The Russo-Ukrainian Race For Adaptability Under Fire

Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A podcast sponsored by The Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition, articulated by Walter Littman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman. Counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, a Bulwark contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m joined by my partner in this enterprise, Elliot Cohen, the Robert Diaz Good Professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and the Arleigh Burke Chair of Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington.

Elliott, great

to be back with you this week. That’s always good to be back with you, Eric. Let me introduce our guest who I’m very excited to have with us. Major General, Mick Ryan, retired from the Australian Army after thirty five years of service, including command at every level up to brigade. He had deployed in Afghanistan, a number of other countries.

He was in charge of the Australian Army’s military education and training programs His last appointment was as the commandant of the Australian Defense Academy. And I think as well to our purposes, he’s a gender and military intellectual. He wrote a terrific book called war transformed. He’s even a budding novelist. We’ll get him to to talk about that, a fictionalized account of a war over Taiwan.

For those of you who are not doing so already, you should really follow his Twitter feed war in the future and his substack in which he really lays out, I think, with far greater clarity than anyone else I’ve seen the sort of basic kind of military calculations and ways of thinking which are critical for understanding the Ukraine war. He is he’s really the the epitome of an educated soldier, not only having graduated with distinction from School of Advanced Warfare of the United States Marine Corps. But far more importantly, from my point of view, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced international studies from which he graduated with distinction and we don’t give those things away lightly. So, Nick, it is terrific to have you with us. You know, you really are I mean, I would say, you know, you’re one of the premier military intellectuals in the west today.

And I think reading the things you write reminds us just how valuable it is to have somebody who has not only the the historical and theoretical knowledge, but that practical sense that you can only get from decades spent soldiering, so welcome, Mick.

Well, thank you. It’s a privilege to be here with two of my old professors. And, you know, I’m really humbled that I was invited to come on and and talk to you about

Well, okay. That’s that’s the end of the nice stuff. Eric begin the interrogation.

It is great to have you and I agree with everything Elliott said about the importance of people following your Twitter feed and your Substack as well. Let’s start with what’s happening today with the battle of bakmut. This has been going on now for about nine months the Russian forces clearly been trying to encircle and cut off the Ukrainian defenders in Bakmood. It’s not a hundred percent clear, I don’t think. Why in the sense that it’s not a terribly strategic location.

I mean, it it does enable them, would enable them if they were to take it. To begin to press on to Slovakia and ChromaTorsk, but certainly doesn’t seem worth the losses that they’ve taken. Jonathan Last twenty four hours, the picture, if anything, has become more opaque. I mean, there have been some bridges blown by the Ukrainians. It’s not clear whether they’re engaged in a retrograde operation or whether they’re actually gonna stand and fight some more and just inflict more losses what’s your sense?

What’s going on? Well,

I think, you know, there’s been two imperatives for the Ukrainians to stay here. One’s political. I mean, both sides have invested political value in this objective since the first fighting there in May last year. I mean, this has been a pretty long campaign. And you had Zelensky visit there at least once.

That invests value in the place that it strategically just doesn’t possess But militarily, it’s a it’s a cost imposition approach from the Ukrainians. They are drawing the Russians into a fight to trip Russian forces essentially and to distract them from other places in the country to have them commit forces that might be more meaningful use just about anywhere else in Ukraine. I mean, the real decision for them is at what point does that cost in position wind away and based having to focus more on forced preservation.

Do you think that’s where they are at this point, Mick?

I think they’re close But then again, Klaswirth had something to say about these things too when the emotions take over. And I think we’ve seen that all throughout this war when things that seem the most logical military decision in the world are either delayed or don’t happen because, you know, one side or the other things having this did so much or lost so many people in the place that they can’t give it up. There’s probably a little bit of that going on at the moment, and I’m sure there’s discussion going on between General Zaluzny and President Zelensky on the political implications of staying versus leaving. It won’t just be a pure military decision.

Can I ask a follow-up question? And clearly, the Ukrainians are posing horrific losses, particularly on the Wagner Group, although not just Wagner. Who are just sending men by their hundreds and thousands to their deaths, and they keep on going in part because they really have no choice once once you’ve joined Wagner, you’re you’re gonna

if

you if you don’t advance, you’re gonna get your head crushed by a sledgehammer quite quite literally. Do you think that this kind of attritional, cost imposing strategy by the Ukrainians can work against, hey, an organization that’s so utterly ruthless about its own people. But in general, Russia, you know, which does have a much larger, at least, potential population of draftis and mobilized people to bring to bear. Is there really long term damage being done to Russian military structures as a result of this? That make it worthwhile because the Ukrainians are also suffering very heavily.

Yeah.

I mean, this is one of the great asymmetries about how these two countries are fighting it. At least on the battlefield, the Russians taking a total war approach. Everything is a target in Ukraine. It’s people, it’s city, it’s armies, it’s culture. Whereas the Ukrainians haven’t taken that approach, they have a more values based approach to war that have not deliberately targeted Russian civilians or Russian targets.

And that’s important for those two. I think just for their own souls, as well as, you know, sustaining western diplomatic and military and intelligence and economic support. I think at the political level though, I mean, the Russians have not taken a total war approach. I mean, they have not fully mobilized their country, they have not fully mobilized their population. It was at best a partial mobilization.

That was problematic. Industry is being mobilized but even then that’s about doubling and tripling shifts, not the massive expansion in the number of factories and things like that. And the Ukraine’s actually have mobilized their whole country. I mean, they inducted over seven hundred thousand people into the military and other national security functions last year. They mobilized their industry to build weapons, including new ones, which have supplies the Russians.

You know, I think the Ukrainians have probably built a more durable model for this war of industrial systems because it’s linked into Western supply chains in a way the Russians just are not able to do. I mean, even the Chinese are very limited in support and they reduced to Iranian drones and North Korean ammunition, neither of which I would come within a mile off.

Mick, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about because you’ve written about it, the difficulties of executing withdrawal under fire, what we in the US call a retrograde operation. It’s a cliche of military affairs that this is one of the most difficult things to do. Arguably, General Sarafekan executed a withdrawal from Carson, which was actually pretty effectively done, prevented the kind of route in the south that we saw happen, and Karkivoblast when the Ukrainians went on the counter offensive back in the fall. So tell us a little bit about for our listeners benefit. Assuming that the Ukrainians are in fact going to make a strategic withdrawal to straighten their lines, assume better defensive positions.

What are we likely to see over the next, you know, days and maybe weeks as this plays out? Yeah.

They I mean, they’re extraordinarily difficult. And the sort of econ leadership of the October November cast on withdrawal probably gives us a bit of a model. From a leadership perspective, you’ve got to explain to people why they’re withdrawing. No one likes to withdraw. It’s corrosive in Uniting and morale.

And if soldiers think that what they’ve done the last few months and losing their fellow soldiers is without any purpose. That has really bad impacts. So you got to be able to lead soldiers and to explain exactly why you’re giving up certain pieces of gram, which is what we call it, retrograde, not withdrawals where possible. Another really important consideration, I think sort of Econ appeared to have gotten this right, is to see if your anniversary about one, are you withdrawing and two, what might be the timing of it. You know, once the enemy gets a sniff that you’re withdrawing, boy, it’s amazing how much extra capacity they can find to put pressure on you.

One of the Australian Army’s great claim to fame is we deceive the Turks about withdrawal from Calipoli. But it’s a case study that if the enemy doesn’t know you’re leaving, it makes your job a lot easier. Ron DeSantis third, you’ve just got to decide what’s the sequencing of it. It’s extraordinarily difficult when your soldiers are under more pressure than normal and they’re being tied on from all three sides.

To

sustain battlefield discipline and get the order of the withdrawal right so you can achieve a clean break from the adversary and they can’t do something that might end up in some massive killing spree. So, you know, these are very, very difficult operations, and, you know, I respect the Ukrainian high command for the kind of terrible decisions and this really brutal calculus that they’re involved in at the moment.

So let’s assume that they can the Ukrainians can withdraw and they’ve There have been news reports about them preparing backup positions and so on, which would be the prudent thing to do. But what does the war look like after that? Let’s say, we wake up next week and they they they have indeed ceded Bahma to the Russians. Where where does the war stand at that point?

I think whether Ukraine holds or or gives up backward, it’s not gonna change the course of this war. I mean, I’m sure there’ll be lots of the headlines in it, but the reality is it’s not gonna change the overall direction of this war. Indeed, it puts the Russians in a worse position because they’ve captured a pile of rubble and the next objective is on higher ground around the town that the Ukrainians have had eight, nine years to prepare defenses for. So, you know, the Russians are in an even bigger quandary after this because they don’t have a clear objective for what their next main effort might be. The Ukrainians have led the Russians.

You know, they’re still kind of keeping their powder dry for when the mud’s dry mud drys out for when they launched their their offensive, which we all assume is coming, I think it is. But, you know, the location and timing of that is something that probably been wall gaming or, you know, I’d say, probably at least six months in to just see where they might be able to hurt the Russians. And From my perspective, one of the things about the Russians is they’ve been entirely predictable over the last six months about how they’re fighting. I mean, they would be much easier to wallgame the future Ukrainian options against just because the Russians aren’t doing anything that’s terribly surprising.

Let me follow-up on on that a little bit. So one of the things that happened that enabled the Kharkiv offensive was that Ukrainians came to realize that a lot of the Russian units there were severely under manned. And given the losses we’ve seen, and I don’t know, you’ve probably seen it, you may have even tweeted about it. But the comment, I think it was as Elugeny who made it, that the loss ratio in Bakmuda has been something like seven to one for the Russians. I’m not sure whether that’s accurate or not, but assuming it is, the Russian losses have just been enormous.

And as you say, once they take Bokmood, they’re gonna have a lot of, you know, tired, under manned, under equipped units sort of strung out now across a longer front. Does that open up some opportunities for this counter offensive that we’ve been talking about in the east? Because I think a lot of people have been thinking it’ll come in the south. Because obviously there’s a big strategic imperative to break that land bridge that the Russians have created. But might it come in the east where they’re you know, now sort of surely undermanned and probably morale not not great.

Yeah.

If I recall, what happened after the several donuts campaign Putin declared a operational pause just because they were exhausted and had done this. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, got us a mob might have to do something similar in the east after they take back mud. I mean, Garatimab’s strategy so far is is a little weird. I mean, Putin keeps talking about how much time he has to win, whereas Grasimov seems to be rushing to get a victory. There’s there’s a there’s an irony in it.

Kind of disconnect there in Russian strategy and and their military approach. I think there are opportunities in the east and the south, and any Ukrainian offensive has to take both into account. It’s not an either either, but the sequencing and the orchestration between the two will be important. Ukraine has to maintain pressure in the east because it can’t afford for the Russians to really put pressure on the Ukrainians around there even and closer to the Russian border whilst they’re doing something in the south. So the the east is in play regardless.

The Ukrainians. It’s just whether it’s a main or a supporting effort, whether it’s a major push or whether it’s a fake tool Ron DeSantis. Yeah. I can see viable options in both regions, but they have to take the sea. I think they want any hope of putting pressure on the Russians at Crimea.

And I I believe, Crimea is the end guy in here.

Could you talk a little bit about what you think the potential is for Ukrainian success? You know, we’ve been reading a lot about the very extensive Russian fortifications along the two major approaches to Crimea indeed along the entire front. There’s no secret that a lot of Ukrainian units

are

pretty tired and they’ve suffered terrific losses. Unfortunately, a lot of the advanced tanks and so on that the west of shipping will probably not really be absorbed by the Ukrainian forces until I don’t know, maybe this summer or something like that. But realistically, what can one hope for from a Ukrainian offensive at particularly at this stage in the war, where both sides have to be exhausted.

Are you both sides are tired, I think, but You know, the one thing the Ukrainians have done consistently in this war is surprised us about their capability. They surprise us at the start of the war. By pushing the Russians away from Kyiv. People then went, okay. So they can defend Kyiv, but, you know, they won’t be able to do anything else.

And then they, you know, fought that battle and gone mass really bled the Russians. And then people went, well, they’ve they’ve defended okay, but they won’t be able to do offensive very well, not like us. And then they smashed the Russians in Kakiv and did the same in Qasan. So at every step of the way, the the Ukrainians have surprised us how capable they are. And I think that there’s a lot of reasons for that.

But one of the most important is when you are under an existential threat, a whole range of things become possible that are not possible under any other circumstances. So my view is don’t underestimate the Ukrainian. They’ve surprised us before. They’ve certainly surprised the rush throughout this war. That’s why the Russians are in the mess they are eaten.

And, you know, I think the Ukrainians are very capable in generating at least on Ron DeSantis of advance, a pretty powerful thrust that might be able to penetrate into the Russian deep deep spaces, not just into their tactical defensive lines. So that’s what I expect them to be aiming for in their next offensive. I think they’re capable of it. The Russians just don’t seem to have a modern war fighting capability and they keep reverting back to more and more ancient methods of defending and and fighting as well.

Yeah. You know, I wrote a a piece in the Atlantic where I think I said the Russian army is now using pre nineteen eighteen tactics. It’s not the sophisticated infiltration tactics of the of the Germans in nineteen eighteen or the very meticulous planned attacks of actually the Australian military on the Western Front where actually, you know, American forces went into battle under Australian command. Why is that the case? I mean, you know, we I think most of us had this idea that the Russian military was a pretty sophisticated military.

I mean, I remember lots of people swooning about the supposed gross enough doctrine And their performance has really been pathetic. The one, if you want to call it, a bright spot for them, has been the withdrawal from Coruscant, which, you know, you give them credit for. But why are they so bad? And then the next question has to be, and why didn’t we see

it? I’m sure there’s going to be decades of analysis at this particular point. But I think one of the rules that come out of this war is when a military organization tells you it’s really good, you need to scratch beneath the surface of that claim. Because that’s what the Russians have been telling us and that’s what the Chinese are telling us at the moment about how good they are, how capable they are, how how their transformation efforts have been really successful and and these kind of things. The, you know, the reality is you can look at a military organization and weapons, its soldiers, its capabilities, its doctrine, and all those kinds.

But until it actually interacts with an enemy, you you just don’t know how it’s gonna full. So, you know, this is why I’m always attracted to net assessment rather than, you know, single sided assessments of one organization that’s useful. But I think net assessment of military capability is a really important thing that, you know, the US does the British have started doing. Because it takes into account a whole range of things. And then you link that with wall gaming to starting what’s the interactive parts of those, the relationship between that organization and others.

And what’s the emergent behaviors of that organization once it’s under the pressure of combat, under the pressure of war back at home. They’re the things that we’re probably missing in the assessment of the Russian military. I think too many people took it as given that, you know, they were they’d come a long way, that the reforms for ten years had largely changed them from a Soviet era to a post called war professional joint Western like organization, except for some of the assumptions, and that’s kind of an overgeneralization. So I think that was part of it. I think to, you know, Many of the people doing this have a good sense of organizational theory and doctrine and things like that.

But you’ve also got to have a sense of how military institutions really work, and you don’t get that by studying reports or reading books or doing archival work. You’ve actually got to live in them just to see the dynamism and sometimes like a dynamism in military institution. So, somehow you’ve got to combine all that. Howard Bauchner:

Mick, one of the things that you hear, you know, or you read now, is that increasingly, you know, at the Munich Security Conference and at meetings of government leaders, whether it’s the EU or NATO, that although in public, people remain very optimistic and bullish about the Ukrainians as we have sort of been in this conversation privately, in the chancellays, it’s much darker and much more discussion about, you know, we’re headed towards a frozen conflict or a stalemate and of course, that’ll have to be negotiated. I guess, you know, we’ve talked already, and you’ve said, don’t underestimate Ukrainians. I take your point completely. I guess my question is a variant of the question that Dave Petray has famously asked Linda Robinson about, you know, Iraq. Tell me how this ends.

What do you think, you know, the likely, kind of, as you were just saying, interaction will be if there is a Ukrainian counter offensive, and how do you see this thing being brought to a close? You mentioned earlier, Crimea, you think is really the end game. But give us a sense of, you know, how you think that happens. And and then a corollary, we’ve had enormous discussions in this country as you know about what longer range systems should be given to the Ukrainians. That will allow them to get out to longer ranges than they can with the current gimliars rounds they have for their high mobility artillery systems.

With some people saying attack them, some people talking about the, you know, the ground launched small diameter bomb. Other people are talking about de pickums and the kind of cluster munitions that come with those. What is your sense of what they need to sort of get on with it as it were?

They certainly need the technology. They need reach, longer reach, so they can get into the deep battle. Against the Russians across the breadth of Ukrainian territory. I mean, Ukraine should be able to target every inch of Ukrainian soil upon which means the Russian soil, whether that’s Crimea, all the way up to just inside the Ukrainian border with Russia or Belarus. So they should be given every weapon system that allows them to do that If they wanna target their own sovereign territory occupied by Russians, they should be able to do that.

We should give them the wherewithal. I think, you know, the the the kind of dark prognostications we see coming out of Munich is politicians are finally starting to get sticker shock from the wall. They’ve realized again after thirty years of not having to do this. So this stuff is really expensive, you know, to sustain the industrial base, to produce a lot of things is quite expensive than winning costs. You can’t there’s no fast cheap and easy way to win a war.

You’ve actually got to invest and politicians are starting to realize that. They’d next need to realize that they have to do something, you know, and and and make those kind of Ron DeSantis, which I think the US Army is doing in a couple of others, but not many others. There’s still kind of been a shock that we’ve got to do more here. I think the west is actually up to it. I mean, the reality is we’re not providing huge amounts of aids as a proportion of our GDP.

I mean, Australia’s provision of age has been really quite pathetic and personalize, if I’m honest. There’s a lot of countries who can step up their assistance to Ukrainians. But, you know, how how do they win? You know, I’ve just written a piece on the Ukrainian, what I call strategy corrosion and how do I go with a theory, a victory is part of that. Because, you know, I I’ve thought back to Elliot’s work and and then Frank Hoffman beat me up about having a epi of victory.

And and the center of it is Ukraine have to beat the Russians on the battlefield whilst denying them sources of strategic support. I mean, that’s that’s how they they win this. I think winning is possible. I know talking about winning is kind of unattractive to some people, and it’s not something we wanted to do in the last of these, but you’ve got to talk about when I mean, war is competitive. And there’s only two ways you can go.

You can win or lose. And I don’t wanna silver metal on this, and I’m pretty sure the Ukrainian state. So there’s a whole range of things that’ll be involved in victory here, but it it takes commitment not interest.

Both Eric and I absolutely heartily agree with you. I’m I’m wondering, no, I propose your comment about people in the west kind of waking up to what not only the cost of war, but what war means in a larger sense, what kind of world we actually live in from, you know, your part of the world, Australia, setting aside the the relative Parisimoniousness of what Australia is actually given to Ukraine. How would you say the war has affected Australians’ view of the world at large and their own region. How has it affected the Australian government and the Australian military?

I think there was a surge of focus on the war in the first few months. Certainly, there was a big demand from different media organizations for stories and insights. I think that’s kind of faded quite a bit. Particularly as we reach the one year mark. I mean, it’s a story that hasn’t quite disappeared.

It’s not as obvious as it was, say, in a few months ago, but what is reinvigorated that. I think there’s been a little bit of cherry picking of observation from the war. I mean, the default tanks narrative has been very strong here. It is a strong eighty tank community in Cuba amongst public service and academia. And this has just given them evidence.

So they haven’t looked at things like integrated air defense and what that means for crew fighters and stuff. But certainly had that impact. And there’s also been a little bit more of a focus on, okay, if one small democracy can be preyed upon by a large authority of Terran and Europe. What does that mean for Taiwan? And therefore, what does that mean for Australia’s national security policy?

So this defense strategic review, which has been delivered to government, which should be announced, I hope, in April, is designed to kind of the Australia’s response to both Ukraine, but also this new security environment that we’re seeing through Chinese aggression. In coalition in our region.

You mentioned the tank anti tank debate, and that that leads to a different question I wanted to ask you, which is I instruct me when I’ve spoken with people in the American military, the predominant view seems to me, well, this is kind of World War one with drones added into the mix. Now there are a few other people say, no, no, no, this is actually this conflict is quite revelatory of what modern war looks like, and there are a whole bunch of issues that are associated with it and therefore we better be quite serious in trying to learn such lessons as there are. And I’m curious to know where you are in that debate. And to the extent that you are somebody who feels that, no, this is a modern war, which really needs to be studied quite carefully. And not just a reprise of the wars of the the major wars of the last century.

What what are some of the standout aspects of it? Yeah.

I think World War one with drones is too too simple. I mean, every war is an aggregation of every war that’s gone before plus a few new things. Whether it’s geography, politics, technology concepts. So I think, you know, this is if you look closely at this wall, you can see the strider of every single world that’s gone before, including Afghanistan and our brain, plus a few new things. I think the few new things Firstly, is the autonomous systems that you’ve mentioned.

We’re seeing in the air. We are seeing a better response now in cater autonomy systems, but we’re a long way behind there. We are starting to see uncrewed ground systems that we could really see them proliferated for Russians and Ukrainians, get them right particularly lethal ones. So that’s the autonomy space. I think the second one is strategic influence has been a really interesting lesson from this.

You know, the Ukrainian are really good at it, but they don’t do it all. It’s been a combination of the Ukrainians, the West government, and citizens around the world joining a global kind of influence campaign to show off Ukraine or what and do what NAFL does, which is what they

call

you know, what posting Russia in a whole range of things. But I think strategic influence is a really big lesson out of this for and I think the third one is it’s reinvigorated the study of leadership. I mean, military organizations without good leadership, ungood military organizations, countries without good leadership, and good countries, I think. And I think Zelensky is single handedly reminded us all that good leadership at every single level is essential for successful institutions be they government, military, private, academic. It it doesn’t matter.

So for me, there are three of the big things out of this war, the fair close study among the many many many other lessons in strategy operations and tactics.

Just one quick follow-up and then over to Eric. What about those arguments that have been made for, if not the obsolescence of the tank, the devaluing it, of it. But I would also say people have said similar things about attack helicopters. And they’re even saying somewhat similar things about jets being used for close air support. And there’s a, in fact, a kind of a broader argument that I think some people make, which I confess I have some sympathy to that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq really distorted our understanding of the modern battlefield.

Because the United States and the allies had this overwhelming total air supremacy, and they really they were not up on the ground. They were not up against people who could really, you know, take out tanks or shoot down helicopters and almost they got really lucky. So, you know, those particular systems, is there is there a story there?

Oh, I think so. And, you know, one of the other stories from places like Afghanistan is it was probably the most densely surveilled battlefield in the history of humankind, and we still used to get surprised all the time by the enemy. I mean, I think that was the most relevant lesson for from Afghanistan for me having served there. But, you know, I think you’re right. There are some systems that either need to be used very differently in future or may not be as relevant in the future.

I mean, is the tank, the horse cavalry, of its time or not. I don’t think it is because both the Russians and Ukrainians want them and are using them because they see them as useful, survivable mobile and lethal platforms that use cleverly are very effective. I do think things like attack helicopters are different. I I don’t know whether they’re survivable in how they’re used currently. I I just I I I think the Australian Army should get rid of this.

The Japanese are getting rid of this because they’re just not survivable. Because the Ukrainians approved that a modern integrated anti missile drone and air defense system, even with old bits as well as some new digital backbone joining it all up can be extraordinarily difficult to penetrate. And I’m not sure Air Forces are paying efficiently to have difficult their jobs going to be in future. There’s not a lot for navies out of this other than, you know, done stuff as a navy captain and just sit there and be a target. But I think ground forces really need to look at all the data from this and do the kind of thing.

The US Army did post seventy three looking at the Arab Israeli wars because that resulted in Airline battle, it resulted in the big five US Army systems. And it resulted in a reinvigoration of the US Army’s training in education system. And these are the kind of outcomes that we should be seeing at. And I know the US military is is starting to look at this particular US Army and what it means for the Pacific. But for me, the big thing is, which lessons are appropriate to this war and which lessons are appropriate to all wars?

And that will take some careful Sifting through, I think.

Nick, I agree that the information space is one that is gonna merit a lot of study. And the Ukrainians claim that ten thousand Russians have surrendered in response to their information operation with a number number to call if you wanna, you know, if you wanna give yourself up. I don’t know if that’s accurate or if that number itself is part of an information operation. But if it’s even close to to accurate, it’s pretty extraordinary. And it shows I think one of the sort of asymmetric advantages that you’ve been talking about that the Ukrainians have, which is their ability to innovate on the fly, which has been, you know, really really impressive.

I I guess that prompts me to ask a question, you know, you wrote this wonderful book, The Future of War, which I think the publication date, at least in the US, was February fifteenth twenty twenty two. So it was about, you know, less than a fortnight before this war actually broke out, which was, you know, therefore gonna test all of the propositions that you had, you know, briefly put down on paper for us to now, you know, grade your homework. So What, if anything, has surprised you after having been through the discipline for several years of working on and and writing a book, and then having something, you know, like this breakout, has anything surprised you? And if so what?

Not a lot. There’s been far more continuity than than new things in this war. I mean, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some of the things Ukrainian I guess two things have surprised me. Firstly, just how slow the Russians have been to learn. I haven’t been that surprised by how badly.

I mean, that happens in war. Some armies who look good. My French army on, you know, May eighth nineteen forty looked really good. On May eleven nineteen forty looked terrible. And, you know, it’s the same with the Russians here, but it surprised me how slow they have been to learn and adapt in particular compared to the Ukrainians.

The second thing is I’ve been surprised by how surprised a lot of others are by what’s going on because Most of what we’re seeing is absolutely normal for these kind of large scale wars between big, well populated relatively wealthy industrialized countries. I mean, we’ve seen this half a dozen times since the first industrial revolution at least. And it’s kind of shocked me that just how uneducated the vast majority of the commentary it is about what war is. You know, it says to me there’s a real gap in our education about war as a phenomenon, which is like real interest and how it evolves and how it doesn’t. And That for me is probably been the biggest shock.

It’s just how uninformed many people in the population, many people in government, and many people in, I’ll I’ll broadly call the commentary just when it comes to the basics of fighting large wars. You

know, what war is on both sides seems to be usually a competition in learning because as the great British military historian Michael Howard put it, you know, no army gets it right at the beginning of the war. The question is who adapts quicker. So for me, the the the puzzling. And when you think about Ukraine, which has, I think, learned and adapted very quickly, the sort of makes sense given the kind of society they have low level initiative, makes it somewhat chaotic, but nonetheless you can understand why they would learn quickly. It is somewhat surprising to me that the Russians have been so bad at it and so bad at recovery.

I mean, it’s not like they haven’t had this kind of issue before. And I’m just wondering if you have any inkling why that’s the case, why Why can’t they learn? Why why don’t they end up, you know, finding the really competent young captains and making them colonels and really competent young lieutenants and making them generals and adapting that way. That why why do you think that isn’t happening? Yeah.

It’s it’s interesting because, I mean, at least, on paper, you know, the Russians have a pretty good system for developing doctrine and military theory and and nurturing at least the big idea is in war. But they seem to be not great at training their people to actually fight wars, particularly at the tactical level there’s clearly some systemic issues that they haven’t fixed in with hazing the incentives for service and these kind of things. And as other commentators have highlighted, you know, the Russian Army now is not the old Soviet Army. There’s a high level of corruption now and and and readiness padding compared to what we might have seen in the Soviet era. There’s a there’s a greater spectroscopy in the military that wasn’t as prevalent, say, in the Soviet era.

So I think all that goes in. I think you know, Russia is still struggling with its place in the world post nineteen ninety one. I I did a lot for a lot of them that they just haven’t got over. What happened with the collapse of the law, certainly Putin hasn’t and he’s beaten that drum for a long time now. So I think there’s no single answer here.

There’s a whole range of strategic political and institutional factors that mean they just don’t have the drive learn like the Ukraine. So and I’ll go back to this the existential threat. The Russians aren’t under an existential threat here. Putin might talk about it from NATO, but most Russians understand. They’re not under a daily threat.

The same as Ukrainians are. And when you’re under that daily threat to your life and your family’s life, it changes how you think, and it changes your risk calculus, and it changes just how creative and innovative you’re willing to do. And that’s what the Ukrainians have done in the Russian tablet.

One observation people have made continually, of course, has been the absence of a non commissioned officer corps in the Russian Army. Do you do you think that is a major contributing factor to some of what you’ve just been discussing?

I think we’ve over egged that one, to be honest. I think that the Russian military, like the Ukrainian military, has a system where those functions are undertaken they’re just not undertaken by the kind of people that we do in the west. I mean, they have whether it’s lieutenants or or senior enlisted people undertake the functions that we normally have with French corporals, corporals, and sergeants. It doesn’t mean they’re any worse than than us. They still have the same functions to undertake.

But I think we need to be careful not to mirror image the Russians or even the Ukrainians, which by the way doesn’t have a strong NTO court just yet they still use senior soldiers. I don’t think it’s a major contributor in Russian problems, to be honest. I think in some respects, we’re just projecting ourselves on them to try and find a reason for their lack of success. I think the reasons go much deeper than oh, they don’t have NCOs.

There’s,

missinterest, and because the Israelis traditionally never had much of the NCO corps either. And in some ways, they had a somewhat similar system, I I think. I I was wondering

if we could sort of move a bit beyond Russia, Ukraine. And talk in general about how one should think about the future of war, how people should educate themselves about it. Now one thing that I’ve I’ve always embired about you, Mick, is and this was particularly true when you’re you were the commandant of the Australian defense college. You took science fiction and you take science fiction very seriously as a military science fiction. You’ve written some about it.

I believe you’re continuing to do so. I was wondering if you could just talk a bit about that. Why science fiction? Who some of your favorite writers are? What what is it that those of us who are listening to this podcast can can learn from it?

Yeah. I I I go back to Michael Howard who, you know, wrote about, you know, most practitioners in the military rarely get to practice their art and they have to study military history to prepare for it just in case. I think you can also you can study the future at the same time in order to kind of broaden your conception of what about what war is, about how new technologies might have an impact, particularly the ethical impacts of things like artificial intelligence, lethal, autonomous systems. And, you know, for me, this was a mechanism by which you can say to military officers who generally exist in a hierarchical system without huge incentives for innovation to say to them, it’s actually okay to be a bit more creative So we used to do papers for our chief of defense on a range of futures issues up in ten to twenty years in the future. And I just found that a good way to nurture the ability to take intellectual risk in our future leaders.

So, you know, there’s a bunch of different books you can use for that is the classics from Azemarle and and others, but there’s a new generation of young science fiction writers and not so young science fiction writers, you know. There’s there’s John Scholesy, Martha Wells, and and others like this have written on issues related to the profession of arms that I think are quite insightful and are really important for intellectually preparing our future leaders.

So and I I guess my final question to you is most of the listeners to this podcast, I’m pretty sure are not professional officers and even if they are, you know, I think we’re all we’re all aware that it’s going to be that it is difficult to follow an ongoing war and make sensible judgments about it. What are your suggestions?

I think you’ve got a reader. I mean, that’s that’s the most fundamental discipline. If you want to understand what’s going on in the world around you, it’s moving too quickly. And as much as we’d love to spend more time in the schoolhouse and you know, I’d I’d love to be sitting in a class in Johns Hopkins sites right now if I could. But we can’t do that.

You can’t do it in the military. You can’t do it in national security. And a priority can’t do it in the broader world. So I think you’ve got to have the discipline of self learning. You’ve got to dedicate yourself to understanding more about the world around you, whether it’s technology, war, economics, intelligence and other things.

So I think that’s the easiest and the most fundamental way of doing this and then talk with people who you agree with and talk with people you don’t agree with is important once you’ve done done the baseline reading. And I think the the two most important skills you can have. You don’t need to be an expert, but you should be informed and you should be able to understand that different diverse views around individual subjects is really important.

Nick, this has been a terrific conversation you have actually put some of this into practice. Haven’t you in terms of the use of fiction in your most recent work? Do you wanna tell our listeners about it? And and how they how they can get a hold of it?

Yes. I I decided to my my follow-up to the war transformed book is a a fictional account of a war over Taiwan called White Sun War. We published in on thirty April in in the United States. And it’s very much along the same lines as the killer angels of the historian looking back at a future war through the eyes of key participants. And for me, the key participants of those in new kind of units, whether it’s space command, marine, latore, regiments, Chinese marines or even just young officers who are commanding human machine teams with what’s the robotic systems and humans in them.

So I look at a lot of the technology, but also the ethics and also a lot of the ideas and organizations that I think are going to have to change. When it comes to what we might have to face in the Western Pacific.

Listen, I just want to say how grateful I am that you could join us and say how important a role you play, Nick, there long time ago, you had a generation of people like general John Galvin and others, but they’re always few and far between. And it’s a really an indispensable role because Even civilians like Eric and myself have read a lot of military history and studied this stuff very closely, it’s not quite the same thing. So we’re we’re really grateful to you for what you’re doing, and I would just urge people are listening to the podcast to follow you on Twitter and on Sub Sec and to to buy that novel. Eric, over to you. And to read the future of

war, which will tell them a lot that they didn’t know and will help them appreciate what they’re reading from Nick and and from you Elliott, from Philips O’Brien, from our good friends over at the Institute for the Study of War, Fred and Kim Kaye again, etcetera. And with that, we’ll have to bring this episode of Shield of the Republic to a close because I don’t know, Mick has another engagement he has to move on to, but Mick, we’re really very grateful you spent the time with us. If you enjoy Shield of the Republic, give us a review on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast from. And drop us a line at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com.