Three years ago, Russian forces moved across the Ukrainian northern, eastern and southern frontiers, as well as in a coordinated series of missile and air assault actions, in the hope of a short, ten-day lightning war. The ultimate objective was that the Ukrainian government would fall, to be replaced by a Russian puppet government that would keep NATO out and Russia in.
In On War, Carl von Clausewitz describes how “the political object, as the original motive of the War, will be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made”. Ukraine, facing an existential crisis, has leveraged all its national resources to achieve the supreme political goal of retaining Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia, which has invented this crisis and constructed a make-believe tale about NATO encroachment and Nazi leadership in Ukraine, faced no existential challenge. And yet, Putin has manufactured a political environment where there is no Russian national life, in the economy, in schools or in the media, without total commitment to winning the war.
Writing in the early days of the war, I described how no responsible military or political institution will be able to ignore the lessons that will emerge from Ukraine. Very few people anticipated the profound impacts this war would have on European and global political and security affairs. The insights from this conflict about the changing character of war extend from the technological to the industrial, the tactical to the political. With this as context, what might be the key insights that the past three years have provided for Australian politicians?
Australia needs a new theory of conventional deterrence for non-nuclear middle powers that is more sophisticated than possession of three submarines and a small stockpile of missiles.
A first lesson is the need to invest in deterrence. Deterrence is a national undertaking to discourage or restrain another nation-state or non-state entity from taking unwanted actions. It possesses a psychological dimension and aims to affect a potential aggressor’s decision-making process. One of the crucial responsibilities of national political leadership is to deter aggression against the nation they lead, and to resource their participation in multinational efforts to deter coercion, aggression and conflicts. The West now exists in an environment where predatory authoritarian regimes see democratic political weakness as provocative. While Australia has embraced deterrence in its most recent National Defence Strategy, it remains purely a military strawman. At heart, Australia needs a new theory of conventional deterrence for non-nuclear middle powers that is more sophisticated than possession of three submarines and a small stockpile of missiles. More elements of conventional deterrence, including civil defence, a capable sovereign defence industry, robust cyber defences, missile defence and plans for mobilisation of industry and people, are needed.
A second lesson for Australia’s political leadership regards the pace of political and strategic decision-making. The speed of planning, decision-making, action and adaptation is increasing due to faster media cycles, the greater visibility of friendly and enemy systems from drones and open-source intelligence, the proliferation of different ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and AI-enabled decision support. Political and military institutions must ensure that their people and institutions are able to intellectually and physically deal with this new environment through better use of time for improved decision-making.
In the 2024 Australian National Defence Strategy, the government proposed that defence’s procurement decision-making does not pass the test of timely 21st-century decision-making. This is largely a result of a dwindling risk appetite by politicians and public servants in the modern era. This root cause is likely to have impacts in many other elements of the national security enterprise. For example, decision-making about the provision of military assistance to Ukraine has been slower than required by battlefield and strategic realities.
Understanding escalation management and red lines is another crucial lesson of the past three years. A nation must be opaque enough in its decision-making to not provide warning to an adversary about future intentions, but transparent enough to prevent that enemy from making decisions that escalate situations out of control. National leaders and alliances must never reveal all their red lines nor publicly take counsel of their fears about enemy responses.
There was probably a much better appreciation of this issue among Cold War-era politicians. Contemporary politicians need to improve their performance, however. The frequent debates in recent years about whether providing a few tanks or artillery systems to Ukraine would escalate the war not only demonstrated strategic immaturity and risk aversion but also resulted in Ukraine being unable to exploit battlefield opportunities at the end of 2022 and since.
The three years since February 2022 has also reinforced the crucial nature of alliances. The war would have turned out very differently if the NATO alliance and its military, intelligence, informational and diplomatic support had not been provided to Ukraine. NATO has been reinvigorated and expanded over the last three years in a way that has been fundamental in deterring Russia from expansion of the war. Modern political leaders must not only understand the importance of alliances in securing their countries, but how alliances contribute to a more secure and prosperous global environment. It is necessary to invest in alliances and advocate for them with both domestic and international audiences.
The experience of Ukraine offers a salutary lesson to this generation that large-scale war is always possible.
Strategic communication by political leaders with citizens is a fifth and vital lesson from the past three years. Advanced new technologies now provide the means to target and influence various populations in a way that has not been possible before. But this is just the medium; the message is also crucial. Political leaders need to be able to explain deterring war, and if possible, the key decisions in war. This has been something that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has excelled at throughout this war.
In the book War in Ukraine, Thomas Mahnken and Joshua Baker write that “in the months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was plenty of wishful thinking that such a war would be irrational”. This appears to have been a widely held view among many politicians in the West before the war. Thus, a sixth lesson is about the possibility of war. The political cultures in western nations, including our own, are not well informed about war and its consequences. The post-Cold War generation, seduced by the economic growth and increased globalisation, have come to believe that large-scale war is not possible in the 21st century. There has been a marked decline in the study of military history and war more generally in higher education institutions. But good strategy always assumes war is possible.
The experience of Ukraine offers a salutary lesson to this generation that large-scale war is always possible, particularly when authoritarian leaders with few limits on their power seek to remove examples of other political systems from the view of their citizens. War, unfortunately, is the ultimate sword of Damocles that hangs over humanity. One thing that makes it more likely is for political leaders to avoid understanding war and its causes.
A final lesson of the last three years for Australia’s political leaders, and indeed every citizen of our nation, is about will. The central insight from Ukraine must be that no one will help a nation that doesn’t demonstrate the will to defend itself. There are many dimensions to this demonstration of will. Ultimately, it is about building national resilience in all its forms. The concept of sovereign resilience, which includes the requirement to mobilise people, ideas and industry for large military and national challenges, must be implemented from the top of our nation’s political leadership.
Three years after Russia began its catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, Australians have been given an opportunity to ponder what we value as individuals and as one of the world’s most successful democracies.
That opportunity, for our politicians, our government, business and community leaders and for every citizen of this country, has been underpinned by the courage, resilience and essential goodness of Ukrainian citizens and soldiers. They have demonstrated a form of overwhelming will and sacrifice not often seen in nations. And despite the horror we feel in watching the Russian barbarians seek to extinguish an entire people and its culture in the past three years, there is also a sense of privilege we might feel in having been able to observe the rare demonstration of uncommon valour by an entire nation.
But in learning from Ukraine, our political leaders must have the courage to ask and answer the following: does Australia, with its short attention spans and its societal avoidance of personal and political risk, possess a similar will to defend our own democratic systems?
