Summary
This week's topic is why Wars fail : Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and the limits of Military Power. Despite having strong military force Russia failed to capture Ukraine, but history shows that often big sharks get defeated by a group of small fishes.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again.” This fun nursery rhyme is borrowed straight from military history. Humpty Dumpty represents the gigantic siege cannon that Royalists set at the top of St.Mary’s Church tower during Civil War but did not use it, ultimately the opposing party blew up the wall and Humpty Dumpty had his big fall. Similarly Russian Military had their fall against Ukraine by underestimating them.
Pompous Putin made a fatal mistake of looking down on Ukraine. He thought Ukraine was weak while Russian forces were gigantic sharks. But he forgot that powerful armaments help the war but “unity”, “wit”, “knowledge”, “judgment”, and “determination”, these play a crucial role in winning a battle. Sometimes little trickeries and act of deceit takes a team long way in the battlefield. For example, Ukraine carried out many guerrilla attacks and destroyed elite Russian troops. Ukraine may not be mightier than Russia but definitely wittier. As the historian Barbara Tuchman said “A commander who combines resolve with keen strategic intelligence can achieve impressive results.”
Another lesson we can learn from the Ukraine-Russian war is that change is the only constant in life and those who cannot adhere to change will always hover. Ukraine adapted to a modernised command philosophy which encouraged subordinates to deal with the circumstances at hand and commanders will join if things get awry. In my opinion this was a smart move by Ukraine, because soldiers in the war zone facing the battle will better understand the seriousness of an action than someone sitting at the headquarter giving orders. It is a question of common sense. Russian command philosophy on the other hand is more hierarchical, they do not encourage subordinates to make any decisions. Therefore, they had to rely on their commanders’ instructions. And, those bull-headed Russian commanders did change their tactics when needed, their pride was too big. Russia’s arrogance caused their major strategic defeat.
Another thing that Ukraine had and Russia did not was trust amongst officials. Ukraine did a team work and they had a purpose to protect their home. I learnt a very important life lesson from Ukraine that in order to achieve something a person’s intention is very important and our mind is the most powerful weapon.
One reply on “Week 3 Post”
Shamma,
You make a number of interesting and mostly accurate points in this post. There is little question that the Russians completely underestimated the strength and resolve of the Ukraine forces in the early stages of the conflict. They thought they would march victoriously into Kyiv in about 3 days! But the Ukrainians were able to use a variety of innovative tactics to bottle up and defeat the much larger Russian force, ultimately causing them to retreat.
You are also right about the hierarchical nature of the Russian military. Ukraine, on the other hand, had begun to adopt the organizational arrangements that the U.S. uses, with non-commissioned officers have substantial battlefield responsibility. One of the consequences of the Russian insistence that only senior officers could make decisions is that they have had about a dozen general officers killed in action because they were too close to the front lines.
All of that said, we must be careful not to put this completely unnecessary and cruel conflict in the past tense. Russia’s human and military resources are much larger than Ukraine’s, and it is therefore going to be very difficult for Ukraine to achieve their objective of pushing Russia completely out of their territory. Most experts still are expecting a stalemate–unless, of course, Putin is killed or overthrown. –Professor Wallerstein