Ukraine: path to destruction

By Richard North - November 24, 2024

Two-thirds of the country, apparently, back assisted dying, which is perhaps just as well because president Putin seems set on granting them their wish. It is a pity about the other third, though, as they may not be given the choice.

Yet, despite France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, reporting that his country has given the go ahead for Ukraine’s use of Scalp, the French equivalent of Storm Shadow, on targets in Russia, once again the media collective do not consider this an important enough subject to give it the treatment it deserves.

Meanwhile, it seems, Ukrainian forces have been busy overnight, lobbing ATACMS at the Kursk oblast, although the multiple reports differ on the number launched – ranging from 5-10 – and none are confirmed.

If the guidance system for ATACMS is still GPS, then I doubt the Russians are going to lose much sleep over this salvo (real or imagined), as the targeting is unlikely to be precise. Nor is it beyond the realms of possibility that “spoofing” could direct the missiles into a defence zone where they can be intercepted and shot down.

Storm Shadow/Scalp is, of course, a different kettle of fish. With its virtually unjammable terrain contour matching system providing the guidance, it is much more likely to find its targets and with deadly effect.

However, with the complexity of the system though, and its reliance on externally acquired data which must be uploaded to the missile’s guidance system, it is much more likely that donor technicians will be directly involved in preparing the missile strike.

It is also likely that target acquisition, in the first place, is assisted – if not entirely enabled – by donor country assets, in particular satellite radar mapping and signals intelligence, capabilities which are way beyond the scope of the Ukrainian armed forces.

In a very real sense, therefore, Putin and his spokesmen are right to assert that Nato forces have declared war against Russia. The provision of these weapons has gone far beyond the simple matter of providing weapons – however potent – and actively taking part in strikes against Russian territory.

This, actually, is what makes this latest round of escalation so different and so much more important. It amounts to a significant uptick in the escalation states which, on reflection, Putin can hardly ignore. His authorising the “test” firing of the Oreshnik IRBM on Ukrainian territory was probably, in his mind, a minimum credible response.

It is perhaps because a largely technically naïve media does not understand the detail of the support mechanisms required for Ukraine successfully to launch their strikes, that the provision of the weapons is seen simply as the donation of another weapons system, rather than the major escalation that it represents.

Certainly, having scoured media reports from across the world, I see no acknowledgement that British and US intelligence assets are being employed to provide real-time targeting information, nor that technicians from both countries are undoubtedly directly participating in the strikes.

A current report by the New York Times, for instance, tells us that, once restrictions had been lifted, “Ukraine lost little time in striking its first blows, hitting a Russian ammunition depot with American ballistic missiles on Tuesday and a command post with British cruise missiles on Wednesday”.

This paper goes on to say that Russia responded by formalising a new doctrine that lowered its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, then fired the Oreshnik missile in a test launch.

Nowhere does it even hint, though, of the direct participation of US and UK personnel, or the provision of real-time intelligence, which means that both of either forces are involved in target identification and strike planning. By any possible definition, Nato forces are at the very least co-belligerents.

Thus, with Putin having formulated his new doctrine, the paper talks of Russian “missile brinkmanship”, but in terms of the cold logic of war, from Putin’s very narrow and self-centred perspective, it is hard to see how he could have made any other response.

So far, given what he must see – again from his own limited perspective – as a massive provocation, one could argue that far from “brinkmanship”, Putin’s response has been relatively restrained.

In considering the counter, therefore, the Americans and the British – and now the French – need to think of Putin’s options, not in abstract technical terms but as he sees them. Further strikes, after his warning shot, will most likely be seen as further escalation, requiring an enhanced although still measured response.

It would be fair to say that Biden and his advisors – and Starmer with his – did not anticipate Putin’s response this time round, signalling that the Russians still have the ability to surprise, and may do so again. It would be a foolhardy man who believed that the Russians had emptied their locker.

One might have thought that, of all the media, the Wall Street Journal – so often more reflective than the rest of the pack – might have picked up on some of these vibes. But, in thin coverage, it is focusing on the possibility of Ukraine developing its own ballistic missiles – something it has neither the funding nor the capability to achieve in any realistic timescale.

The Washington Post, on the other hand, is skipping the current escalation rachet and looking forward to the advent of the Trump administration, noting that Trump wants to make a deal, but arguing that “a bad deal is worse than none”.

No doubt conscious of the Kremlin’s plans for Ukraine, the paper warns that, if Trump leaves the country dismembered, America “will look weak and dictators will be emboldened”.

Once again, though, we have a paper talking about Ukraine responding to the claims of North Korean troops in theatre, “with strikes inside Russian territory using British and American long-range missiles”, but with no recognition of the direct role of either the US or Britain in these strikes.

Without understanding that role, to anticipate Trump’s policy intentions may be wildly premature. There is still nearly two months to go before the president-elect takes over and, such is the current speed of events that events could have spiralled out of control long before there is a new man in the White House.

It seems to me, in these context, that a demonstrable act of de-escalation is required but, since neither the US nor Britain are publicising their active roles in the conflict, it will not be easy to scale down actions to which neither party have admitted, without drawing attention to it.

Pulling back to this side of the Atlantic, the Sunday Times has put Richard Spencer, its China correspondent, to work, to resolve the dilemma, in a piece entitled “Will fear of mutually assured destruction save us in new nuclear order?”

In a long, turgid dissertation, he argues that the thing that will prevent escalation to a nuclear Armageddon is the well-established fear of annihilation embodied in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

But what Spencer does not seem to have understood is that we are not looking at that traditional sound off to DEFCON 1, with two nuclear giants on a countdown to oblivion. Rather, we are seeing each side take baby steps in upping the tension, each hardly recognisable for what they are.

As the Russian state media have been illustrating, Putin’s next response to a de facto Nato strike of any magnitude might be a conventional strike on US or UK territory or assets. If limited in nature – to perhaps one isolated target – that would hardly justify or even trigger a full-scale nuclear response.

And then, as the Telegraph asserts, this could even be a crippling cyber attack of such an extent that it could “turn the lights out for millions” – if Ed Miliband doesn’t get there first.

This does beg the question of what the actual response might be to Putin’s next move. Do we then see tit-for-tat exchanges, gradually increasing in intensity until we finally see nuclear weapons deployed. And if, say, the first nuclear strike is a small-scale tactical nuke deployed on its own territory, hitting Ukrainian positions in Kursk, what then?

The real problem is that we are on this escalator and no-one seems to understand that, or be prepared to discuss how to get off it. Starmer, for instance, is saying that we should double down on our support for Ukraine, and make sure Ukraine has what it needs for as long as it needs.

This shows he has not the slightest idea of the peril facing us, and how easy it is to lose control and create an unstoppable momentum, in the manner that drove the great powers to war in 1914. No sensible person would deny the parallel, yet here we are blindly following the same path to destruction.