Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine war, NATO success at Vilnius Part I.
Ukraine war updates.
1) Ukraine adapts its counteroffensive strategy.
After suffering heavy initial losses when trying to breach well-entrenched fortifications and multiple defensive lines (thanks to now-detained, Wagner ally General Surovikin) - layered with anti-tank/anti-personnel mines - Ukraine has quickly adapted its strategy: switching away from frontal assaults to long-range fires.
The goal is now to attrit Russian forces defending these lines.
Given this new adjustment, the renewed urgency of supplying Ukraine with long-range precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and missiles cannot be overstated.
And some good news on that end: following the UK’s decision to supply storm shadow missiles, France is now also sending their own long-range cruise (SCALP-EG) missiles.
The US must not delay sending its own ATACMS.
Ukraine needs a strong long-range fires advantage to crush Russian artillery systems, fuel/ammo depots, and logistics hubs - thereby creating a permissive environment for a renewed frontal assault on the defensive lines that would then be defended by badly provisioned and demoralized Russian troops.
2) Ukrainian pilots will start their F-16 training in August.
Training centers will be set up both in Denmark and Romania.
3) South Korea steps up its involvement in the Ukraine war.
In his visit to Kyiv, South Korea’s PM Yoon Suk Yeol promised more ammo and de-mining equipment to Ukraine.
Of course, countries like South Korea and Japan have a lot at stake in this war.
The last thing they need is for Russia’s invasion to succeed - whetting Beijing’s appetite for similar military adventurism in the Pacific - placing both countries at a heightened risk.
A Russian victory in Ukraine would encourage China to try its own luck: it would signal to Beijing that a) Russia is a more capable military ally (demonstrating powerful staying power with its success in outlasting the West) than first thought (in light of early-on setbacks), and that Putin was right after all: a US-led international community and system of alliances is ultimately impotent and powerless in preventing military outcomes sought with sufficient vigor.
Now, that would be a terrible outcome for both South Korea and Japan.
Consequently, there is a lot more that both countries can do for Ukraine.
4) The Russian military is beset with incipient rebellions.
Mere two weeks after Prigozhin’s failed/aborted coup, discontent amongst the highest echelons of the Russian military continues.
It was on this occasion, the turn of well-respected (and personality-wise opposite of the flashy and unhinged Prigozhin) Russian theater commander, Maj General Ivan Popov:
“The Ukrainian military has failed to break through our army’s defenses, but the top commander hit us in the rear, treacherously and cowardly beheading the army at this most difficult moment.”
This was a leaked voice recording (addressed to his troops) of a dismissed (ostensibly, for his dare to speak truth to power) Russian general labeling the highest military command (Shoygu and Gerasimov, and possibly Putin) as traitors.
It strains imagination as to how bad the internal morale and discipline within the Russian military has to be these days.
But is it really all that surprising?
Putin’s first mistake was to let the internal discipline and (public) in-fighting get out of hand.
When his chief mercenary, Prigozhin, called his Minister of Defense Shoygu a “fat cat”, Putin did nothing.
And when that same mercenary dared to march on Moscow, shooting down 7 Russian military aircraft (galvanized to stop him) and killing Russian pilots, Putin responded with a generous offer to drop all criminal charges, and allow him and his army to self-exile to Belarus.
We then learned that Prigozhin wasn’t in Belarus, that he was in fact back in Russia, and that he traveled freely between St Petersburg and Moscow.
And we now know that Putin invited the “traitor” (Putin’s own words) Prigozhin and his 35 commanders (of Wagner) to meet and talk at the Kremlin mere 3 days after Prigozhin killed Russian pilots and took senior generals (and a whole city, and a military command post) into his custody.
Turns out, at this very meeting, Putin offered Wagner fighters an opportunity to resume fighting under one unified Wagner commander.
(side note: it is unclear however, what precisely was on offer. But it looks like the offer of return to “business as usual” was ultimately declined).
At this point, one wonders if Putin is even aware of extremely dangerous precedents that he himself is setting up.
He is quick to forgive deadly rebellion and in fact, rewards this conduct with a 1-1 exclusive meeting at the Kremlin.
It would therefore not be at all surprising if we kept hearing of more outspoken generals being dismissed, and even more potential future rebellions bubbling under a very thin facade of Putin’s continuous grip on power.
NATO’s Vilnius summit is a remarkable success: Part I.
The meeting of the world’s most powerful military alliance defied all naysayers, expanded its membership even further, and delivered concrete (and most realistic) outcomes for Ukraine.
The remarkable unity on display, in the middle of the largest land invasion in Europe post WWII, was a powerful testament to the alliance and to the bonds - based upon shared values and common interests - uniting the most advanced military union in the world.
In today’s post, we shall focus on two major accomplishments: Sweden’s membership and allied commitments for Ukraine.
And on Thursday’s cable, we will unpack America’s success in navigating the alliance towards confronting China - and how this ties with the EU-China relations in general.
1) Sweden joins NATO.
These cables have long maintained that Turkey was not going to block Swedish accession to NATO, and that it was a matter of when not if.
With presidential elections behind him, and Sweden agreeing to remove export restrictions and implement anti-terrorism legislation against Kurdish terrorists, Turkey’s legitimate needs were fulfilled.
In addition, and although the two issues were never formally linked, Turkey will now finally receive its 40 F-16s.
(side note: and Canada will now remove its weapons export restrictions on Turkey)
About time, and frankly, pretty pathetic that NATO’s largest army in Europe, and one of the main military and diplomatic backers of Ukraine, ultimately, a power of such a high strategic value, had to wait so long for these F-16s..
If anything, Turkey should be reintroduced into the F-35 program, and should get access to the most advanced jets - let alone be allowed to purchase these older F-16s.
Of course, when it comes to F-35s, there is another issue: Turkey’s purchase/possession of the Russian S-400 SAMs (which are capable of learning F-35s unique radar signature - therefore, a risk to the US and NATO. But Turkey had offered a range of solutions, from swapping the software on S-400s to Turkey’s own, to not using/deploying the problematic SAMs in question).
And yet somehow, the issue of being in possession of the Russian S-400 air defense systems is only pertinent when it applies to Turkey: India - a non-NATO power - gets a free pass, and the issue never comes up as a blocker for the US plans to arm Delhi with the most advanced military gear (and if the desire to replace Russia as a primary supplier of advanced arms is for real - which it should be - then sooner or later, the US will need to sell India America’s advanced fighter jets. Will Washington hesitate then due to the S-400s?)
A lot of this is of course due to Turkey’s ongoing tensions with Greece.
But the outsized influence of the Greek lobby in the US Congress interferes with the rational policy-making in Washington’s diplomatic affairs: although Erdogan has been rather bombastic with his rhetoric against Athens, it is in fact Greece that is blatantly provoking Turkey by militarizing the Eastern Aegean islands in a clear violation of the Lausanne (1923) and Paris (1947) peace treaties.
But politicians like Senator Menendez, somehow forget to chastise Greece for its own violation.
In any case, an actual military conflict between NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, is and will always be highly implausible.
And last week, this became even less likely once the Turkish President Erdogan revealed his revitalized interest in joining the EU.
To be clear, Turkey is not becoming an EU member anytime soon - EU’s current members are obviously not going to demonstrate a unanimous support to admitting a member state that would essentially lead the bloc to share a border with Syria and Iran (leaving aside other political issues between Brussels and Ankara).
But Erdogan’s aspiration is good news, and should be treated as such.
(side note: Erdogan did himself no favors by initially implying that his decision to let Sweden in was contingent upon EU’s corresponding agreement to let Turkey into its bloc. That was always complete nonsense, and by saying one thing early in the morning, and quickly reversing his course and agreeing to let Sweden in, Erdogan cheapened his own demands: he set a very bad precedent that he can u-turn on his own terms within a very short period of time. This is obviously not going to help him in future negotiations - and there are going to be many).
Turkey’s renewed directional aspiration towards the EU signals a stronger break with Russia.
To be clear, Erdogan’s relationship with Putin was always exaggerated.
In terms of actual conduct, Turkey always aligned with NATO, was and is one of the major military donors to Ukraine, and quickly changed its finance and compliance regime to align with American sanctions on Russian sanction-evading money.
But if there were still skeptics around Turkey’s true interests as a state, well this was a good reminder of Ankara’s actual geopolitical priorities.
Moreover, this also empowers the EU with leverage to insist upon further political reforms in Turkey.
Turkey’s recent elections (where the leader of opposition won enough votes to deny Erdogan a clear victory in the first round, and later admitted his defeat and even congratulated Erdogan) once again demonstrated that Turkey was not a classical authoritarian state - far from it.
But neither is it a proper liberal democracy.
And it should be: it is good for Turkey, for the future and prosperity of its citizens, and for its Western allies as well: a more politically stable, and a classically liberal-democratic Turkey will become even more valuable as an ally and a partner to both the EU and NATO.
Consequently, one of the main concerns of this summit - the worry of Turkey’s continuous resistance to Swedish membership - was overcome.
2) Ukraine gets the best realistic outcome.
It is now clear that, going into this summit, a lot of well-meaning Ukraine supporters (including many reputable analysts and academics) had rather unrealistic expectations from the members of this alliance.
This is because, many of them - including (at least in the beginning) President Zelensky himself - expressed ‘‘shock’’ and extreme dismay that Ukraine did not get an invitation to join the alliance, and did not secure a clear timeline for that process.
Indeed, and after a long period of stoic, mature diplomatic leadership, President Zelensky once again reverted back to acting out - declaring that NATO’s failure to provide clear timelines and commitments to Ukraine was “unprecedented and absurd”, protesting further that NATO would have temerity to add ‘conditions’ for Ukraine’s eventual membership.
Shortly thereafter, a lot of media pundits and ‘‘analysts’’ had joined in, berating NATO’s official communiqué from this summit.
The following phrase in particular, triggered a lot of impatient Ukraine backers: “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
But then again.. That statement and sentiment is true!
It is hard to understand the source of this disillusion - what was it exactly that they would have NATO do?
Did they expect NATO to admit Ukraine outright? In the middle of the war?
(side note: and even the senior Ukrainian diplomats (including the President Zelensky himself) had themselves previously admitted that they “accept”the reality that Ukraine joining the club during the war was all but impossible)
Such a move would immediately imply that either a) NATO was taking its Article V commitments (attack on one = attack on all) seriously and would thus end up automatically in a state of war with Russia, or b) It would choose to not apply Article V on just this occasion.
Obviously, there is no appetite to go to war with Russia - in any of the NATO member states - let alone if there is even anything close to a unanimity of its (soon 32) member states on this question.
So then, either NATO admits Ukraine and does not apply article V - and thus crushes the entire premise and credibility of its founding, core tenet (and creates major security risks to all of its members), or it does not admit Ukraine.
How does a weaker, uncredible NATO (the former scenario) benefit Ukraine?
And besides, if NATO is not going to fight Russia directly (which it is not), then what is even the point of admitting Ukraine now - aside from once again, crushing its own credibility by opting to thereafter forgo application of Article V?
What is it exactly that NATO cannot help Ukraine with right now, that a membership will get that fixed?
Ukraine needs more ammo, money, and advanced weapons like ATACMS and F-16s (long-enduring advocacy of these cables): all of these can be supplied right now - without any formal membership.
The only additional value of a NATO membership is one of joint deterrence - and that is only possible when this war ends: because once again, letting Ukraine in and then failing to declare war on an invading Russia, would render that deterrence completely useless.
Consequently, the only way for Ukraine to get that practical value of NATO-wide deterrence, is to join the club once the war is over: deterring possible future invasion.
And if Ukraine can only join after this war, what sort of statement did Zelensky expect?
That Ukraine would join NATO without any conditions, and on a specific date?
Joining unconditionally, would imply that NATO is now a union in service of Ukraine only - when in fact it is a club of 32 member states: with mutual obligations and standards.
It is only right and proper that other NATO states would want to see reforms in governance and rule of law, and steps that would ensure resilience of the political order in Ukraine.
Because once again, this is about a club of 32 member states - not only about Ukraine and its security.
And if conditions have to be met (an extremely reasonable expectation), then how could other member states be certain of a specific date that Ukraine would join?
What else could NATO say except that Ukraine would be invited when it meets the conditions of this club?
In addition to all of this, and as a reminder to all those who compared this statement to the Bucharest summit of 2008 (where vague promises were made to Ukraine and Georgia), let us not forget that on this occasion, NATO did in fact remove a major bureaucratic obstacle out of the way: the usual process of meeting the complex and slow Membership Action Plan (MAP) was gotten rid of.
Consequently, the comparisons to the Bucharest Summit are analytically erroneous, and generally unfair.
The removal of MAP is in fact a major win for Ukraine - this means that in practice, and once the war is over, Ukraine can and should join (once it meets normal, reasonable conditions) the club in a very short period of time.
In addition, there was also the very big announcement of the G7 security commitments for Ukraine:
“Today we are launching negotiations with Ukraine to formalize — through bilateral security commitments and arrangements aligned with this multilateral framework, in accordance with our respective legal and constitutional requirements — our enduring support to Ukraine as it defends its sovereignty and territorial integrity, rebuilds its economy, protects its citizens, and pursues integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. We will direct our teams to begin these discussions immediately…..In the event of future Russian armed attack, we intend to immediately consult with Ukraine to determine appropriate next steps. We intend, in accordance with our respective legal and constitutional requirements, to provide Ukraine with swift and sustained security assistance, modern military equipment across land, sea and air domains, and economic assistance, to impose economic and other costs on Russia, and to consult with Ukraine on its needs as it exercises its right of self-defense enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. To this end, we will work with Ukraine on an enhanced package of security commitments and arrangements in case of future aggression to enable Ukraine to defend its territory and sovereignty.”
It is too early to guess the precise parameters (let alone broader contours) of the planned bilateral security arrangements.
We shall learn more as negotiations go underway.
But one thing is clear however, to amount to a credible deterrence against future Russian aggression, these bilateral commitments would need to be much broader in scope, stronger in definitive ‘trigger clauses’, and impose actual obligations on the security guarantors.
In other words, it cannot be another Budapest memorandum of 1994.
It would need to be a credible security pact - something closer to America’s security agreement in defense of Israel: where in the 1975 Memorandum Of Understanding, Washington undertook a “long-standing U.S. commitment to the survival and security of Israel”.
Further memoranda and bilateral treaties (and actual conduct of $ billions in weapons transfers) then provided meat to these promises and made the commitments credible.
One hopes that the transitory period between the end of the war and Ukraine’s eventual membership of NATO would be as short as possible.
But in that crucial gap - America’s (and other G7 states’) bilateral commitments would need to be robust.
(side note: there is of course the practical difficulty of Congressional resistance, and adherence of the future administrations to these commitments. Another reason why the transitory period leading to Ukraine’s NATO membership must be as short as possible).
Overall then, and taken as a whole, the Vilnius summit was a major success for Ukraine.
And even President Zelensky himself quickly reversed course on the way back from the summit.
He admitted that the outcomes of this summit amounted to “a significant security victory” adding crucially, that “we have great unity from our leaders and the security guarantees — that is a success for this summit.”
Now, if only he had taken a patient and diplomatic approach from the very beginning - denying Russia’s propaganda machinery some juicy quotes on alleged NATO disunity…
Great points on Turkey and Ukraine. Your mention of Georgia: the idea of their accession to NATO seems all but dead.