Aug 292022
The reputable think tank, the Atlantic Council, published a list of 23 lessons from the Ukraine war.
The details are well worth reading, but I thought I’d post here a brief summary of the lessons themselves.
- Lesson for Western diplomacy: Don’t second-guess Ukrainians
- Lesson for global diplomacy: Putin’s regime can’t be trusted—and needs to be defeated
- Lesson for US foreign policy: The United States can no longer rely on strategic ambiguity
- Lesson for US national security: Washington must contend with Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran at the same time
- Lesson for military operations: Equipment doesn’t win wars. People do.
- Lesson for military planning: Nimble modern weapons can defeat larger, conventionally armed forces—especially when on the defensive
- Lesson for deterrence: Troop deployments work better than threats of economic sanctions
- Lesson for the global economy: The new tools of conflict are economic—and they are powerful
- Lesson for economic statecraft: Don’t separate sanctions from longer-term foreign-policy objectives
- Lesson for economic statecraft: Sanctions work, but they are messy and take time
- Lesson for wartime strategic communications: Influence operations are a day-in, day-out job
- Lesson for hybrid warfare: Don’t ignore the fundamentals
- Lesson for the energy sector: Decades of energy diplomacy can disappear with one brutal invasion
- Lesson for global intelligence: Russia is not ten feet tall
- Lesson for would-be invaders: You can’t hide preparations for a full-scale invasion
- Lesson for cybersecurity: The private sector should play a critical military-operational role in cyberspace
- Lesson for US homeland security: Ignoring the home front is a serious mistake
- Lesson for US assistance policy: Invest deeply in key resilient partners
- Lesson for NATO: The Alliance is a uniquely valuable institution that requires enduring political and financial investment
- Lesson for Ukraine: There’s no way back for relations with Russia
- Lesson for China: Today’s Ukraine is not tomorrow’s Taiwan
- Lesson for Middle East policymakers: America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all the alternatives
- Lesson for Germany and its allies: Seize this moment for a strategic reversal
I fear that there are many more lessons yet to come, some with potentially devastating consequences outside of the conflict zone.