Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy

One of our students from Finland passed this on. A very timely and informative (and I think potentially very important) report from the Latvia - the National Defence Academy of Latvia and the Center for Security and Strategic Research. The PDF of the report can be downloaded at this link: http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%2002-2014.ashx Note the excerpted figure one below for the assessment of Russia's view of the changing character of armed conflict.  Also of note below that are the eight phases of the new generation of war. I think this is a good analysis of the Russian version of unconventional and political warfare and we should study this so that we can develop the strategy to counter these forms of unconventional warfare and political warfare. Russia’s New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy Janis Berzins Introduction Russia considers Ukraine (and Belarus) as part of itself, something that was lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Henry Kissinger put it, in an open editorial in the Washington Post, “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.”1 Moreover, it is considered,together with Belarus, to be a guarantee of Russia's territorial integrity. This is a very sensitive issue. Historically, one of Russia's most important defense strategies is “depth”.2 This explains why it expanded its borders to the West as far as possible. For Russia, it was already difficult to accept the Baltic States becoming NATO members in 2004. Moscow claims the West guaranteed that former Soviet republics and satellites would be left as a neutral buffer zone. True or not, the fact is that nowadays NATO's border is approximately 160 km from St. Petersburg, instead of 1,600 km during the period of the Soviet Union. In the hypothetical case of Ukraine joining NATO, the city of Belgorod that was deep inside the USSR would be on the border. Since for Russia, Ukraine is supposed to be a close ally or, at best, neutral, it considers the involvement of the United States and the European Union in Ukrainian internal affairs to be a direct confrontation to its regional interests. Moscow is rightly convinced that the United States and the European Union were working to attract the Ukraine to their sphere of influence, ignoring Russia's natural right to the region. Russia's goal has always been to make Ukraine a friendly and subordinate partner. For Russia, after the West’s interference, this seems to be further out of reach than ever. Still, notwithstanding the fact that the Russian government is convinced that the West has been financing the Ukrainian opposition and many organizations like NGO’s with the objective of destabilizing the Yanukovitch government, it signed an agreement led by the European Union and mediated by the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany, to end the protests on 21st February. The deal included restoring the Ukrainian Constitution as it was between 2004 and 2010 until September, when constitutional reform was expected to be com- pleted; early presidential elections no later than December 2014; an investigation of the government’s violence to be conducted jointly by the opposition government, and the Council of Europe; a veto on declaring a state of emergency; amnesty for protesters arrested since 17th February; surrendering of public buildings occupied by protesters; the confiscation of illegal weapons; new electoral laws to be passed and the establishment of a new Central Election Commission.3    The phases of new-generation war can be schematized as (Tchekinov & Bogdanov, 2013, pp. 15-22): First Phase: non-military asymmetric warfare (encompassing information, moral, psychological, ideological, diplomatic, and economic measures as part of a plan to establish a favorable political, economic, and military setup). Second Phase: special operations to mislead political and military leaders by coordinated measures carried out by diplomatic channels, media, and top government and military agencies by leaking false data, orders, directives, and instructions. Third Phase: intimidation, deceiving, and bribing government and military officers, with the objective of making them abandon their service duties. Fourth Phase: destabilizing propaganda to increase discontent among the population, boosted by the arrival of Russian bands of militants, escalating subversion. Fifth Phase: establishment of no-fly zones over the country to be attacked, imposition of blockades, and extensive use of private military companies in close cooperation with armed opposition units. Sixth Phase: commencement of military action, immediately preceded by large-scale reconnaissance and subversive missions. All types, forms, methods, and forces, including special operations forces, space, radio, radio engineering, electronic, diplomatic, and secret service intelligence, and industrial espionage. Seventh Phase: combination of targeted information operation, electronic warfare operation, aerospace operation, continuous airforce harassment, combined with the use of highprecision weapons launched from various platforms (long-range artillery, and weapons based on new physical principles, including microwaves, radiation, non-lethal biological weapons). Eighth Phase: roll over the remaining points of resistance and destroy surviving enemy units by special operations conducted by reconnaissance units to spot which enemy units have survived and transmit their coordinates to the attacker's missile and artillery units; fire barrages to annihilate the defender's resisting army units by effective advanced weapons; airdrop operations to surround points of resistance; and territory mopping-up operations by ground troops.

Can the U.S. Fight the Wars of the Future? By MICHAEL P. NOONAN

The future can be characterized by unconventional warfare and the requirement to be able to counter unconventional warfare.  From Al Qaeda to the Iran Action Network (see the recent CNAS report) to Syria to the Taliban (in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and many more, all these conflicts can be characterized by elements and organizations conducting various forces of unconventional warfare.  We can call it "special war" or irregular warfare or asymmetric warfare or 4th generation warfare but the common characteristics among each conflict is that they are using a variation of unconventional warfare by exploiting insurgencies and resistance, local and translational, to coerce or disrupt and yes in some cases overthrow governments or occupying powers.  And these organizations rest on the basic building blocks of unconventional warfare by relying heavily on underground and auxiliary organizations and in some case guerrilla forces to conduct subversion, sabotage and psychological and political warfare (to include political mobilization of various sectors of populations and organizations, again local and transnational).  We should look to unconventional warfare history and doctrine for ways to understand the phenomena we are seeing and for ways to address such conflicts and counter enemy strategies.  Unfortunately what we do not have is a comprehensive theory of unconventional warfare (which should include countering unconventional warfare)  and I think that is why is why unconventional warfare is not recognized in many of these conflicts.  

Can the U.S. Fight the Wars of the Future?

By MICHAEL P. NOONAN

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/09/20/the-us-defense-budget-and-the-growing-popularity-of-special-war

September 20, 2013 RSS Feed Print

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This week, the four U.S. military service chiefs marched to Capitol Hill and testified about the impending doom that a deepening sequestration would do to our capabilities. Only one service chief, Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Amos, testified that his service could handle one major theater operation* if sequestration sticks. But is this too much doom and gloom?

Are the threats of the future the same as the threats of the past and thus necessitating similar, but better, capabilities? Or does the maintenance of those overwhelming conventional capabilities cause a form of lockout dissuading other major and minor powers to not try to compete with such capabilities, but try to compete in different ways?

Over at The XX Committee, John R. Schindler, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, has an interesting post up today entitled "The Coming Age of Special War," where he argues that the United States today is being schooled in "what Eastern intelligence services term ‘special war,' an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional sense." (This also includes, in large part, the extensive use of other forms of political warfare which I discussed here back in August.) Exhibit A for this is how Russian President Vladimir Putin has handled the Syrian crisis.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Syria.]

According to Schindler:

The post-modern American war of warfare, which very few if any countries could hope to match in complexity and cost, is now so expensive that even Americans can no longer afford it. The strategic impact of this realization promises to be vast and far-reaching.

Conflict, though, shows no signs of evaporating. We can expect a gradual move away from the high-intensity warfare that the U.S. has perfected in the tactical-operational realm. Which may be just as well, given the current state of the U.S. military, particularly our ground forces, which are tired after 12 years of counterinsurgency in CENTCOM. Although the possibility of force-on-force conflict with China seems plausible, particularly given rising tensions in East Asian waters, the rest of the world appears uninterested in fighting the United States the way the U.S. likes to fight.

This, paradoxically, may not actually be good news in the long run, as the United States is seriously unready for other forms of conflict. Worse, the U.S. Government has persuaded itself that it is more ready for lower-intensity forms of conflict than it actually is. To be fair, in recent years the Pentagon, in collaboration with the Intelligence Community, has made UAVs a serious threat to terrorists around the world, while DoD's Special Operations Forces [SOF] – as large as the entire militaries of many Western countries – are the envy of the world in terms of their size, budgets, and capabilities. Yet all these are really just somewhat more subtle forms of traditional military applications of force.

[See a collection of political cartoons on defense spending.]

These realities are pushing both our adversaries and ourselves toward "special war," but this will be difficult for the U.S. because:

Special war is the default setting for countries that are unable or unwilling to fight major wars, but there are prerequisites, above all a degree of cunning and a willingness to accept operational risk to achieve strategic aims. I'm afraid the U.S. Government falls quite short in those two departments.

The apparently total inability of the U.S. Government to keep secrets these days indicates a basic unreadiness for special war. Just as serious an obstacle is the mindset of most U.S. warfighters, which remains vividly conventional and unimaginative. No less, the risk aversion that characterizes too many American military and intelligence operations, caused by having lawyers oversee everything the Pentagon and the [intelligence community] do, will have to be dispensed with if America wants to develop any real capabilities in special war.

…

Special war works when competently handled. It's very cheap compared to any conventional military operations, and if executed properly it offers states a degree of plausible deniability while achieving state interests without fighting. The United States at present is not ready – organizationally, legally, politically, or culturally – to compete in special war. But getting proficient in special war will soon not be a choice, but a necessity. We're already losing at it, whether we realize it or not, and the current trajectory is worrying. Over 2,500 years ago Sun Tzu, an early advocate of special war, argued that the acme of skill is not winning battles, rather subduing your enemy without actually fighting. It's about time the Pentagon caught on.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Afghanistan.]

This tracks very closely with comments made by the military anthropologist Anna Simons in her monograph "21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them." She argues that the United States has difficulty in the conduct of such operations because foreign cultures have increasingly become much more aware about us than we have of them and that we do not specifically screen and recruit individuals for wile. In her words wile:

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/09/20/the-us-defense-budget-and-the-growing-popularity-of-special-war

An interesting essay.  A description of modern unconventional warfare which is why we also need the strategic capability to counter unconventional warfare.  Some excerpts:

Looming over all this, though, is the reality that the U.S. military may have simply priced itself out of the market.

...

Yet tactical awesomeness does not equal strategic competence, and any serious analysis of U.S. military performance since 9/11, in the era of the Global War on Terror, must conclude that Americans arms failed to deliver promised political outcomes in either Iraq or Afghanistan. While there is much blame for this to be laid at the feet of barmy politicos, U.S. top military leadership is equally culpable for the strategic setbacks.

...

Conflict, though, shows no signs of evaporating. We can expect a gradual move away from the high-intensity warfare that the U.S. has perfected in the tactical-operational realm. Which may be just as well, given the current state of the U.S. military, particularly our ground forces, which are tired after 12 years of counterinsurgency in CENTCOM. Although the possibility of force-on-force conflict with China seems plausible, particularly given rising tensions in East Asian waters, the rest of the world appears uninterested in fighting the United States the way the U.S. likes to fight.

...

What is needed instead is a serious capability in what some Eastern intelligence services term "special war," an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional sense. Special war is the default setting for countries that are unable or unwilling to fight major wars, but there are prerequisites, above all a degree of cunning and a willingness to accept operational risk to achieve strategic aims. I'm afraid the U.S. Government falls quite short in those two departments.

The apparently total inability of the U.S. Government to keep secrets these days inidcates a basic unreadiness for special war. Just as serious is the mindset of most U.S. warfighters, which remains vividly conventional and unimaginative. No less, the risk aversion that characterizes too many American military and intelligence operations, caused by having lawyers oversee everything the Pentagon and the IC do, will have to be dispensed with if America wants to develop any real capabilities in special war.

V/R

Dave

The Coming Age of Special War

September 20, 2013

http://20committee.com/2013/09/20/the-coming-age-of-special-war/

The last couple weeks have witnessed one of the most significant periods in decades in the annals of diplomatic history. Having deeply mishandled the domestic side of the Syrian crisis, the Obama administration proceeded to worsen matters by, in effect, outsourcing the problem to Vladimir Putin. As I've written elsewhere, I'm pessimistic about any Moscow-brokered WMD deal having the effects that the West desires. That said, much remains to be seen, as this issue is really only in the first chapter of diplomatic resolution.

However, I'm confident in stating that the United States backing off from overt military intervention in Syria's civil war has important implications, already visible, for the U.S. military. That diplomats, not generals and admirals, were walking point in the White House on this issue has been widely noted, as has a budding civil-military conundrum that will very likely get worse in the years ahead.

Looming over all this, though, is the reality that the U.S. military may have simply priced itself out of the market. After the thrashing of Saddam's forces in early 1991 by a U.S.-led coalition in Operation DESERT STORM, it was evident to nearly everyone that facing America's military in a stand-up fight was a losing proposition. Our technological lead, coupled with superb command-and-control (C2), gave the United States a remarkable competitive edge in the tactical-to-operational realm of warfare. Strategy, however, would prove a much tougher nut for the Pentagon to crack. Even Saddam, in the years after his 1991 defeat, never seriously planned for conventional resistance against any future U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which even the man from Tikrit realized was a fool's errand.

In the heady time of Blitzkrieg triumphs early in World War II, Hitler famously proclaimed "nothing is impossible for the German soldier" (dem deutschen Soldat ist nichts unmöglich) and in the salad days of U.S. hegemony after 1991 that Nazi mirage seemed to have been realized, at last, by the Americans. Yet tactical awesomeness does not equal strategic competence, and any serious analysis of U.S. military performance since 9/11, in the era of the Global War on Terror, must conclude that Americans arms failed to deliver promised political outcomes in either Iraq or Afghanistan. While there is much blame for this to be laid at the feet of barmy politicos, U.S. top military leadership is equally culpable for the strategic setbacks. History will not be kind to the likes of Generals Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez, to cite only two particularly egregious examples, and any attempt to dodge this truth can fester into a kind of "stab in the back legend" (to allow a second Germanism in one paragraph), a fate to be avoided at all costs.

Above all, the U.S. is broke. This week, while addressing the baleful impact of sequestration on the Pentagon, three of our four service chiefs bluntly informed Congress, in open session, that they could not execute even one Major Theater War under current financial conditions. Since the end of the Cold War, the MTW has been the military's gold standard. Down to 9/11, the Pentagon's positions was that it could fight two MTWs simultaneously; now, with readiness in trouble due to wars and empty coffers, the reality has set in that the Pentagon is facing a crisis. The post-modern American war of warfare, which very few if any countries could hope to match in complexity and cost, is now so expensive that even Americans can no longer afford it. The strategic impact of this realization promises to be vast and far-reaching.

(Continued at the link below)

http://20committee.com/2013/09/20/the-coming-age-of-special-war/