UKRAINE : ESCALATION MISMANAGEMENT

UKRAINE : ESCALATION MISMANAGEMENT

JEFFREY OWENS

Fear of vertical escalation by Russia has manifested in the form of appeasement by the collective west in placating Russian aggression, slow-walking military assistance to Ukraine out of sync with the realities on the ground, and yielded not only the dismantling of deterrence but also an uncontrollable Russian horizontal escalation resulting in further global destabilization.

Vertical escalation occurs when one country or group directly responds to the provocations of another.

Fear of vertical escalation in the form of Russia “nuking” Kyiv in response to Ukrainian resistance or directly striking a NATO country in reprisal for military assistance to Ukraine paralyzed the collective west with “nuclear psychosis” and led them into taking an approach of extreme caution in providing even basic military support.

Nearly three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an overwhelming amount of U.S. stockpiled Cold War era military equipment remains off limits to Kyiv.  Meanwhile Russia’s entire non-nuclear Soviet inheritance including tens of thousands of military vehicles, hundreds of thousands of bombs and millions of shells are fully at Putin’s disposal to murder scores of thousands of Ukrainians and level dozens of Ukrainian towns.

While Ukrainians have fought bravely and with great ingenuity have time and again thwarted Russia’s plans to force the capitulation of Kyiv, the extreme caution the collective west has taken in support of Ukraine has provided Russia the breathing space to develop an alliance of authoritarian regimes dedicated to deposing western global leadership. 

Now the cost of stopping Russia’s war is exponentially higher than it was two years ago; not only in Ukraine, but globally. 

In September to November 2022, when Russian forces were on the run from Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson and had largely expended their pre-war stockpiles of missiles, the west comparatively only needed to focus their resources on providing Ukraine the weapons and training necessary to neutralize Russian logistics in Crimea and drive the Russian army out of occupied Ukraine. 

Although NATO provided several months of solid training to nine new brigades of Ukrainian soldiers, they offered no air power and few long range strike capabilities.  Ukrainian mechanized infantry then surged into thirty-kilometer-deep Russian fixed fortifications in the 2023 counteroffensive and quickly became bogged down. 

The U.S. hesitated until the end of the offensive to provide Ukraine only with a few dozen long range ATACMS missiles and thirty Abrams tanks for a battlefront spanning 1,000 kilometers. 

Only after the counteroffensive failed to achieve its aims did the U.S. provide significant amounts of ATACMS.  These targeted Russian helicopter bases and logistics hubs deep in occupied Ukraine and Crimea, which had been highly effective not only in supplying the buildup of Russian defensive lines which thwarted the counteroffensive, but also ran hundreds of devastating attack helicopter missions against Ukrainian infantry. 

In the time and space allotted to Russia by western placating, Putin brought into the fray the rogue states of Iran and North Korea.  This not only turned Ukraine into a 21^st Century “Spanish Civil War” for the testing of war equipment against western systems, but also pumped their defense industrial complexes with masses of cash along with Russian missile, satellite and possibly nuclear technology in return. 

First was Iran with their Shahed drones, thousands of which were sold to Russia at inflated prices, while Iranian operators relocated to occupied Ukraine to train Russians on their use and observe the performance of their equipment in action against Ukrainian countermeasures.  Lessons learned in Ukraine were put to direct use against Israel in Iran’s April 2024 massed arial attack using the identical drones. 

As Russian losses in manpower, equipment and ammunition mounted, Russia turned to North Korea for nearly two million artillery shells, long range ballistic missiles and eventually foot soldiers to offset Russian casualties.  North Korean officers for months have operated in occupied Ukraine, observing their missiles in action while the defense industry in Pyongyang couples these lessons with provided Russian technology to improve their performance. 

As of October 2024, Ukraine faces an entire axis of evil (Russia, Iran and North Korea) and must defend its territory with ever decreasing manpower due to hundreds of thousands of casualties, against ever increasing Russian forces supplemented by tens of thousands of released convicts and now possibly tens of thousands of North Korean soldiers. 

Additionally, Ukraine faces a massive air threat which barely existed in late 2022 compared to its current form.

Russia expended most of their pre-war stocks of missiles in the first six months of the war, and its air force had largely been driven from Ukrainian skies by highly effective Ukrainian air defenses. 

The breathing space allotted to Russia by western hesitancy allotted time to ramp up their domestic production of missiles, but also supplement them with long range North Korean and now Iranian short range ballistic missiles. 

Meanwhile the Russian Air Force innovated itself back into the war visa-vi glide bombs.  Russia enjoys an enormous Soviet inheritance of many hundreds of thousands of “dumb bombs” ranging from 500-1500 kilograms, typically dropped from 1950’s era high flying, slow moving Tupolev “Bear” bombers onto cities; such as when the Russian Air Force razed Aleppo, Syria. 

Driven from the skies by Ukrainian air defenses, the Russian Air Force began experimenting with Su-class fighter bombers operating in standoff positions behind Russian lines, and releasing bombs affixed to glide kits which carry the deadly explosives into Ukrainian held territories.  Upon impact, they wrought terrible destruction. 

There are not enough air defense interceptors in the world to even put a dent in the potential hundreds of thousands of Russian glide bombs.  The single only defense against them is to shoot down the bombers carrying them. 

The cost to the west for air defense for Ukraine now exponentially outpaces the price to Russia to produce or purchase missiles or manufacture glide kits.  The U.S. PATRIOT is among the only air defense systems capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.  Only a very few of which are available to Ukraine, and a complete battery has a price tag of more than $1 billion with each interceptor missile costing $2-3 million. 

The PATRIOT with its long-range capabilities is also the most effective tool against Russian fighter bombers carrying glide bombs. 

With the entire country from the front line to Lviv under constant missile threat and any military fortification, village, town or city within 70 kilometers of Russian held territory are in danger from glide bombs, just the air defense alone of Ukraine would require well more than a dozen complete PATRIOT batteries along with scores of other systems to safeguard against many other Russian air threats.

Western hesitancy along with a complete misunderstanding or straight denial of Russia’s war aims has yielded Russian horizontal escalation, expanding the war into the far reaches of the globe.  While vertical escalation involves a direct response to a provocation, horizontal escalation is a passive aggressive form of foreign policy that often entails providing support to other actors which diversifies the threat one’s enemy faces. 

Providing cash and technology to both Iran and North Korea is a Russian horizontal escalation against the west in response to their support of Ukraine.  This escalation increases the threat each poses to their perceived spheres of influence; Iran over Israel and the Middle East, and North Korea over South Korea and Japan. All of which are important U.S. allies. 

Meanwhile, Russia has also further horizontally escalated by providing direct assistance to the Iranian backed Houthi militants.  A designated terrorist organization operating in western Yemen, the Houthis with the help of Russia have repeatedly targeted western shipping through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Horn of Africa; severely disrupting global supply chains.

Neutralizing the Bab-el-Mandeb, through which roughly 40% of global shipping typically traverses to and from the Suez Canal, has forced merchant ships around South Africa, adding both thousands of miles and thousands of dollars to each journey.  Anyone concerned about global inflation should first and foremost assess the increased cost associated with Russian supported Houthis blocking essential shipping routes of nearly every conceivable product and good. 

Every Russian horizontal escalation has been met with tough talk or statements of “deep concern” from the west, but yielded little action.  United States Cold War doctrine was rooted in deterrence, a discipline of utilizing a robust foreign policy backed up by military force to contain Soviet aggression out of fear of direct consequences. 

The Biden administration has thrown decades of deterrence to the wind by taking a purely reactive instead of proactive posture against Russian aggression; which has only encouraged it. 

In an embarrassing display of weakness, the Biden administration has for months fumbled back and forth over granting Ukraine permission to launch U.S. provided long range missiles into Russia against legitimate military targets predominantly due to a Russian counter-threat to in turn, provide the Houthis with long range precision guided anti-ship missiles, to do with as they please.  Bending to such blackmail would have the great American Cold War leaders turning in their graves. 

Likewise, Russian horizontal escalation has long nullified the Trump/Vance stance on de-escalation or a negotiated settlement with Russia; assuming a chance ever existed.

Russia’s war aims involve not just destroying Ukraine, but dismantling NATO and creating a new multi-polar world order, dictated by violence and divided into spheres of influence.  A world order which may be very near at hand and which the collective west has done little to stop.

De-escalation is merely a fancy term for avoiding deterrence, and what at this point could be negotiated?  Freezing the conflict?  And if so, to what benefit to Russia and with what deterrence by the west to hold them to the agreement? 

The pardoning of infinite war crimes? Rescinding the Russian cash and military technology now in the hands of rogue states?  The abandoning of Russian war aims?  And all for the ceding of a few Ukrainian territories to Russia?  Hardly not. 

Russian propagandists openly mock Trump for boasting to have some type of “pull” with Putin to “end the war in a day.”  Trump would have no more chance of doing so than a mayoral candidate for New York in the 1920’s convinced he could “talk” the Mob out of bootlegging alcohol. 

A rediscovery of U.S. Cold War leadership; Truman, Marshall, Kennan Eisenhower and Reagan is essential.  

They well understood that Russia respects only force and backs down only to strength.  They established and executed a successful multi-decade U.S. foreign policy of curtailing Russian expansionism through vigilant and long-term containment.  If the collective west does not change their stance and realize the very real threat they are under, they will “de-escalate” themselves out of global relevance.   

Jeffrey Owens is the Author of the Victory in Europe: A People’s History of the Second World War. He is from Grove City, Ohio, United States. Jeffrey is the correspondent of Mahabahu.

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