Darren Jones: a different kettle of fish

In the right hands, the plumb job in Government is Chief Secretary to the Treasury.  Seat in Cabinet.  Just below the radar, but enormous power.  In charge of government spending - everybody needs to be your friend.   The best springboard imaginable: the partial list below is revealing[1].

And now, CSttT Darren Jones has sprung into another such job: CSttPM, no less, invented specifically for him, it seems (and to help dig the Starmermobile out of the rut in which its wheels are spinning idly as the engine races).  Yes - Darren, the sharp, confident, facetious smartarse, is in charge of more than just spending now.  Let's see what he does with it:  because such jobs and such people are in the type of pivotal position that can see significant results along several axes, personal as well as political and practical.

In business, the term once used was "troubleshooter" - a person appointed to get something Big & Awkward done, often away from the corporate centre.  Julius Caesar is perhaps the greatest example in history; there's Wellington and Slim in British military annals (and many other besides, of course).  Douglas MacArthur: the list could go on.  Right now, Putin has Sergei Kiriyenko[2].  It's happened to me three times in my career: being given plenipotentiary powers in the hope I could fix some unexpected, pressing difficulty.

The thing is: you're never sure how things will turn out - with the task itself, and what the Man does afterwards.  Caesar came back in triumph from Gaul - and immediately mounted a successful coup.  MacArthur had a coup in mind himself.  Wellington was a bit more constitutionally correct when he had the whole of Europe at his feet: he still became PM.  But Slim just quietly slipped away[3].

The troubleshooter appointment will always be given to someone believed to be capable - that's the whole point - but often also to someone viewed as maverick, which can give rise to the problematic aspect of what happens after the hoped-for success; the unwanted consequence of the Faustian pact.  And if he wasn't (identifiably) a maverick before the assignment, well, lots of power and a free hand, sometimes exercised way out over the horizon ... it can turn a man's head.  Capable, and hitherto reliable, doesn't always mean predictable.

We shall follow Mr Jones' progress with interest.

ND

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[1] Past CSttT's include: James Callaghan, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Portillo, Alistair Darling, Danny Alexander, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak.  (Oh yes, and Chris Philp, whose ambitious little heart nearly exploded at the prospect he had it made, when he briefly held the job.)

[2]  If you haven't heard of him, well most people haven't.  Aye, there's the wonder of the thing - as Sherlock Holmes said in related circumstances

[3]  Zhukov, of course, was effectively banished to Siberia!  but the CP has always been paranoid about military leaders: when you need 'em, you really need 'em.  But afterwards ...  

Who fares best against Trump?

The Donald is, by his own estimation, a legendary deal-maker and negotiator.  Well, he does get (some) things done, and indeed sometimes gets his own way.  But how much of this is deal-making?  And how good are his deals?  His reputation in the New York real estate sector sucks is, errr, equivocal.

He's been in action quite a bit this year!  So there's something to score: and we can form an early view on his performance as a negotiator up against several prominent counterparties.  

vs China:  Trump is losing, hands down.  The Chinese are playing him like a fiddle, and he's steadily backing down on the tariff war, step by step.  Yet surely, by every standard of US foreign policy as espoused in the past decade by both his and the Democrat party, this is the only game that truly matters.  Sheesh... this really matters!  - did he think he could simply swat Xi aside one spring afternoon while he was mostly busy, errr, earning his Nobel Peace prize, annexing the whole North American land mass, remodelling the White House, peddling his crap merchandise, running feuds against everyone he's ever had a grievance against etc etc etc?

vs Russia:  jury still out, perhaps, but Putin won't be particularly disconcerted by their exchanges to date.  Relative to the extraordinary prior claims made by Trump ("peace in Ukraine in one day!"), and his huffing and puffing about "consequences", the current state of play is pretty demeaning for him.

vs Mexico and Canada:  given how things looked at the start of the whole tariffs round, OK-ish for M & C.  They've mostly stood their ground, and the world hasn't fallen down around their ears by any means.  Makes Trump's early rhetoric look pretty silly - and that's just on trade.  As for annexing Canada ... (I think we can hear the laughter from here - and Greenland probably isn't too worried just now, either.)  

vs India:  jury definitely still out, because India has options.  Trump has dealt his blow - but will he get any pleasure from what happens over the next months and years?  Not at all clear.  How clever is it to send Modi scuttling to Beijing, hmm?

vs Starmer:  surely, 2-1 to Trump.  Starmer has chosen to grovel, in return for some relative 'gains' (negatively defined, which is the only thing we can say) when compared to the EC, see below.  But it has suited Trump to give a little pat on the head to the biggest arse-licker, just pour encourager les autres.

vs the EC:  a seriously bad result for the EU, courtesy of the unelected EC which holds much of Europe's fate in their hands.  Feeble stuff.  A bit of a surprise, given how comprehensively the EC wiped the floor with Cameron and May.  But from this distance, that probably tells us more about them than it does about the EC.

vs Iran:  personally, I can't call this one yet.  Need to keep it in view: could tell us quite a lot.

Crazy man, crazy times.

ND

Some lawyers know the law: some know the judge ...

Well, someone on Team Trump knows their game: gotta love the symbolism of meeting in Alaska!  Yup, Li'l Volodya / L'il Volodymyr, it's real estate.  Sometimes you wish a former territory was still yours - but sometimes that's just history and we all move on.  Great stuff.

While we await the ghastly prospect of Trump and Putin sitting around the map of Ukraine drawing arbitrary lines (and Putin wetting himself with pleasure at meeting the Great Man again), here's the story I promised you'd get.

*   *   *   *

Many years ago I was working for (*gasp*) an oil & gas company, and had planning responsibility for our ops in a certain African country.  A plum piece of offshore acreage was up for grabs and we wanted it: but another company had a rather more compelling claim.  The acreage was contiguous with a play they'd been working very productively for several years, and their geo-data strongly suggested the oilfield they were producing extended into the new block.  It is technically possible for business to be conducted effectively by two separate developers accessing a single field that straddles a licence-line - you need to negotiate a "unitisation" agreement - but it's messy, not least in primitive jurisdictions (are you allowed to say that? - Ed).  So the incumbent was strongly motivated to pitch hard for the new acreage.  We had some neighbouring acreage, too, which thus far had not yielded any discoveries.  But we weren't deterred: the prize was great.

The minister, replete with tribal hat and fly-whisk, decreed that he would make his determination at the end of a grand meeting where he'd hear each side make its case.  Along came the incumbent with a slick slide-show of all their geo-data: a fine technical presentation that was pretty persuasive - judged on its own terms.

But our chief geologist was a canny Frenchman (Basque, actually - we'll call him Vasco), and this was a Francophone country.  When the incumbent's team had finished their polished performance, he strode up to the table with a large map that he unrolled theatrically and plonked down several paperweights to hold it flat.  It was a simple map of the seabed, with few markings: the lines of the various licence areas; and seabed contours.

Now seabed contours don't have very much to do with what lies thousands of feet beneath (OK: nothing whatsoever).  But they made the plot that was up for grabs look a lot more natural a fit with our existing area, than with the incumbents.  Our man's presentation was short and simple, and he concluded it with a grand, sweeping gallic hand-gesture across the map, indicating the perfect logic of his contour-based argument.  Then he sat down.

The minister pondered all things in his heart, and then rose to the table.  He addressed the assembled host with these words:

Moi, je comprends l'argument de Monsieur Vasco

With this, he grandly replicated the sweeping gesture across the map; turned on his heel; and awarded us the licence.

*   *   *   *   *

I think we can guess what Putin's maps are going to look like.  Heaven help Zelensky on 15th.

ND

Russian strategy revisited

Last year I offered a short account of how evolving Russian practice on the Ukrainian battlefield was starting to show signs of being in pursuit of an identifiable strategy (after two years of unbelievably inept, strategy-free military nonsense); and how that would be viewed - highly critically - through the lens of classic Soviet military doctrine.  The current state of the Trump-triggered "negotiations" makes it useful to revisit that account, and add a bit more salient detail from that Soviet playbook.

Recapping: under Soviet doctrine the offensive should be mounted on a series of broadly parallel axes, simultaneously, across a fairly wide front.  A graphic analogy might be swinging forcefully into the opponent with a heavy club featuring several long, protruding sharp nails.  The desired 'phase 1' effect is inflicting direct damage, plus pinning the enemy into position with much reduced ability to manoeuvre to right, left, or even backwards.  The doctrine prescribes several subsequent phases to deal with what remains, and straighten the line between the multiple puncture-incursions made in phase 1.

That's if the action lasts beyond the first several days of phase 1.  We didn't extend the account in that earlier post: but taking matters a stage beyond the initial phase, the Russians foresaw a contingency in which NATO, reeling from the initial, puncturing blow but for whatever reason unwilling to escalate to nukes, called for a 'freeze' and negotiations.  In such a case, the Russian claim on territory would essentially be delineated by just that straightened line, obtained (more or less) by joining the dots between the furthest point reached of each of the breakthrough axes.  Obviously, there would be some finessing: if they'd over-reached on one axis, they'd be only too happy to 'concede' along that line and fall back to something handily defensible.

Then ... rinse and repeat on a rachet basis twenty years later, or whatever.

The Soviet critique of Russia's performance 2022-25 would be simple: beyond Day 1 back in Feb '22, where's the shock?  The whole strategy is predicated on massive firepower and speed, see the earlier post[1].

However ... perhaps all these lessons have been learned, and Russia intends its 2025 summer campaign to culminate in just such an offensive.  It's not difficult to conceive the current state of play on the  Kharkiv front as being shaped for such a development, and even posit the precise axes that would be involved.  Ditto the front south of Ukraine's 'fortress belt'.

And Trump looks just the man to sit with a map, extend his stumpy finger, and offer Putin the territory east of a straightened line of his own devising [2].  I'd judge Putin's dream outcome for 2025 would be an offensive like the one surmised above over the next several weeks; then a sit-down with Trump and a big map before the autumn rains begin.  Militarily, anything oversimplified in geographical / topographical terms could be an utter disaster for Ukraine.  Out on those open plains, largely devoid of the hills and forests we automatically think of in Western Europe, the only inherent primary obstacles are water-courses, towns and strongpoints.  Failure to factor in the precise geography of the water-courses in particular, and as a defender you're sunk. 

Well, Putin can dream.  Let's see what kind of Soviet-style offensive his army can muster in the next few weeks.  I doubt Stalin would be particularly impressed.  

ND

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[1] Also upon the 3rd of the triad: manoeuvre - see that earlier post - absence of which would be another major criticism of Russia's current venture.

[2] I'll tell another story on that theme next week

Even Russians find North Korea weird

... though these days, such is the sheer strength of Putin's international positioning, they must be very, very nice to them.  And send them lots of tourists, in gratitude for all the, errr, fraternal bullets and artillery rounds.  And cannon fodder.

So let's see if the Russian magazine piece at this link gets fraternally taken down in the coming days.  (If so, it's archived already: https://archive.ph/k8ULv)  Nothing you wouldn't expect, but revealing nonetheless. 

During the tours, the guides allowed tourists to approach and communicate with supposedly ordinary residents, but Valentina was alerted that they all spoke good English...  And they spoke in the same memorized phrases - that they have everything thanks to their leaders and these are not just leaders, but their fathers, whom they worship. "One of our guides once said that they are like little children holding the leader's hand and do not ask where to go. Because their father always knows everything - what needs to happen, where their direction is, where the country is heading. I thought, this is an interesting comparison with small children. It really seemed to me that they perceive everything as little children," the girl said.  

Some impressive weaponry in the arsenal, for all that. 

ND

Towards a Theory of 'Trump Ideology'

A few weeks ago we suggested that, while there are clear signs of their being some kind of doctrinaire, ideological approach(es) behind whatever might be called a 'Trump Programme', it was perhaps too soon to elaborate it methodically.

Work in progress, maybe: but here's an interesting stab at it:  Trump as an auto-immune disorder.  What's particularly good about this is that it offers a thoughtful angle on one critical aspect of the puzzle, namely, why aren't the legendary Checks & Balances working?   I have a bit of a theory on this myself; but here's a much more fully-developed one.  It also makes a neat point about the difference between business conducted in markets, and business conducted via barter-like deals, which I think we could profitably come back to another time.

Not too long, and well worth adding to the evolving body of intelligent ruminative literature.  A couple of extracts: 

Other tinpot dictators – like Modi, Erdoğan, Putin, Xi**, Orbán – and their countries are distinct from the US in an important way. These autocrats do not have comparable democratic institutions. They can capture, subvert or sabotage democratic traditions in their own countries, using their own means. In each of them, there are longstanding traditions of inequality (such as caste in India), vigorous and celebrated imperial histories (Turkey, Russia and China) and deep traditions of racial and religious nationalism (Hungary and India).  But they do not have the special strengths of American democracy: a sturdy commitment to separation of church and state; the distribution of powers between legislature, judiciary and executive; and a deep antipathy towards tyrants, royal or otherwise... [Trump] has hit upon an original formula: to reverse-engineer the liberal institutions designed as guardrails against people like him.

 Trump loves wealth, ostentation and deals, but he hates markets, not because of their imperfections but because they, in principle, rest on ... supply and demand, the rationality of prices, all of which are safeguards against political fiat, personal greed and efforts to cook up macro outcomes for micro reasons. This hatred of markets unites all of today’s autocrats, because markets make their oligarchies unstable and their nationalist fiscal policies responsive to global finance ... they fear the power of global financial markets to shake their national economic goals.  [Trump] disdains the market – because it obeys no master other than its own rules of price, volume and scale. His weapon against it is tariffs, which he wields in the hopes of bringing it under his control. The market relies on the social contract, that agreement between individuals and government that is based in trust and predictability. Since Trump despises the market, he must dismantle the social contract, in all its forms and guises.

ND

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** Not sure "tinpot" is exactly appropriate for Xi ...

How troubled is China about Trump's tariffs?

I mean, really troubled -?  Obviously, China has done very well out of the pre-existing "free trade" regime (everything is relative).  Obviously, the CPC (a) talks a good fight, and will always counterpunch stoutly as a reflex; and (b) ultimately doesn't mind imposing suffering on its people, provided the cause is sufficiently important strategically.

Whatever: they seem to have come to the table.  Sometimes the calm, confident-sounding bellicosity is a face-saving reflex.  Then again, Trump changes his story every day or so to maintain the spin on the wobbly plate of his bizarre policy-making, and is pretty keen on saving his own, errr, tanned face.  And as neutral venues go, Switzerland looks a bit more of a western location than, say, Singapore or Dubai would have done.  So far, so convenient for Trump's spin.

That said, there are a couple of other straws in the wind.  Firstly, following Xi's appearance in Moscow - a priceless morale-boost for Putin, so we know where the balance of obligations should now lie - and to China's serious annoyance, Russian online media have been showcasing clips of a tic of Xi's: he was spotted in Moscow letting his head drop a bit to one side, seemingly an involuntary slump before bringing himself back upright again.  It's been bruited about that this may be a sign of stroke, etc, yadder yadder.  Well, maybe he was just bored stiff: people are always speculating about health and striving for clickbait opportunities ... but, hey, this is Xi, the sole arbiter of Putin's future, in Russia, being poked by Russian media.  

And what it there's a soupçon of truth in it?

I'd say, the Taiwanese better start trembling.  That man wants them in the bag before he goes.  In all the crazy circumstances, who could be utterly amazed to wake up one morning to a fait accompli in the East China Sea?  Tariffs or no tariffs.

ND

Self-sufficiency steel? Ore? Coal, oil ... gas storage ..?

The old debate we often return to, has surfaced again a propos of steel manufacturing.  To what extent is self-sufficiency in strategic commodities and capabilities to be maintained?  Procured?  Or even desired?  Some have strong inclinations to one extreme or the other, whatever the prevailing circumstances.  I tend to say that there's no immutable answer, no formulaic way of "optimising".  War and peace are critical input variables: but also the key given fixed externalities.  China has no oil, as I once diplomatically reminded a Chinese commissar who had just scorned Europe's enthusiasm for electricity interconnection and stated that a nation should not rely on imports of such a vital resource.

In the here and now, I and many others would put primary steel manufacturing on the strategic side of the line.  Clearly, Starmer has taken the same view at Scunthorpe (though curiously unmoved by Port Talbot, as the Welsh Nats bitterly remind him and indeed by Grangemouth / SNP), leading others to note that those vital "raw materials" we were all on the edge of our seats waiting for ten days ago, came from, errr, elsewhere (abroad).

Then comes Nils Pratley, extending the debate to gas storage and specifically, Centrica's huge offshore Rough storage facility.  Pratley is usually quite sound, and here he sets out a reasonably balanced range of pros and cons.

Steel was a security risk. What about UK gas storage? The government refused to allow steel furnaces to be turned off. Should it be happy with just six days of stored gas?

So here we go again.  

Nobody could disagree that now and for many years to come, gas ticks the 'strategic necessity' box.  Since we ceased to be self-sufficient in natural gas in terms of production from our own territorial waters (the early 00's), without any government intervention or subsidy the miracles of the free market secured a healthily diverse range of import sources and facilities through which to convey them.  How so?  We've told this story before.  

Because the decline of indigenous production could be, and was, seen coming a mile off, demand remained strong, and the companies involved were themselves strong, capable and confident. And that's where we are: able (as the energy crisis of 2021-3 showed) to withstand remarkable buffeting from the global market, and still keep homes warm.  For sure, the cost of doing so [i.e. paying world prices] was to some extent socialised, but the means of doing so were free-market means.  

And all this happened without Rough, which had been "permanently shut down" (© Centrica 2017 et seq) some years before as being uneconomic to its owners, the Tory government having more than once declined to bail them out.  But lo!  Miraculously, it transpired Rough had not been permanently shut down, but merely mothballed, and was rapidly pressed back into service by Centrica to avail itself of the profitable opportunities presented by Putin's gas crisis.

See, here's the problem in this very particular case: Centrica has form as a would-be subsidy-farmer.  That's the trouble with going down the "strategic" road.  Just like "green" or any other government-favoured enthusiasm, once the subsidies are spotted, every man-jack starts greenwashing / strategy-washing or whatever.  It becomes very hard to disentangle what could be a respectable strategic case from their self-interested special-pleadings.  

Even in 2025, with that recent crisis experience in hand, for all the ticks that natural gas puts in the 'strategic necessity' box, I'm not sure Centrica should be indulged.

ND 

Putin's wartime wardrobe

Impressive, or what?

So what does Li'l Volodya don for his expedition to a safe corner of Kursk?  Yep, the khaki hi-neck teeshirt and fatigues.  (At least he kept his top on.)  Is he trying to channel anyone that Trump might have met recently?  Why?!

The really funny thing is that the video clips and stills of his soldier-boy "visit to the front" shown on Russian TV were of poor quality.  Instead of ignoring this glitch, or even revelling in the cinéma vérité realism of the situation Putin, ever one for a carefully curated image in the style he feels is appropriate for his status as co-equal of Trump and Xi, had his spokesman bluster defensively about it in a press conference.  Do they not realise it makes them look even more phoney?

Let's see how Putin's "Yes but No" response to a ceasefire goes down with Trump.  The Donald will certainly want someone to blame if his "fighting stops within 100 days" boast doesn't come about.

ND

While Trump & Putin deal bilaterally ...

It looks for all the world as though Trump, against all his self-vaunted reputation as a dealmaker, has rather publicly gone into bilaterals with Putin on a basis that may be designed to achieve something for "America First", but nothing whatever for Ukraine.  And maybe that's exactly the correct summary of the situation.

But even if he has, Putin has also made some capital errors in this process: he's wetting himself with such pleasure at being talked to again by someone other than China and NK, it's not clear he can help himself.

Just count his well-advertised desiderata:  I'm not sure which, if any, count as Red Lines, but just look at the list.

• Russia gets all of the oblasts of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (Kharkiv has sometimes featured on this list, and we know what he really wants is Odessa, for a free crack at Moldova and total blockade of Ukraine from the Black Sea)
• Ukraine to undergo regime change (we must assume he has a List of Names), and a programme of 'denazification' which is a long list of demands in itself
• Ukraine substantially to disarm
• NATO to withdraw from X, Y, Z (list varies), and deploy no forces whatever to Ukraine
• Ukraine never to be admitted to NATO (sometimes demand extends to EU) 
• end of all sanctions etc
• return of all assets (no doubt "+ interest" etc)
• end of all blacklistings, charges of war crimes etc etc
• return to the comity of nations in all dimensions, G8, sports, etc etc: (we may guess he has a list of specific showy performative demands to seal this)
• tickets to the Oscars, Wimbledon, Pope's funeral 
• I have probably forgotten a few

So: how many of these could Trump conceivably deliver?  (without at very least expending every last drop of personal credibility in the RoW, and US political capital with the EU.)

So Putin won't get all this (that's putting things mildly): so he risks looking like he's spent a helluva lot of blood and treasure for equivocal results.  May not go down well back in Moscow.

OR: he simply wants to set Trump at the throats of Europe.  Now that, he might achieve.  But not all of Trump's merry men are knaves or fools, by a long shot.  And not necessarily the bombastic, unequivocal, easily-understood 'victory' Putin would be hoping to celebrate in Red Square, even though it might be epoch-making in the long run.

This ain't over by Xmas. 

PS, I didn't miss the interesting BTL suggestion from Mr Cowshed that Trump wants to set Putin up against Xi.  Nice theory!  Even more difficult to imagine, though.

PPS:  Forgotten a few?  Didn't even mention return of the small Kursk salient held by Ukr since last August!

ND

Wouldn't normally quote Jake Sullivan, but ...

The Biden administration didn't in any way distinguish itself on foreign & security matters (well, on anything really) but here's a great quotation from the outgoing National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. 

If I had told you three years ago that Joe Biden was going to announce a special military operation to take Ottawa in a week and three years later that he was in the wheat fields of Manitoba losing thousands of soldiers a month with inflation over 10% and interest rates in America over 20%, 600,000 Americans either dead or wounded, and we're inching out little Canadian town by little Canadian town, you wouldn't sit here saying, 'Wow, America's really winning this war in a big way, that’s great for America'. You would never say that. But somehow we're saying, 'oh the Russians there doing great'. They are not doing great:  They set out on a strategic objective … and they have failed in that.

It's from an interview here.  He wants to be careful not to give Trump any ideas ...

ND

Does Trump know how to play Putin?

He's already winding him up mercilessly.  The context is that Putin's very substantial and prickly pride has been deeply wounded by being flatly ignored and personally banned by the entire western world for several years, and that his travel and international interlocutors are constrained to China, Iran, North Korea and, errr, back to China again.  He is absolutely desperate to be out on the World Leader circuit again, as fast as possible.  And in his optimistic moments his hopes are high.

Now, nationalist Russian sentiment is aggrieved - and is certain Putin is also angry - that Trump has failed to recognize with sufficient gratitude that Soviet Russia won WW2.  They say Putin will assuredly give Trump one of his "history-lesson" rants whenever they do finally get to talk.  He is given to rants of this kind: lengthy and rambling with a mind-numbing effect on audiences.  Nobody outside of the aforesaid China, Iran and N.Korea is trained to "listen attentively" to these things any more: the days of Fidel Castro at the podium are a distant memory.  

And in Trump, they have truly misread their man.

For all his gargantuan failings in many departments, Trump has a colossal amount of low cunning in the matter of personal encounters and human psychology.  Both he and Putin have made vast capital from their differing abilities in human engagement, so they both operate psychological theories of a kind.  But mano a mano?  When dealing with anyone other than meet-the-people walkabout audiences, Putin self-evidently relies on pure menace and intimidation - he even considers this a matter for pride and the TV cameras - a very Russian thing.  Look at the merciless, gleeful, premeditated way he literally set dogs on Angela Merkel, a well-known cynophobiac.  It'll be water off Trump's back: the man doesn't give a toss for such things (and probably won't even grant a face-to-face meeting).  But having already been baited, can we see anxious, urgent Putin going for everyone else's Plan A, viz abject flattery?  Really?

Both Putin and Trump are of course themselves the subjects of endless psychological analysis and speculation, professional and amateur.  But you know who can play them both?  Well, maybe Xi, who has the luxury of considering his chess-by-post moves very carefully, and never needs to make a move he's not totally comfortable with.  But Xi is unlikely to hold the key to restoring Li'l Volodya's fortunes in the Big World of Global Prestige.

The relevant answer is ... Zelensky.  If you've seen one or other of the lengthy TV documentaries on the man, you'll be in no doubt whatever that the little comedian / showman / war leader is absolutely masterful in his personal dealings - with whole crowds of foreign politicians as well as one-on-one encounters.  He, too, has had a very long time to ponder the arrival of Trump, but his conclusions and plans for this critical juncture will have been a lot more adroit than the twisted frettings of Putin.  I'd rate Zelensky's chances quite highly of making a bit of strategic hay over the next couple of months.

On the other hand I doubt very much that Putin's upside scenario  - Transactional Trump the famous isolationist, wants a quick PR win, and gives me everything I want - will play out anywhere other than in his most optimistic dreams.  The downside - still in the global naughty corner come summer, Ukrainian drones still falling nightly on my oil refineries, and another trip to Pyongyang in the diary - looks a lot more likely.  

And Zelensky will still have a ghastly, grinding war on his hands.  Perhaps with a few more weapons in the armoury, though.  And Xi will continue to sit there quietly at his own global chessboard, planning his Taiwan campaign.

ND

Ukraine in Kursk: quick assessment

The 2025 Predictions compo was coming along - but has to wait!  Because ...

A short while ago we suggested here that Putin was prone to forgetting that the enemy gets a vote; and that Ukraine, already shown to be adept at springing surprises, was likely to have a couple more up its sleeve before Trump convenes any kind of sit-down around a table somewhere.  Yesterday saw the start of one such: a significantly renewed Ukrainian effort on Russian soil in the form of several attacks from their Kursk salient and elsewhere in that vicinity.

The Russian milbloggosphere is in characteristic turmoil over this, and with a new twist.  Previous big surprises - the Wagner 'mutiny' of last year and the Kursk incursion in August - caught them with very little information to go on, and they floundered.  This time, because the Kursk salient was already an area of active operations and an issue that exercised patriotic milbloggers greatly, they have a lot of contacts on the ground feeding them detailed, if extremely patchy and chaotic information.  They also have the usual kneejerk drivel from the Russian MoD, but they know that's always going to be mendacious and wildly complacent.  All in all, they haven't known what to make of it all, and initially resorted to parroting the official "all tidied up, nothing to see here, move along" stuff.  But they knew that wasn't right.

As of this morning, they've settled for a handful of agreed conclusions:  

• what's been seen so far isn't the main Ukrainian thrust, which is yet to come;
• even this "diversionary" activity has met with some success;
• Ukraine is deploying electronic warfare measures that are neutering Russian drones, along with some seemingly effective all-arms coordination in depth.

None that I've seen have made the obvious comment, which would be to liken this winter push to the Battle of the Bulge:  though one has suggested it is a "blow of last hope", which maybe amounts to the same thing.

Finally, the most knowledgeable blog-writers have held back from drawing preliminary conclusions altogether (and of course Putin, as ever in such circumstances, remains entirely silent and missing from the public sphere), which is wise because the Ukrainians are just as good at chess as the Russians and have had many months to plan this move.  The date of Trump's inauguration has, after all, been known for quite a while.

Am I going to fall into the first-draft-of-history-trap here?  No: just a handful of points.

• this "blow of last hope" should have been blatantly obvious to Putin et al, both in general and in detail: yet again, his ability to be thrown by tactical events seemingly knows no limits: we can adduce half a dozen such unforced errors around his sphere of (notional) influence since the Syrian debacle alone.  He may have a brutal 'theory of (long-run) victory', but if he trips up and falls flat on his face in the meantime, it might still not work out.
• plenty of time between now and Jan 20 for more ...
• this year has seen some deeply impressive mil-tech advances from Ukraine's still highly capable defence-industrial base.  I've been expecting the electronic warfare anti-drone breakthrough for 18 months - they really needed it for their 2023 summer offensive, but better late than never.  There may be more to come on this front, too: and while tech advances tend to be countered by the other side after a while, the issue right now is the next couple of months. 

On paper, Putin shouldn't even be worrying about Kursk - he'll get it back for sure in due course, one way or the other - but I'll bet he is.

ND

What Syria means for Russia

At the peak of its vainglorious Cold War pomp, the USA reckoned to maintain forces sufficient to fight two major wars and one minor war - simultaneously.  Well, it was never put to the test.  But perhaps there's the measure of a true global superpower.  Putin, of course, fancies his Russia as a superpower ...

I wonder how he'd assess his standing the day after Damascus fell.  To describe this as humiliating for him is an understatement: if you can't see it, you obviously don't read much from the teeming world of fiercely patriotic Russian 'milblogs'.  He must own to an intelligence failure on a par with Israel's, pre October 2023; the loss of a client regime in under a fortnight; in material terms, the loss of his logistical springboard to Africa, where he aspires to a buccaneering, influential and lucrative interventionist positioning; and in political terms, the loss of prestige.

Ah, prestige.  Who uses that term these days?  In my earliest soldiering, I found myself briefly under the tuition of a Chief Instructor who'd fought in the closing 12 months of WW2 and in many a campaign through the '50s and 60's.   He told us that everything he'd done, all across the globe, was for the sake of upholding and extending British prestige.  If, today, we are too post-imperial to care about such things well, across most of the world and most definitely including Russia, prestige matters immensely.

Putin and his Russia just aren't up to it.  How much does he look forward to his next meeting with Xi?  With Kim?  With Erdogan?  The man who can't prosecute a mid-sized war in his own back yard, nor prop up a single strategically vital client on whose territory he maintains sizeable naval, army and air assets.  The man who, for all his much vaunted experience of decades and supposed statecraft, even now doesn't realise that the enemy gets a vote?  Even after Ukraine indeed turned out, as predicted, to be Finland rather than Georgia. 

See, Volodya, superpowers need to be cognisant of how, when they extend themselves in foreign lands, it's necessary to do a great deal more than plonk down some forces, kick a little ass, and then assume everything's bought and paid for.  Check out Rome in its prime, Britain, the USA - and note just what an all-enveloping, wrap-around approach needs to be taken to hold what you think you've got.   How many snipers and opportunistic hit-and-runners you need to be prepared for.  What all those other carping, jealous powers can do, with so little effort and just a little hostile intent, to incommode you and your positions on your faraway clients' turf.  How (in the military idiom) if you want to hold the line at a river, you must hold both banks.  Oh, how much all-round capability it all requires!  Capability you just don't have.

If you ask me, this humiliation will result in Putin lashing out, and bodes worse for Ukraine than anything else so far.  Which other cat can he kick?  But even there ... the enemy has a vote.

ND

Russia - extreme measures to prop up the birth rate

As we well know, declining birth rates across substantial parts of the globe, coupled in many countries with ever-increasing longevity (of a sickly fashion), is a massive strategic issue - economic, social, political, demographic, you name it.  Russia has it as bad as any, and they are now losing their youthful menfolk to war at a striking rate.  As elsewhere, they are increasingly reliant on immigrant labour, but as elsewhere this causes serious tensions.  Wage inflation is rampant as the war economy grows. 

But Putin is, after his fashion, a strategist - and plans are afoot to rectify the situation long-term.  Some of what follows is in the "do we really believe this?" category, but I assure you it all comes from informed Russian sources.  Measures under active consideration include:

• a "childlessness tax"
• reducing the age of consent (the earlier kids get at it, the more offspring they'll have - that's the theory)
• banning abortion
• banning divorce
• contraceptive purchase made significantly more difficult
• revival of all manner of patriotic "have lots of children!" campaigns from former years
• Orthodox priests to tell their flock childlessness is a sin
• tax breaks for large families
• some of Putin's childless mistresses to "mend their ways" rather publicly
• banning alcohol 

Banning alcohol?  In Russia??  Yes, you heard that right.  When I first read this, I assumed it was some Russian satirist at work: just one piss-take too far - but no.  Apparently there will be some experimental "dry regions" established in the near future.

Never, ever, consider getting into a drinking contest with Russians - they have what is termed "special training".  If you've never been there, it can be like Saturday night in the Gorbals, seven days a week.  For Russians, hitting the age of 60 is a really big deal, so many of them keel over of alcohol-related causes before then.  In any office, at all levels of seniority you'll find puffy, red-faced people bimbling around doing not very much: that's the latitude given to dipsos.  As for the streets ... Russian cops carry big black-and-white striped sticks, notionally for traffic control, with which they tenderly shepherd the drunks into side alleys.  

Good luck with that aspect of policy, eh?

ND 

Russian LNG exports scuppered. Eyes on China?

Russia has just suspended LNG exports from its Arctic LNG 2 gas terminal - indeed, it's suspended liquefaction.  Not a helpful state of affairs for Putin, when Russia obviously depends a great deal on sales of commodities (and, errr, of surface-to-air missiles - remind us, Ayatollah, how they are working out?**).  

This is being reported as a result of sanctions, as follows:  although it's possible to transload LNG at sea (from Russian vessels to non-sanctioned LNG carriers of other nations, e.g. UAE), LNG is many times more difficult to play games with than oil - which, frankly, you can transport in an old Coke bottle.  Their sanctions-busting games on LNG have run their course, and they are giving up.

Maybe.  But there's a counter-argument you'll hear.  It's actually a lot easier to offload at a regasification port, and then have the cargo re-loaded onto another vessel.  All that needs to happen, the argument runs, is for China (say) to offer this service for its usual modest fee.  This being the case, the shut-in must be for technical reasons, most likely to do with the shortage of LNG vessels capable of taking on icy waters.

I'd throw another complication in for good measure.  Russia is known to depend utterly on western technology for all manner of industrial purposes, some of which can't simply be rustled up by the Chinese (or Indians).  Oil- & gas-field tech is one such area.  For a relatively modern facility (i.e. not of solid old Soviet design) like and LNG liquefaction plant, I'd be wondering if they've run out of spares for something potentially quite basic.  

We see this phenomenon at work further downstream: see this recent post for a note on how Russia's oil infrastructure is suffering for want of a basic piece of kit like the non-return valve.

So even if the LNG shipping aspect isn't an insuperable problem, sanctions might still be biting in other ways.  How can they not - eventually?  That said: how long can Ukraine wait?  

ND

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** and, err, how they feel about having correspondingly less SAM cover in Crimea?

China, Korea, Russia, Ukraine: strategic mistakes all round

Start with Ukraine.  Zelenski's 'Victory Pan' of earlier this month is so off-beam, it simply serves to illustrate the impossibility of 'victory' by the standard of his stated war aims.  I won't waste space pointing out why.  Desperation stuff, ahead of the US election.

I fact, it's so off-beam, and he has often proved to be quite a subtle guy, I could even imagine that his real audience is internal - some truly unrealistic hard-liners.  Look guys, this is what it would take, right?  Now look carefully - do you seriously imagine any of this is going to happen??

Either that, or he's losing it (Heaven knows, he's been under monstrous pressure for a very long time) & it's a big mis-step.  Even the seasoned chess players in the Kremlin must initially have laughed out loud (- until they start thinking like I did above).

But then ...

... the North Korean thing**.  Could you imagine anything more calculated to swing the dial back the other way? - in several places around the world where it really matters.  And not just in political terms: Russia seriously doesn't want S.Korea becoming a material backer of Ukraine.  Or Japan.  More desperation stuff.

Why did China allow this to happen?  Is Xi really happy to have N.Korea as an outright proxy in such a tangible & risky way?  Or does he even have control on what Kim Wrong'Un does any more?  Have keen will China be to see Putin transfer missile technology to its rogue neighbour?  Even Lukashenko  is publicly breaking ranks on this one.

And how does this go down in Tehran?  The dimensions and angles are endless.

Trump will be in his element if he wins next month.  He just loves swirling, ambiguous situations, where his scope for crazy, unpredictable interventions is maximised.

ND

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** Every soldier there's ever been knows the feeling of being in a long line to get issued with ill-fitting kit in various shades of green.  It'll be "present you bare left arm for the needle" next.  Happy memories!

Battle of Kursk (2024) Revisited: illuminated by flames

It is well over three weeks of Ukraine's incursion into Kursk.  If they so choose, they can easily extend this into next month, maybe longer: the word in Moscow is that Putin has set his birthday (in October) as the deadline[1] for expelling them.  

His policy is consistent with the 'Stalin 1941' approach he has generally taken when hit with an unexpected blow: lie low for a bit (doubtless squaring away various issues and people behind the scenes), then tough things out - the policy equivalent of trading space for time, always Russia's default reaction.  Would be deeply unsatisfactory from the standard western point of view as regards being seen to respond with urgency, but doesn't seem to bother most Russians very much ("wait till the Tsar finds out ...").  Meanwhile his Donbas advance continues - with faint signs that manoeuvre warfare might even be breaking out there too.  Oh, the rush to get things done before the US election!

Putin's policy of not troubling too much over Kursk may be assisted by a phenomenon noted in France during WW1.  Primitive opinion-surveys determined that the population in the south of France - many hundreds of miles from Verdun - didn't care very much at all about what was happening elsewhere: northern France's peril didn't seem to move them.  The French powers-that-be took this so amiss, they instituted (inter alia) the rigid, universal school curriculum that had every French kid taught exactly the same thing - i.e. whatever the government dictated - at exactly the same time, wherever they were.  Knowing first-hand how brutally racist Russians are towards Ukrainians, it seems possible (though personally I have no evidence) that Muscovites don't view deep-south Kursk residents in a particularly sympathetic way either.  In any event, that 'word from Moscow' also has it that Russia as a whole is not much troubled by the Kursk incursion, distinctly limited in geographical scope as it will always be, however long or short. 

While we await further developments on all these fronts, Ukraine's ultra-successful drone-strike campaign is having a genuine effect on Russian oil supplies, petro-facilities being nigh impossible to defend.  The standard official Russian line is usually that "a drone was shot down over the refinery / whatever, and fragments caused a fire that subsequently spread".  Everyone knows this means the attack was successful: and as one milblogger acidly wrote, shooting down a high-explosive drone directly over its target is likely to be "a posthumous achievement" - for both the shooter and the target itself.  Incidentally, the fact that one of these fires has raged for 12 days now (and counting) tells this old oilman that the Russians have failed to fit non-return valves in their oil infrastructure (i.e. the fire is being fed by oil still arriving unpreventably into the facility from the pipelines it is connected to) - which isn't even remotely surprising: their whole set-up is truly primitive by western standards.  They'll no more be able to retrofit valves in a hurry than land a cosmonaut on the moon[2] - indeed, they probably won't even be able to buy them.

Of course, they can and will source oil from elsewhere and truck it in.  The lines of logistics, though, start to get very stretched indeed[3].  

ND  

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[1] Of course, Putin's deadlines, like his 'red lines', are eminently flimsy, as has been proven so often it's a wonder he still sets them.

[2] Amazingly (by western standards), the Russians have even attempted to bring the blaze under control by holding a prayer meeting at the oil depot in question, complete with saintly relics.  Sadly for these pious folk, an oil tank took the opportunity to explode during the ceremony.  Still: always gotta admire piety.

[3] Also, there will be a lot of folk taking a cut in such an ad hoc operation.  The beauty of fixed delivery-infrastructure is that once built, it's relatively hard for the usual embezzlement to take place along the supply chain.  But an operation based on thousands upon thousands of trucks ...

"Battle of Kursk", 2024-style

Last week, a little OT exchange took place BTL here, thus:

Anon:  What I'm not so sure of is if this is a Stalingrad moment (in reverse), or if it's the Third Battle of Kharkov in reverse, where von Manstein recaptured a lot of the territory being fought over now.

ND:  Not sure everything needs to be mapped onto a historical precedent**; although when it can be done convincingly, it can offer useful insights.  What's interesting to me about this (apparently significant) Ukrainian incursion is:  (i) they - the Ukr side - are following Soviet doctrine! Many writers have suggested it was unwise (see 2023 offensive campaign) to attempt to school them in western military ways, when so many of their senior officers would already be very well educated in a different school. Or they may have found some kind of workable synthesis.  (ii) they seem to have managed Surprise: certainly tactical (generally possible if you put in enough care & attention) but maybe even strategic (unusual - but very desirable). Remember, this is a chess game where both sides can usually see all the opponent's pieces - the perennial Russian challenge out on the flatlands, and one which in the west (Eu, USA) we don't really have, the battlegrounds being characterised so much by extensive geographical relief features

A week on, things have developed a bit: we know it genuinely is a significant incursion, not merely a quick slash-and-burn raid.  But the full motivation and end-plan for what Ukraine thinks it's doing is still a matter of analysis & speculation.  Here's mine:

Backdrop:  for as long as the Russian army can maintain its brutal discipline (i.e. can keep throwing in the cannon-fodder remorselessly) there is nothing plausible that Ukraine can do, however resourced by the west, against eventual Russian "success" in fully capturing and occupying the four Ukranian oblasts it claims as its own, absent something game-changing.  (Just for the record, from the very beginning my line on this has been "and what's to stop them?")   One Russian milblogger has put this very neatly, describing the Russian operation as a tunnel-boring machine: it may sometimes need to slow down if it encounters something a bit flintier than usual, but basically it will "calmly" (his word) grind on relentlessly to wherever it wants to go.

Although in hindsight one can fault the 2023 Ukrainian counter-offensive (some of that fault lying squarely with western advisers), it proved beyond a doubt that Russian defensive preparations along the entire front as far as the Dnipro (though not necessarily south and west of that) are sound, and that without massive airpower that Ukraine will never enjoy, no sustained, strategically useful breakthrough on that very long front is achievable.

Therefore:  since nobody can foresee a Russian event "favourable" to breaking this iron deadlock - certainly not before the US election - more creativity is required from Ukraine.  Up until now, that's been represented by (a) a stunningly successful Black Sea operation; (b) an equally stunning drone campaign against the vast swathe of ultra-vulnerable targets across heartland western Russia, particularly oil facilities - and air bases,/ aviation ammo dumps which have taken some really serious blows.  (Note something else we've said from the start: Russia can replace absolutely anything except its airforce, which has caused Putin to husband it cautiously.)  But neither can be much more than a major, suppurating thorn in the bear's flesh, the pain and cost of which it can tolerate indefinitely. 

That being the July 2024 starting-point, Something Else had to be tried before November.  Well, this is it, and it looks entirely logical.  Apart from making the really obvious remark that the Russian ground currently dominated by Ukraine cannot remotely be held for more than a few weeks at the outside - and so Zelensky won't be intending to - I won't today be prognosticating on this ground offensive per se.  There are however a few more remarks we can make, in addition to the truly impressive 'surprise' mentioned above.

1. The Soviet-plus-western doctrinal synthesis being displayed by Ukraine is very 2024, and very nicely purposed to the precise conditions.  For a strategist, this is a fine thing to behold (and for Russia, absolutely appalling: think what could be done with this-plus-airpower ...)  A combined-arms assault, with depth, under cleverly assembled air-defence and electronic warfare cover, proving that such things are possible even from a sorely-stretched nation on the modern "transparent" battlefield.
2. The above point on Putin and his jealously protected airforce has been reinforced in spades.  The obvious immediate counter to a fast-moving assault deep(ish) into undefended open country is tactical aviation.  As for the past 30 months, it's conspicuous by its absence (not 100% absent, but not remotely committed to the task).
3. Very smart of Kyiv not to base this offensive around the newly-arriving F-16s.  As regards aviation, things can only get worse for Putin: his airfields, aircraft and ammunition being steadily depredated, with the F-16s still to arrive on the battlefield.
4. Just as the Donbass "tunnel-boring" represents its monstrous strengths, deep Russian weaknesses - in very many dimensions, military-technical and political - have been brutally been exposed over the last few days.  The embarrassments are set to continue for many days to come. 

I could bang on about these weaknesses for pages but will settle for now on four comments:

• Putin really, really hates what's happening.  He's swallowed a load of humiliation over the decades, but this is being dished out by Kyiv.  (I confidently await BTL comments that assert it's actually the US 9th Ranger division in Kursk.)  But as regards his response, of course that could go either way.
• Not only is he determined to husband his airforce, we see he's utterly determined to stay with the daft-but-significant rhetoric of "Special Military Operation" / "just a terrorist provocation" etc etc.  This is very telling.
• Even a fortnight of incursion has tremendous long-term consequences for Russia.
• To repeat: think what could be done with this-plus-airpower ...

ND

PS:  In capturing the main Russian natural gas crossing-point / transfer station, Ukraine has pocketed a splendid wildcard for future deployment ...  

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** Almost expected someone so say "Kursk 1943"!   Glad nobody did.  I was expecting "Battle of the Bulge" analogies right from the start, too, but personally I didn't run into one until yesterday! 

Great times for the Great Man Theory of History

We should define our terms here, and personally I don't choose to go the whole hog with Carlyle, who claims that the whole of history can be written in terms of the stories of Great Men.  But that overlooks important 'materialistic' or 'economic' insights - such as those of Marx (someone else we won't be going the whole distance with, either ...).  I shall stick to something far more difficult to shoot down, and go with: at certain key points the course of human history is (sometimes) fundamentally determined by the purposeful actions of individuals.

In 2024, what more do we need to say?!  Whether Biden steps down is a decision he seems to have reserved to himself: I see no "economic" factors at work, just a painful case of very human personal vanity.  Whether Trump survived was a matter of chance (it seems), but a Trump presidency will - I think we might agree - set the USA and most probably the world** on a different course than any plausible Democrat victory this year.  (American isolationism has always been there, for more than 200 years, and its triumph over pragmatic internationalism has often been possible but never guaranteed.)  Neither is it a given that Russia would be in the hands of a dictatorial, brooding, fretful revanchist at this hour: nor that China would be in the hands of an all-powerful monomaniac nationalist. 

It seems to me that if one wants to argue against any of this, one has to have a thesis that requires stepping back to so distant a perspective (1,000 years?  5,000 years?) that all meaningful granularity is lost for any but anthropological, almost biological purposes.

ND

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** Some, though not I, hold that a Trump presidency will result in the US being withdrawn from global cooperation on actions related to climate change - with globally damaging consequences.  Interestingly, those folks are often highly materialistic lefty-greens.  If they couple their theoretical materialism with their fear of Trump, it must give them some uncomfortable ideological pangs.  (Of course, the whole of Reality ought to be fairly painful for them at frequent intervals ... )