Translating Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific

My latest assessment of lessons, difference in context and key challenges for military and national security planners in the Pacific

Source: Australian Department of Defence

This week I have returned to Indonesia for the second time in 2024. I don’t know how many times I have been to this amazing country since my first visit in 1992, but it has been a lot. I have had the opportunity to visit many of Indonesia’s different islands, from Sumatra to Makassar to Ambon, and to work with Indonesia military and academic institutions. In 1995, I spent a year at the Australian Defence Force School of Languages learning Bahasa Indonesia, which I used as a translator in the late 1990s during visits to Indonesia with senior military officers.

Therefore, it was a great pleasure to be invited back to Indonesia this week by the Indonesian Ministry of Defence. My mission was to present to a seminar attended by senior Indonesian military officers, as well as some of the local staff from foreign embassies (including the awesome team from the Australian embassy in Jakarta).

The topic of my talk was the relevance of lessons from Ukraine for the Pacific theatre, and for Indonesia in particular. This provided me with an opportunity to update and expand my previous assessments about the relevance of the lessons from Ukraine for application in the western Pacific. The majority of this article therefore covers the Ukraine lessons, differences in context between Eastern Europe and the Pacific, and the major challenges that emerge for countries that might seek to challenge Chinese military coercion and aggression in the western Pacific.

However, before I do, it is worth highlighting some context about Indonesia for those of you who may not know a lot about the country

Indonesia

Indonesia is a nation made up of many different ethic groups that live on more than 6000 of the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia is a mainly Muslim nation, and with a population of nearly 280 million, it is the largest Islamic nation in the world. It is also vibrant democracy, having shed the dictatorships that guided the nation in its first half century after independence in 1945.

Sitting astride the Pacific and Indian oceans, the archipelagic sea lanes through Indonesia are some of the most important in the world, including the Malacca Strait.

Map showing density of maritime trade through South East Asia and Indonesia. Source: Logcluster.org

Indonesia is a non-aligned state, having hosted the first conference of the non-aligned movement in Bandung in 1955. It is however an important member of ASEAN and was one of its founding members in 1967.

Indonesia has a large military. Its largest service, the Army, comprises about three quarters of the overall strength of the 400 thousand strong Indonesian military. The armed forces of Indonesia and Australia collaborate at multiple levels and maintain many training and education exchanges and conduct a range of bilateral exercises in the air, sea, land, cyber, special forces areas on an annual basis.

The leadership of the Indonesian military have a keen interest in learning about developments in contemporary warfare, including the lessons from the war in Ukraine. This is why I found myself speaking in Jakarta this week.

Translating Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific – and Indonesia

The primary focus of the assessment I provided in Jakarta was how we might translate the lessons of the war in Ukraine, be they tactical, strategic, or political, for application in the nations of the western Pacific region. There were three key elements of my presentation.

First, I provided some of the key insights and lessons that could be gleaned from the first three years of the war in Ukraine. This was by no means a comprehensive list and many of my readers here will be familiar with my views on how we can learn, and the key lessons, from the way. However, for clarity, I covered the following key lessons on modern war in my Jakarta presentation:

Lesson 1. A new era of mass and mobilisation. Deterrence and conflict in the Pacific may require planning for (and possibly conduct of) national mobilization I highlighted here how 21st century mobilization is a trinity of national (not military) endeavours: industry; people; and ideas (which you can read about in more detail here).

Lesson 2. The signature battle and meshed civil-military sensor networks. While I have written about this trend in detail both here and in reports for the Special Competitive Studies Project, I highlighted that the implication of meshing civil and military collection and analysis means that more investment will be needed in open-source information and assessment, including AI capabilities, for integration in military intelligence and operations. It would also require a greater focus on military deception operations.

Lesson 3. Cheaper and more precise deep strike capabilities. This has been an interesting development during the war in Ukraine, with Ukraine having developed a strategic strike complex from almost a standing start on 2022. This means that nations will need to invest in sovereign, lower cost strike weapons while also obtaining some of the more exquisite foreign systems. At the same time, we can't take our eye off close combat capabilities; each nation will need to achieve their own balance of close- and long-range combat systems depending on their particular circumstances.

Lesson 4. The evolving fight for influence. Both Russian and Ukraine have made significant investments in this area during the war. Nations need to deter war, and if they cannot, be capable of winning their wars and winning the narrative of their wars. At the same time, modern nations must counter misinformation and disinformation and educate their populace about trusted and compromised information sources.

Lesson 5. Ubiquitous air, land, and sea uncrewed systems. Even though remotely operated systems were developed and employed during the Second World War, and there has been development of newer systems since, the past three years has been the most intense, large-scale development and use of uncrewed systems in human history. Some of the implications of this include the ability of many nations to develop their own low-cost drones, as well as the need for military organisations to evolve their organisational, doctrinal and leadership models to better exploit the teaming of human and uncrewed systems.

Lesson 6. More integrated adaptation battle. Both Ukraine and Russia have learned and adapted during the war. Their forces have engaged in tactical learning (the Russians have been slower but have improved) as well as strategic learning and adaptation (which is learning that supports improving a nations war effort and ability to win wars). The crucial point is that both systems are necessary, and they must be linked to reinforce each other.

Lesson 7. The enduring importance of good leadership and strategy. The war in Ukraine has provided a plethora of lessons about national and tactical leadership (the good and the bad) as well as nations investing in the ability to develop good strategy, based on tested assumptions, and the ability to continuously assess and evolve that strategy. But, part of this is also democratic nations being able to have tough, honest decisions with their citizens about investing in defence and strategic resilience capabilities.

Optimizing Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific

But, given the profound differences in culture, geography, politics, infrastructure and weather between Eastern Europe and the western Pacific, a degree of translation is needed to ensure that the observations gathered from the war in Ukraine are optimised for application in this region of the world. There are five key ‘Pacific filters’ that can be applied in this optimization process, and these are examined below.