Command, a wide-ranging analysis of post-World War II conflicts by leading strategic studies expert Lawrence Freedman, examines a range of well-known conflicts, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the French defeat by the Viet Minh at Dien. Bien Phu, to the Falklands War and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, to the current war in Ukraine. “The big point,” said Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, “is that autocracies are very bad at this. Many of the most destructive decisions come from authoritarian decision making. This is certainly the case with Vladimir Putin but also with Saddam Hussein and even more [the Argentine military dictator Leopoldo] Galtieri during the Falklands War’. But he adds: “It’s not that democracies always make better decisions.” As Freedman’s book shows, at the core of interactions between military and civilian leaders – which even in the best of circumstances can be marked by tensions and personal conflicts – is the lack of open and often critical feedback that leads to poor decision-making. “Empires lack the feedback mechanism and are entrenched in the belief that the advantage of authoritarianism is bold and decisive decision-making. “While in some cases you can tolerate a lot of bad decisions and come out OK because you have superior numbers, where it’s very close, one bad decision or a little bit of bad luck can throw you out completely.” And while Russian military operations for more than a century have often relied on the use of overwhelming numbers (often with little regard for casualties), in Ukraine, Russia appears to have been constrained by domestic political considerations from introducing a general mobilization, which has limited scale of the forces it can develop. Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, has written a new study on command in military conflict. Photo: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images One issue that has intrigued Freedman, as well as other analysts, is why Putin – whose use of force was limited in scope before Ukraine – embarked on such a dangerous and ill-prepared gamble in Ukraine. “Military power has been good enough for Putin so far. He used it effectively in Chechnya, Crimea, Georgia and Syria. He used it in a fairly limited way in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, where those doing his dirty work wanted him to take an even more aggressive approach. “But his approach to the current conflict in Ukraine has clearly been misguided. You have to assume he didn’t realize the gamble he was taking. He genuinely believed that Ukraine would collapse fairly quickly, and it’s hard to know why. “Even those [foreign] Analysts who believed that Ukraine’s military might not fare well did not believe that the Ukrainian people would capitulate. But he did. He saw it as a special military operation [ the term the Kremlin has consistently used rather than “war”] which would last a few days. And since that plan failed, they went into the rear.” A key failure, in Freedman’s view, was that while Russian intelligence had widely penetrated Ukraine – as even Kyiv has admitted – key figures around Putin either did not understand Ukraine or acted as an echo chamber for him. . “It doesn’t seem that Ukraine experts were consulted in Russia. It appears that Putin was talking to his comrades in the FSB [the federal security service] and GRU [military intelligence ] who shared his prejudices. And the rant he gave on February 21st [three days before Russia invaded] he is still as good a guide as any to believe what he thinks. It is clear from this that he finds it very difficult to take Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, seriously. I think he thought Zelensky would make a deal. He did not do it.” At the heart of the problem, Freedman believes, is the strictly hierarchical nature of Kremlin decision-making and how those at the top are immune to responsibility for mistakes. “There are no incentives to tell the truth on the ground to senior management. Senior military officers – people like Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov – are all part of the inner circle. They have fired a lot of quarterbacks now they know there is a problem. But they are not the problem. It’s always someone else.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. And since Russia’s first plan to topple Ukraine in a coup against Kiev collapsed within weeks amid stiff Ukrainian resistance and Russian logistical incompetence, Moscow has struggled to find a credible Plan B. “They tried for plan B – the famous convoy assembled outside Kyiv – but couldn’t find one. It was logistically beyond them. The lines were very exposed. So they went back to focusing on Donbas. “Even then it took until May for them to focus on what they could do – artillery barrages on a narrow front, a tactic for which Ukraine had no easy answer, other than taking heavy casualties until they started to arrive Western weapon systems”. Even now, six months after the war, Freedman struggles to understand the Kremlin’s logic, particularly its tactic of creating a winter energy crisis in Europe to undermine support for Kyiv. There are no incentives to tell the truth on the ground to senior management. They are all part of Lawrence Friedman’s inner circle “I think the only ‘winning theory’ the Kremlin has at the moment is that the West is turning to Ukraine because of the energy crisis. But the surprise there is that Moscow has not now called for a ceasefire. That would bring Zelensky on the spot because he couldn’t agree on one. “On the contrary, Putin still acts as if he expects more from this war than he already has. The reason I think there are some signs of desperation on the Russian side is that some are beginning to recognize that an energy crisis is not going to lead to a betrayal of Ukraine. In the long term, this signals the risk of deep damage to Russia’s economy.” While Freedman is cautious about predicting that Russian forces could face a second major setback — particularly in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv is effectively putting pressure on Kherson — he sees the same lack of institutional imagination determining the war’s future trajectory. “There will be something big like Russian forces being surrounded and trapped [around Kherson]? Unless the system suffers a shock like the one it experienced in late February and early March [when Russia abandoned its effort to take Kyiv], I think Russia will persevere, if for no other reason than it can think of something better to do. The Kremlin is paralyzed.” Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine by Lawrence Freedman is published by Allen Lane on September 8
