Putin is fighting an impossible war and there's no escape

 Russia is in thrall to myths of military invincibility, just as Germany was in the 1930s

Source - Daily Telegraph 23/10/22

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Why do states start impossible wars? This question is prompted by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But it applies to Europe’s great tragedies over more than a century.

Most obvious is a failure of intelligence; the common denominator of military disaster. Governments do not start wars they think they will lose. For Russia’s rulers to believe that a relatively small invading force could conquer Ukraine in a few days, and then hold down a hostile population supported from outside, is proof of a huge failure somewhere, whether in the intelligence agencies, the military staff or perhaps by Putin himself.

How could a government machine composed of experienced, ruthless and intelligent men make such a gross error, disastrous for their victims and themselves?

Similarly, how could the German government in 1914 think they could defeat an alliance of France and Russia, and probably Britain? How could Hitler in 1939 think he could conquer Europe? For the countries that were defeated and occupied, and for the British too, German victory twice seemed agonisingly close. But in reality, its acts of aggression were almost inevitably doomed from the start. Germany, like today’s Russia, was far too weak in population, resources and economic capacity.

Some might answer "but they nearly did win". Yet even if the Kaiser’s army had won the battle of the Marne in August 1914, or if Britain had asked for peace terms in May 1940, or indeed if Putin’s shock troops had taken Kyiv last February, what then? How could they think that victory could be anything more than temporary? How could they imagine holding down bitterly hostile countries, even if the rest of the world left them alone? How could they not anticipate the insoluble long-term problems?

There were several explanations, which I think shed light on the Ukraine disaster too. First, generals who will not or cannot admit to their masters that they fear defeat. For both Germany and Putin’s Russia, myths about military invincibility made things worse. Generals may warn of obstacles, and they certainly did so in Germany before 1914 and in the late 1930s. Perhaps some of Putin’s generals warned him too. But their jobs, their prestige – and their budgets – demand that they reassure their masters that they have a plan.

Such were the German army’s Schlieffen Plan in 1914 and its Operation Yellow in 1940. Generals and politicians convinced themselves that these were bold and brilliant solutions offering rapid victory and avoiding a long war they rightly expected to lose. But such plans inevitably focused minds on the short term, and left the aftermath vague. The Russian attack on Kyiv showed the same recklessness, but without the competence.

For such risks to seem reasonable, there has to be some ideological foundation. The common elements were short term fatalism and long-term fantasy. Fatalism, in believing that war was inevitable and that time was short. In 1914 and in 1939, Germany’s rulers believed that they were surrounded by enemies and that their security position was deteriorating: so war was unavoidable and it had to be soon. This mindset nullifies any objection to war as a policy: the aggressor claims victimhood, and anyone who advocates a moderate policy is dismissed as a coward or a traitor.

The long-term fantasy was in both cases – and clearly in Putin’s case too – some variant of racial nationalism, carried to the most extreme imaginable extent by the Nazis whose aim was not merely conquest but genocide. So the fantasy victory will mean the triumph of the Teuton over the Slav in 1914; or of the Master Race in a struggle for world domination in 1939; or of the Greater Russia in 2022. Such fantasy underestimates the enemy and closes down discussion about the long term by making practical concerns seem trivial: why bother about future trade relations or political systems when the aim is to reshape the globe?

War has always been the greatest cause of political upheaval. Even victory takes its toll, as in the breakup of the United Kingdom in 1919. Defeat demands a far harsher reckoning. How harsh depends on how cohesive society and the state are and in Russia, they weren’t in 1917.

So a Bolshevik coup and an ensuing civil war caused far more bloodshed than the 1914-17 battles. 

And now? If there is a pattern, it is of the army, desperate to stave off complete military disaster, insisting more or less politely on regime change: in Russia in 1917, Germany in 1918, France in 1940, Italy in 1943 and (nearly) in Germany in 1944. Economic suffering and popular discontent provided the backdrop, but not the agency. Will Russia’s officer corps decide that Putin is too great a danger to themselves and a perfect scapegoat? Or will they remember the German officers put up against a wall in 1944?