Commentators have assumed that the Ukraine stands little chance of fending off an overwhelming onslaught from Russia because of Russia’s vastly superior troop and weapons strength. But history proves an inferior force dedicated to unconventional warfare can so damage a superior one as to compel its withdrawal or cause its defeat. The American Revolution proved that point in the Eighteenth Century. Consider Russia’s horrendous losses in Afghanistan before it was forced to withdraw. We ourselves experienced a comparable disaster in Vietnam and many would argue in Afghanistan. Based on those and other examples, the Ukrainians’ fate is indeed very much to be decided by their will to fight and by their methods. If they are wise, they will follow Winston Churchill and discover that clandestine “ungentlemanly warfare,” replete with the element of surprise, can indeed hasten the destruction of an enemy despite that opponent’s technological and numerical superiority.
In Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Giles Milton records the history of clandestine operations employed in the service of Great Britain by various people trained in the dark arts of unconventional warfare. Those brave mavericks were dispatched by secret order of Prime Minister Churchill to perform dangerous missions of sabotage against Nazi Germany throughout the second World War. Those operations repeatedly confounded Nazi plans to achieve military objectives, crippling supply chains; destroying fuel depots and power plants; and misdirecting command, control and communications. The Ukrainians would do well to study Churchill’s “ungentlemanly warfare” very carefully and prepare to employ like methods in anticipation of a Russian invasion.
Indeed, with appropriate U.S. backing, the Ukrainians could take full advantage of Russia’s profound weaknesses. Despite news suggesting the contrary, Russia’s massing of troops, equipment and supplies along the Ukrainian border reveals significant vulnerabilities that can now be exploited. Through means of espionage and infiltration, Ukrainian operatives and commandos can take steps that, if timed properly, will impede a Russian advance. They can spike Russian fuel supplies; remove key components from Russian tanks, aircraft, and armored personnel carriers; and contaminate food and water stockpiles necessary to sustain Russian forces. The mass deployment of Russian forces immediately across the Ukrainian border puts them all within easy reach of Ukrainian operatives and commandos. Cyber warfare can also be staged presently at key points along the Ukrainian border to enable--simultaneous with the start of Russian offensive operations--signal jamming; electromagnetic spectrum operations to destroy command, control, and communications capabilities; rapid deployment of system destructive viruses; and rapid deployment of viruses designed to give command instructions that redirect Russian forces or cause them to enter staged Ukrainian kill zones. In this way, a far inferior force can magnify its impact to rebuff or defeat a vastly superior force.
Russia maintains a big and cumbersome military machine that suffers from the weakness of centralized command and control that, if broken, leaves officers in the field panic stricken with little assurance that if they act without authorization they will not end up suffering severe punishment. Russian rank and file soldiers fear their superiors, and they fear the intervention of political commissars. They proceed in war out of fear and paranoia, far more so than patriotic zeal. By contrast, Ukrainian soldiers will be fighting for their homelands, for their literal homes, and for their families. Their incentive to defeat the invaders to protect their homes and families are far greater than the Russian soldier’s incentive to fight. The Russian soldier is miles from home, is living uncomfortably in the field in the dead of winter, and is under the oppressive command of a military directed strictly from the top down. Although there are Russians from the region among those massed at the border, the typical Russian soldier has little personal interest in or familiarity with the Ukraine and all or almost all are commanded by officers who are politically preferred Russians who are not originally from the Ukraine or Crimea.
If Russian forces enter Ukrainian territory and occupy it, unconventional techniques, akin to the highly successful counterinsurgency measures employed by the French Resistance in World War II, will again be essential in crippling Russian occupying forces.
In short, if the Ukrainian people have the will to fight, they can retain or regain control of their country, even against one of the most oppressive and tyrannical regimes in the world. Like in Afghanistan, if Russia becomes bogged down in the Ukraine with tremendous loss of life and destruction of its military hardware (if the Ukraine becomes a kill zone for Russia’s occupying forces), Russia may well perceive the advantage of colonization outweighed by the costs. The Ukraine can become another Afghanistan for Russia, depending on the will of the Ukrainian people to be independent.
The United States should make clear to the Ukrainians, complemented by immediate action, that America will back Ukrainian independence and opposition to Russian aggression by supplying the Ukraine with the training and means necessary to engage in unconventional (or, in Churchill’s words, “ungentlemanly”) warfare against Russian aggressors and occupiers—regardless of the length of Russian occupation. While it is in our strategic interest that Russia not regain control over the former Soviet satellite states, we serve that interest not only by arming the Ukrainians but also by supporting Ukrainian resistance to any Russian occupation. We need that far-thinking at the State Department, among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at the National Security Council.