Many friends and colleagues have asked me: “Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine fail?”
My answer is that it depends on what we consider its goals to be: the very narrow goal of taking over Luhansk Oblast and most of Donetsk Oblast might still be met. There is also the whole stretch of territory running west from Donetsk to Kherson. Russian forces might keep a fair amount of that.
I do not expect them to keep the part of Kherson Oblast north of the Dnipro River in the long run. They are too exposed there, given that Ukrainian forces can destroy all the river crossings.
In a larger sense, the war was doomed from the day Ukrainians repelled the attack on Kyiv, and a swift and effective Ukrainian counteroffensive has over the past few weeks further aggregated problems for Russian President Vladimir Putin, militarily and politically.
Once Russian troops were no longer able to take all of Ukraine, they had inadvertently created a hostile state right in the heart of historic Russia — a state not only hostile to them, but also Western-oriented; a state not just democratic, something Russians cannot seem to get the hang of, but maybe even fairly non-corrupt, although that remains to be seen.
More defeats are likely awaiting the Russian army, even though in the long run it can be expected to be a protracted war.
Russia simply does not have the military strength to defend a 1,000km front line. Too much of it would be thinly defended, or held by second and third-rate troops such as the Russian National Guard, and conscripts from Donetsk and Luhansk.
Of greater concern to Russia must be the artillery situation. Russian advances were completely dependent on overwhelming superiority in artillery, but Moscow has lost a fair amount of that advantage.
In particular, the GPS-guided long-range artillery the US is sending to Ukraine must have Russian troops terrified.
That said, Russians have long experience with rebounding from military catastrophes.
At minimum, we will end up with a frozen conflict, where Russia controls most of Donetsk and Luhansk, and a lot of the Mariupol-Meletopol corridor north of the Sea of Azov.
To summarize, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy might not be able to concede to official Russian control of any pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, and Putin might not be able to give it back.
In conclusion, the invasion has failed, Putin has got himself lost in the long grass, but a political and military stalemate is awaiting.
Harvard University sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol has said that it was a weak state’s failed military campaigns abroad that caused the domestic implosion of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as Russian empires.
A weak state invites foreign missteps and that triggers the chain reaction.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) need to learn from this historical lesson.
Simon Tang is an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton.
The 75th anniversary summit of NATO was held in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday last week. Its main focus was the reinvigoration and revitalization of NATO, along with its expansion. The shadow of domestic electoral politics could not be avoided. The focus was on whether US President Biden would deliver his speech at the NATO summit cogently. Biden’s fitness to run in the next US presidential election in November was under assessment. NATO is acquiring more coherence and teeth. These were perhaps more evident than Biden’s future. The link to the Biden candidacy is critical for NATO. If Biden loses
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
Shortly after Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) stepped down as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, his successor, Xi Jinping (習近平), articulated the “Chinese Dream,” which aims to rejuvenate the nation and restore its historical glory. While defense analysts and media often focus on China’s potential conflict with Taiwan, achieving “rejuvenation” would require Beijing to engage in at least six different conflicts with at least eight countries. These include territories ranging from the South China Sea and East China Sea to Inner Asia, the Himalayas and lands lost to Russia. Conflicts would involve Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia,
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to