Leadership in Modern War
Leadership in Modern War
We must prepare for other future conflicts by learning the many lessons about leadership offered by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Part One of a two-part article.
Leadership matters, it makes a difference. Kaja Kallas, 2023
Leadership is something I have studied for many years, and I have written on this topic many times. It is a topic worthy of study both inside and outside military institutions given the profound difference in effectiveness between well-led organisations and those that suffer from poor leadership.
The war in Ukraine, and many of the strategic activities associated with the war, have provided observations and lessons from which western nations and their military and national security institutions might learn. Although I have written before on some of the leadership lessons from Ukraine, and also cover it in my forthcoming book about the Ukraine War, I wanted to return to the topic because the longer this war continues, the more robust is the breadth and depth of leadership lessons available.
I had intended that this be a single article, but as I got into writing it, it quickly became apparent that it would need to be a two-part article. Therefore, in this first part, I explore the rationale for studying leadership during the Ukraine War as well as the lessons for political leaders. In part two, I examine the lessons of leadership from the war at the strategic level and the lessons that can be used to develop future combat leaders.
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The image at the top of this article is just one example of modern leadership. It is a photo of a married couple, both of whom command combat units in the Ukrainian 42nd Mechanised Brigade. The war has provided many examples of leadership from combat leaders such as this couple, as well as from strategic and political leaders. We need to learn the lessons of their experiences.
No human endeavour involving more than one person is likely to succeed without some kind of leadership. Sometimes that leadership is found wanting, and at times, it is positively woeful. But good leadership not only helps teams, institutions and nations succeed in their collective activities, but also inspires individuals to achieve things well beyond what they thought they were capable of.
Leadership is an essential human skill with many definitions. In the new Australian Defence Force doctrine on leadership (which I helped develop), leadership is described as follows:
Leadership is an affair of the heart. And of the mind. Guided by character. It is the spirit that develops people, builds teams and gets results. It is an interplay of emotions, feelings, attitudes and values. It involves being able to understand what followers need, being able to predict how they will react, and inspiring them towards achieving a common goal. We define it as the art of positively influencing others to get the job done.
Field Marshal Montgomery in his 1961 book The Path to Leadership, called it a “battle for the hearts and minds of men.” There have been many other definitions offered by individuals from government, commerce, the arts and the military. Those who seek to continuously improve their leadership capacity, and that of their subordinates, must look to all aspects of human endeavour for exemplars of good leadership. Renowned strategist and organisational change expert, Peter Drucker, once described leadership as follows:
Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people” — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
No human endeavour possesses such high stakes as leadership of a nation in wartime. People who are elected or appointed to lead and command must have the presence to inspire or convince others to do most complex and difficult things in terrible and demanding circumstances.
Good leadership is developed through experience, study, reflection, mentoring and the mental capacity to embrace variety of ideas. Providing the "why", or purpose, is also a central responsibility for leaders. Purpose is more vital than the tasks to be undertaken. Leaders inspire through giving their people meaning.
But the authority granted to leaders has many limitations. These limits might involve organisational boundaries, or even national caveats. Consequently, leading through influence is a critical skill. Clear purpose helps, but leaders must invest in developing the logical and emotional appeal of tasks and missions, collaborate with others and then communicate using various mediums. This is regardless of whether the setting is the battlefield or a national capital. It is a lesson that has been proven again and agin during the war in Ukraine.
Learning from the War in Ukraine
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there have been many publications exploring lessons from the war since February 2022. Most of the observations produced by academic, government and media institutions over the past 26 months can be classified into one of three primary categories.
First, there are many observations about equipment. This includes the multitude of different combat and support equipment, as well as munitions and other materiel used to underpin combat operations and the defence of military forces and civilian infrastructure. Most recently, this has included advocacy for the ATACMs missiles for Ukraine, the pending deployment of F16 fighter jets, the application of drones in the land, air and maritime domains, and the Russian development of turtle tanks in the first half of 2024. Over the past year or so, this has also incorporated debates over industrial capacity and sourcing of munitions and equipment for Ukraine, and Russia.
A second major category of observations concerns ideas. This includes military tactics and strategies used by either side, as well as national policy implemented by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other nations. It has included observations about poor integration of combat arms, particularly by the Russians, as well as Ukrainian tactics to defeat the Russians north of Kyiv. Recently, observations have been made about Russian Z Storm Units and evolved tactics for the use of drones, Russian human wave tactics, the employment of artillery and drones to close the detection to destruction gap and the evolving integration of the Ukrainian air defence network.
But this category of learning from the war in Ukraine has also extended to the consideration about the pace and risk tolerance of strategic and political decision making in the West. Recently, this has also included the development of bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and many other Western nations.
Third, there are observations lessons about from Ukraine about organisations and formations employed during the war. Early in the war, many observations were made about the utility of the Russian battalion tactical groups. Since then, other observations have been made about Ukrainian assault brigades, the new Ukrainian drone service, and Russian private military companies. Michael Kofman and Rob Lee have also written about the strengths and weaknesses of higher-level force design of the Russian military, and Dara Massicot has been an excellent source of insights on Russian strategic military re-organisations announced by Defence Minister Shoigu since the the beginning of the war.
All three of these subject areas related to learning from the Ukraine War provide useful insights to inform adaption in Ukraine and its supporters in the West. Unfortunately, countries like China are also learning many of these lessons from the war and applying them in their own force development efforts.
A core responsibility of professional military and national security institutions is to collect and analyse the many observations made about the war and analyse which ones might be acted on rapidly and which ones require more evidence or more time to implement. And while there are a multitude of observations about equipment, ideas and organisations that can be exploited in the short term, there is also one other area that is worthy of close study and analysis: leadership.
Leadership: Enduring and Evolving Features
As different institutions evaluate their observations from Ukraine, and how these may inform and evolve the development of leaders at different levels, it is important that we also understand how war itself is changing. Scholars and military intellectuals who study war and the military profession differentiate between wars’ changing character and its enduring nature. This intellectual construct of how war has some elements that continuously change and some that consistently remain the same originated, at least in written form, with Carl von Clausewitz’s masterpiece written in the 19th century On War. His work remains foundational in the contemporary study of war.
War’s Enduring Nature. The enduring nature of war refers to those aspects of human conflict that are consistent themes throughout the ages. This nature of war is defined by the interaction between opposing wills, violence, and its being driven by politics. In describing this theory of the nature of war, Clausewitz sought to depict what he believed were the universal – or enduring elements – that every theorist above all should be concerned about. It is important to understand this when studying leadership because the concepts of ambiguity, fear, friction and surprise must be central to preparing leaders for their roles in war.
War’s Changing Character. When exploring the changing character of war, we are accepting that political, technological, societal developments drive the evolution in how war is waged. Humans have moved from swords and shields to tanks and planes, and now into an era of autonomous machines and algorithms used in all domains of human competition and conflict. The ideas applied to war, blending new technologies and new organisations, have also continued to develop throughout the ages. This process has continued during the war in Ukraine. This concept of war’s changing character is an important aspect of leadership development programs because in any conflict, both sides learn, adapt and change. This change needs to be understood, nurtured and sometimes forced through, by leaders at many levels. Leadership development programs must educate leaders about their role in absorbing new ideas and technologies in their institutions so that they have the best possible chance of success.
Finally, leadership occurs at different levels in every country and institution, requiring different skill sets at those levels. In my book War Transformed, I proposed five different stages of leadership that military leaders progress through during their careers. For the purposes of this examination of leadership lessons from Ukraine, I propose to divide the review into three distinct forms of leadership: political, strategic and combat. Of course, there are many other ways that this exploration might be conducted, but this framework is probably the simplest.
While the issues that are covered in this article might relate to specific levels of command, there will also be what could be described as ‘interface issues’. These are the aspects of leadership theory and practice that relate to how different levels of leadership might interact. For example, civil-military relations are an interface issue for the political and strategic level of command. Operational art, logistics and training are interface issues between strategic and combat leaders.
It is worth noting at this point that there are many other examinations of command and leadership during wartime which might be read to complement this article. One recent book on this topic, which explores multiple wars including Ukraine, is Lawrence Freedman’s brilliant Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine. A small selection of other useful books on this topic includes David Horner’s Strategy and Command, Pois and Langer’s Command Failure in War, Van Crevald’s Command in War, and Roberts’ Command Decisions.
Back to Carl von Clausewitz, who tells us in Book 1 of On War that “the political object, as the original motive of the War, will be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made. It is appropriate then that our exploration of leadership lessons from Ukraine begins with the political level.
Political Leadership
In their chapter in the recent book War in Ukraine, Thomas Mahnken and Joshua Baker write that “in the months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was plenty of wishful thinking that such a war would be irrational.” This appears to have been a widely held view among many politicians in the West before the war. Politicians in Ukraine, the west as well as in Russia and China, have probably learned a lot since that time. Of course, the fact that this learning has occurred among the political elite is a hypothesis!
We also need to assume that Russia, China and their authoritarian (and wannabe authoritarian) partners around the globe have been watching and learning from the performance of politicians during this war. Back in September last year I explored what China might be learning from the war in this regard.
The first lesson is about the importance of alliances. It is hard to imagine where the war would be now if not for the NATO alliance and its military, intelligence, informational and diplomatic support to Ukraine. The NATO alliance has been reinvigorated and even expanded in the past 26 months in a way that was unanticipated a few short years ago. NATO has been fundamental in deterring Russia from any expansion of the war, and in the training and equipping of the Ukrainian armed forces. Modern political leaders must not only understand the importance of alliances in their security of their own nations, but how these alliances contribute to a more secure and prosperous global security. Political leaders must understand the necessity of investing in such alliances and be advocates for them with both domestic and international audiences.
A second lesson on political leadership from the war might be about the pace of decision-making. The speed of planning, decision making, action is increasing due to hypersonic weapons, faster media cycles, and AI support at many levels. Military organisations must ensure that their people and institutions at every level are able to intellectually and physically deal with the environment through better use of time for improved decision-making.
Further, military personnel must be able to exploit this use of time to improve their capacity to adapt through re-organization, re-equipping, re-thinking and re-skilling. This exploitation of time also applies to politician. And, it might be observed, that politicians have not adapted well to the pace of modern war. Decision-making about the provision of military assistance throughout the war has been slower than required by battlefield and strategic realities. This is related to a third observation on political leadership: escalation and red lines.
This third lesson about escalation management and red lines is a crucial one because it is, in all fairness to political leaders, a very delicate balancing act. A nation has to be opaque enough in its decision making to not provide warning to the enemy about future intentions, but transparent enough to prevent that enemy from making decisions that escalate the war out of the control of all participants. As part of this difficult political balancing act, nations and alliances must take care to not reveal all of their red lines and not demonstrate too much fear about how their own decisions might lead to vertical or horizontal escalation in the war.
There was probably a much better appreciation of this issue, and the related subject of deterrence, among politicians who lived through the Cold War period. The current generation of western politicians need to improve their performance, however. The debates on whether providing a few dozen tanks or artillery systems to Ukraine would escalate the situation not only demonstrated strategic immaturity and risk aversion by politicians, it also led to Ukraine not being able to exploit battlefield opportunities and probably more Ukrainians deaths than necessary. Understanding and practicing the internal debates on escalation management is an imperative for modern politician leaders.
A fourth lesson for political leaders is investing in deterrence. Deterrence has been a characteristic of relations between tribes and nations since such organisations and relationships developed thousands of years ago. Deterrence is a national undertaking to discourage or restrain another nation-state or non-state entity from taking unwanted actions. It has several important components. Deterrence possesses a psychological dimension and aims to affect a potential aggressor’s decision-making process. This effect is achieved through the ‘use’ of force in the form of a threat. A third psychological element is the fear of possible undesirable consequences. A final component is the undesirable consequences for a potential aggressor are failure or that costs will exceed possible gains.
One of the crucial responsibilities of national political leadership is to deter aggression against the nation they lead, and to resource their participation in multinational efforts to deter coercion, aggression and conflicts. Maybe Russia would not have been deterred by a more robust stance from Ukraine and NATO in 2022. It is an interesting counter-factual to ponder. But it is clear we are now living in an era where predatory authoritarian regimes see western political weakness as provocative. More robust conventional and nuclear deterrence regimes are required in democracies and this must be led from the top.
A fifth lesson for political leaders is about strategic communication with their citizens and enemy populations. Disruptive new technologies have not only enhanced the lethality of military forces at greater distances, but they also now provide the technological means to target and influence various populations in a way that has not been possible before. Political leaders need to be able to explain conflict to their citizens, and the strategies and resources needed to defend national sovereignty. This has been a role assumed by President Zelensky throughout this war, as well as by other leaders such as Kaja Kalas and Jens Stoltengerg. At the same time, the political leaders of democratic nations must be able to make hard decisions about strategic influence operations that are aimed at the populations of enemy states – and defending against enemy misinformation operations.
A sixth lesson is about the the possibility of war. Contemporary political cultures in western nations are not well informed about war and its consequences. The past thirty years, described by some as the long peace, has seen the Cold War generation of political leaders and staffers move on and be replaced by a new generation. This new generation, seduced by the economic growth and increased globalisation of the past three decades have largely come to believe that large scale war was not possible in the 21st century. At the same time there has been a decline in war studies in western universities.
The experience of the war in Ukraine should have taught this generation that large-scale war is always possible when there exist authoritarian leaders with few limits on their domestic power and who wish to either expand their influence or remove examples of other political systems from the view of their repressed citizens. War, unfortunately, is constantly looming over humankind, and is made more likely by those who avoid understanding war and its causes. The current generation of political leaders in the west must refamiliarize and re-educate themselves on this terrible scourge.
Related to this a seventh observation on leadership: the need for humility. The war in Ukraine, and all wars throughout history, have shown that national leaders who do not understand their adversary or who do not sufficiently invest in the intelligence and intellectual efforts to understand their adversary often lead their nation to strategic failure. This is a phenomenon I have examined and written about recently. The last 26 months have seen several examples of a lack of humility that have resulted in tragic outcomes for the military forces involved, particularly the Russians in 2022; and the Ukrainians (and their western supporters) in 2023.
A final lesson for political leaders from the war in Ukraine is about will. The key lesson is that no one will help a nation that doesn’t demonstrate the will to defend itself. It is a lesson about will, and one that politicians everywhere must learn. There are many dimensions to this demonstration of will. Ultimately it is about building national resilience in all of its forms.
Sovereign resilience, which also includes the requirement to mobilise people and industry people for large military and national challenges, must be led from the very top of a nation’s political leadership. It requires that they be able to explain the rationale for defending a nation and for the sacrifices needed. It is something that the Ukrainian president has done from the beginning of the Russian large-scale invasion in February 2022. In essence, a key observation from Ukraine is that political leaders must be able to ask themselves whether they would pass ‘the Zelensky test’ and hopefully the answer is ‘yes’.
On Leadership: Learning from Ukraine
That concludes this first of two articles that provide a deeper look at the lessons that might be learned about leadership from the war in Ukraine. There are a couple points that should be made before progressing to the next part of this exploration. First, none of these lessons are new. They have been learned multiple times throughout human history. Second, each of the themes in political leadership explored above deserve much more analysis than I have provided here. They are certain to receive this attention in the coming years and decades. Finally, it is far from certain that all of the current generation of political leaders will heed all of these lessons. It is up to voters in democracies to select those political candidates for office who are most likely to have learned from them.
In the next part, I will shift to the examination of leadership at the strategic level and combat leadership. While getting political leadership right it’s important, and setting national direction is crucial, so too is leading at other levels of that most difficult of human endeavours: war.