Opinion Russia-Ukraine: Lessons from a seven-month war
Raja Menon writes: The Ukraine conflict reshapes battlefield, challenges understanding of victory and defeat.
A Ukrainian serviceman carries an NLAW anti-tank weapon. (AP/File) 
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After the 1971 war, when a tri-service discussion analysed the war, Sam Manekshaw, then a general, weighed in with a twinkle in his eye to say, “My dears, you can win as many battles as you like at sea, or in the air, or even lose them, but eventually it is the Army that will prove to be decisive”. Manekshaw was stating the conventional wisdom — that the political objectives are invariably won on land — and also invariably, by the capture of territory. So it has been, since time immemorial, although great maritime thinkers like Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan emphasised that any great land victory would never be lasting or decisive if the sea played a part in the conflict, in which case victory at sea was an essential precondition. What the Ukraine conflict has done is throw serious doubt on Manekshaw’s prediction that it was the victory in land and the subsequent peace treaty that would further the state’s objective in going to war. No one is a greater authority on this question than Claus Von Clausewitz and his famous dictum was, “War is politics by other means”.
Other military thinkers have commented on and amplified this over the ages, as mentioned earlier — Admiral Mahan, who emphasised the role of the sea in the successful conclusion of the war. Ukraine was a case of war with a preponderantly land component, between a former superpower and an insignificant land power. Initial predictions on the duration of the war stretched from four days to a week. Yet, the outcome of the war seems entirely uncertain in its seventh month. War has changed; for how long is the question. During the Second World War, the Germans overran France, Belgium and the British army in less than 40 days, ending with the British evacuation from Dunkirk. In the same theatre, in the First World War, the Germans and the allies fought an inconclusive land war for four years. The issue was finally settled by economic and civic upheavals in German society caused by four years of the British economic blockade that totally isolated Germany into privacy, starvation and civic disorder. Yet, the peace treaty — the Armistice — was signed as a mark of defeat in a land war, although great damage had been done at sea.
The Ukraine war, it was predicted would be fought like the Second World War, with one side overrunning the other in a blitzkrieg of four to five days. But war has gone backwards to the days of the First World War, with no conclusive result in four years of fighting. Does this mean that the role of the tank or the armoured fighting vehicle is over, temporarily or permanently, to be replaced by a high-tech battlefield? Or will the tank make a comeback and reassure the cavalry generals? India, where the preponderant capital military costs have been invested in the 4,000 or so tanks we possess, has produced no literature to enlighten the layman, there being a deathly silence from the premier Indian army think tank, the ARTRAC (army training and doctrine command).
As Clausewitz stated, war is just another form of state-to-state intercourse, as is trade and diplomacy. In India, the conventional wisdom is that one of the primary roles of the Army is to punish a large-scale Pakistani terror strike. Such has been the scenario in four or five repetitive war games played between Indian and Pakistani retired professionals under US supervision. The Pakistani side has always played its game to reinforce the view that only a defeat in a land war in the Punjab would be considered serious enough to threaten nuclear retaliation. But, after Ukraine, the whole question of the validity of the use of the army as a punitive instrument is open to question. Will not an Indian land offensive degenerate into messy trench warfare of interminable length? Reputed English language journals worldwide have sought answers to this question from military professionals but none seem to have sought answers from ARTRAC or TRADOC (the US army training and doctrine command).
It is clear that now there is such an entity as a hi-tech battlefield. At the same time, not all battlefields are hi-tech. The hi-tech battlefield reduces the salience of overwhelming manpower, but without getting into the domain of military experts, it can be summarised that the tendency to hold war in abeyance is going to increase with a simultaneous rise in the importance of economics and diplomacy. As Kissinger famously put it, “Diplomacy is a restraint on power”. This increases the importance of the study of Clausewitz’s Grand Strategy, being a mix of economics, diplomacy and force. An example often quoted in international studies is the efficacy of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is primarily geo-economic but is imbued with military power overtones, and advances dynamic diplomacy. This has been referred to as civil-military fusion. Some countries are probably unaffected by the lessons of the Ukraine war, but inter-state relations have undergone a massive change, as the threat held out by large states (such as India) is taken more lightly by smaller neighbours, provided they have access to technology.
Menon, a former rear admiral in the navy, is author of A Nuclear Strategy for India
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