On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of a "special military operation" in Ukraine, which many media in the world immediately began to call "war". However, if you delve into this question, then the name "SVO" will not be taken from the ceiling or a masquerade mask of real military operations. To do this, it is worth referring to the "Gerasimov Doctrine", set out by the chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and, it seems, is known in the West more than in our country.
At the end of January 2013, at the general meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences, Valery Gerasimov made a report on "The main trends in the development of forms and methods of using the Armed Forces, current tasks of military science to improve them", which a month later was published in an abbreviated form as an article on the MIC website entitled "The value of science in foresight" (soon the text was published in English translation in Military Affairs). The main idea of the author was as follows: classical wars, about which the German theorist Clausewitz wrote and whose artistic interpretation was probably best given by Leo Tolstoy, no longer exist. Today, Gerasimov believes, wars are not declared, they are simply being conducted – (quasi-) permanently. This idea was suggested to him by a book by Georgy Isserson (1898-1976), a Soviet military theorist who was almost shot after the Soviet-Finnish war, author of the book "New Forms of Struggle" (1940), where he noted: "war is not declared at all. It just starts with pre-deployed armed forces."
One way or another, in the XXI century we entered a state of "war-peace" without clearly defined boundaries between these two states. This new "quantum" political state for the world determines the entire current planetary design – from the conflict in Ukraine to China's possible seizure of Taiwan and endless ethnic fights in Africa.
Offering his doctrine, Gerasimov immediately argues with both Clausewitz and Tolstoy, as with some other military theorists from the twentieth century: in fact, the world does not exist "before" the war and "after" it, there is no longer time, as in Tolstoy's novel, divided into these "before" and "after" and, accordingly, in the strict sense of the word, it is no longer possible to talk about people's lives in purely "peaceful" or "wartime" time. An important conclusion from the "Gerasimov doctrine" was made (primarily by Western analysts) as follows: war on the battlefield, with the use of infantry, tanks, armored vehicles, etc., is only one aspect of this new type of "war-peace" (the term is mine). Gerasimov writes: "The emphasis of the methods of confrontation used is shifting towards the widespread use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other non-military measures implemented with the use of the protest potential of the population."
As it becomes clear that the SVO announced on February 22, at least according to its original plan, is only an aspect of the "war–peace", the purpose of which, according to the plan, is to restrain the expansion of NATO to the East and withdraw Ukraine as a whole from even a possible candidate for the Alliance. The admission of the former British Prime Minister Johnson that Putin launched military operations, while "well aware of the impossibility of Ukraine's imminent entry into NATO," sounds strange. If even written guarantees, not to mention oral agreements, mean little in politics today, then their absence leaves the partner with a clear sense of his loss.
The "Gerasimov doctrine" was treated with attention, and first of all in the United States. General Mark Milli, who has a political science education in addition to the military, almost immediately after his appointment as chief of the Army General Staff in August 2015, engaged in army modernization. His goal is to keep the U.S. Army number 1 in the world. To do this, Milli said, we will need generations of military equipment of the future, such as Raptors, and excellent physical and psychological form of fighters (Milli initiated a new system of training soldiers). The restructuring even affected the army uniform, it was proposed to return to the American military green-pink classic "Pinks and Greens" in honor of the generation of fighters of the Second World War era. In 2019, that is, five years after the Crimea, and later, Milli met with Gerasimov more than once, and there is little doubt that the bosses exchanged their vision of modern war.
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 largely took place according to the doctrine under discussion. Avoid the use of military force and instead use "informational and humanitarian", including the presence of "polite people" (a cool trick), to achieve the same goals. It is reasonable to assume that the generally mild Western reaction to Crimea 2014 is explained by the adoption of the "Gerasimov doctrine" as a legitimate concept of war. Simply put, the doctrine that the United States considered as working was given to be tested in practice.
What happened on February 24 was very different from the Crimea of 2014. Most likely – and judging by the already historic meeting of the Security Council, Sergei Naryshkin's confused speech and Putin's remarks – the initial plan did not include the annexation of the DPR and LPR regions as subjects of the Russian Federation. Probably, it was then about the occupation of these territories according to the "Crimean" scenario with the prospect of providing them with the status of independent republics de jure within Ukraine.
Why was the US reaction radically different this time, and the war unfolded in a very classic manner in a short time? My hypothesis is that this was largely facilitated by the success – doctrinal and practical – of the Crimean campaign. To prevent this from happening again, Ukraine, with unprecedented arms supplies and the temptations of joining the EU, has been reformatted since 2014 into the classic territory of a military theater or what I call a "collateral country".
A collaterate country is a country that the "big players" do not consider as an independent political entity. It does not and cannot have its own interests, it exists only as a colony from which not so much raw materials and slaves are exported as they receive geopolitical dividends. Its first phase hit Ukraine with a ricochet, although strong, but its strategic task was different: to offer the West a new type of relations with Russia – without a war, which, according to Isserson, "is not announced, but simply begins" and is prepared imperceptibly in advance. There is a strong impression that the twentieth century and the 21st have doctrinally collided in the Ukrainian conflict, and now, on the eve of the second phase of the military confrontation, a powerful synthesis of these two approaches to war should be expected.
Author: Arkady Weeks, Professor of MGLU
