Mick Ryan, AM Profile picture
Sep 11 19 tweets 4 min read Read on X
In the past 24 hours, it has been reported that the Biden administration has finally submitted a strategy for supporting #Ukraine to the U.S. Congress. What is the current U.S. strategy for Ukraine, what might the new strategy look like and will it influence on the trajectory of the war? 1/19 🧵Image
2/ Currently, there is no published U.S. strategy specifically for the war in #Ukraine. After 31 months, the Biden administration is still using crisis management, speeches and slogans such as ‘for as long as it takes’ rather than developing and executed a clear, well resourced strategy for Ukraine.
3/ The key elements of the U.S. approach since the beginning of the war have been: 1. Providing military assistance to Ukraine; 2. Rallying international support to provide economic, humanitarian & military aid; 3. Leading development & implementation of economic sanctions; & 4. Avoiding a war between the U.S. & Russia.
4/ The lack of a clear U.S. strategy for #Ukraine is hardly a new issue. Several organisations have proposed strategies for the U.S. approach to the war. In May this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies proposed a plan for Victory in Ukraine encompassing five strategic initiatives. csis.org/analysis/victo…
5/ What might an explicit U.S. strategy seek to achieve, and what might its major components be? In essence, what will be the purpose of the strategy and its key lines of effort?
6/ The most important element of the strategy will be the purpose of U.S. support that is described in the document. Based on a realistic diagnosis of Ukrainian and Russian capacity, and the current situation in the war, the purpose should include a clear vision of the outcome, or the end state, of the war that the U.S. seeks.
7/ The strategy might employ existing statements on Ukraine such as a 2022 opinion piece from the U.S. President. Biden wrote in a May 2022 New York Times op-ed about Ukraine that “America’s goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.”
8/ However, a clear end state is insufficient. What strategic tasks might be needed to achieve this?
9/ Just ‘defending Ukraine’ is insufficient. The new U.S. strategy, if it is to have any impact, must shift to ‘defeat Russia in Ukraine’ as a key objective. This will influence thinking in Europe and message Putin that he will not be allowed to ‘win by waiting out’ the West. It should also inform the amount and pace of support for Ukraine.
10/ Another objective must be to sustain the international coalition that is supporting Ukraine. Across an array of military and economic support initiatives, this coalition is providing an enormous amount of support to Ukraine and this need to be sustained, if not increased in size and speed of delivery.
11/ A third objective should be investment in defence industry to hasten support to Ukraine, rebuild U.S. war stocks and to deter Chinese adventurism. This might include increased defence production in the US, and among its allies, as well as additional sanctions and covert action to interfere with defence production in Russia and unfriendly nations.
12/ A 4th objective will be achieving increased diplomatic support for Ukraine from the international community and lessen the tendency of fence-sitting nations to tacitly support Russia through procuring cheap energy or not supporting Ukraine in the United Nations. Related to this must be increased efforts to counter Russian misinformation, and its amplification by countries such as China.
13/ These objectives would underpin ‘winning the war’. But a U.S. strategy should also anticipate and support Ukraine ‘winning the peace’.
14/ Winning the Peace objectives would include security guarantees for Ukraine (including support for its entry into NATO and bilateral arrangements), support for reconstruction in Ukraine and the support for pursuing and prosecuting Russian war criminals. Collectively, this will probably be a decades long undertaking.
15/ Nothing in this proposed strategy is simple, cheap or quick. But that is not what strategy is about.
16/ The U.S. will need to move beyond policies and statements which provide instant gratification to a strategy that underpins a theory of victory for Ukraine, guarantees its long-term security – and provides reassurance for other U.S. allies about the capacity and reliability of the U.S. in Europe and other parts of the world.
17/ Time will tell whether the new U.S. strategy shifts thinking about U.S. support for Ukraine. It could be a consequential document that sets a different and more audacious policy for U.S. support to Ukraine. Alternatively, it might be just more of what we have seen in the past 31 months, and then die a quiet death in early 2025.
18/ But, once it is leaked, which is almost certain, many will be watching for insights to hopefully answer a key question that remains unclear at present: does the U.S really want Ukraine to win? Read my full article on this topic here: mickryan.substack.com/p/a-us-strateg…
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19/ Thank you to the following for the links and images used in this thread: @DefenceU @CSIS

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More from @WarintheFuture

Aug 31
I have posted my weekly update with events in #Ukraine, Russia, and the Pacific theatre, as well as my recommended readings. Some key points in the thread below. (Image: @DefenceU) 1/11 🧵 Image
2/ In Russia, Ukraine’s Kursk campaign continues although advances in the past week have been fewer than in the initial part of their post-break through exploitation operations. Russia’s response has gathered momentum.
3/ While there have been some advances, the Ukrainian incursion appears to have reached - or is close to reaching - the ‘limit of exploitation’ that I discussed in this articleback on 12 August. In that piece, I examined what Ukraine’s options were once that occured. These include defending all terrain seized in Kursk, selecting defendable terrain and withdrawing into that, and withdrawing back into Ukraine altogether. It appears that the second option is most likely at this point. Image
Read 11 tweets
Aug 27
The Ukrainian attack into #Kursk, now into its 3rd week, was a tactical & operational surprise for the Russians. But the Ukrainians also surprised their supporters in the West. And part of the reason is that many Western nations can’t conceive of such audacity in the modern world. 1/14 🧵engelsbergideas.com/notebook/ukrai…
2/ Ukraine also surprised their supporters in the West in large part because #Ukraine deliberately withheld details of the #Kursk attack to preserve operational security, avoid second guessing by talkative bureaucrats in the West, and avoid the inflated expectations of the build up to their failed 2023 counteroffensive.
3/ The operation is not without risks. The Russian advances in the Donbas, particularly on their Pokrovsky axis of advance, are taking ground and threatening a key line of defended cities in eastern Ukraine. Losing these would cause significant challenges for the Ukrainian defensive campaign in the Donbas and political challenges for the Ukrainian president.
Read 14 tweets
Aug 25
Throughout the #Ukraine war, adaptation has been a critical national & battlefield function for #Ukraine, and for the Russians. This is a process that pulses & pauses, and is distributed unevenly throughout combat units & the bureaucratic institutions of state. What observations about strategic adaptation might be made of the #Kursk offensive? 1/16 🧵🇺🇦Image
2/ The capacity to learn and adapt is crucial to generating advantage in wartime. Given the pace of contemporary military operations, when advantage is generated, it can be quite transitory or rapidly overtaken by enemy counter adaption. Therefore, learning and adaptation must be an ongoing endeavour. One of the most important levels of learning in war is that which takes place at the strategic level.
3/ Strategic adaptation occurs in both peace and war, although war provides better incentives for thinking about better ways of applying all national means to achieve wartime objectives. At heart, strategic adaptation is about engaging in a battle of learning & adaptation with an adversary, applying lessons better or more quickly than they do, & ensuring this knowledge is used to shape the trajectory of war, and ultimately, winning it.Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 22
This provides further disturbing evidence (on top of the tens of thousands of Russian war crimes) that unnecessary cruelty is a systemic part of Russia’s invasion of #Ukraine and not isolated, individual acts. There are institutional incentives for the Russians to behave this way (medals, etc). Putin and Gerasimov are ultimately culpable. 1/6 🧵🇺🇦
2/ This is vastly different from the conduct of the Ukrainian military through the war. As I examine in my new book, The War for Ukraine, fighting a ‘just war’ is a key element of Ukraine’s war #strategy. As Zelenskyy noted last week, in #Kursk “we must fight by the rules.”
3/ This “fighting by the rules” plays a big role in projecting legitimacy for the Ukrainian state and helps in gaining military, diplomatic, financial and moral support from other nations.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 19
Ukrainian objectives for the #Kursk operation have gained some recent clarity with statements by the Ukrainian President, as well as other Ukrainian officials. What are these objectives, and what are the Russian options to respond to the Ukrainian Kursk campaign? 1/24 🧵🇺🇦 Image
2/ The first Ukrainian objective is political. Zelenskyy has described how "we’ve already expanded and will continue to expand the circle of those who support a just end to this war. It's essential that Ukraine enters this fall even stronger than before." Ukraine must be stronger as the year tapers off into Winter & it must also be seen as such by its supporters and those who support Russia.
3/ Another element of this political objective is to pierce the Russian bluffing about escalation. #Ukraine has demonstrated, again, that the various red lines projected by the Russian president are nothing but a chimera designed to reinforce Western political timidity about decision-making on the war, and shape Western decisions about provision of weapons.Image
Read 24 tweets
Aug 15
Ukraine is continuing to push forward in #Kursk while also conducting a difficult defensive campaign in the Donbas. On the Russian side, the Russians are continuing to push on their main effort – the advance towards Pokrovsk – while seeking to redeploy forces from other areas to stem the advance of Ukrainian forces in Kursk. 1/19 🧵🇺🇦Image
2/ Both sides are moving forward while at the same time sustaining terrible damage elsewhere. The remainder of this year, and possibly the trajectory of the war, will be determined by who blinks first and decides that focussing on the losses they are sustaining is more important than the gains they are making elsewhere. This is the ultimate expression of Clausewitz’s battle of wills.
3/ However, something else caught my eye today that, in the reporting about the #Kursk operation, has been overlooked. In his video released in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy used the following words: “It is important that #Ukraine fights by the rules.”
Read 19 tweets

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