Amos C. Fox
Thanks to near-real time reporting from the battlefield, open-source intelligence, and many good streams of analysis—to include reports from the Institute for the Study of War and assessments from Michael Kofman and Mark Galeotti—the Russo-Ukrainian War provides a rare and information-rich occasion to compare competing proxy war strategies.
When examining proxy strategies, it is important to remember that a proxy is simply an actor (Actor B) who a principal (Actor A) relies on as an in-lieu-of actor to advance its own political-military interests. In Ukraine, Russian proxy strategy resides on one side of the spectrum and the U.S. proxy strategy on the other. While Ukraine is fighting for its national sovereignty and the restoration of its territorial integrity, the U.S. is relying on Ukrainian military operations to defeat Russia. The defeat of Russia serves multiple U.S. interests, aside from just helping Ukraine remain a sovereign state. These interests include advancing both the relevance and importance of NATO and the European Union, continuing to spread Western idealism and democracy at the expense of balance-of-power politics and single-party authoritarianism, and strategically weakening Russia’s standing within the international system. In the sad irony that accompanies war, both strategies feed off one another, having transformed the conflict into a grinding war of attrition.[1]
This point is important because it tends to be lost in the castigation of Russia’s poor tactics and in the goading of Ukrainian forces by the U.S. to adopt maneuver-centric tactics.[2] In reality, the competing Russian and U.S. proxy strategies create a circular logic. Understanding that a proxy is an in-lieu-of actor, the purveyor of a proxy strategy can mold that strategy to fit their needs, goals, resources, risk considerations, and the type of proxy available (or any combination thereof). Accordingly, the firepower-centric proxy strategy of the U.S. contributes to Russia’s human wave proxy strategy; and Russia’s human wave strategy contributes to the firepower-centric, technology diffusion proxy strategy of the U.S., which, when cycled over time, creates the devastating war of attrition that is playing out in eastern Ukraine.
The goal of this essay is not to vote one way or another on whose strategy is better or more ethical. Moreover, the goal is not to inject emotion or virtue-signaling into this paper. The purpose of this paper is to provide an objective comparison of proxy strategies, while not advocating for, or against either of the involved participants. The ultimate goal of this paper is to illustrate, as objectively as possible, how the Russian and US proxy strategies feed off one another to fuel a war of attrition.
RUSSIAN PROXY STRATEGY
Russian proxy strategy at the outset of the Russo-Ukrainian War relied on speed and obfuscation to spring a fait accompli to take control of Crimea in February 2014.[3] Yegveny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group and other contractual proxies worked alongside unmarked Russian regulars to take Crimea.[4] By mid-March, Crimea’s new government, a blatant Russian proxy, put forth a referendum of independence from Ukraine, becoming in the eyes of Russia the Republic of Crimea, and was subsequently absorbed into the Russian Federation.[5]
View fullsize
Yevgeny Prigozhin (L) with Vladimir Putin during a dinner with foreign scholars and journalists in 2011. (Misha Japaridze/Reuters)
In April 2014, the Kremlin relied on a similar proxy strategy to unofficially annex significant portions of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The goal was to take control of Donetsk and Luhansk before Ukraine or the international community could comprehend the situation. The Kremlin sought to move more quickly than Kyiv could counter and consolidate military forces on territorial acquisitions before a lax international community could respond.[6]
During the opening phase of the Donbas campaign the Donetsk People’s Army (DPA) and the Luhansk People’s Army (LPA) fit the definition of exploited proxy; a composite force created by the Russian military to fulfill combat duty that would have otherwise been filled by Russian armed forces.[7] Further, the Kremlin’s proxy strategy sought to keep Russian forces in the shadows at the campaign’s outset. Nevertheless, Western friends, partisan internet users, concerned local citizens, and others used social media; cell phone signal forensics; theater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and open-source intelligence to unmask Russia’s hidden hand.[8] To be sure, not long after Russia dispatched army forces to Luhansk Airport and Ilovaisk in August 2014, it became evident that the conflict was not merely the result of a band of erstwhile separatists from the state’s eastern reaches conspiring against Kyiv. Instead, it was unmistakable that the conflict was a concerted Russian foreign policy gambit seeking to both undermine Kyiv and take sovereign Ukrainian territory.
Russia’s proxy strategy evolved from one that emphasized obfuscated intervention, to one that used proxies as an auxiliary to take the sting off biting combat losses and provide policymaker’s more strategic flexibility. From August 2014 onwards, Russia did next to nothing to hide its involvement in the conflict.[9] Instead, the Kremlin used the the Donetsk People’s Army, the Luhansk People’s Army, and Wagner as a millstone, while using its army as a holding force and to deliver the coup de grâce, when applicable.[10]
Using the Donetsk People’s Army, the Luhansk People’s Army, and Wagner as auxiliaries—or outsourced fighters, as Galeotti refers to them—Russia creates military and political time by jettisoning many of the risks associated with warfighting.[11] Every proxy killed or wounded in action equals one less Russian regular killed or wounded. This exchange dynamic helps preserve the army, while still advancing an aggressive, goal-seeking foreign policy.
Concurrently, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies evolved from an exploited proxy to a cultural proxy. Cultural proxies are those that share a cultural bond with their principal, and therefore involve fewer agency costs, have high autonomy, and are trusted with more challenging operations.[12] Despite coming up short while fighting independently at Donetsk Airport, Luhansk Airport, and Ilovaisk in 2014, it is not a stretch to assume the Kremlin began to see the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies as a steadfast expedient for Russian military forces in Ukraine.
The evolution of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies from exploited to cultural proxies was not entirely an acknowledgement of brotherhood. The evolution reflected a calculated move by the Kremlin to position the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies as culpable partners in a future invasion of Ukraine.[13] Russifying the proxy army would accelerate the movement of the population of the Donetsk and Luhansk’s oblasts towards future annexation. Moreover, given the premium placed on land forces when a large operation to denationalize Ukraine came, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies would have to be trusted to operate independently.
When Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both Wagner and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies took on distinct roles. Wagner, seen as a trustworthy proxy because of its contractual bond with the Kremlin, was afforded significant latitude to operate independent from the Russian Army, but still under Russia’s National Defense Management Center (NToSU).[14] The Russian General Staff’s unified field command must request Wagner support from Prigozhin, who possesses the approval authority for the group’s tactical employment.[15] This contributes to many of the problems of command and control, logistics support, and combined arms that plague the Russian military effort in Ukraine.[16]
View fullsize
Militants of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic stand outside a military mobilization point in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk, Ukraine, in February 2022. (Reuters)
Additionally, Wagner’s status as a private company afforded it the opportunity to hire personnel differently from the Russian Army. Wagner quickly hired and rapidly sent contractors to the front to reinforce and or augment existing military operations. During the summer of 2022, Wagner quickly drew up 40,000 contractors, largely recruited from Russian prisons, while the Russian Army remained dependent on the state’s bi-annual conscription process.[17]
Wagner fits with a traditional Russian view on attrition’s utility in warfare. Russian military strategist Alexander Svechin writes that when a quick, decisive strike is out of the question, “geographical objectives and secondary operations” become strategic imperatives.[18] More specifically, Svechin asserts:
The weary path of a strategy of attrition, which leads to the expenditure of much greater resources than a short destructive strike aimed at the heart of the enemy, is in general, chosen only when a war cannot be ended by a single blow. The operations of a strategy of attrition are not so much direct stages toward the achievement of an ultimate goal as they are stages in the deployment of material superiority, which would ultimately deprive the enemy of the means for successful resistance.[19]
Taken in the context of Russia’s failure to quickly topple Kyiv and control Kharkiv in late February 2022, Wagner’s use in places such as Mariupol and Bakhmut makes more sense. Russia failed to win the conflict with a quick, decisive strike on Kyiv, and the Kremlin thus likely reasoned that the best strategy to defeat Ukraine resides in out-resourcing Ukraine and exhausting their manpower reserves. Wagner facilitated that shift in strategy, which likely contributed to their increased importance after the Russian military’s early failures around Kyiv and Kharkiv.
By February of 2022, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies had become trusted cultural proxies for Russia and were given a set of tasks similar to those of Wagner.[20] Russia used them as a bite-and-hold force, primarily concerned with consuming Kyiv’s personnel and equipment in large attritional affairs in the Donbas.[21]
The use of Wagner and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies as attritional battering rams and operational distractions provided the Kremlin the strategic flexibility for Russian forces to capture territory along the Sea of Azov, creating the long-coveted land bridge to Crimea. Moreover, in keeping with Svechin’s postulate on attrition, Moscow’s proxies provide a covering force for Russia to further invest its position along the Sea of Azov. Simultaneously, Moscow’s proxies fight bite-and-hold battles with the Kyiv’s armed forces meant to exhaust their personnel and equipment.[22]
What’s more, high-end weaponry like HIMARS and other precision munitions are expensive, exist in limited quantities, and are not being produced in a way befitting the requirements of industrial warfare.[23] Again, keeping Svechin’s thoughts on attrition in mind, it is not a stretch to assert the Russian military strategy intentionally paired slow, grinding combat with the Ukrainian’s reliance on high-end weapons from the U.S. and other Western partners in an effort to exhaust those stockpiles.
In short, the Kremlin’s strategy does not appear as haphazard as a lot of reporting suggests.[24] Ukraine has inflicted as many as 30,000 casualties, to include 9,000 killed in action, on the Wagner Group since the start of the conflict.[25] Considering that estimates indicate that the Wagner Group numbered approximately 50,000 at its high-water mark, the losses are staggering.[26] Reporting on losses for the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Armies are not as clear as those of Wagner. Open-source information does not present a holistic or necessarily trustworthy picture. Nevertheless, reporting indicates the Donetsk People’s Army began the conflict with roughly 20,000 soldiers.[27] By November 2022, combat operations inflicted 19,540 casualties.[28] While Russia’s proxy army was absorbing these casualties, Russia’s regular forces tended to be more oriented on consolidating their holdings along the land bridge to Crimea and fending off local challenges to those territorial possessions.[29] In effect, Russia’s proxy strategy appears intent on somewhat protecting its regular army, while using its proxy armies as an offset mechanism.
U.S. PROXY STRATEGY
Ukraine’s defense, which has been nothing less than awe-inspiring, is underpinned by a complementary U.S. proxy strategy. It is important to note that exploitation is not what fuels this strategy. Instead, the U.S. approach is a pragmatic strategic response to Russia’s unfortunate decision to try and eliminate Ukraine from the political map.
The proxy strategy pursued by the U.S. is one of technology diffusion between the U.S. and Ukraine that rests on the idea of a transactional proxy relationship.[30] States relying on other states as a proxy is not a new idea. Scholar Geraint Hughes, for instance, notes that the U.S. has long used Israel to support American interests in the Middle East, among other examples.[31] Scholar David Lake makes a similar statement regarding state-to-state proxy operations. Lake supports this assertion by highlighting U.S. reliance on Saddam Hussein and Iraq as an in-lieu-o’ actor to combat Iran’s push for regional hegemony during the Iran-Iraq War.[32] In Iraq’s case, the U.S. used indirect control to keep its involvement obfuscated from the public.[33] In Ukraine, on the other hand, the U.S. has done next to nothing to keep its involvement hidden. As ironic as it might seem to the casual observer, overt proxy employment, whether a state actor or a non-state actor, aligns with traditional proxy strategy. Hughes notes that “...in certain cases it should be noted that sponsor states do not always seek to conceal their assistance to proxy forces.”[34]
As noted above, the relationships in state-to-state principal-proxy interactions are generally transactional. In a transactional relationship, Actor A takes a backseat role and does not participate in the conflict through the use of its own armed forces.[35] Instead, Actor A participates by sharing intelligence with Actor B, equipping and training Actor B’s forces, and providing Actor B’s government with financial support.[36] Unlike coalitions and alliances, however, in proxy relationships Actor A transfers the majority of tactical risk, including the material costs of war, to Actor B.[37]
View fullsize
Vladimir Putin, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, Petro Poroshenko during Minsk II negotiations (AFP)
During the period between the Minsk II agreement and February 2022, the U.S. and its Western partners did not utilize a proxy strategy in Ukraine. Instead, they focused on deterrence and provided security assistance and security force assistance. When Russia did invade Ukraine, U.S. policy evolved from deterrence to defeating Russia on the battlefield, albeit with Ukrainian forces doing the fighting and dying.[38]
Presidential Drawdown Authority is a tool that allows the U.S. president to provide military and financial support to other states and international organizations to address emergencies in real time.[39] Initially, this authority was used to provide primarily financial support, but it did involve a small number of meaningful armaments.[40] By mid-March 2022, the Presidential Drawdown came with a number of high-impact weapon systems, which pushed the conflict toward parity between Ukraine and Russia. This package included 600 Stinger anti-air missile systems, 2,600 Javelin anti-tank rocket systems, 40 million rounds of small arms ammunition, and one million artillery rounds, grenades, and mortars.[41] As the conflict continued, the U.S. provided expanding lethal aid packages, eventually resulting in the transfer of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) Avenger Air Defense Systems, and a multitude of other sophisticated weapons.[42] By the summer of 2022, these aid packages helped Kyiv turn the tables on Moscow, illustrated by the devastating number of casualties the Ukrainian armed forces inflicted on Russian forces.[43]
FINDINGS
By the early summer of 2022, Ukraine’s forces had inflicted upwards of 80,000 casualties on the Russian military—a withering number for six months of combat. [44] As a result, it appears that Russia adapted its general strategy, and its proxy strategy in particular, to account for the U.S. technology diffusion proxy strategy.
It appears Russia’s proxy strategy shifted to offset the Ukrainian advantage in firepower through mass—that is, throwing more soldiers at the problem than U.S. and Western munitions stockpiles can withstand over time. The Wagner Group’s authorization to recruit personnel from the Russian prison system is perhaps the most notable example of the Kremlin’s shift regarding its proxy strategy.[45] With the failure of Russian blitzkrieg, the Russian military embraced its population and materiel asymmetry with Ukraine, and shifted to a strategy of attrition oriented on exhausting Ukraine’s resources, its political and domestic will to fight, and the ability and will of the U.S. and other Western friends to continue providing weapons, training, and money to Kyiv.[46] The enlistment of approximately 40,000 prisoners by Yegveny Prigozhin to augment Wagner’s 10,000 contract fighters provided the Russian Army with approximately four additional division’s worth of disposable proxy manpower.[47] That infusion of manpower has allowed Russia to compensate for the significant casualties inflicted on the Russian military and proxy forces by the U.S. proxy strategy of technology diffusion and its vigorous execution by Ukrainian armed forces.
CONCLUSION
Russian and U.S. use of proxy strategies complement one another to fuel a war of attrition. Russia’s human wave response to expensive and limited U.S. firepower is not unreasonable, despite perhaps being quite cynical and fatalistic. Russia’s human wave proxy strategy both protects conventional Russian army forces by redirecting combat to disposable proxies and frees the conventional army to reinforce territorial and political gains along the Sea of Azov.[48] Simultaneously, the U.S. proxy strategy is a logical response to an undersized and outgunned Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians fighting at distance with U.S. artillery, missiles, and rockets while using urban terrain to offset Russian strength makes complete sense. But the interaction of these two proxy strategies, both logical in their own right, fuels a devastating war of attrition, depletes weapon stockpiles, and generates significant numbers of casualties.
No comments:
Post a Comment