Sun Tzu, the great Chinese warlord, once said: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Boy are we hearing that noise across Europe now. Hesitance, indecision and arguments about gifting tanks to Ukraine as Russia prepares for a barbaric spring offensive. We are stuck in a tactical rut – failing to see the big picture. Of course, send in the tanks – but for what purpose?
Let’s face facts: the penny has not yet dropped; this is not just about Ukraine but Russia attempting to revive its influence over Slavic Europe. Putin has become the most disruptive force in Europe impacting on the continent’s security and every single economy. A new cold war.
The West fell asleep after the end of the first Cold War in 1990. We became complacent, downsizing our collective defence posture. Our strategic confusion enabled revisionist powers to smell weakness. Russia and China now share a common goal of exploiting our ever-fragile world order to pursue their own agendas. The world is in danger of splintering in plain sight into two competing spheres of influence unless we rekindle our Cold War statecraft skills and stand up to the bully.
This drift cannot go on. We need leaders who can think big and more strategically. If Russia is not defeated in Ukraine this year Putin will be emboldened and won’t stop there. We need to put this fire out.
Here are seven strategic steps to help conclude this conflict.
1. Define the mission. The West should agree what “success” is: Russia’s removal from all Ukraine territory.
2. Secure “UN safe haven status” for the port of Odesa. Vital grain ships should be protected by a neutral maritime force. Just 20 per cent of the grain is currently exported, impacting on the global as well as our own economy.
3. Assist Ukraine to construct a major armaments factory in eastern Poland to manufacture, assemble and replenish its weapons and equipment without fear of bombardment from Russia – just as Taiwan is investing in a vast microchip plant in Arizona.
4. List the state-sponsored Wagner militia, responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Ukraine. We should now join America proscribing it as a terrorist organisation.
5. Directly sanction Putin and freeze his overseas assets. The Russian leader is responsible for this invasion. His name should be added to the sanctions list.
6. Welcome Ukraine into the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Ukraine will not be joining Nato any time soon. The JEF, (a British led multi-national force of 10 European democracies) offers that critical umbrella of security – deterring Russia from attempting to invade again.
7. Appoint a senior UK Ukraine envoy, answerable directly to the Prime Minister. This would help co-ordinate Whitehall support and align our efforts with international allies.
Britain is well-placed to help lead this balancing act. We retain a reputation for defending and promoting hard-fought standards and values and the convening power to rally other nations to our cause.
2023 will be a pivotal year. Putin is about to go all in. If Ukraine is defeated, it will not only be the absence of tanks that caused this epochal mistake, but the failure to agree a strategy of deterrence and containment.
We hope our Prime Minister will appreciate the need to step up to the historic challenge of our times by reinvigorating our political appetite to lead. We’ve done it before. We must do so again.
Tobias Ellwood is chair of the Defence and Security Committee
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE is ex commanding officer, 1st Royal Tank Regiment
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