US nuclear umbrella, we need to understand its purpose and form.

Early in the Cold War, forward-deployed nuclear weapons were focused on deterrence and warfighting, compensating for the numerical superiority of communist armies. As Soviet capabilities improved and more countries became nuclear powers, the purpose of the US nuclear umbrella expanded to include non-proliferation.

In essence, the US preferred to protect key allies like Japan rather than risk them developing their own arsenals. US and allied interests broadly aligned because all sides feared a multipolar arms race in which small, independent arsenals could be vulnerable to pre-emptive first strikes, while the custodial risks of accidental or unauthorised use were multiplied. Building independent nuclear capabilities would have also strained allies’ economic and financial resources. It would also have been unpalatable to the public in some countries, like Japan. The same logic applies now.

Australia is an interesting case in point. Having cooperated with Britain’s nuclear program, Australia engaged in a renewed debate about developing its own capability after China’s first nuclear test in 1964. In the end, the credibility of US security guarantees helped inform Canberra’s decision to eschew pursuit of nuclear weapons and ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1973.

The protection-for-abstinence bargain propping up the nuclear umbrella relies on allies and adversaries believing that the US has the will to risk nuclear retaliation against the homeland to defend distant friends. Even today, a handful of NATO allies host small quantities of sharable US nuclear weapons on their territories to improve the credibility of deterrence.

But nuclear sharing is a European exception. In the Indo-Pacific, Bush’s announcement ended an era in which US nuclear weapons had been present in allied territories for decades, either as deployments on land or in transit on US Navy vessels. Following earlier withdrawals in the 1970s from Okinawa (ahead of its full return to Japan), Taiwan and the Philippines, the US removed its last nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991. Managing these forward deployments strained public trust and involved levels of secrecy and backroom dealings that are still emerging in the archives.

It’s possible that contingencies still exist for redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to forward locations in the Indo-Pacific. But, in the main, South Korea and Japan put their faith in public proclamations that the US has the means and will to project nuclear force from afar in their defence, illustrated by the periodic appearance in the region of US nuclear-capable bombers. Behind the scenes, bilateral consultations on extended deterrence thrash out details and align expectations.

Successive Australian defence white papers dating back to 1994 make clear that Australia also expects US nuclear protection, even if Canberra seems less concerned than Seoul or Tokyo about soliciting US assurances in public. Australia banned the stationing of nuclear weapons on its territory under the Treaty of Raratonga in 1986. However, the periodic operation of US bombers from Royal Australian Air Force Base Darwin and longstanding shared access to intelligence and communication facilities in Australia, including Pine Gap and North West Cape, attest to an implicit quid pro quo that the price of coverage by the US nuclear umbrella includes integration in nuclear planning and therefore the likelihood of being targeted. The same is true for Japan and South Korea.

Despite the implicit costs, the US nuclear umbrella has remained attractive to allies because the alternatives have seemed unpalatable, at least during the phase after the Cold War when the risk of nuclear war felt relatively low.

Japan and South Korea are among the countries sometimes called latent nuclear powers because they probably possess the means to develop nuclear capabilities relatively promptly. This would be harder for Australia but not impossible, at least in theory. In practice, the economic, legal and political barriers to independently going nuclear remain prohibitive, and the Australian public is set against it. As strategists like Hugh White have argued, the main driver for Australia or other US allies in the Indo-Pacific to overcome these hurdles in pursuit of nuclear weapons would be a breakdown of trust in US protection.

In other words, the US nuclear umbrella remains a lynchpin of non-proliferation in our region. As Australia’s 2017 foreign policy white paper says, ‘Without extended deterrence, more countries in the Indo-Pacific would need to re-assess their security and defence capabilities.’ That is official code for seeking weapons of mass destruction.

Unfortunately, allies will be watching Chinese and Russian actions and pondering whether the US nuclear umbrella remains credible.

China under President Xi Jinping is rapidly expanding its nuclear forces and doing so outside an effective arms control regime. Unlike the US, Beijing is modernising its forces without any transparency, which violates its obligations as a nuclear weapons state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia is not alone in deploying new weapons platforms that have potential nuclear applications, such as hypersonic missiles. But intentions and trustworthiness matter as well as the capabilities themselves, which is why President Vladimir Putin’s flagrant nuclear threats over Ukraine and obstructionism in multilateral forums put Moscow in a different category to Washington. Chinese and Russian nuclear forces have cooperated to some extent since the announcement of the Xi–Putin ‘no limits’ partnerships. Both countries have close ties to nuclear North Korea, which continues to test and improve its own nuclear forces.

So, how should Australia and the international community respond to our worsening strategic environment?

For a start, we mustn’t give up on international rules and norms or shy away from criticising China and Russia for fear of being labelled biased.

In this light, it was heartening to see Foreign Minister Penny Wong prioritise non-proliferation initiatives and messaging, including calling out Moscow and demanding more from Beijing, during UN high-level week this month. Equally, Australian officials have said they want to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency to set the highest possible non-proliferation standards through the acquisition of nuclear-powered (not nuclear-armed) submarines under the AUKUS partnership. Such engagement has been welcomed by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. Given Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s personal commitment to non-proliferation, there are opportunities for Canberra and Tokyo to work more closely together, including through the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative, which they co-founded.

Importantly, we mustn’t dislocate multilateral initiatives from strategic realities. This is one reason why Australian and Japanese leadership makes sense—both bring perspectives as, to quote the foreign policy white paper, nations that ‘rely on nuclear deterrence for their security’.

We have an opportunity to apply this more joined-up style of thinking as the US works with its allies to develop the concept of integrated deterrence, which is a key component of the US national defence strategy. In line with the nuclear posture review, nuclear forces are being modernised. Overall, however, nuclear weapons should play a reduced role in maintaining credible extended deterrence. Instead, more emphasis shifts onto conventional and hybrid capabilities, leveraging the US network of allies and partners. This would support non-proliferation if it can be achieved.

Consistent with integrated deterrence, Australia, Japan and South Korea are already investing in capabilities like conventional long-range strike and offensive cyber. For Australia, AUKUS is crucial for achieving this—not just for submarines but also in the other areas of advanced technology cooperation. South Korea has perhaps gone the furthest by introducing a new command structure to implement the ‘three-axis’ system, which is intended to deter a North Korean nuclear attack through a combination of missile defence and conventional strike. These investments by US allies are intended to complement rather than supplant the US nuclear umbrella, which, in theory, is made more credible by becoming more clearly a last resort.

We don’t yet know how integrated deterrence will work in practice, but it seems evidently better for the cause of non-proliferation than other options being mooted to address the credibility of extended deterrence, such as reintroducing US nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula or allies pursuing sovereign nuclear capabilities.

We would all prefer to see a world with fewer nuclear weapons. In our current strategic circumstances, that requires finding a way to incorporate the non-proliferation benefits of the US nuclear umbrella into multilateral initiatives.

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