This is an excellent point:
Europe, the United States and above all the Ukrainians need to learn to cope with masked warfare — the Russian term is maskirovka— which is designed to confuse not just opponents but also the opponents’ potential allies. As I’ve written, the West urgently needs to rethink its military, energy and financial strategies toward Russia. But more specific new policies will also be needed to fight the masked invasions that may follow in Moldova or, in time, the Baltic States if this one succeeds.
Americans and Europeans should begin to rethink the funding and governance of our international broadcasters in order to counter the new war of words. We should also begin to reinforce the local police forces of the states that border the new Russian empire; NATO’s F-16s cannot fight thugs who are storming the town hall. This isn’t just about spending money: We need more special forces, more “human” intelligence, not just more ships and planes. Above all, we need to be prepared, in advance, for what may come. It’s a new world we are now entering, and we need new tools to cope with it.
Strengthening Ukraine's counter-intelligence, police, and special forces should be just as important as strengthening their conventional military.
And NATO needs to do the same thing. I mentioned that post-Afghanistan and post-Iraq, our Europe-tagged special forces should go back to working with eastern European states about resisting a Russian invasion:
Let me add in that 10th Special Forces Group should refocus on Europe and prepare for its Cold War-era mission of being a stay-behind force to conduct direct action in the rear area of a Soviet invasion and rallying locals to resist the Soviets.
These special forces troops would practice working with Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian forces as irregulars fighting in the rear of the Russian advance to keep the Russian invaders off balance before and during the NATO counter-attack.
That was their main Cold War mission. My post was focused on defending the Baltic states from a sudden Russian invasion, but it applies generally to NATO in the east. And even to Ukraine outside of NATO if we exercise with the Ukrainian special forces.
And unmasking the Russian subliminal threat is important, too.
But let's not get carried away with this Maskirova Warfare. Conventional warfare is not dead because of it.
Remember, Crimea was secured by this subliminal invasion not because of the superiority of this maskirova approach, but because Ukraine's army was not prepared to quickly mount an operation to disperse the Spetsnaz and the militias they organized and imported in Crimea.
Spetsnaz are good troops. But they are special operations troops--not conventional operation troops. A competent conventional force would have defeated and scattered the Spetsnaz and their militia hand puppets. That's why Russia airlifted in six or seven thousand troops into Sevastopol to reinforce the naval infantry regiment there, and sent in 15,000 more ground troops across the Kerch Strait. If the subliminal invasion faced resistance, old fashioned maneuver units would have been needed.
And in the east, Russia's similar maskirova efforts appear to have failed to simulate a widespread uprising requiring Russian intervention to "preserve the peace."
I'd like to note that the scope of Russia's successful Crimea operation and (presumed) failed eastern Ukraine operation matched almost exactly with the scope of Russian action I speculated about before the invasion in Operation Kharkov Storm.
I read elsewhere an invasion scenario that saw Russia invading along an arc from west of Kiev to Crimea. With just 40,000 Russian troops massed near the border plus the Crimea garrison, I thought this was madness. You don't go into such a vast area with so few troops for a mission of conquest. A raid? Sure. Or a punitive mission. But not conquest. Moderately effective resistance would cripple the effort and result in an ugly victory at best and defeat at worst.
Besides, with Ukraine's army strategically fairly immobile, why attack on a broad front to include as many Ukrainian defenders as possible? Just strike a narrow front with Russia's limited ground forces to maximize the force ratio. The very eastern portion of Ukraine between Kharkov and Donetsk seemed like the best target for a successful Russian effort.
But back to the main point, Russia's failure to wage a successful subliminal invasion of eastern Ukraine meant that Russia would have had to resort to conventional force to salvage the invasion. Russia had already successfully energized Russians about the imaginary Ukrainian threat to Russian speakers in Ukraine, so could have invaded with a pretext few in the West would believe. They did not invade.
Despite some worries that I was failing to judge events to contradict my speculation that Russia was too weak to fight a war in eastern Ukraine, Russia did not unleash their army to invade. Why?
Russia did not invade [eastern Ukraine] early. Why?
Did the Spetsnaz effort fail and so deny Putin a needed pretext? If so, why not just assert the pretext and go anyway? The pretext was flimsy for Crimea. What was one more?
Did I grossly over-estimate the Russian troops available? And rather than 100,000 troops and Interior Ministry troops being available, only a quarter of that could be scraped up quickly?
If so, Crimea is the priority.
Now Russia seems to have enough troops to occupy the eastern portion of Ukraine--had the troops been available a month ago. Now, these troops may not be enough to fight for, take, and hold eastern Ukraine in the face of Ukrainian resistance.
Or maybe Russia hasn't made nearly as much progress in restoring their military to fight "the big one," when they earned an ugly victory over a small foe since 2008. Perhaps they're still only capable of fighting "the small one." And Crimea was it.
Or at least Russia's military is not good enough to win a bigger war cleanly and quickly. Such a fight would cripple the Putin narrative that the Russian army is awesome.
You can argue Putin's purported soul made an unexpected cameo appearance, I suppose, to convince Putin that it was wrong to conquer eastern Ukraine.
Or you can argue that the Spetsnaz failed in eastern Ukraine and that Russia's army was not ready to fight for eastern Ukraine as opposed to simply road marching in to collect the gift of a Spetsnaz-orchestrated phony uprising.
So this so-called Maskirova War is not a replacement for conventional warfighting abilities. We have to fight on Putin's terms, of course. Because it can work, as Crimea demonstrates.
But if we ignore NATO conventional capabilities to win the Maskirova War as if that is the entire spectrum of conflict, Russia can just send in the tanks and paratroopers to win the old fashioned way. Note that Applebaum said we need "not just more ships and planes," accepting that ships and planes (and ground forces) are needed. Don't misinterpret this new threat as the only threat.
