Monthly Archives: August 2023

By Michael F. Duggan

BRICS, an emerging alternative to the G20, appears to be coming of age.

In the new and more conspicuously multipolar world—and the Second Cold War—the two primary poles of the US/West and Russia/China/Iran will be increasingly competing for the favor and resources of the third pole, a loosely aggregated league of mostly free agent states of the Global South (“BRICS” stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the league may prove attractive to much of the developing world). Looks like China and Russia intend to beat the West to the punch.

Take special note of the 15th annual BRICS summit that was held this past week in Johannesburg. Although there is currently no talk about supplanting the Dollar with the Yuan as the world reserve currency (or as a competitive alternative to the Dollar), it seems likely that if the world were to significantly de-dollarized, the US could find itself in the Great Depression II or something even worse.

Some commentators have observed that the sanctions the West has placed on Russia has had the effect of de-dollarazation parts of the world economy, and that the war in Ukraine is driving the decline of Western economic dominance. The sullen response to the war by many of the nations of the South would seem to corroborate this. Worse yet, the new and less cooperative world order is coming at a time when unity is needed, when the cooperation of China, Russia, and the Global South’s will be necessary to combat the unfolding crises of the environment.

It’s all starting to look like a Shakespearean tragedy writ large.

By Michael F. Duggan

It is a first principle of political survival for the ambitious, the audacious: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” The fact that this quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson means that even the most etherial of idealists acknowledge the primacy of power politics.

From the reprisals of the earliest tribal chieftains against their rivals to the brutal realism of the Romans and the Mob, from Machiavelli and the Tudors to the failed Valkyrie plot against Hitler, from The Godfather to the Gangs of New York, history, commentary, and art all tell us that plots against the powerful are a dangerous zero-sum game. As the story of Candaules in The Histories of Herodotus tells us, a successful coup may yield fruit, but there is nothing more lethal to would-be usurpers than a failed one.

Although coups are often the acts of ambitious lieutenants, I suspect the Prigozhin putsch was more the act of a loose cannon.

In many ways it is surprising that Prigozhin survived as long as he did. When the June 24 coup failed, I thought that it would be presumptuous of him to make Labor Day plans. Let us see how the U.S. justice system treats those charged with making a coup in this country.

*At this writing, the stories of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash are uncorroborated.

By Michael F. Duggan

There is a town in the Zaporizhzhia oblast to the east of what was the Kakhova Reservoir called Robotyne. It is located on the front at or near the first line of Russian defenses. Over the past several days, a new push by the Ukrainian Ground Forces has been directed toward this town and appear to have gained ground. By some reports, the Ukrainians have captured a part of the town, which lies along vectors toward the crossroads town of Tomak, Melitopal, and the Azov port city of Berdyans’k. Reaching any of these places would be a major Ukraine victory and an initial step in an apparent larger strategy to sever the Russian landbridge.

Notable in this attack is the deployment of the elite Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade, one of the Western-trained and equipped units that has to date been held in reserve. The commitment of this unit and others, like the 46th Airmobile Brigade, suggests that Ukraine is now “all in” and fully committed to the counteroffensive that began in early June. The 82nd is also notable in that it has 14 British Challenger II tanks and a larger number of U.S. Stryker CVs, and Marder IFVs, the German equivalent of the Bradley.

For months this 82nd was celebrated by some U.S. sources as “ridiculously powerful,” and boosted to the point where one wondered if the story was a plant.^1.

Although the latest push may gain additional territory in the flex zone between the lines and may even breach the foremost Russian defensive lines, penetrating all of the Russian lines and defensive zones in a drive to the Sea of Azov would seem to be all but impossible. At least one former U.S. military officer said that the commitment of these units may also signal the final major push of the Ukrainian offensive, that it could be “the beginning of the end” of the military phase of the war.

The question is: what comes next?

Note
1. For example, see, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/05/03/ukraines-82nd-air-assault-brigade-is-ridiculously-powerful-and-could-lead-the-coming-counteroffensive/?sh=7d1ef8811bbf

By Michael F. Duggan

There are necessary wars and unnecessary wars. There are crises that one side or the other wants, and there are crises that, through error or escalation, take on a will of their own.

In 1861 the Confederates forced the Sumpter Crisis: if the U.S. Army resupplied its own forts in the South, there would be war. The Imperial Japanese obviously wanted the crisis initiated by the attacks on Pearl Harbor and U.S. installations in the Philippines. In both instances, events took on a course of their own and proved catastrophic for their instigators. As long as politicians and policymakers control events and seek diplomatic resolutions, there is hope. As Churchill observes “Jaw, jaw, is always better than war, war.” But when decisions become subject to the rapidly-unfolding dictates of the crisis as seen through the lens of national security interests by the military, things may spiral, regardless of whether or not war is necessary.

The exception to this rule is when the military does not not want war.

In the summer of 1914, the politicians and their ministers went back and forth through diplomatic cables, but the two prewar European alliances—the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente—ostensibly designed to create security for the signatories, had in fact created a perfect apparatus for starting a world war. Except for Britain (whose entry in the war was based on national honour and interests like its friendship with France and protecting the Empire), every waring nation could claim self defense.¹ This is because each of the continental belligerents believed that at a certain point they had to mobilize or else fall victim to the mobilization of the enemy. It was an outlook that is reminiscent of the “use or lose” rational for modern first strike nuclear strategy.

If Russia mobilized against Austria in order to protect their slavic ally, the Serbs, Germany would have to mobilize against Russia, causing France to mobilize against Germany. Germany, faced with a two-front war, had to take out France as quickly as possible in the event of a Russian mobilization so that it could turn its efforts to the east. But in order to invade France through a course of least resistance, Germany would have to cross Belgium, thus bringing in Britain. In other words, once policy shifted from the political leaders to the military leaders, events would take on a horrible momentum, a will of their own, and avoiding war would become logistically impossible. When Russia mobilized in response to the Austrian-Hungarian attack on Serbia, the game was on, and the other three major powers of Europe followed suit. Cue: Roses of Picardy.

John Kennedy is supposed to to have read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August the summer before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although academic historians even since have created a cottage industry out of underscoring Tuchman’s errors (or else ignoring her altogether as a non-academic historian), she got some of the basics right, and Kennedy took away the proper lessons. Unlike 1861 and 1941, the leaders of October 1962 were looking for a way out. Unlike 1914, Kennedy was calling the shots for his side and did not let things get to the point where the military completely controlled events. This was also the case with the Bay if Pigs invasion. As we know, war was averted in 1962, and both sides “won.” It was a textbook instance of good judgment, crisis diplomacy, and applied history.

If reports coming from both sides of the Russo-Ukrainian War are accurate, the 2023 Ukrainian offensive has not breached the foremost Russian defensive lines. Ukraine has taken staggering losses, first in the Battle of Bakhmut and then in the offensive launched in early June. The Russians are deeply dug in and likely have hundreds of thousands of reserves in eastern Ukraine and adjacent areas in western Russia. If this is true, then it seems possible that Russia will launch an offensive of its own in the near future.

If this happens, and it then appears that Russian is winning the war, the question becomes: what NATO will do? From what one infers, the true believers on the American side who may be in favor of expanding the war are politicians and policy people. Although I can’t prove it, my sense is that the Pentagon does not want a direct confrontation between NATO (i.e. the United States) and Russia. Unlike some of the military men of 1914 and 1962, they do not want to initiate a sequence that cannot be undone short of a self-destructive, unnecessary war. Like Kennedy, they may realize that when events are locked into a military course of action, they may take on a chaotic will of their own that is beyond human control. The question is whether or not the civilian leadership will heed their warnings.

Note
1. See Hew Strachan, The First World War, 34. See also Michael Howard, The First World War, 33-34.