It is likely,
particularly if the military operation does not achieve its objectives quickly
and gets bogged down with a protracted combat, that the president will ask
Verkhovna Rada to introduce martial law in eastern Ukraine. All this means a
rapid escalation of the violent conflict and most likely the biggest strategic
mistake in Poroshenko’s young presidency. It will be a tragedy for millions of
Ukrainians, and a fatal blow to Ukraine’s democratic transition.
Many Ukrainians who
have been living for months on the waves of the heightened patriotism verging
on the nationalistic fervor fed by the images of violence in Donbas have criticized
Poroshenko for his hesitant and feeble response toward the armed threat.
The blind national
consensus that emerged considered questioning of the raison d’être
behind the armed campaign as either the expression of unwanted pacifism in a
time of war or, simply, treason of the Ukrainian national interests.
In times like this,
however, the highest form of patriotism should have been criticism itself, including
doubt in the armed offensive and search for an alternative form of resistance.
Who wants war in Donbas and why give it to Putin and
separatists?
The struggles are won
not by emotions but by reason and effective strategies.
The use of reason in
the current conflict in Ukraine leads to the crucial question: who wants war in
Donbas and Ukraine in general?
The continued support that separatists in
eastern Ukraine receive in the form of arms deliveries and manpower through the
porous border with Russia shows clearly that Kremlin (including his protégé ex-President
Viktor Yanukovych and the ‘Family’) wants nothing else but war in the Donbas.
Furthermore, local armed separatists and
Russian rebels also need and want war to justify their presence and actions.
Why would then Ukrainians do what Kremlin
wants? Why would Ukrainians want to play a violent game that the Kremlin is so
skilled at (consider Chechnya)? Why would Ukrainians use the language (of arms)
that the separatists understand so well? Strategically, it would have been more
effective and wiser to devise campaigns that neither Kremlin nor separatists
expect, understand or have advantage in.
Ukraine like Syria or Bosnia
During the
celebration of the 25th anniversary of the peaceful democratic
transition in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski expressed a growing
concern that Ukraine could become like Syria.
The Syrian or, in
fact, Bosnia’s scenarios in Ukraine are possible not only because of the
presences of the armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine fueled from outside but precisely
because the Ukrainian government decided to respond in kind. Since April 15,
the Ukrainian army and increasingly a number of pro-Ukrainian armed groups and
regional battalions of volunteers engaged in the military operation.
After
more than two months of the armed campaign, it should have become obvious that Ukraine’s
military operation was a failure.
Its
objectives, spelled by the then acting President Oleksander Turchynov “to protect Ukrainian citizens, to stop the terror, to stop the
crime, to stop the attempts to tear (Ukraine) apart” have never been met. In
reality, the terrorist operation neither brought a decisive victory against separatists nor
stopped the violence nor protected local civilians. The
costs of significantly outweighed any benefits.
Military
operation a failure
Nearly 200 Ukrainian military personnel
died in the conflict while more than 300 civilians were killed. According to
the United Nations refugee agency, more than 50,000 Ukrainians have been
displaced from their homes. The
Ukrainian army clearly lacks needed capabilities, including training,
technology, and equipment to isolate and deal with the separatist threat
without creating a massive collateral damage in the process.
All these costs came despite a relatively
low intensity warfare that Ukraine was engaged in thus far and despite the
constraints placed on the army operation.
With the declaration of the martial law in
Donbas, the constraints are lifted and the conflict turns into a high intensity
war. Given the previous experience of the military operation, thousands are likely
to die and hundreds of thousands will become refugees in the current phase.
No state, and even more so Ukraine, is
prepared to bear such costs.
The first victim of the war would become
democratic and economic reforms, the fight with corruption, holding officials
accountable for delivering services, reforming bloated bureaucracy, decentralizing
the country and ensuring safety and security of ordinary citizens.
Ukraine
like Libya
In an acknowledgement of the weakness of the
Ukrainian army to wage an effective campaign, the state endorsed the creation
of peoples’ battalions.
This meant a growing number
of private armed militia groups that are de facto responsible to no one but
themselves.
Like in Libya, it would be hard to disarm
them after the struggle ends. These groups are likely to have a destabilizing
influence on the democratic transition in Ukraine as oligarchs and criminal
elements began using them to settle their own scores and protect their
political, territorial or financial turfs while the conflict in eastern Ukraine
rages on or eventually dies down.
Where the anti-terrorist operation was
seemingly successful in liberating towns from separatists like Mariupol on June
13, it was because the local population, including miners, recaptured without
violence most of the city weeks before.
It left separatists stranded in a few
administrative buildings that were eventually seized by Ukrainian forces.
Mariupol is now a telling
story of what might happen after the “victory:
– different factions of armed volunteers that lack effective command and
control structures and simple criminal groups now vie for control over the
city. Building open society and a local
democracy after the end of the military campaign will be as daunting as
achieving victories in the armed campaign.
Ukraine
like Afghanistan
So
far the Ukrainian army has failed to seal the borders between Ukraine and
Russia and it lacks capabilities to prevent armed separatists and weapons from
flowing into the country from the east.
As long as the borders remain porous the Ukrainian army is likely to be
kept at bay if not defeated in a protracted conflict. The outcome will be no
different than the one that awaited NATO in Afghanistan where the Taliban have
fought successfully against the most powerful military alliance in the world
because of the open borders with Pakistan. The main difference is that the
Ukrainian army is nowhere close to the strength of NATO while separatists in
eastern Ukraine with Russia’s help can in fact become militarily stronger than the
Taliban ever were.
Adversary
knows the Ukrainian military moves before they are made
Any effective deployment of the military
capabilities on the battlefield that includes the element of surprise is
entirely negated by the reported gigantic infiltration of the Ukrainian army by
the Russian intelligence services. The invasion of Crimea and the military
lessons from that period were missed on the advocates of the armed solution in
eastern Ukraine. Half of the Ukrainian army in Crimea shifted their loyalties
and joined the Russian forces, while 25 percent deserted and went home. With
such high level of questionable loyalty among the Ukrainian army, including top
brass, no effective major armed campaign can be conducted in a short or medium
term without a complete overhaul of the Ukrainian armed forces and its
counter-intelligence services.
A mastery of winning over local
population
Another
important factor that does not bode well for the armed campaign in eastern
Ukraine is that separatists in Donbas receive local assistance in terms of
food, shelter and information. Even if only a small minority of the locals
supports the separatists the majority of the population in Donbas remains in
fact largely silent, withdrawn, and passive in the face of armed separatism and
generally lackluster toward ATO and the government in Kyiv.
The
probability that the civilians will be killed is greater during the war than
when only one side (e.g. separatists) uses violence.
With
more civilians killed while the anti-terrorist operation or its revamped
version is being conducted on the ground the greater the hatred and the urge
for revenge among the locals towards their supposed liberators.
And
such development contradicts the basic principle of any
counterinsurgency – the mastery of
defeating guerrillas is the mastery of turning the local populace against them.
And a long history of (counter-)insurgency
shows that there has never been a victory without open or at least tacit
support of the local population for the side that eventually prevailed unless that
local population is annihilated. Ukraine’s military campaign is merely a
physical tool against the adversary and is not designed to win hearts and minds
of the locals – the necessary strategy for the ultimate victory in Donbas.
Logic
of conflicts
The armed struggle has a straightforward
logic. The side that wins is the one
that deploys effectively a greater number of physically able manpower to do
more violence with the use of technologically more advanced military hardware. The
armed conflict is driven by material (financial, economic), technological and
physical capabilities. The greater these capabilities that can be sustained
over a longer period of time the greater the chances for eventual armed
victory.
The armed insurgency that is being
challenged with the armed counterinsurgency has also a simple logic. The
technologically, materially and physically inferior side engages the materially,
physically and technologically stronger opponent with guerilla-like, hit &
run tactics. Furthermore it relies heavily on external and local assistance to
survive and continue the resistance. The victory in a protracted
insurgency-counterinsurgency struggle comes when one side becomes physically
and materially exhausted.
Ask
those who push for the armed campaign in eastern Ukraine
The violence in eastern Ukraine combines
both logics that of the armed struggle and the insurgency-counterinsurgency
warfare. Therefore, those who advocate the armed response as the most effective
tool available to defeat the armed militia in eastern Ukraine should be asked
to demonstrate that:
1.
Ukraine possesses material, technological
and manpower superiority over the other side that it can effectively deploy and
coordinate on the battlefield over a longer – counted in months – period of
time.
The anti-terrorist operation has delivered
little proof of this prowess. If anything it showed major
weaknesses.
2.
Armed insurgents are not able
to regroup, resupply and receive local and external support for their armed
campaigns in Ukraine.
This is not likely to happen anytime soon.
3.
The benefits – meaning, costs
vs. gains – of waging armed resistance outweigh advantages offered by an alternative
approach.
The alternative approach is political
mobilization and civil
resistance – the conflict in which one side wages struggle by different, political
means.
Waging
political struggle
The hints of the political strategy that is
more effective than a military one have been there all along. They have been missed on the general
population because of the reflexive response to take arms when faced with violence
in an increasingly hyper-nationalistic environment that calls to arms. The
latter, intentionally or not, occludes or disowns (as unpatriotic or treasonous)
other non-military alternatives.
Odessa has been relatively calm
not because the anti-terrorist operation was there to defend people but because
the local population has remained mobilized and is keeping separatists out. Mobilized
society in Kharkiv, like the one in the local metro, suppresses separatism with civic voices and without arms. Its perseverance is
the most effective weapon. Unarmed people, mobilized in hundreds, take on
separatists like local civilians next to Kramatorsk and throw out separatists and
take down a road blockade.
Poroshenko in fact recognized the
importance of people power.
In his announcement that relaunched the
military campaign, he asked people in the Donbas to “become allies” and urged “civil
disobedience to the so-called people’s republics.” The problem is that popular
civic mobilization is not compatible with an anti-terrorist operation.
The two are driven by different logics –
the former by the power of ideas and legitimacy that summon thousands – men,
women, young and old – to engage in strikes, non-cooperation and civil
disobedience and the latter by a sheer physical force waged mostly by
physically capable men to eliminate the adversary. The anti-terrorist operation
creates a perfect vicious circle of violence that limits space in Donbas for
political agitation and popular mobilization of civilians in support of
Ukraine’s unity.
Such development is unfortunate,
particularly given the fact that civil resistance has historically proven to be
more
than twice as successful as the violent resistance against tyrants and occupiers.
And its effectiveness was often undermined rather than helped by the
simultaneous armed campaign with the same objectives. Furthermore, civil
resistance generally lessens the material destruction of the country in the
conflict, awakens thousands of demobilized and fearful, paves the way for more
successful democratization and, most importantly, saves lives.
Political struggle or civil resistance in
contrast to the armed struggle like ATO does not ask Ukrainians to give their
life for the country. It asks each and every Ukrainian to give the rest of his life for the country.
Maciej Bartkowski teaches civil
resistance in Krieger School of Arts and Science at Johns Hopkins University in
Washington, D.C. and is the editor of Recovering Nonviolent History. Civil Resistance in
Liberation Struggles. The
views expressed here are his own. He
can be followed on Twitter @macbartkowski
