We are now over two years beyond the February 2022 renewed invasion of Ukraine by Russia. As the time has passed, few have dared to write books, likely out of a fear that they will accused of being no better than journalists and denigrated as a simple first draft of history. A few have, nonetheless, risen to the challenge. In late 2023 Christopher A. Lawrence of the Dupuy Institute took a relatively narrow focus and wrote The Battle for Kyiv: The Fight for Ukraine’s Capital that looked at the first nine weeks of the war. Now in 2024, Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army and think tank analyst, gives us The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire (Naval Institute Press, 2024).
As the dust jacket for The War in Ukraine explains:
Author Mick Ryan examines the foundations of Ukrainian and Russian strategy for their ongoing war, looking back over several decades to reveal how both sides have evolved their military strategy and force structure. Each has undertaken institutional-level reforms of their military and national security enterprises in the decade leading up to this war. But because the emergent behavior of military forces after fighting begins cannot be fully predicted, these prewar reforms only constitute a starting point for adaptation during the war. Part I of the book covers the role of strategic leadership, with a focus on evolution of strategy since February 2022. From there, the second part of the book delves into how the Ukrainians and Russians have adapted their tactics, organizations, operational approaches, and strategic foundations for war-making throughout the conflict.
The War for Ukraine, dust jacket
Unlike many Ukraine watcher, Ryan is not a technophile. Indeed, in The War for Ukraine Ryan is perhaps better described as a humanist:
Central to this discussion are the ways that, regardless of cutting-edge technology, human elements have remained a crucial deciding factor in Ukraine. Ryan shows how good leadership allows a nation to navigate the ambiguity and uncertainty of conflict, while poor leadership leaves it vulnerable to surprises. Likewise, The War for Ukraine offers case studies of the importance of an institution’s ability to nurture and reward human learning as it relates to combat. The book provides strategists, policymakers, and military leaders with a basis from which to plan for constant adaption in military organizations.
The War for Ukraine, dust jacket
That’s…classified
Ryan acknowledges that in writing The War for Ukraine there is a risk attempting to divine lessons on strategy given the recency of the conflict and it’s ongoing nature.
In presenting observations about strategy from the war in Ukraine, a degree of humility is necessary. As the war continues, many aspects of strategic decision-making and the interactions between the belligerents and allies remain invisible to most observers. Many classified documents remain to be revealed. Nonetheless, there remains a responsibility for institutions and individuals in leadership positions to learn from such observations in the short term. Strategy is an undertaking that is about generating an advantage over a competitor. Every bit of knowledge, even if incomplete, is valuable. It is therefore incumbent on us to learn what we can now if it enables generating military advantage in the future.
Ryan, p. 93
Strategy matters and wargame practitioners
In Part I of The War for Ukraine, author Mick Ryan details seven key observations on strategy in the war to date. Each of these has application to wargame practitioners (and even hobby wargamers) as they al focus on connecting strategy to the battlefield in some manner.
- “Strategy matters.” “The price of strategic incompetence is military organizations being used for unclear or unachievable political objectives, poorly resourced or out of lance in the capabilities, badly led, or a combination of all four” (Ryan, p. 93). How many times have you played (or designed) a wargame where the strategic objective are unclear or have no basis in the “reality” of the game being played?
- Strategic assumptions drive success or failure.” “So making vialid assumptions in strategy is hard. That doesn’t absolve nations and institutions from doing their best to validate their assumptions that inform strategy and its implementation” (Ryan, p. 96). How many times have you played/designed a wargame where the strategic setting is obviously divorced from the reality of, well, reality or the game itself? What sorto lesson can be learned from a wargame that is flawed strategically?
- “Leadership and will are essential in strategy.” “In war, surprise occurs at every level as the combatants—and national leaders—seek new sources of advantage. And the greatest source of advantage, in all forms of war and in every era of human existence, is good leadership” (Ryan, p. 98). Does the wargame you play or design really take leadership into account? Is it really just a die roll modifier to a Combat Results Table (CRT) or a card to play once?
- “Strategy and influence are indivisible. “And while people may be able to see more of the world, and the events that occur in it, than ever before, what can be seen and what is actually occurring are often two different things. And therein lies the importance of influence operations to deceive one’s adversaries. Such arts will be vital to convince people they are not seeing what they think they are seeing” (Ryan, p. 100). This is a very different take on the notion of the “transparent battlefield” espoused by others such as John Antal and Jack Whatling. In your wargames, is the impact of persistent Intelligence – Surveillance – Reconnaissance (ISR) to give all the players a true gods-eye view of the forces or is there the possibility of deception in there?
- “Strategic integration is vital.” “Finally, the integrated approach to strategy must be broader than national capacity—it must include alliances and coalitions. A lesson of the war has been the centrality of alliances and their contributions to security in the twenty-first century security environment” (Ryan, p. 100). While your wargame might have allies, how does the game model the agency of those powers? What does your game do to make the players build alliances or coalitions, or is it all just delivered with a nice bow making everything easy?
- “National resilience is a foundation for strategy.” “Central to strategic resilience is ensuring strategy is resourced appropriately over the long term. This includes the allocation of personnel to the right areas of government and the military, or provisions of sufficient quantities of equipment and munitions, and the protection of civilians and civil infrastructure. Resourcing of strategy includes maintaining an industrial base that can expand when the occasion arises, or when the need to deter a adversary is necessary” (Ryan, pp. 103-104). While a wargame player or designer is likely tempted to defer such “strategic” decisions to a strategic-level game, what are the impacts of those decisions on the operational or tactical level? One of my favorite rules for the naval miniatures game Harpoon 3 (GDW, 1984) back in the day was rolling for the availability of precision guided munitions on day 3 or later in World War III. Spoiler alert: you often didn’t get any of the fancy stuff, meaning that air strike had to go in low and hot delivering dumb iron bombs and praying to not get waxed by the SAMs or AAA.
- “Surprise in inevitable.” “Once a war begins, it rarely proceeds as expected by the belligerents or outside observers” (Ryan, p. 105). The War for Ukraine was written before the current summer 2024 offensive into Russia around Kursk kicked off. As Ryan has written elsewhere this alone calls into question the concept of the transparent battlefield.
Changing character of strategy
While I note that Ryan is not a technophile in the sense of a John Anatal or Jack Whatling, in The War for Ukraine there is a recognition that the character of war is changing. Ryan calls out three emerging innovations that are driving change to include:
- “Meshed Civil-Military Intelligence” (Ryan, pp. 220-222).
- “Strategic Influence Operations” (Ryan, pp. 223-224).
- “Autonomy and Counter-Autonomy” (Ryan, pp. 224-225).
In each of these innovations, Ryan connects them back to the people and organizations that use strategy. That is perhaps the greatest contribution in The War for Ukraine that Ryan brings to the discussion; a never-ending focus on humans over tech.
Recommended.
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