Strategy and the Lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War

Image: President Zelenskyy Twitter / X

This week, there are a lot of articles that explore the lessons, or more accurately the many observations, about the war in Ukraine since February 2022. I will be contributing to this with a couple of articles for publications here in Australia.

But it is impossible to cover all the major observations from the war at this point for a variety of reasons.

First, because the war is still active. Some lessons will not be apparent until the war is ended. Second, we only see a small part of the war, be it for security reasons or because of the fog and friction inherent in all forms of war. And finally, wars such as this are massive national undertakings, of which military operations are just one component. Getting a sense of the lessons from all elements of national power applied by Ukraine and Russia, and for how they interact, will take years or even decades to decipher.

But at this point of the war, we must be drawing initial observations. Every bit of knowledge, even if incomplete, is valuable.

The world is moving at a very fast pace. Technological developments and changes in the geostrategic environment mean that when a nation does generate some form of advantage, it is transitory. Advantage might last for months, weeks, days or even hours in the current environment. But rather than constantly making your own mistakes in adapting to change, a clever institution should learn from the mistakes of others.

Many western nations will be studying the conduct of this war for a variety of lessons that might be applicable to them. We know the Chinese will certainly be doing so. They have been studying the western way of war for decades, particularly since the 1991 Gulf War.

In this article, I would like to delve into one particular aspect of the war: strategy.

This is a word for which there are many definitions. At heart, strategy is an undertaking that is about generating advantage over a competitor. But it is a concept that originally emerged from the theory and practice of war and is now used in nearly every societal endeavour. But using the term and doing strategy well are two very different things.