Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 19:45:56 +0200
How to win a war without a fight
The example of Russia in Crimea and the lesson for Africa
Jean-Paul Pougala
2014-05-18
<http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91369>
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/91369
<http://www.wikipedia.org>
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Those who are fighting today against the splintering of Ukraine are the same
as those who are working behind the scenes to break up Mali and who are
financing the rebellions in eastern DRC in order to create a new republic in
the Kivu tomorrow
What is being taught in military academies? Are you comfortably seated? I am
going to take you on a virtual tour of strategic studies at a military
academy. We will study the Ukrainian crisis based on a strategic studies
textbook that is widely used for the training of the Russian and Chinese
military, but also in a number of business schools across the world.
The book is called the Art of War, written by the Chinese strategist and
tactician Sun Tzu (544-496 B.C.). The central principle of Sun Tzu’s model
of military strategy is to use cunning to bring the enemy to lay down his
weapons and surrender before the battle has even begun. In other words,
according to Sun Tzu, the best military strategist is he who wins the war
without having to fight, simply by using cunning, bluff and timely
disinformation to confuse the enemy, giving him false hope at the start of
hostilities only to completely disillusion him in the end.
Let us take the Ukrainian crisis as a case study, as is done in military
academies. We will use the ten main strategies recommended by Sun Tzu to win
a war without fighting, in order to find out who, in Ukraine, has the best
chance of winning the current showdown between the United States of America
and Russia.
1. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces,
we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we
are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’ Once you
have identified the enemy’s plan you must constantly, in doing battle, give
an impression that belies the bellicose attitude he expects from you in the
circumstances. Thus, your counter-offensive must be invisible; you must know
how to lie and above all give the enemy no chance to understand you or
figure out your true reaction to his warlike intentions, of which you must
always feign ignorance.
In this case, the objective of the West is to proceed from an association
agreement between Ukraine and the European Union to the adhesion pure and
simple of Ukraine to the EU. But above all, it is to secure Ukraine’s
adhesion to NATO in order to cut it off completely from Russia, the lease of
the naval base of Sevastopol in Crimea to the Russian navy would thus not be
renewed, depriving Russia of her rapid deployment capability in the
Mediterranean in the event of a war with NATO, as in the recent intimidation
operations in Syrian ports, when President Hollande advocated bombing the
country, and in Egyptian ports following Morsi’s ouster, when the USA
threatened to cut military supplies to Egypt.
President Yanukovych, Moscow’s man, feigned ignorance of the harmful
consequences of signing the association agreements – and stopped at the last
minute. That is when the West came into play, inventing a popular
revolution. The Euronews television claimed that according to an intercepted
conversation between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign
policy chief Catherine Ashton, the 88 deaths on Independence Square were the
work not of President Yanukovych but of the opposition paramilitary, backed
by the members of the coalition currently in power in Kiev, in order to deal
a fatal blow to a presidency that is hostile to the European Union and to
NATO.
But how can they be so sure of it? This is what Euronews had to say on the
subject : One or more of the snipers who fired on the militants on
Euromaidan had occupied the headquarters of the National Bank of Ukraine in
Kiev. There, investigators discovered spent casings corresponding to the
bullets found in the bodies of the victims. Moreover, these were the same
bullets that were used to attack the riot police and the opposition
protestors. In all: 88 dead.
Russia looks on, aware of what is happening, invisible, inaudible, absent –
and does not intervene. What it wants is to take back the entire Crimean
Peninsula, but without a fight. How to achieve this? It is the West that
will help her by playing a game of chess, without taking into account the
pawns of the opponent, who is also playing, but secretly. And now, it is Sun
Tzu’s second strategy that enlightens us regarding President Putin’s
behaviour in this crisis.
2. ‘A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle; a defeated army
first battles and then seeks victory.’ Sun Tzu explains that according to
this principle, in war one attacks only when one is sure of winning.
Otherwise, one waits as long as necessary for the situation to turn to one’s
advantage.
Many western politicians, such as US Senator John McCain on 15 December
2013, passed through Maidan Square in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, to
support and encourage the angry crowd, its anger well stoked and guided. On
19 February, our allegedly peaceful demonstrators launched an assault on the
police. At the end of the riots there were 26 dead, including 9 police. And
this is what President Obama had to say, in Mexico where he was on an
official visit: “I want to be very clear as we work through these next
several days in Ukraine that we're going to be watching closely, and we
expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint, to not resort to violence
in dealing with peaceful protestors.” Later on, in the plane returning from
Mexico, according to an AP release, it was Ben Rhodes, security advisor to
President Obama, who talked to reporters on Air Force One, saying: ‘We
consistently oppose any of the violence by all sides, but the responsibility
is on the government to pull back its riot police, to call a truce and to
engage in a meaningful discussion with the opposition about the way forward…
because too many Ukrainians are feeling like their own aspirations are not
being met in this government.’
These three American personalities had already fallen into the trap set by
President Putin: they had clearly chosen their side. Through their actions
and words they unwittingly acknowledged paternity of the demonstrations on
Independence Square in Kiev. This acknowledgement was then used by Russia to
discredit Western interlocutors following events that seem to have been
totally unforeseen by both sides, but up to what point? We will see in the
next strategy which side favours the ultimate goal over multiple pseudo
temporary victories.
3. ‘For the skilful strategist, the main thing is victory, not a lengthy
campaign.’ That is to say that for a good military strategist, what counts
is the elements taken as a whole, it is the ultimate result of all the
operations and not of sporadic little day-to-day victories. We have looked
at the objectives of both sides: in the end, the West wants Ukraine to join
NATO in order to deprive Russia of its access to the Mediterranean. Whereas
Russia simply wants to annex Crimea to guard against such an eventuality.
Indeed, Crimea is Russia’s sole access to warm water.
Elsewhere, to the north, it is cold sea and if the West were to start a war
against Russia in wintertime all its ships would be blocked in the frozen
waters of the Baltic or North Seas. It would be defeat before the battle had
even begun. In the succession of events that took place in Kiev up to the
ousting of the president, it was the West that seemed to hold the trump
cards since it was the West that was dictating the pace, and even the choice
of the new leaders, whom it speedily recognized. Even if they had just
overthrown a democratically elected government, what did it matter?
Democracy is a big lie that exists at the expense of those who believe in
it. Especially since regular elections would take place in one year. And
during negotiations President Yanukovych had accepted to bring these
elections forward. Not fast enough for the West, which had him ousted barely
24 hours after the signature of this agreement with the opposition. Here, it
is the West that entered into a lengthy campaign. Moscow was silent.
President Putin was stuck in Sochi for the Winter Olympics. Subsequent
events show that this silence was calculated. Apparently, what interested
him was the final victory and not the intermediate operations.
4. ‘He who is skilful at keeping the enemy on the move by holding out the
prospect of an opportunity, ensures his superiority.’ According to Sun Tzu,
you must always push the enemy towards greater mobility to lead him where
you want him to go, in order to finish him off. On 6 February 2014, U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland arrived in Kiev and met the
three main Ukrainian opposition leaders: Oleg Tiagnybok, Vitali Klitschko
and Arseni Iatseniouk, who subsequently became Prime Minister. The next day,
in an interview with the daily Kommersant Ukraine, President Putin’s special
advisor Sergey Glaziev stated: ‘As far as we know, Mrs Victoria Nuland has
threatened to blacklist the Ukrainian oligarchs if President Yanukovych does
not relinquish power to the opposition. This has nothing to do with
international law. (…) It seems that the United States is counting on a
coup. (…) The Americans are spending $20 million a week to finance the
opposition and the rebels, including the delivery of weapons.’
Commenting on Senator McCain’s visit to Independence Square on 15 December
2013, Alexey Pushkov, a member of the Russian parliament (the Duma), told
Kievski Telegraf, the Ukrainian daily: ‘Representatives of the European
Union and of the United States are directly implicated in the political
showdown in Ukraine. (…) Do they intend to establish a new colonial regime
there?’
At this point we already observe that the Russians are creating a perfect
diversion. Having pushed the Westerners to be more mobile and to travel
several times to Kiev, whereas they themselves have not budged an inch from
Moscow, they have been able to force the Americans to choose a priority: a
change of power in Kiev. It is into this trap that the Russians will lead
them and where they will occupy them for quite some time, while they are
free to secretly put the finishing touches to the invasion of Crimea.
5. ‘The skilful strategist is so subtle that he has no visible form. The
skilful strategist is so discreet that he is inaudible. Thus, he is the
master of the enemy’s destiny.’ The skilful strategist eludes the enemy. He
must communicate as little as possible and withhold information. When he
does communicate, it is to convey unexploitable or false information to the
enemy.
When President Putin gave his only press conference on 5 March 2014
exclusively for the Russian press, he swore on the head of his
great-grandfather that he had no troops in Crimea. And that the military
that were seen without national insignia on their uniforms were in fact
local self-defence forces. Viewed from the West, this was a lie. But looking
at it more closely, President Putin was merely conning them. And he supplied
a capital piece of information that was not understood by Western
strategists. Indeed, when he denied that there were any Russian, i.e.
foreign soldiers in Crimea, he was telling them that, officially, Crimea was
already Russian and that the forces present in Crimea could therefore not be
considered as invading forces but as forces that were already at home, in
their own nation, their own republic, hence the designation ‘local
self-defence forces.’ Unfortunately, the subliminal message was not properly
analysed and understood by Western ‘strategists’ who, instead of immediately
looking into the Crimean situation, continued their posturing, as usual,
talking of a Russian de-escalation of tension even though the latter had
just informed them that they had already proceeded to the second half of the
game to which the West had invited them.
In Paris, a conference on Lebanon was transformed into a discussion on
sanctions that would be taken against Russia if it was not nice and did not
remove its forces from Crimea and return them to their base.
The next day, in Rome, a conference on the chaos left by NATO in Libya was
transformed into a debate to inform European public opinion that Europe
really did intend to do something.
One continued to organize pointless conferences, to-ing and fro-ing between
European capitals and Kiev, even though the barycentre of the crisis had
already long moved from Kiev to Crimea. An extraordinary mini-summit on
Ukraine was even organized in Brussels on 6 March and, right in the middle
of the meeting, President Putin sent the participants a little present: the
dispatch that arrived on news desks in Brussels at 12 o’clock, stating that
the Crimean parliament had unanimously voted in favour of joining Russia and
that a referendum would be organized to validate the vote barely ten days
later.
6. ‘To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of
skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.’ A skilful
strategist is not violent, he does not humiliate his adversary. He leads his
adversary to transform himself and to recognize his inferiority. He thus has
no need to fight. In Crimea, the Russian special forces arrived in uniforms
without insignia and surrounded all the Ukrainian military bases, but
without forcing the Ukrainians to leave their bases. The problem is that the
regular occupants of those bases were no longer free to come and go. They
had to choose: either they waited stoically for events in Kiev to produce a
miracle to dislodge the Russians, or they surrendered. Many chose to
surrender without even trying to defend themselves. In any case, they were
not under attack.
At the same time, without even waiting for the referendum, at the airport in
Sevastopol, psychological pressure was ramped up a notch: immediately after
the vote of the Crimean parliament all flights to Kiev were scheduled as
international flights. Ukrainian currency was progressively taken out of
circulation and replaced with Russian roubles. For the first time in history
one witnessed the faultless application of Sun Tzu’s theories: winning
without a fight. The United States was completely taken in.
7. ‘In ancient times skilful warriors first made themselves invincible, and
then watched for vulnerability in their opponents. Invincibility is in
oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent.’ A true strategist uses timing to
win all his battles. His cunning makes him impervious to the threats and
bellicose actions of the enemy. He thus becomes invincible. But it is not
enough. He must win. For this, a skilful strategist must know how to wait
for a moment of weakness of his enemy before taking action and delivering
the coup de grâce. Once the annexation of Crimea was secured, Russia knew
that the operation itself would drastically weaken the West in the
operations to come. But the West mistakenly thinks that President Putin will
stop at Crimea.
He knew that he had long been destabilizing his adversaries, who were
incapable of innovative initiative. President Obama announced a series of
sanctions, first on visas. It seemed like a bad joke. ‘In 1994, you forced
Ukraine to get rid of its nuclear weapons, promising help in case of attack.
And now that its territory is being dismembered you are threatening to
withhold visas? What are you playing at?’ In reality, President Obama cannot
do much. Right now the Russian president is the sole master of the game. He
is holding all the trump cards. He can do as he wishes, when he wishes, and
how he wishes. The worst of it is that all the gesticulating of the West
merely shows how powerless it is.
First because it does not have the money to wage a war against a power such
as Russia, but also because the slightest economic sanction will immediately
backfire. For example, according to information published on 7 March 2014 by
the French economic journal Challenge, as soon as President Obama threatened
to freeze Russian assets, in a single day, on Thursday 6 March 2014 the
Central Bank of Russia moved the gigantic sum of several tens of billions of
dollars from accounts in the United States to Russia and various tax havens.
If this kind of operation were to continue it could, in the medium term,
lead to a veritable banking and financial cataclysm in the United States. It
is a classic case of the biter bit.
Still on Friday 7 March 2014, the Bloomberg agency gave another analysis and
forecast. Bloomberg reported that on 1 September 2013 Russia held $160
billion in banks in 44 countries, whereas on that same date, 24 countries
had deposited $242 billion in Russian banks. Western countries can freeze up
to $160 billion worth of Russian money. The Russians can freeze up to $242
billion worth of Western money. According to Bloomberg in Washington, the
country that has the most to lose is France, whose banks have invested $50
billion in Russia, followed by the United States, whose banks have invested
$35 billion in the largest country in the world, Russia, with its 6.5
million square miles.
Worse, once again according to Bloomberg, we have it from the mouth of
Sergey Glaziev, the Russian president’s advisor, that in case of American
sanctions Russia would be obliged to renounce the dollar in favour of other
currencies and create its own payment system. (…) If the United States
freezes the assets of Russian public institutions and private Russian
investors, Moscow will encourage everyone to dump U.S. Treasury bonds.
Moreover, if sanctions are imposed, Russia will have to renege on the
reimbursement of loans from American banks.
The die is cast. Russia is invincible and has even identified the enemy’s
weak spot. Consequently, the odds are that, after Crimea, it knows that it
can annex first the former Georgian territories of Abkhazia and Ossetia,
before swallowing all the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine that
voted for President Yanulovych at the last presidential election. Without of
course forgetting the separatist region of Transnistria in Moldavia, at the
border with Ukraine, which also has a Russian majority and since its
independence, proclaimed in 1992, has been asking to join Russia. At this
point we come to another of Sun Tzu’s strategies.
8. ‘You may advance and be absolutely irresistible if you make for the
enemy's weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your
movements are more rapid than those of the enemy.’ To advance, you must
avoid hand to hand combat with the enemy, and limit yourself to hitting him
only there where he is unprotected. For strategic withdrawal you must place
yourself in recesses unknown to the enemy or outside his control.
Since the blitzkrieg in August 2008 against U.S. ally Georgia, under
Sakashvili, the conquered territories are the weak spot of the West. ‘You
had led Georgia to believe that you could help it in case of war with
Russia. And it did what you told it to do. When it was bombed, you didn’t
show up. So, what is your word worth?’ Russia’s humiliation of little
Georgia is a big stain on the United States’ credibility and, even today,
the two disputed territories are in fact under Russia’s control. This is why
it is easy to predict that these are the first territories that Russia will
annex after Crimea. Again according to Sun Tzu, the easy victory over
Georgia in just four days does not mean it should be repeated today in
Ukraine. And President Putin is well aware of this.
9. ‘Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let
your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.’ Tactics
and strategy must always be adapted to new situations. It is not because a
solution worked once that it will always work. If one repeats the victorious
tactics of the past one runs the risk of facing a seasoned enemy who has had
time to study one’s strategy and how to deal with it. For a skilful
strategist, each situation is unique and merits a unique strategy. While the
Americans repeated the same costly recipe in Iraq and Afghanistan that they
used in Vietnam, Russia avoided repeating in Ukraine the victorious tactics
it had used in Georgia, with hundreds of shells shot from tanks and combat
helicopters. Because obviously, whereas the American allies were unprepared
in Georgia, it is unlikely that they would have been surprised and remained
passive a second time. Indeed, we were told that American F16s were flying
towards Estonian and Polish skies. Just as President Putin remained silent
during the events in Kiev, before swallowing Crimea, today no one knows what
strategy he has prepared for the Russian-speaking regions of eastern
Ukraine. Since Sun Tzu recommends that one should not repeat victorious
strategies, one can wager that he has something completely different in mind
for the eastern regions – but what?
10. ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result
of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every
victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy
nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’ The skilful strategist must
always keep three things in mind: be master of the environment, the
battleground, know the enemy in detail and know yourself in order to be
able, above all, to detect your own weak spots before the enemy does. To be
a strategist in the Russian secret service one must speak several languages,
English among them. But all texts and communication among members of the FSB
are coded exclusively in Russian. The CIA has a Russia department that
cannot match the formidable strategic mastery of English by Russian spies.
Or the Russian’s highly detailed knowledge of Americans. There is also a
network composed of American Russians who hold American passports and can
gain access to any post in the American administration.
This explains the impression that nothing the Russian president’s
counterpart says surprises or upsets him. As for the environment, Russia is
6.5 million square miles, the United States half that. Whereas Americans in
Russia are concentrated in a few big cities in the West, Russians in the USA
are scattered throughout the country. They have become Americans for all
intents and purposes. Russia need only study their behaviour to know all
there is to know about Americans.
To come back to Ukraine, the regions that interest Russia are the
Russian-speaking regions, where the population is Russian and which Russia
therefore masters, even sociologically. This is not the case of the USA,
which, in Ukraine as in Afghanistan or Iraq, always gives the impression of
engaging in potential war zones anywhere on the planet without ever
mastering the terrain, as in a video game in which it is enough to replace
one map by another and continue pulling the trigger - which has led to
useless wars that have literally ruined the United States of America.
President Putin is well aware that the other side is playing it by ear, from
Iraq and Syria yesterday to Ukraine today. Finally, with a confused American
president who makes generic threats and is totally incapable of any
initiative regarding Ukraine, if there is a master of the universe today in
terms of military strategy, that master is Vladimir Putin. He knows his
enemy, the USA, he knows the terrain, Ukraine, and he is aware of the new
power of his country, the new military strength of the country since the war
in Libya, which he mentions whenever he wants to mock American strategists
who had thought they could establish democracy in Libya and are now
organizing a conference in Rome to request the help of the Russians to
straighten things out over there.
For his part, President Obama gives the impression of not knowing either his
Russian counterpart or the complexity of the Ukrainian situation, otherwise
he would not have suggested to those they had put in place in Kiev to ban
the Russian language. Worse, he seems to be unaware of his own weakness,
that of a ruined country that cannot offer anything to 47 African countries
that he has invited to Washington, merely to mimic the encounters that are
held every two years between African and Chinese leaders.
WHAT ARE THE LESSONS FOR AFRICA?
In a communiqué on 22 January 2014 the White House announced that President
Obama had invited 47 African heads of state to Washington. He was careful to
exclude three, from the Central African Republic, Egypt and Guinea Bissau,
who were accused of taking power through coups, without benefit of
elections. How to explain that in Ukraine the American administration itself
is forcing the hand of Russia to recognize the new regime in Kiev that is
also the result of a coup? Is a coup in Europe different from a coup in
Africa?
On 17 February 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from
Serbia. The West applauded. Serbia brought the affair before the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, the judicial organ of the UN
that ruled on the secession of Kosovo, validating it by its decision of 22
July 2010 in these terms: ‘the declaration of independence of Kosovo did not
violate general international law, or resolution 1244 of the Security
Council, or the Constitutional Framework.’ However, the ICJ added that it
“is not required by the question it has been asked to take a position on
whether international law conferred a positive entitlement on Kosovo
unilaterally to declare its independence or, a fortiori, on whether
international law generally confers an entitlement on entities situated
within a State unilaterally to break away from it.”
Bernard Kouchner, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, was
pleased with the ICJ’s decision and declared : ‘The independence of Kosovo
is irreversible (…) This opinion clearly states that Kosovo's declaration of
independence is not contrary either to international law nor to Resolution
1244 as France has always maintained and I am delighted.’
Question: Why is the West happy to encourage secession in Kosovo and in
South Sudan yet pretends to be an ardent defender of international law and
the intangibility of borders in the case of Ukraine? How is Crimea in
Ukraine different from South Sudan or Kosovo? The answer is that there is
one rule for some and another for the rest and that this is the stock in
trade of some countries, the same who took it upon themselves to play
policeman of the world and dole out good and bad points to the naïve
candidates for democracy, all the better to despoil them. Contrary to what
happens regularly in Africa, from Eritrea to South Sudan, Russia did not
help Crimea to declare its independence but rather to join an already large
entity. Any new independence weakens the country that loses a piece of its
territory. But it also weakens a new state that is not viable.
Those who are fighting today against the splintering of Ukraine are the same
as those who are working behind the scenes to break up Mali and who are
financing the rebellions in eastern DRC in order to create a new republic in
the Kivu tomorrow
Russia will continue to surprise the Americans. What message were the
Russians sending to the Americans when they set the date of the referendum
to validate the annexation of Crimea by Russia to coincide with the end of
the Sochi Paralympics on 16 March 2014?
Unlike Russia, the strategies of the Africans are grossly predictable to
their Western enemies. Insofar as they are capable of understanding that the
West is the enemy of Africa. There is a real cultural and intellectual
backwardness of the population in Africa that prevents it from understanding
that it must establish a balance of power with the West in which its own
standpoint would be taken into account. But this cannot happen in the
classic relationship of institutionalized beggary in which the one who holds
out his hand to receive is always the one who obeys.
This is why there does not exist in any African country a serious project to
spy on the West. Africans mistakenly think that they are the friends of the
Europeans and never ask themselves how the Europeans see them: as simple
slaves, albeit very well educated ones. Western television stations may give
the impression that they hate President Putin or Russia, but an element
remains that no one can ignore: whatever their relations in the future, they
will have to pay Russia due respect. They have already begun. To wit, the
way everyone is beating about the bush over pseudo sanctions that never come
about. It is because of this element of respect that I am paradoxically
optimistic about the future of relations between these two enemies of today.
I cannot say the same about Africa. In order to be respected we will have to
stop holding out our hand, it is an indispensable condition before we even
begin to talk about military strategy or spying on the Europeans.
Yaoundé, 8 March 2014
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