The war in Ukraine was supposed to be over by now. One year later, it rages on with no end in sight.
The Russian military was supposed to be a near-unbeatable war machine. Modernized with petrodollars, it was supposed to easily rout a much smaller force. The war in Ukraine would expose the Russian military as being poorly led, hollow and brittle, and largely incapable of engaging in the type of combined arms operations required to quickly take the Ukrainian capital and other key regions of the country and then hold them.
Ukraine's leaders mobilized their entire population to resist the Russian invaders. The Ukrainian military, expertly led and trained to fight like a nimble modern Western army, traded space for time. The Russians quickly lost momentum as the Ukrainians counterattacked their flanks, rear and other vulnerable areas. The Russians were forced to pull back and consolidate their forces in order to preserve what remained of their invading army, which has now seen many of its elite and other frontline units decimated.
Some estimates suggest that the Russians and Ukrainians have each suffered at least 100,000 casualties so far (meaning both killed and wounded). Such extreme losses in personnel and material have not been seen in Europe since World War II or perhaps even World War I.
To be certain, the Ukrainians would not have been able to survive the initial onslaught and then push back the Russian invaders without many billions of dollars of American and NATO military and other assistance. The war in Ukraine has proven to be a bonanza for American arms manufacturers.
The war in Ukraine has great meaning, both symbolic and real, as the frontline in a much larger global struggle between the western liberal democratic project and autocracy and neofascism as embodied by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Erdoğan, Narendra Modi and the Trumpists and Republicans and larger white right in the United States. The war in Ukraine is a site for grand power politics as well. Russia's place in the world is greatly diminished as it is now a second-tier power with nuclear weapons; China is boldly inserting itself in European politics by choosing to either supply Russia with lethal aid and/or brokering a peace deal; Iran is asserting itself as well by supplying Russia with drones that are being used to terrorize the Ukrainians. The U.S. and NATO have strengthened their already very deep ties even more; the alliance is rejuvenated and is now (again) viewed as indispensable to the West's security against Russia.
And what of the hopes and dreams of a permanent democratic order?
The war in Ukraine has forced a recalibration there as well. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union was supposed to usher in a Pax Americana and new order where Western-style liberal democracy and "stability" were uncontested around the world, especially in Europe. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that growing catastrophe, is a reminder, once again, of just how much that dream remains unfulfilled.
As the first year of the war in Ukraine becomes the second year, the Russians are preparing for a new offensive in the spring. The Russian army is attempting to replenish itself with hundreds of thousands of conscripts. Putin shows no sign of stopping his belligerence: he views the war in Ukraine as a generational struggle, an existential battle for Russia (and his legacy) against the West as a whole.
Putin continues to threaten the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and elsewhere if he deems it necessary to "defend" the motherland against the United States and NATO.
"We no longer clearly live in the post-Cold War era. And we most certainly do not live in the post-9/11 era anymore."
The Ukrainians are also preparing a counter-offensive as they integrate new Western equipment into their military. The question for the Ukrainian leadership is now, how much more of the homeland can be liberated?
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In an effort to better understand the complex (and often confusing) nature of the war in Ukraine and its broader implications, I recently spoke with Elliot Ackerman. He is a New York Times best-selling author of several books, including "2034: A Novel of the Next World War," "The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan" and "Places and Names: On War, Revolution and Returning." Ackerman is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Ackerman reflects on the different competing narratives and agendas — and even versions of history and reality — that are being applied to the war in Ukraine.
Ackerman summarizes some of what we now know about the war in Ukraine one year later and why so many preliminary expectations and predictions proved to be incorrect. He also highlights the lessons that Western and other militaries are learning from the war. Ackerman warns that "peace through strength" should be the guiding rule for how America and its allies confront such countries as Russia and Iran and other malign actors. At the end of this conversation, he highlights how history demonstrates that Russia is far from being defeated, will learn and adapt, and that "peace" or "victory," whatever that means in this context, will likely not come to Ukraine anytime soon.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You have a unique perspective on the war in Ukraine. You are a decorated combat veteran. You've written excellent, well-researched and properly sourced military speculative fiction such as the novel 2034. You have a deep knowledge of policy and the operational art of war. Given all those lenses, how are you seeing and making sense of the war in Ukraine?
In many ways, I'm like everyone else. I'm trying to process it. I'm trying to understand the competing narratives that exist about the war in Ukraine. What are the stories that America is telling itself about the war one year later? What about the Ukrainian experience? What story are the Russians telling about the war? Ultimately, everyone is telling different stories about what this war is about and what the stakes are. I don't think that's unique at all to the war in Ukraine; it is a feature of war more generally.
The reason we fight wars is because we can't agree on what the war is about in the first place. The Ukrainians and Russians both have certain strategic strengths that they're bringing into the conflict. Conversely, they both have specific strategic weaknesses. One of the obvious Ukrainian strengths is that they are fighting for their homeland. This war is completely existential for them. The Russians have a strength in that they are fighting a war in somebody else's home, so their society isn't the one that's ravaged. The Russians also have the advantage of raw human resources and sheer numbers. They believe that they can outlast the Ukrainians -- and the world more generally. The world will get tired of being involved in Ukraine and domestic politics will change in the US and Western Europe. That is what the Russians and Putin are hoping for.
"The one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war in Ukraine". What does "anniversary" mean in that context?
It would be fascinating to see if we went back and looked at media clippings during the First World War to see if reporters and journalists in August of 1915 were writing their obligatory one-year anniversary pieces. Anniversaries signal the institutionalization or codification of something that's happened, that said the event is going to extend into the future. Obviously, if you're fighting a war, you don't want a second or a third or fourth anniversary. You want it to end.
Is "commemoration" a better word than "anniversary"? "Anniversary" just feels unseemly and dirty to me, as imprecise as that sounds. Human beings are suffering and dying in Ukraine and "anniversary" does not respect and/or channel that experience properly.
Is it appropriate to be marking wars down in time? Is time the metric by which we should be talking about a war? OK, so you have a one-year anniversary. What do you do for the second-year anniversary? To me, it would seem as though the energy would be better spent if we were focusing on the objectives of the war in Ukraine. In the Second World War people knew the tasks that needed to be accomplished. The Allies knew that we needed to take back Europe. We knew that we needed to invade France. The Russians knew that they needed to push the Germans out of Poland. But we seem more fixated on just marking the war in Ukraine's time progression, as opposed to the progression of objectives that would lead to the end of the war. I agree with you. I find the continual marking of anniversaries of wars that exist in our life to be a little misguided sometimes.
One year later, what do we know today that we didn't know then?
The big thing we did not know was how strong the Ukrainian resistance would be. The common belief was that the Ukrainians would be overwhelmed by this Russian military juggernaut. We also did not know that the Russian military had atrophied to such an extent. The Russian military in Ukraine is not the force that we faced during the Cold War. The Russian military is underperforming; the Ukrainian military is overperforming. I would also add that NATO is doing better than I would have anticipated. It is strong. We have to remember that February 2022 is less than six months after August of 2021, where we see the US withdrawal from Afghanistan -- which is also a NATO withdrawal from that country. I would argue that was probably one of, if not NATO's darkest hour and most severe humiliations. The fact that you see this massive NATO underperformance in Afghanistan promptly followed by NATO overperformance is something I don't think a lot of people expected -- including Vladimir Putin.
International events are moving very, very quickly right now. It's tough to keep up and understand exactly where we're at on any type of a timeline with regard to these wars and the realignments that are going on around the world.
Are we closer to the end of the war in Ukraine or is this just the end of the beginning?
I've felt for a while that we're living in the before time, I wouldn't even say we're at the end of the beginning. We're at the middle of the beginning. Too often discussions about these individuals wars are taking place in a vacuum. Ukraine does not exist in a vacuum. There is a realignment that's going on right now. We no longer clearly live in the post-Cold War era. And we most certainly do not live in the post-9/11 era anymore. I don't think we really know what era that we are in now in terms of global politics. There are rising authoritarian nations that are challenging the Western liberal world order as led by the United States. I do not believe that we know what this global realignment will look like once it settles down.
Here is a basic question: Why does Ukraine matter? Ukraine matters because having one nation invade another unprovoked, especially in a key strategic region of the world, is unacceptable.
Another reason Ukraine matters is because if it had fallen quickly to the Russians what would that have signaled to other countries with similar aggressive designs on their neighbors? Would China learn the lesson that now is the time to make a move on Taiwan? Such an outcome would have made for a very different world than the one that we are currently occupying. Returning to my point about anniversaries, in some ways, that silos the conflict and makes it seem as though it's its own standalone set of challenges. We need to see the war in Ukraine in a global context.
I came of age at the end of the Cold War, have a long interest in military affairs, and like many others read Tom Clancy, "Team Yankee," "The Third World War," various military journals and magazines. I'm watching the Russian military in Ukraine and saying to myself: This is what terrified NATO and the West? This is the army that was supposed to overrun West Germany and run through the Fulda Gap in hours or days? I had an acquaintance who was an M60 tanker deployed in the Fulda Gap during the 1980s. He told me their orders were to fight for a few hours if they could and then get the hell out of there. They were a speed bump. He didn't expect to last that long — it would go nuclear. That Russian military is long gone, evidently.
The Russian military of 2021 is obviously not the Soviet military at the height of the Cold War, which was a real force to be reckoned with. There's a lot of ground that's been covered since 1991. When the Cold War ends, the United States is economically dominant. The U.S. has a conventional military that is unmatched by any other country in the world. Strategically, the US invests more substantively in our conventional military, such as state-of-the-art aircraft, tanks, and ships of the line. The US maintains but does not meaningfully expand our investment in our nuclear arsenal.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and a significant weakening of Russia, their ability to maintain and compete with the U.S. tank for tank or ship for ship just evaporates. The Russians cannot compete economically. But the Russians know that they can maintain their nuclear arsenal. In many ways, we are seeing the result of that in Ukraine with Putin's nuclear saber-rattling. The Russian military doctrine right now embraces a strategy called "escalate to de-escalate." In the Ukraine context that would mean probably using a low-grade tactical nuclear weapon, something that would take out a base and kill a few thousand people. That would not change the strategic balance by itself but using a nuclear weapon is a way to change the nature of the conflict. The goal for the Russians being to make the US and NATO pause and perhaps want to renegotiate, or de-escalate the situation.
Using a nuclear weapon in such a way actually makes sense: if the Russians did such a thing it would upend the world order and create a new age of world events by shattering a longstanding taboo. The new world would be marked by everything that happened before the Russians used a nuke and everything that happened afterward.
Several days ago, one of our leading newspapers had a headline that read, and I am paraphrasing, that U.S.-Russian tensions are at their highest since the end of the Cold War. Tom Nichols has a new essay at the Atlantic where he reflects on the end of the Cold War and what it was like to see that old order collapse. With Putin's invasion, Nichols feels like so much has changed and those dreams of closure and something better for the international order are imperiled if not gone. I have been asking myself what year it is really. It feels like time is broken.
What are the stories that we're telling ourselves about war? For instance, if you listen to President Zelenskyy, he is basically saying that the war in Ukraine is a battlefield in a broader world war. And that world war is about what the global system will look like going forward and whether or not it will be dominated, at least in part, by these authoritarian nations like Iran or Russia or China. That's one narrative of the war. Another narrative of the war is what we are seeing from Republicans, however disingenuously, complaining that Biden is in Ukraine, and we have problems here at home. Putin's version of events is that Ukraine and Russia are, generally speaking, one people and that Ukraine should not exist independently of Russia proper. I don't know where we're at in this timeline, I just know that there are lots of different people putting out competing narratives that are attended by violence to try to win this argument.
There are conservative estimates of 100,000 or more casualties combined between the Russian and Ukrainian forces. But on a personal level, on the ground, what does that feel like? For example, if you're a Russian conscript what does it feel like to know that your side has suffered that much? That your leaders have utter disregard for your lives? That you are human meat, a bullet-stopper? How do we personalize the human dimension beyond a cold statistic?
To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, one dead person is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. At a certain point, these numbers start to become meaningless because the human mind can't comprehend that much suffering. I am neither a Russian or Ukrainian soldier, but I would imagine at a certain point that you might read a new story or see a statistic and your mind cannot comprehend what it means. Your mind truly cannot process that you could potentially be folded into those huge numbers. In combat you can only control the narrow and relatively narrowing set of decisions in front of you, which is managing your little slice of the war and trying to do your job and survive. We have not seen a war fought like this in Europe with casualty numbers even approaching these levels in many decades.
What does it do to a military organization from the squad level all the way up to battalions and higher to have suffered such a large number of casualties so fast?
We often don't do enough to evaluate the intangible factors that determine the outcomes of a battle or war. Such losses, obviously, will make it very difficult for the Russians to sustain the war. The Ukrainians will also have a difficult time sustaining high casualties because they have a smaller comparative population. If we look to history as a guide, the cold clinical statistics often are not what decides war. War is a distinctly human enterprise. As Clausewitz tells us, war is politics by other means. If you ever lose sight of the political and focus too clinically on the statistical in trying to understand the outcome of a war, you're going to get an outcome that surprises you.
For every example of a people's war that is ultimately successful against an invading army — for example, the Vietnam War — there are other examples where a very motivated force is ultimately just outgunned and cannot sustain their war.
I would not try to predict the outcome of the war in Ukraine; I think that's a loser's game. We need to watch and reach for as many historical examples and touch-points that we have to keep ourselves informed and to see the bigger picture. As we enter the warmer weather in Ukraine during the spring and summer, these are going to be critical months.
What are some of the big lessons that Western militaries are learning from the war in Ukraine?
War is ever changing and it's also timeless. We are seeing both new lessons and also things that need to just be relearned. Early on in the war we saw the incredible efficacy of anti-platform systems. Russian tanks were being blown into flaming coffins by Javelin missiles and NLAWS by small groups of Ukrainians. The Russian capital ship the Moskva was sunk in the Black Sea by a Neptune antiship missile. As we look to the future of warfare, especially to the Pacific with China, these anti platform systems are very effective. That reality should cause American defense planners to pause and ask themselves if we should be putting so many resources into large platforms like aircraft carriers and destroyers and very expensive tanks when the anti-platform systems are incredibly effective.
That having been said what we are seeing in the east of Ukraine is that the war there is a throwback. It is low-tech. There is trench warfare. It's artillery heavy and grinding and there's not a lot of movement. In all, the war in Ukraine runs the spectrum from high tech anti-platform systems to the use of cheap drones used to spot for artillery and mortars. It is a hybrid type of war. And then we're also seeing a type of low-tech war that closely resembles World War I on the Western front.
A war with China for example, would require massive expenditures of weaponry. Ukraine is testing the U.S. and NATO's stockpiles and armaments industries. America's economy would have to be totally reoriented. These are old lessons from World War I.
We know these things. Those lessons were forgotten or perhaps just not taken seriously enough. If the United States ever fights a war against a peer level nation like China, or an alliance between China and Iran where they battle against the NATO alliance, that will mean the mobilization of the entire nation. That is not because of casualties but because we would need every person in the country working to support the war because it is so resource intensive. There's a reason that America shut down from 1941 to 1945 and everybody put on a uniform and had to work to win the war. We're seeing little shades of that in Ukraine in a way that most of us have not seen in our lifetime. Even with the huge defense budgets of the Cold War it was not a hot war, a hungry war that had to be fed.
Between the war and Ukraine, and the type of societal disruption we experienced at home here in the U.S. during the pandemic, if we were to blend those two together that could approximate what it could potentially be like to fight China or another peer nation.
Will American and NATO heavy equipment such as Abrams tanks, Bradleys, Strykers, British Challenger tanks and German Leopards actually impact the outcome in any significant way? What do you think the psychological impact on American public opinion and support for the war is going to be when we inevitably see those vehicles destroyed by the Russians?
Having the systems isn't enough. You need to integrate those weapons systems into some type of a battle plan that will be effective. Is a battalion of Abrams tanks going to be used as the spearhead of an offensive? Just because somebody hands you a hammer doesn't mean you can build a house. But if you have the right plan, you can maybe start putting in some nails and making a little bit of progress. Psychologically, I think it will be surreal for Americans to see our equipment engaged against Russian troops. We are going to learn a lot about how that equipment performs against that type of near peer conventional force.
How long will it take for the Ukrainians to learn to use all that diverse equipment effectively? The logistics are not simple.
This equipment may come from different countries, but it is all standardized to NATO requirements. One of the challenges in Ukraine right now is that they have a lot of Soviet equipment. So yes, it will be a challenge to integrate all the equipment logistically. The one advantage that we have in Ukraine is that there is a massive border between Ukraine and Poland. The supplies can go overland. The Ukrainians basically hold two thirds of the country in the West which means that getting things to the front could be much more fraught than it is.
But there's a process of training and integration that's going to have to take place and it takes a while, but you just need to start it and get it going. There is no real shortcut there. We would have been farther along in the process of effectively arming Ukraine with these new weapon systems if the US and NATO and other allies had started in April or May. When it comes to actors such as Russia or Iran that weakness is a very real provocation. Peace through strength is a pretty wise dictum in that part of the world. I think we're starting to show some strength, but I think it probably would have been better off if we'd shown it about nine months ago.
What type of Russian military rises from these ashes? How are they adapting?
The Russians thought the Ukrainian defenses would just collapse. Clearly, that did not happen; their invasion did not go as planned. When you look at Russia's wars, they have a narrative that goes back to the Napoleonic Wars. In World War 2, what the Russians call The Great Patriotic War, we see the same narrative where they're attacked by Western powers, frequently, it doesn't go well, there's a period of sort of retreat or a period of setback, the Russian bear awakens, counter attacks, and then marches on to glory. So even as we see this Russian disaster in Ukraine over the last year, the Russians are now creating a narrative where they are regrouping, mobilizing the nation, and counter attacking. The expectation that the Russians are crushed in terms of morale and about to collapse is one that I wouldn't necessarily take for granted.
If China more closely allies with Russia, how will that impact the outcome of the war?
An alliance where the Chinese are providing lethal aid to Russia would most certainly not be a good thing for Ukraine. It would be bad for the West as well. Whether or not China is willing to go through with that and ally itself with Russia, which at this point is really a pariah state, I don't know that the Chinese would do that. I could end up being wrong but I believe that China's leaders are more savvy than that.
What does victory in this context mean for Ukraine? What does victory mean for Russia?
Victory for Ukraine is in some ways going to be challenging because victory is predicated on the idea that you've demonstrated a certain degree of battlefield success. Therefore, if the Ukrainians are demonstrating that battlefield success, it becomes difficult for them to start negotiating in a way where they're going to give up pieces of land to Russia. Is victory a Russian withdrawal back to the pre-February 24 borders? If so, that means that Ukraine would accept losing Crimea, and there are probably some Ukrainians who don't accept the idea that Crimea is Russian. Is it realistic to believe that Ukraine can get back everything before February 24 and Crimea? There would have to be some significant Russian setbacks for that to happen.
Victory is very much a function of psychology. What does victory mean for Russia? What is the amount of territory they're going to have to take from Ukraine before they can say that they have a victory? Sure, if Russia invades all of Ukraine and Ukraine ceases to exist that would be a victory. But that is not realistic. The Russians would be facing a massive counterinsurgency inside of Ukraine. The Ukrainians and Russians are fighting and trying to achieve whatever success they can on the battlefield. Once they feel like they have gotten everything they can on the battlefield that might be the moment when serious negotiations begin. But right now, each side believes it has more to gain by fighting than by trying to negotiate, so they're just going to keep on fighting.
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