Think-Tanks Wrestle with Russian Strategic Dilemma
Interesting new pieces from think-tank-land vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine have made it over the transom this week which are worth dissecting.
The first is from War on the Rocks, which was founded by an American defense industry think-tanker and bills itself as a defense publication “for insiders, by insiders”.
One of their latest pieces covers Washington’s strategic dilemma—namely, that of having to face three simultaneous adversaries in Iran, Russia, and China:
You can see it mentions a two-front war, only because the analysis immediately dismisses Iran as having already been putatively ‘removed’ from the chessboard by way of Trump’s even more putative strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, beginning thusly from the openly sentence:
America’s crippling strikes against Iran’s nuclear program in June have created a narrow window to avoid a strategic nightmare: namely, fighting China, Russia, and Iran all at once.
By the way, just as a quick digression to this, here’s an interview from Iranian professor Foad Izadi from Tehran University who apparently confirms that Washington essentially made a deal with Iran to let them bomb Fordow with B-2s in exchange for Iran hitting empty US bases:
As well as Iranian MP Mahmoud Nabavian’s interview confirming the same in even more detail.
Just something to consider in light of Iran being ‘written off’ in this discussion of a “two-front” war.
Getting back, it should also be mentioned that while the War on the Rocks piece does not necessarily represent any official policy-making initiative, it certainly echoes much of the beltway’s sentiments, and is likely to at least influence thinking on Russia; perhaps not in as seminal a way as some of the vintage RAND pieces have done, but given the big MIC names that have written for and read WotR, it’s only a natural contribution to the backbone of US’s coming policies toward Russia, particularly under the gung ho stewardship of Pete “Keg Stand” Hegseth.
The author aptly summarizes the three adversaries as follows:
America faces three adversaries: Iran, the persistent destabilizer, determined to develop nuclear weapons; Russia, the acute threat, invading Ukraine and threatening NATO; and China, the pacing challenge, attempting to topple America’s international leadership.
The chief challenge the author presents is in the form of the question: How do you deter or defeat both Russia and China simultaneously without exhausting your resources? He calls his solution ‘sequencing the threats’:
These competing threats spotlight America’s “strategic simultaneity” problem: How do you deter and, if necessary, defeat China and Russia simultaneously without exhausting your nation’s resources, power, and attention? You don’t. Instead, you sequence the threats.
He cites ancient powers as having famously utilized this art of ‘sequencing’, which is just a fancy way of describing the defeat of your enemies one at a time instead of fighting them all at once, with the kicker being that you start with the weakest and work your way up to the strongest:
Great powers from Byzantium to Venice to Habsburg Austria to Edwardian Britain have all survived by mastering the art of sequencing. This stratagem, as strategist Wess Mitchell elucidated, entails concentrating forces and focus against one opponent’s disruptive potential before turning to deter or defeat another more capable opponent. Israel recently demonstrated this approach, methodically dismantling Iran’s “axis of resistance” one proxy at a time — first Hamas, next Hizballah, then Iran itself (with America’s help) — rather than fighting simultaneous wars across multiple fronts against many enemies.
You can see the beginnings of major cracks in this theory’s foundation, given that he premises the putative “success” of Israel’s usage of this strategy on his belief that Israel somehow decisively defeated all of its regional adversaries, namely Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
But we know nothing of the sort really happened: apart from Israel’s assassination of a bunch of token leaders, and fake strikes against Iran that did little, Israel did not achieve its military objectives, nor managed to conquer Gaza. Further, it destroyed what was left of its global image in the process, which has to be calculated into the equation of what a given ‘strategy’ achieves, since in geopolitics military objectives on their own do not exist in a vacuum.
This is the same type of thinking that has imperiled the West in Ukraine. By using spoiled data—in this case the belief that Russia is “losing” and suffering “far more casualties” than the AFU—the West has convinced itself of a completely warped sense of reality that has led to policies which are detached from any logic or reason.
But he frames his entire argument for this ‘sequence’ strategy around the key idea that America’s time is running out to defeat the second of its adversaries.
Iran Down, Two to Go
Following Israeli and U.S. strikes in June, Iran’s nuclear program is “severely damaged,” set back by up to two years. (Ed: interesting how even he himself seems skeptical, even though this fact is central to the working of his theory) For the first time in decades, America can shift its primary focus from the Middle East. Sequencing logic demands weakening one remaining competitor before risking an unwinnable two-front war. But which competitor?
He asks which competitor? Answering:
Russia is the obvious choice. Moscow is weaker and moved first by invading Ukraine; it should be punished first.
More unbridled hubris.
He goes on to lay out the timeline as four years maximum:
Washington only has, perhaps, four years to implement the right sequencing. Years one and two should focus on helping Ukraine forestall Russian gains through continued intelligence support and military training, loosening the “review mechanism” that restricts Ukraine’s offensive long-range strikes into Russia, establishing European defense production foundations, and imposing systematic costs on Russia’s financial industry and energy trade, the two leading enablers of Moscow’s war effort. Enough pressure could degrade Russia’s wartime economy by 2027, when experts suggest Moscow may no longer be capable of sustaining the war in Ukraine.
Well, the above does have the right idea. Certainly these are reasonable and logical conditions to cause Russia much consternation. But as usual, they are offered in a vacuum which completely ignores Ukraine’s own far-worse trending economic and political indicators.
He goes into detail of each step of this ‘sequence’:
Sequencing, Part 1: Cutting Russian Lifelines
The first part essentially outlines the tired idea of sweeping sanctions on Russia’s entire financial industry, in order to cripple its ability to move funds for the war. Then proceed to hit its energy trade directly by phasing out European oil and gas imports from Russia by as early as 2026, as well as facilitate more Ukrainian deep strikes on Russian energy facilities by delivering the promised ERAM and other advanced long-range munitions.
This part of the strategy has long been in motion, and even got a boost today during Zelensky’s White House meeting where the Ukrainian leader presented Trump with a list of “pain points” for Russia’s defense manufacturing infrastructure, using the diplomatic euphemism “pressured” in place of “struck with Tomahawks”:
Zelensky brought Trump maps with the “pain points” of the Russian defense industry, reports RBC-Ukraine citing a source.
A source in the Ukrainian delegation said that Zelensky and his team also brought several maps to the meeting with Trump this time, which have “great significance” for the conversation with the American president.
“The maps show the pain points of the Russian defense industry and military economy that can be pressured to force Putin to stop the war,” he said.
Moving on:
Sequencing, Part 2: The European Defense Buildup
For part two, the author proposes a much deeper integration of NATO with ongoing Ukrainian operations, essentially calling for NATO’s subtle tip-toe into the war in a ‘frog-boiling’-style method that Russia would presumably not notice or react to:
First, establish a clear division of labor, where European allies manage most conventional capabilities while America provides “backstop” support in its areas of comparative advantage. European powers like the United Kingdom and France would forward-deploy “reassurance forces” near Ukraine, ready for deployment to western Ukraine during a ceasefire or escalation, where they would learn from Ukrainian forces and also provide rear echelon support. European partners would take a greater role in managing NATO–affiliated air and naval operations and patrols against Russian gray zone activities. Meanwhile, the United States would provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance overwatch, logistics and transport, nuclear deterrence, and stand-in forces. If done right, by 2027, the Europeans should handle day-to-day conventional deterrence and defense while America plays a specialized supporting role.
He goes on to sketch a wildly unrealistic portrait of Europeans massively boosting their armament production, again failing to address the trap of vacuum-analysis. Virtually all of these prescriptions are proffered under a kind of assumption that Europe is structurally and politically even remotely in position to coordinate and cooperate in such a frictionless way. You would think the person writing is keeping himself deliberately aloof to recent updates, not having read a single newspaper about the deteriorating condition of Europe’s flagging ‘solidarity’.
He mentions ‘co-financing’ of ‘industrial capacity’ as if that wasn’t at this point a recurring farce dating back to 2022, wherein Europe had famously failed time and time again on various initiatives to create a kind of a la carte group-financing of arms for Ukraine, whether it was the Czech-led initiative for artillery rounds exposed as having procured a fraction of stated totals, or the more recent PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List). These things have always flopped, and to continue suggesting some new variant after another is like spitting into the wind. The only reasonable conclusion the author comes up with here is that it would take ten long years for Europe to “achieve full defense autonomy”.
In his final section, he cites US Admiral Phil Davidson’s prediction of China launching an attack to retake Taiwan by 2027 as the final window before which the US can “finish off” Russia. He mentions the many pitfalls of this approach, including a diplomatic bottleneck as result of the US’s focus remaining occupied by the Ukrainian war, which would rob it of diplomatic thrust for anti-Chinese “coalition building” in Asia.
His final concluding pronouncement reveals the blinkered worldview held by these one-dimensional-minded think-tank types who run the MIC. In gushing over a nonexistent spring of ‘renewal’ of so-called US geopolitical feats, he reveals the blind motivation behind all of this pseudo-strategic casuistry—which is simply the perpetual ‘expansion’ of America’s reach:
With Iran neutered, European security improving, Ukraine holding the line, and Russia weakened, the United States has a rare opportunity to debilitate the Russian threat in the near-term while revitalizing Europe’s security architecture to deter Russia over the long-term, so America may finally concentrate its resources and attention on countering its great rival this century: China.
If the United States uses these next four years better than its adversaries, it will upend the strategic landscape. It will transform the Western alliance from protectorate to partnership. It will multiply America’s reach through increased allied capacity and burden-sharing. And it will prevent America from having to choose between defending Europe and the Pacific.
This is precisely the kind of failed imperial thinking that has squandered most previous empires: endless expansion for no discernible reason, with no discernible justification. Empires like that of the US, in their waning twilight years, become inflicted with a kind of grand delusion of global destiny, wherein it is imprinted on the very DNA of the nation and its political and strategic outlooks that only endless expansion and the fanatic obsession with destroying all even remote rivals via the Thucydides Trap will save the Empire from eventual dissolution.
This foolhardy devolution of national destiny seems to stem from the fact that empires ultimately lose their heart and soul—their nomos—forgetting what was once important and replacing that with this sort of blind degenerative delusion, aped and passed down with increasing severity by each new political generation, that the “greatness” of said nation comes exclusively from its total dominance of the world, rather than from some inherent cultural markers and other unique qualities.
This is because an empire by its definition always ends up ‘globalized’, losing the core of its own identity. And when that identity is eroded, the only thing remaining in its place is a kind of dead vacuum instinctively reinterpreted by successively-inferior generations of political thought-leaders as blind hunger for mindless expansion, as if by blanketing the globe over with their imprint they could mask the terminal atrophy of the nation’s once-held sacred permanence. This is a kind of end-times metastatic spiral which can only conclude with the empire’s dissolution by emergent new forces armed with enough authentic vitality and passionarity as to eclipse the enervated empire which becomes a clay-footed colossus.
Our second—and more interesting—offering comes by way of Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves as a counterpoint to the earlier idealistic think-tank piece:
The piece opens with the premise that Western analysts have gotten the Ukraine war wrong owing to the ‘wild swings’ of expectations that have colored the war, which have given people whiplash and muddled their understanding of the reality taking place on the ground. The author concludes that, after Russia’s perceived “defeat” by Ukraine in the early part of the war, Western analysts have turned toward external factors in explaining Russia’s latest resurgence.
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