Jacob Stoil shares seven strategic lessons from the first days of the war in Ukraine. The first two are sobering:
Lesson 1: The logic of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction has not changed.
Throughout the Cold War, the threat of nuclear war kept the nuclear powers from engaging directly. Indeed, a clear show of sufficiently armed resolve was generally enough to prevent escalation by the other power. It is hard to conceive of any limited objective worth nuclear war. This led to careful deployments. US forces did not protect Hungary in 1956, nor did Soviet forces press their advantage around Berlin. Both sides generally accompanied their troop movements and forward deployments with significant escalation-control measures.
The US deployment in Eastern Europe over the last several months continues to reflect this logic. As Russia became more bellicose toward Ukraine, the United States was careful to deploy to NATO countries. The countries were not areas likely to see aggression by Russian conventional forces, at least in this round of conflict. This unchanged prevailing logic also means that a great power adversary is unlikely to engage any robust US deployment through large-scale conventional means. At the same time, it does not make wars less likely because of what became known among deterrence scholars during the Cold War as the stability-instability paradox. The logic of this paradox did not go away when the Soviet Union collapsed. At its essence this paradox suggests that because of mutually assured destruction, nuclear-armed great powers will engage in proxy conflicts (such as in Syria) or limited operations against their rivals, while at the same time feeling more comfortable in engaging in conflicts against minor non-nuclear-armed powers because they believe that once war starts a rival great power will not intervene through conventional military means. This tendency is clearly evident in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Lesson 2: US nuclear deterrence extends no further than the most forward US soldier.
This lesson follows from the first. Nuclear deterrence is determined by the perception of commitment. This explains in no small part why large numbers of US forces spent the Cold War forward deployed in Europe. Presence and commitment go hand in hand. At the heart of the matter is the question of which county has to make the decision to risk a potential nuclear confrontation. In this regard the limitations of nuclear deterrence reflect the theory of first-mover advantage. If there are significant numbers of US military personnel in area, then to launch a large conventional attack on that place is to choose to risk the possibility of escalation. Attacking a country that has no significant US presence forces the United States to choose to risk escalation over a conflict of comparatively limited national interest.
Rotational forces provide deterrence when they are present but no deterrence when they are not. Only a permanent presence serves to create the deterrent effect. If the United States has not backed up its commitment on the ground, then that commitment, in effect, does not exist. The recent requests from NATO countries near Ukraine for an enhanced US military presence reflect this principle. The military presence does not have to be sufficiently robust to repel a large-scale offensive by a rival great power but it does have to be sufficient to demonstrate that any invasion will cause escalation and a great power war. The deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division to Poland matches this logic exactly.
At its most fundamental this lesson should teach us to think of US presence as signaling not only our resolve to defend one country, but also our lack of resolve to defend those countries in which we do not commit permanent forces. By deploying to the NATO countries of Eastern Europe and not to Ukraine we signaled Russia that we were not committed to the defense of Ukraine and our deterrent umbrella did not cover the country. This was a critical step in the development of the Russia campaign. As a result, Russia gained the first-mover advantage, which will make any attempt to affect Russian forces’ removal far more difficult. This lesson has direct relevance to any place, such as Taiwan, to which the United States has made a commitment but does not have an enduring presence.
More sobering is the fact that there is no MAD, things don’t end there, you can survive it, but what follows is total war. A nuclear exchange is just a big starting pistol. But once that mirage is destroyed, the likelihood of more nuclear exchange skyrockets! (no pun intended) The moment the first nuclear hit doesn’t pulverize a city, the spell is broken. A country like China would also weather nuclear war much better than us. They can muster a covid-style lockdown response; we can’t. They would be done decontaminating before we even know what hit us.
I don’t care about Ukraine or Taiwan, or for that matter Poland or NATO.
I care about America.
Yes Taiwan is done, but the good news is they figured it out and China seems to have largely bought them off inside Taiwan.
Our behavior towards Ukraine is shameful, we convinced them to give up 5000 nukes in 94, but it’s done.
Ukrainian resistance I’ll predict will not be a long one and no Iraq, etc. It’s all bluster and the Euros already are backing down as are saner men in the US.
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I’ll predict this is the beginning of the end for NATO, it’s 30 years late and not a moment too soon.
We provoked this entire war and it was done cynically with some eye of unraveling Russia and Putin with ‘regime change.’
In the end if Biden is our Gorbachev then God Bless Joe Biden, and so far he is…