A twentieth-century dictator fighting a twenty-first century war
If you’ve ever read about the First World War and marvelled at how civilised societies tolerated their young men being flung at fixed machine gun positions only to be mowed down in their thousands, wonder no more. In 1914, military commanders adhered to nineteenth-century tactics, but it was a twentieth-century war with far deadlier weapons. And despite heavy losses, the generals could not accept that tactics they learned from the middle of the previous century and earlier had become redundant. In today’s idiom, they ‘doubled down’ and kept throwing away young lives.
Today, Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine carries a similar parallel: a deluded mind wedded to an outdated mentality that twentieth-century imperialism is right, where smaller countries are fair game for absorption or, if they resist, destruction. That the 69-year-old Putin is both strategically out of date and tactically incompetent matters little to the Ukrainian civilians currently dying under his bombs, but it can inform an estimation of what might come next.
Against this ageing throwback to the Soviet era, the 44-year-old Zelenskiy and his forces fight a remarkable defence, not only militarily but also in the information sphere. Zelenskiy’s humanity in the most trying and provocative circumstances is evidence of a very twenty-first century humanitarianism. This has led to unparalleled global support for Ukraine. However, the information sphere is not greatly different in 2022 than it was in 1914—except in one important way.
A century ago, young men read newspapers, pamphlets and novels that portrayed ‘the Hun’ as evil incarnate. German soldiers were drawn and painted as killing defenceless women and bayoneting their babies. While today social media may impress us with an immediacy and wealth of information our forebears did not have, the objective is the same: dehumanisation of the enemy to encourage normally decent people to demand the deaths of others whom they do not know and with whom they have no quarrel. This is the language of Putin’s Russia, of the twentieth century’s wars, of Soviet-era propaganda.
Contrast that with Zelenskiy’s offer to Russian soldiers and their mothers—twenty-first century humanitarianism in its most obvious form and the clearest indication of what today’s technology can achieve, which breaks out of the narratives of governments striving to dehumanise their enemies. The contrasts between the combatant nations’ leaders and their eras could not be starker.
Nevertheless, what happens next?
The war will likely end by mid-April. Ukraine will be obliged to surrender when supplies of NATO arms become insufficient to resist Russian missiles and Putin’s merciless shelling of civilian areas becomes overwhelming. Putin absolutely will not stop killing Ukrainian civilians, so Zelenskiy will be forced to take the one step that will stop the war: surrender. This outcome can already be seen in NATO’s approach since the war started: it gives the Ukrainian defenders sufficient munitions to hold the Russians, but not enough to repel them. NATO leaders have no intention of fighting to save Ukraine. Soon, domestic pressure in the West to return to some kind of normalcy, coupled with rampant inflation caused by price rises in energy and food, will see NATO deliver fewer and fewer arms to promote the conclusion it has already decided must happen.
Having been given a lesson in how poor the Russian army actually is, Putin will be forced to limit his imperial aims. Some kind of UN peacekeeping force may be deployed to Ukraine. The east of the country and the Crimea will be ceded to Russia. The remaining cities will take years to recover from the destruction visited on them in the last three weeks. Once the deal is signed, pressure to end sanctions against Russia will increase. Putin will be able to sell the entire adventure as a ‘victory’ to a population that is already under Orwellian levels of manipulation.
Putin himself will of course escape any punishment for his crimes to expedite a return to market and economic stability. He may, in the time left to him, decide to try to build a capable army and once again, in a few years, attempt to reclaim his beloved Soviet Imperium. But after this invasion of Ukraine, the whole world is fully alive to the threat he represents, so any further adventure in a few years would be unlikely to succeed. It is also possible that Putin will hand over power to a successor (whether willingly or not) so that Russia and its apologists in the West can claim a ‘new beginning’ to hasten the removal of sanctions.
Thus, as with so many conflicts, little will have been resolved and much hatred will be left to fester.
It is interesting to speculate how future historians will see this war: a skirmish that NATO managed to cause to fail before it could develop into a full, pan-European war? An inevitable continuation of World War Two that took eighty years to come about? Or the first of a new set of wars linked to the unstoppable global rise of the dictatorships and the final snuffing out of the democracies? That, however, remains to be seen.
Another interesting facet of military history is the counter-factual. Wars always offer numerous ‘What ifs?’. And this war already offers a very salient one: if Ukraine had collapsed in a few days as Putin and his generals expected; if Zelenskiy had accepted the CIA’s offer of escape; and if, today, Ukraine had a new, pro-Moscow government and its cities swarmed with FSB operatives eager to liquidate any and all Ukrainian patriots, then Putin would be energised and emboldened. His ‘triumphant’ battalions would be massing on the border with Poland, while others would be forming up at the borders of the Baltic States. And Putin would be rubbing his hands in glee at seeing his prize of reclaiming the Soviet Imperium within his grasp.
No matter what else happens in this awful war, the rest of Europe owes the people of Ukraine a vast debt indeed for being resilient enough to prevent that scenario unfolding.
Thanks for reading.
