By Michael F. Duggan
For several weeks the Western media has been reporting on an existing or impending Ukrainian counteroffensive in the southeastern part of the country in and around the Kherson between Crimea and the Donbas region. Now we are told that it has begun in earnest.
Two months ago, I wrote on this blog that one of the possible courses the conflict could take would be an open-ended war of position in Eastern Ukraine (see “Summer in Ukraine,” June 13, 2022). Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute recently wrote that technological advances have created a new paradigm-shifting defensive revolution in weaponry and therefore in war itself.1 Is the age of Blitzkrieg in conventional warfare really over?
The first defensive revolution lasted from roughly the late 18th century to the final stages of the First World War. The defensive is the naturally stronger mode of war, and the initial phases of the Industrial Revolution—the “Age of Coal and Steam”—rendered it geometrically more powerful than the offensive mode (whose technological requirements tended to be more complex, and required the advances of the “Age of Petroleum and Electricity”). Thus the initial defensive revolution gave us smokeless gunpowder and flat-trajectory bullets, repeating rifles, heavy automatic weapons, barbed wire, and massed infantry attacks, while the Offensive Revolution (roughly 1915-1945) gave us tanks, attack aircraft, light automatic weapons, airborne infantry, modern small unit tactics, and combined forces offensives.
If Lieven is correct, then the days of the typical post-1939 armor-spearheaded combined forces attack might be numbered. Precision-guided munitions, light antitank missiles, and weaponized drones might be making the strategies that worked so well for Gudarian, Patton, Rommel, Zhukov, and Schwarzkopf things of the past (i.e. they might be neutralizing offensive shock, a frequently decisive element in war). Certainly the initial Russian invasion was blunted by Ukrainian defenders with the latest in Western weaponry, and in recent months deadlock has set in. At the very least, the two modes may be balancing-out, or they may be shifting back into tactical, operational, and strategic indecisiveness—a modern analog to the situation on the Western Front from the fall of 1914 until the summer of 1918. If this is true, then it is possible that, as was the case in First World War, offensives will become more and more costly while gaining less and less. It will be a case of diminishing returns in an already costly war.
What does this mean for the current offensive in eastern Ukraine? It could mean one of two things. First, if the dominant mode of modern conventional combat has shifted back in favor of the defense, Ukrainian forces could impale themselves on fixed Russian positions. During the period from the 1770s through World War One, many battles were won on the defensive. These include the Cowpens, Buscao, Sorauren, New Orleans, Waterloo, Balaklava, the decimation of the Light Brigade, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickasaw Bluffs, Cold Harbor, Kennesaw Mountain, and the Marne). Even if the Ukrainians are not defeated outright, they could take disproportional casualties with little or no gain.
The other possibility is that the death of the modern offensive has been greatly exaggerated and that the Ukrainians will be able to make substantial gains. This would be good for the anti-Russian forces in a tactical sense, but would be unacceptable to the Russians, causing them to push back even harder (i.e. a Ukrainian victory would trigger another round of escalation). John Mearsheimer has warned, there would be a dangerous irony —”a perverse paradox”—to a Ukrainian/Western victory in that the better they do, the greater the chances that the Russians will use tactical nuclear weapons.2 Tactical victory for the West could therefore lead to a strategic catastrophe for everybody that might include a nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The Russians have already made it clear that they regard NATO expansion and its military support of Ukraine to be existential threats. As Mearsheimer also points out, the Russians will not give up hard-won territory—will defend it at any cost—and the Ukrainians will not tolerate Russian forces within its prewar borders. And so it goes.
The Southern Offensive has begun, and regardless of who wins, the result will be an increased danger of a broader, intensified war.
Notes
1. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/08/25/six-months-after-russian-invasion-a-bloody-stalemate-a-struggle-for-peace/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qciVozNtCDM&fbclid=IwAR207AWrebrJ5u1iUP3J1bVZpfrU0mf2DK2wTcQaIEEmAXriSKJeQNfVua4 (See minutes 101.15-103,15).