Today, Jack Gaines hosts Doctor Sandor Fabian, who published
"The Illusion of Conventional War: Europe is Learning the wrong lessons from the conflict in Ukraine."
This ten-point contrarian op-ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs.
Article link: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-illusion-of-conventional-war-europe-is-learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-conflict-in-ukraine/
Sandor Fabian's Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandor-fabian-ph-d-3422b639/
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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
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Special thanks to Jazz Bois for the sample of Mellow Hive Live @ Root Budapest. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/EhGCsaiVm0I?si=zG3B1_1zaHjC_K2j
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Credits
Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association
Host: Jack Gaines
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00:00:04 Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website, at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Today we welcome Dr.
00:00:41 JACK GAINES
Shander Fabian, who published The Illusion of Conventional War, Europe is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Conflict in Ukraine. This 10 -point contrarian op -ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs. I have a link to his bio and the paper in the show notes. So let's get started. One thing that caught my eye thinking about your paper are the points where you say that most observers are ignoring or misinterpreting things that they don't agree with. In other words, they have confirmation bias or they have a blind spot to things that they don't understand or refuse to include in their ideal.
00:01:24 SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. And the base of my argument is... I traveled all over Europe and look at European capabilities. So throughout my personal experience and also studies in Europe, that these small countries, especially former Warsaw Pact countries, are trying to get integrated into the NATO system, which is driven mostly by the U .S. and the U .S. frame of reference of warfighting.
00:01:48 JACK GAINES
Sure. Division on division.
00:01:50 SANDOR FABIAN
Division on division. But the issue is these countries could not. purchase, maintain, sustain big ticket items. Right. And small countries have very small training areas. You cannot train officers to conduct division on division war fighting. So you are missing major opportunities in the education and training of the professional military officers and NCOs as well. Tanks are very expensive.
00:02:19 JACK GAINES
Right.
00:02:19 SANDOR FABIAN
These countries can buy maybe 10 tanks. When you buy 10 tanks, then you cannot really train with them because it's very difficult and expensive to actually get them to the field. You need the train system. You need the training areas. You need the ammunition for them. You train as you fight. These countries cannot afford to train as you fight. So by that definition, you actually going into any kind of war. in a suboptimal setting because you did not prepare your soldiers as they are going to fight. So there's a huge disconnect compared to France or the UK or the US.
00:02:56 JACK GAINES
Right. Because they can field larger armories and have more of a supply system to support them.
00:03:01 SANDOR FABIAN
You have the supply system. You have a large training and education infrastructure behind it that actually prepares your military leaders to understand and to fight such kind of wars. And you have the infrastructure behind it and all that that is completely locking in smaller former Warsaw Pact countries. Right.
00:03:17 JACK GAINES
Right. Switzerland was able to stay neutral during World War II. And the strategic calculus that Nazi Germany had for not invading Switzerland was that their form of warfare didn't work well in Switzerland with all the mountains. So they would have had to change all their tactics. And they knew that the Swiss didn't have battle tanks. They had an air force. They had a lot of snipers. They had a lot of riflemen in the mountains that knew those mountains well. just realized that by going through those mountains trying to take Switzerland would have been such a cost that it wasn't worth it. So as you're saying, they created warfare in a way that was successful for them instead of trying to emulate what would have been the popular military style of that time.
00:04:04 SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely. And it's not just the Swiss. Ivan Ergun Toft, he wrote a book about how the weak actually defeats the strong. And he looked at all the wars of the last 150 years. And the primary determinant of who is actually succeeding in war is exactly what you just described. And the Ukrainian war actually shows that too. When you are not presenting a war to your enemy that he is understanding, he is organized, trained, educated for, he's active for, that enemy is immediately in trouble because you refuse to fight on his terms. So when you have a lot of main battle tanks and your enemy don't have main battle tanks... those battle tanks are not going to be useful because who are they going to fight with? What type of targets are they going to hit? And if that enemy has a million high -tech IEDs against your main battle tank, but zero battle tanks, that creates a huge dilemma for you. And also the Western frame of reference of the warfighting is when we win conventionally, we won the war. And the Iraq invasion showed that it's completely wrong. We run through a country, we occupy the country, we won all the engagements, and now we won the war. That actually has been shown throughout history. It's not the case anymore.
00:05:21 JACK GAINES
Right. You know, and that reminds me, H .R. McMaster in his book was talking about how when he went into Iraq with his tank division. I can't remember the size of the unit. I apologize. It was his famous battle where he went over the hill. And he knew that the Iraqi tank commander had trained in the U .S. because as they saw the formation, It was laid out exactly the way they had taught them how to do it. He was proud of them for doing that, but also he knew how to unscrew that type of defense and it was a very effective offense. He wiped out the adversary's tanks. So that's the other half of it is when you are living in somebody else's strategy, they also have control of how that strategy falls out.
00:06:04 SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely.
00:06:05 JACK GAINES
Now, your observation is never present your adversary with a type of war that they are organized, trained, and equipped for, which we've already started discussing. And thinking of that and also the introduction about how people ignore or are blind to different aspects of a conflict, one thing that reminds me of is right now in Ukraine, there was a supply gap between what the U .S. and the EU were providing in weapons and material to Ukraine. But Ukraine didn't collapse, and it's because of something that no one's talking about, and that is that Estonia and the Czech Republic were finding weapons and material and delivering them. They were also going into the black markets in the underground to find other people willing to donate and give weapons and material. But then they also started fundraising public money in order to buy 155 rounds or other munitions to help the Ukrainians continue the fight. while the traditional Western systems were dry. And it's just not talked about. But it really comes down to that notion that Ukraine is not just at war with Russia. It's Ukraine and their network at war with Russia and their network. And that network is critical on who is going to win, who is going to succeed at different phases. So that just really struck me to your first point.
00:07:22 SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, Ukraine in this case didn't collapse, thankfully, but they also didn't win. They are presenting the same type of war and we kind of enabling them because we are providing the tanks, we are providing the armored personnel carriers, we're providing artillery and so on. So we are incentivizing and pushing them into the corner of fighting along the terms of Russia. As long as that's happening, we are creating a situation when the two networks that you described is fighting pretty much a material war against each other. So the outcome is going to be determined who can sustain longer on both sides.
00:07:56 JACK GAINES
Right. And actually, the Czech Republic were also fundraising for combat drones. So they're trying to see through and around this quagmire that you're talking about.
00:08:05 SANDOR FABIAN
Well, another thing I don't talk about in the paper that has been fascinating me for many years, we on the West are fascinated with fighting the war. But we don't determine what winning means and what's happening afterwards. So everybody celebrated that now the U .S. is providing all this aid again to Ukraine to win. But what win really means in this war?
00:08:27 JACK GAINES
That actually feeds to your fourth observation. Friends are important in war, but they can be detrimental as well. especially for your defense efforts, which is what you're bringing up now. And that is if your vision of success, of strategic success as a Ukrainian is to take back all territory and have Russia in a position where they can no longer fight, then that's success. But if your Western allies, if their vision of success is that you have sustained yourself and that... Russia can no longer go further. Their support is only going to go so far because once you have hit their success lines, that's when what they're providing you starts to dry up.
00:09:04 SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, and the Ukrainian president has made it clear several times that the official goal is getting everything back. And that's obviously the communicated Ukrainian goal, understandably, because they are a sovereign, independent country who lost quite a bit of territory to an aggressor. I'm not necessarily seeing the same very clear message from all the Western allies. However, obviously, you can make the argument there is no counter communication made. So the public and everybody else can assume that on the West, we think along the same way. However, again, if you are a very cold headed, completely objective analyst, then the evidence on the ground points to a different direction.
00:09:48 JACK GAINES
That's what I'm seeing. It's almost that Madeleine Albright, Saddam Hussein moment where Saddam asked, do you have an issue if we invade Kuwait? She said, the U .S. doesn't have a position. And he thought, oh, that means that they are okay with me invading Kuwait. But it wasn't. It just caused a misunderstanding that ended up with an invasion that started this whole mess in Iraq. So I get what you're saying. And the signals are never clear between nations on intent. And so you're right. You have to look at the behavior on supply and on policy and what they're giving away to help you in order to succeed. And I think it's going to be limited. So I would imagine Ukraine in itself is going to have to have a plan B in case the U .S. says, you know what, you've gotten 80 % back. I think that's fine. We're going to end our support there. Or the EU says the same thing and they're kind of stuck.
00:10:42 SANDOR FABIAN
It is a very unique case. So when other European countries are looking at the Ukrainian case, I think they should be very careful because Ukraine could actually marshal a global network behind her struggle against Russia. And the same kind of support, the same kind of geopolitical situation, what we are sitting right now might not be recreatable in the future for some other countries.
00:11:06 JACK GAINES
Like Myanmar, the national unity government. just doesn't have the global network of support that Ukraine has. And it's a very different scenario, but it's also an excellent example of what it's like to not have that kind of support. Now, one thing that you were bringing up is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to Ukraine, as an example, because it's all in the field, it's all in trenches, it's very traditional. And one of your arguments, one that you have in this paper as well as in other papers, is that we need to start thinking about urban warfare, The fighting is going to hit the streets more often than not.
00:11:42 SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, absolutely. Many analysts and previous studies are pointing to the war is actually back in the trenches, far away from urban areas and far away from the civilian population. It's not true. Right now, the current situation is more out of urban areas, but still the majority of the fronts includes small villages, small towns, and larger built -up areas. The Russians are attacking those urban centers because those have operational and strategic importance. If you look back at the early months of the invasion, almost all the targets that the Russians were going after were urban areas. If you kind of step back and look at the conflicts of the last 20 years, 30 years, urban areas are the future. We are in a very unique opportunity here that we can actually build our future battlefields. We are building the buildings. We are looking at road networks. We are wiring the CCTV networks, the communication networks in the cities. So why we are not thinking about this in how we are going to utilize our buildings, our underground structures, our communication for military or defensive purposes. And if you look at it, it's nothing new because the Finns are very good at this. During the Cold War, they had an amazing network