Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Durrie. 0:13 In this week's report, Steven Metz will discuss how Russia and the US approach limited wars and why Russia has some structural advantages fighting them. 0:23 But first, I welcome, as always, Judah Grunstein to the show for our briefing on world affairs. So Judah, uh, what, what has crossed your desk this week? 0:31 Well, there are a couple, uh, elections that are coming up this weekend, um, that we ran briefings on today. The first is by Christine Wade on Peru's presidential and congressional elections on Sunday. 0:46 And, uh, for background, Peru has been actually one of the more successful South American countries economically, uh, driven by, by mining and resource-based development. 0:57 And it's also a founding mender- member of the Pacific Alliance, which is a, a grouping of, of countries that have more liberal economic policies, uh, that, that contrast, uh, especially in recent years with the Chavez or even the Lula, Lula model of Latin American leftist politics and, uh, economics, economic policy. 1:18 And in addition, since the end of the dictatorship under Alberto Fujimori in, in 2000, uh, Peru's democracy has been relatively solid. 1:29 But, um, and, and, and that's, uh, increasingly under, uh, being questioned this year, where the, the leading candidate is Fujimori's daughter, Keiko, who, who was a candidate in 2011 and was already controversial due to, due to fears that she would pardon her father, who is, who's currently in jail for human rights abuses and corruption. 1:55 Um, at the same time, there, there, there have also been, uh, controversial rulings by the Electoral Commission, one that used a technicality to disqualify the candidate who had been polling second at the time, Julio Guzman, and another that cleared Keiko Fujimori of vote-buying charges. 2:14 And, um, and, uh, Keiko Fujimori is currently the, the leading candidate. Um, and at the same time, because of the, the controversial nature of her, of her family connections mainly, um, there, there's a lot of, uh, 2:32 uh, there, there's, there's sort of a glass ceiling to how high she can, she can actually poll in the second round runoff. 2:39 So Christine discusses just the chaotic run-up to Sunday's voting and also why the, the race really is, is a race for second place in the first round voting to see who will face off against Keiko Fujimori and with, with a strong likelihood that that person will actually become president. 2:56 Interesting. Um, and then the other election this weekend is in Chad, where, uh, I think you probably have more familiarity than I do. 3:06 Yeah, and you, you ran a, uh, good briefing on the situation in Chad by Celeste Hicks. And, uh, yeah, they have an election upco- coming up on Sunday. 3:16 And I think in, in contrast to Peru, there's, it's a bit of a foregone conclusion. 3:20 Um, so, uh, the, the, uh, President Idriss Déby, uh, who has been in power since 1990, uh, will almost certainly win, uh, and almost certainly in the first round. 3:33 And, um, but, uh, in contrast to previous years, there have, has been a, a series of demonstrations, uh, against Déby i- in, in, in recent weeks since about February, um, when there was a case of a very high-profile rape in which, uh, the perpetrators had strong links to regi- regime insiders, so one of them, uh, was the son of the foreign minister. 3:59 So the kind of political opposition, uh, crystallized around that and brought, this, this case brought people to the street, and they vented their frustration, um, with, with elite privilege in Chad. 4:10 Because while Déby has positioned himself very well internationally as a very strong ally of France and the US in its, in, in, in the war on terrorism, um, he has under- underperformed at home, despite oil production picking up under his rule and so on. 4:27 So, um, uh, y- it will probably be the, the biggest challenge to Déby in, in quite a while, but still he, uh, Celeste points out that, uh, that it's not really a struggle for him to pull through, especially because the opposition is very split. 4:44 Um, some allege, uh, by design that, uh, Déby has a, has a hand in, in kind of setting up, uh, opposition parties and, um, splitting the opposition vote. 4:56 M- And, um, yeah, so I, I think I, I concur with Celeste that, uh, he is not in real danger now, but that, th- that this is kind of a, a warning shot to his administration. It, it also, the, the election highlights two 5:14 sort, sort of recurring threads and recurring narratives in, in terms of African politics and governance. The first is this idea of a, a very richly endowed country that remains very poor. 5:29 So there have been billions of dollars of oil revenues, uh, s- for Chad in the past decade, but, uh, the, the majority of Chadians haven't really seen the benefits of that. 5:39 And the second is this, this tension between international 5:47 needs, uh, the, the needs of, of international partners for security cooperation and stability, while at the same time recognizing that this kind of authoritarian rule or, or, or non-democratic rule over the long term is a recipe for instability, uh, ultimately, a long-term recipe similar to what we've seen in Burkina Faso, where Blaise Compaoré was a long-time security partner for the West and, and had his hand in a lot of different pots in terms of mediating conflict, some say also stirring them up so that he could mediate them. 6:26 And Chad is a similar case where you have this, this ruler like Déby who has proved to be a very reliable partner. 6:35 The Chadian military is one of the more effective militaries in the region, and so a reliable and effective partner. At the same time, the West sort of has to turn a blind eye to these non-democratic, uh, 6:49 tendencies that are going on, uh, in the hopes that they can buy time. But, uh, again, it's, it's this sort of d- double-edged sword where in general it does, it, it usually doesn't end well. Yeah. 7:02 So but, uh, you also had a ve- a very interesting piece by Frieda Ghitis, one of her columns, um, on one of the, uh, preeminent stories in international affairs this, this, uh, this week, uh, the Panama Papers. 7:15 Yes, and what I liked about Frieda's angle was she, she framed it, uh, by, by, by arguing that in some ways the reaction to the leaks in various countries, uh, is as revealing as the leaks themselves. 7:30 So, so these leaks implicate people from almost every country in the world, and yet the, the reactions have been very, very different. 7:39 So she, she starts with Iceland, where the prime minister has alread- already been forced to resign over offshore shell companies in his wife's name that, that suggested a conflict of interest over the country's controversial bank bailouts following the global financial crisis. 7:56 And Frieda contrasts that, uh, with the reaction in China, where the news which, which implicated members of President Xi Jinping's family was censored, and this, uh, even though, uh, President Xi's, uh, president, his presidency has been dominated in some ways by this anti-corruption campaign that he's been using and some, some argue to, to, to weed out rivals and, and opponents. 8:23 Um, and, and Frieda also mentions Russia, where the news media has been 8:28 r- essentially tamed by the Kremlin and framed the leaks as part of a Western conspiracy to target President Vladimir Putin, whose inner circle was also implicated in the leaks. 8:41 So Frieda makes the distinction between how democracies respond to this kind of news as an opportunity to root out corruption and tax evasion, and how authoritarian regimes respond to them as attacks targeting, targeting them, uh, painting themselves as the victim, and that, that reflects their brittleness when it comes to these kind of, these kind of revelations. 9:02 Um, more broadly, the, the s- the story itself, the Panama Papers leak, leaks itself, themselves, 9:12 th- point to something that we've talked about in previous podcasts about corruption as a topic that we identified at WPR as one of the key issues to watch this year, uh, because of the, the, the backdrop, the context of sluggish economic growth and income inequality as a, um, more and more prominent issue, uh, among, among popular opinion and, and publics. 9:39 And I think for the, the reason that the Panama Papers are so especially damning is because they show what, what, what people always sort of know but never necessarily have, or very rarely have the paper trail proof 9:56 that, uh, that there are essentially two sets of rules, one for the extremely wealthy and power- powerful and another for everyone else. 10:05 And in the, the context of the last four or five years especially, where, uh, the burdens of austerity and the pain of the economic doldrums throughout especially Europe and, uh, but also elsewhere, are, have not been evenly distributed. 10:23 And so again, it's something that everyone knows, but when revelations or leaks like this come along to prove it, it's especially damning and, and also potentially politically destabilizing. Yeah. 10:36 Um, we'll see where this all ends up with the Panama Papers and other corruption, uh, scandals. Uh, thank you again for, for joining me. Thank you. It's been a pleasure, as always. 10:46 You can find these stories on worldpoliticsreview.com, along with many others. As a listener to Trendlines, WPR will give you a special deal on its yearly subscription. 10:56 Simply go to about.worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast to get access. 11:01 [upbeat music] Throughout their history, both Russia and the US have engaged in so-called limited wars within and outside their borders to further their political agendas. 11:15 Steven Metz, military analyst and regular contributor to WPR, wrote a piece detailing the concept of limited war and how the two nations' approach to waging these wars differ from each other. I'm Steven Metz. 11:31 Uh, I am a, uh, author and an analyst on defense and national security affairs with a specialty in, uh, insurgency, low-intensity conflict, and the future conflict environment. 11:45 The, the phrase limited war was one that security specialists, uh, really began talking about m- uh, primarily in the 1950s, but it is a, a phenomenon that's really existed throughout history. 11:59 Uh, the idea is that a- a- at almost every historical, uh, time, there is what's often called great power war, major war between nations, empires, kingdoms, whatever. 12:12 Uh, but at the same time, there are wars that involve great powers, nations, kingdoms, and, uh, other types of entities, uh, tribes, militias, roving bands, uh, whatever. 12:26 Uh, these would be known as limited wars as opposed to great power wars. Uh, while both have existed throughout history, they've sort of vacillated in strategic significance. 12:38 Uh, and basically, at times in history when the chances of great power war are high or when great power war is actually taking place, uh, limited war may still exist, but it kind of recedes into the background. 12:53 But in times like our current era, where there is no great power war, in fact, it seems quite unlikely, that increases the strategic significance of 13:03 limited wars that today are involving extremist movements, insurgents, uh, groups that use terrorism and so forth. 13:11 During the Cold War, most of what were then called limited wars, uh, were things that involved movements that were using insurgency, nationalist movements, anti-colonial movements, separatist movements, uh, and the like, uh, that were fighting against their local government. 13:30 Um, often these sorts of conflicts drew outside intervention by the great powers as well. Uh, during the Cold War, one of the major dynamics of limited war was that the Soviet Union and the United States 13:44 used this as a sort of proxy conflict. The United States would support, uh, a nation or to some extent an, an armed group that, uh, that it favored. The Soviet Union would, would support the other side. 13:57 So you had, uh, sort of an indirect proxy conflict between the great powers. Uh, today most limited wars take in a slightly different fashion because there is less use of it as proxy conflict. 14:12 Uh, the, the dominant form today, the most important type in the world, uh, are the, uh, the, uh, the insurgencies, the terrorist campaigns by, uh, Islamic extremist movements that we're seeing in Syria, in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, uh, in Nigeria and other parts of Africa as well. 14:31 [dramatic music] A little more than two hundred years ago, Russia first went to war over Chechnya. Conflict continued through the 1850s. 14:42 At the end of World War II, the entire Chechen population, hundreds of thousands of people, was literally shipped to Siberia by Stalin. 14:50 By the late '50s, Chechens had returned to their homeland under the grip of central Russian control. 14:59 B- because of the, the, the, the thousand-year history of Russia, um, it actually has a much deeper involvement in limited war than the United States does, in, in part because it's an older nation. 15:12 But, but, um, Russia of course began as a, uh, a, uh, fairly small princely state and over the course of a thousand years, uh, expanded immensely, uh, a- a- until it covered an entire continent. 15:26 And then of course in the last century it also became a, uh, a great power with, uh, with global aspirations. 15:33 During this thousand-year, uh, spread, Russia very often encountered, uh, smaller political units, tribes, principalities, kingdoms, whatever, uh, a- a- at its border that either posed a challenge to it or in some cases, uh, were actually incorporated in Russian territory and wanted to try to use, uh, i- insurgency and things like that, uh, to become independent. 16:00 So for Russia, most of its experience with limited war throughout most of its history 16:07 was what today's security specialists would call pacification, where it's trying to use the minimum amount of resources, uh, to keep restive tribes, militias, uh, principalities, whatever, on its border from posing a threat to it or from those that are within its borders from, uh, from trying to, uh, become separate. 16:28 Beginning in the late 1800s, uh, Russia continued to do this, but it also took on another form of limited war, and that was using involvement in limited war as a means of proxy conflict against the other great powers. 16:44 Russia did this in particular against Turkey. I mean, Russia had a, an ongoing conflict with, uh, with Turkey for four or five hundred years. 16:53 Uh, by the 1800s, uh, as Turkey weakened, the Ottoman Empire, Russia found it, uh, very useful to support rebels and separatist movements and nationalist movements that were fighting against the Turks. 17:06 One good example of that was the, uh, uh, the Greek war for independence in the early 1800s. 17:13 Russia also used this sort of, uh, support to, uh, uh, to various sorts of movements as proxy conflict against Great Britain, uh, in Central Asia, Afghanistan, uh, what today is Pakistan, and so forth. 17:28 So Russia really developed these two methods, one that was pacification of, uh, of potential, uh, enemies either inside its borders or in the periphery of its borders. 17:40 The other was to sup-- was support to, uh, to rebel movements, uh, as a way of weakening other great powers. Um, during the Cold War, Russia continued to do this, uh, uh, use these same two techniques. 17:53 At the end of the Cold War, there was about a ten-year period where Russia was weakened enough that it didn't do much of the, uh, the, the proxy type of conflict. It still did, uh, quite a bit of trying to pacify, uh, 18:06 its, um, enemies inside its borders or outside them, uh, through things like the Chechen Wars. 18:12 But recently as Russia has kind of gotten back on its feet and Putin has become more assertive and seems determined to, uh, raise, uh, Russia's role in the global stage again, uh, it appears to be easing back into the use of, of, uh, limited war as a means of proxy conflict as well. 18:33 And I think the re- the recent Russian intervention in Syria is a, is a good example of that. 18:37 [dramatic music] [explosion] [gunshots] The battle for the strategic town of Debaltseve in Eastern Ukraine last February was a crucial turning point in the war between Ukrainian government forces and armed groups backed by Russia. 19:01 The pro-Russia forces took the town after encircling thousands of Ukrainian troops. [dramatic music] Uh, well, Putin has done a, a number of things to augment Russia's effectiveness at limited war. 19:17 And, uh, y- not coincidentally, uh, these things to a large extent mirror what the Soviet Union did, particularly in the first few decades of, of its existence. 19:28 Um, one tool that the Soviets used in limited war that Russia is not as able to do today is simply the provision of, of, uh, of monetary assistance to rebels and, uh, and other groups that it supports. 19:46 Uh, the Russian economy is, is such today that, uh, that Putin simply can't afford to take on clients like, say, Cuba, uh, that was a client of the Soviet Union, uh, um, during the Cold War, uh, North Vietnam and so forth. 20:01 So what Putin has done is really concentrate on two techniques that make Russia more effective at limited war. One is simply to revive and improve the Russian military. Uh, in the past decade or two 20:17 as Russia's, uh, production of raw materials, particularly, particularly oil and gas increased, uh, and as income flowed in from that, uh, Putin was able to dramatically increase Russian defense spending 20:33 and, uh, which, uh, which helped augment Russia's conventional capability and to, uh, to, to help revive, uh, the special operations capability that the, uh, that the, the, the, the Russian military has. 20:46 So, so part of the way that he's increased the effectiveness is by simply increased defense spending, defense reforms to make it, make it, uh, more effective. Um, the other way is by developing 21:00 a range of methods that security specialists today often call gray zone or gray area, uh, aggression. And this is something that we've really seen from Russia in, uh, Georgia and, uh, most explicitly in the Ukraine. 21:16 And, uh, what Putin has done there is to use a wide range of techniques short of outright, overt, obvious Russian conventional military aggression as a way of, in fact, committing aggression. 21:31 He, he's done this by advising, uh, and to some degree funding local proxies by sending in Russian special operations forces, uh, sort of in disguise to look like they aren't, um, Russian forces. 21:45 Uh, he's done this by using cyber war. He's done this by, uh, sort of psychological operations and propaganda. So the whole idea of this gray area aggression 21:58 is that it is a way to commit aggression kind of below the threshold that the rest of the world, uh, might take action. [dramatic music] Good afternoon, everybody. As a candidate for president, 22:15 I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end for the sake of our national security and to strengthen American leadership around the world. 22:25 After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of two thousand and eleven. 22:35 So today, I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over. 22:50 [dramatic music] While the United States certainly has a, uh, a longstanding, uh, tradition of involvement in types of limited war, I mean, going back to the, uh, to the various pacification campaigns, uh, against the Native Americans. 23:08 For the United States, limited war was always looked at as something that was unnatural and temporary. 23:16 There almost was the attitude that, uh, when the United States was involved in a limited war, that once it was over, it's something that, uh, that the United States wouldn't do again in the future. 23:27 In other words, we saw every episode where we, we were dragged into limited war as sort of the last example. 23:34 And that's, I think, uh, uh, different in some important ways from, um, the Russian instance because Russia, because of its history, always looked at limited war, pacification, what we today call counterinsurgency, as simply a, a natural part of being a great power. 23:51 You never saw the idea on the part of Russians that, well, if we can just complete this limited war, if we can just finish this conflict, then we won't do this anymore. 24:01 The United States, on the other hand, has tended to have that particular attitude, that every one was an unusual occurrence. It was the last one. Once it was over, we wouldn't do that, uh, ever again. 24:13 And you can certainly see that in the last fifty years or so in the way that the United States approached counterinsurgency. 24:20 The United States, uh, didn't get involved in counterinsurgency or counterinsurgency support until the early nineteen sixties. 24:27 It felt that it had to do so because there were so many Soviet-backed rebel movements that were having success. 24:34 But when the United States did it and developed capabilities, concepts and ideas and organizations in Vietnam, once that was over, it took all of this apart. It simply forgot everything it knew. 24:46 It, it, it got rid of the old files And move forward with the idea that it would just-- that was something that, uh, that the United States did once, but it wouldn't do again. 24:57 The end of the nineteen-eighties, the United States was forced to kind of relearn and redevelop its capability for counterinsurgency because of conflicts in El Salvador and elsewhere. 25:07 Once those were over, again, it kind of erased everything it knew. It, it, it, it took counterinsurgency out of the curriculum at the military schools. It took, took its organizations apart. 25:18 It didn't develop any new doctrine. So there was another about ten or fifteen-year period where, uh, the United States was hoping or pretending that it wouldn't have to do that again. Then came Iraq and Afghanistan. 25:30 It had to go back and, and relearn almost from a, uh, from a, uh, a blank sheet. Over the years, it got very, very good at counterinsurgency support, counterterrorism. 25:41 Uh, but there are signs today that as the US disengages from Iraq and Afghanistan, it might repeat the same process and once again say, "Okay, that's over. We won't do that anymore. 25:53 Let's just forget about that and move on to other things." 25:56 I, I think the US's biggest organizational or structural disadvantage when it comes to waging limited war is the nature of the American political system is one that was explicitly designed by the Founding Fathers to make it difficult for national leaders, uh, to become involved in any kind of conflict other than a big, full-scale, obvious conventional war. 26:21 Uh, hence, we have a division of responsibilities b- uh, for the use of military power between the Congress and the executive. 26:29 You know, all of this, uh, division was done deliberately because America's Founding Fathers, uh, didn't want the United States to be a great power the way the European great powers were continually, uh, using proxy war and getting involved in other places. 26:46 Uh, as a result of this and a-as, uh, uh, in, in part because of America's history, Americans tend to have this attitude that the normal state of human affairs is peace. Uh, occasionally, there will be periods of war. 27:01 When that happens, uh, the tradition is that the United States declares war. It mobilizes, it builds a big military, it wins the war, then it demobilizes and returns back to peacetime. 27:15 And this is a, a, is a very different attitude than Russia, because Russia, because of its tradition, saw low-level conflict as the normal state of affairs. 27:25 It was organized and planned to be involved in it all of the time. For the United States, involvement in any kind of conflict was seen as something abnormal, something temporary. 27:36 So what that means is on the part of the American public and American leaders, 27:42 when the United States is involved in a conflict like this, uh, there tends to be a sense of weariness or patience, uh, that emerges fairly quickly. 27:52 Uh, in the conflict with Islamic extremism that began after the, uh, September 11, 2001, uh, attacks, uh, American military and defense leaders, uh, were calling it the long war. 28:05 Uh, they were, they were saying that the war against Islamic extremism could last for decades. Despite the fact that political and military leaders were saying that, uh, mu-much of the public simply never bought it. 28:18 Uh, th-there is this kind of shortness of attention. The idea is, "Okay, we've been in war, albeit limited war, for fourteen, fifteen years now. Uh, we're getting tired of that. 28:30 Let's find a way to disengage from it and get back to the normal state of affairs, which is peace, peace, and no involvement in conflict." 28:38 I am a believer that American engagement, uh, in many, if not all parts of the world is, is a good thing. 28:47 So I'm, I'm personally not an advocate of disengagement, uh, taken to ex-- uh, its, its extreme, uh, uh, isolationism. 28:56 Uh, on the other hand, I'm also not a fan of the idea that we should somehow, uh, change our national strategic culture, change our, our means of government, uh, so that involvement in limited war is easier. 29:11 Uh, what I do think, uh, the United States needs to do is to have more realistic expectations. 29:19 Uh, in other words, we need, uh, our political leadership on both the political right and political left, Democrats and Republicans, uh, to recognize the fact that, that, uh, involvement in limited war is an unfortunate evil that will be required sometime. 29:37 It will not, in most cases, lead to a decisive victory the way that conventional war might. 29:44 And our political leaders need to stop using, uh, US involvement in limited war as a partisan cudgel that they use, uh, against their enemies. 29:54 We're just seeing so much of that today, that, uh, political opponents of President Obama are slamming him because, you know, we've been in conflict with the Islamic State for, what, two years now or something like that, and they're not defeated. 30:09 I mean, if one looks at the, you know, three-thousand-year history of limited war, uh, to defeat a clever, uh, and determined enemy like the Islamic State, particularly one at a great distance, is not something that happens in, in two or three years. 30:24 It is something that takes decades and decades. 30:27 So I think what the United States needs to do is to avoid involvement in limited war as much as possible, but to recognize that there might be times when it is in the national interest and is, is in the interest of, of America's allies and partners, but that we need to have realistic expectations on how difficult it will be and what the results will be once, uh, it does reach some sort of resolution or conclusion. 30:55 My thanks to Stephen for these insights. 30:57 You can check out the full article titled A Tale of Two Strategies: Limited War in US and Russian Strategic Culture on worldpoliticsreview.com, and you can get your special discount on WPR's yearly subscription at about.worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast. 31:15 If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to Trendlines on iTunes or in the podcast app of your choice, and we would be really happy if you give us a good rating or a nice comment at the same time. 31:27 Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Durrie. 31:30 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 31:40 The additional audio used in the report was sourced from The Washington Post, Vice, and the White House. Have a fantastic weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. [outro jingle]
