By Stephen Smoot
“The thing which hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” reads Ecclesiastes 1:9
Historians usually paraphrase this Biblical wisdom from “the words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem” with the more pithy “history repeats itself,” but they mean the same thing. The repetitiveness of history serves a useful purpose in providing context from the past to try and unlock events in the present.
A current example may lie in Ukraine’s shock invasion of Russia last week.
Ukraine forces launched an invasion of Russia proper, aiming first at the strategic gas transit town of Sudzha, then toward the energy production center of Kursk. The British Daily Mail called the invasion “a fresh humiliation for Vladimir Putin” two years into the war.
Readers should please set aside for the moment their feelings about the morality of the wars discussed henceforth and consider only the strategic, economic, diplomatic, and political aspects.
Putin faces an invasion of the nation over which he presides just over two years into the conflict that he launched. While successful in occupying some territory, Russian forces have not broken the will or the strategic and tactical capabilities of Ukraine. Western aid comes in amounts just shy of that which might provoke a direct conflict between their countries and Moscow.
Nations supporting Ukraine hope that a Russian loss will both preserve the Ukraine state and also blunt Russian power in the region.
Last week, the publication Foreign Policy reported that “as of this writing, it is still unclear whether thinned-out and poorly prepared Russian forces have been able to halt the Ukrainian advance.” It went on to say that “the operation demonstrates Ukraine’s ability to achieve surprise and exploit sudden breakthroughs.”
By comparison, in his excellent study “Lincoln and His Generals,” T. Harry Williams describes the days before the Battle of Gettysburg as follows “at the time (General George) Meade assumed command (of the Union Army of the Potomac) the Confederate Army was scattered over a wide area in southern Pennsylvania. (Robert E.) Lee, meeting no opposition, had sent his columns against a number of key cities.”
Williams wrote of the iconic town that “its strategic significance was great,” much like Kursk.
Many of the strategic realities for the Confederate States of America have recurred in surprisingly close ways to the Russo-Ukraine War. Ukraine is large in size, but significantly smaller than its opponent in both land and population. Most of its borderlands are with its enemy, which can use command of the sea to restrict trade. Kiev, like Richmond, lies approximately 100 miles from its enemy’s border.
The West tends to support Ukraine, just as Britain and France favored a Confederate victory. Russia’s territorial proximity to NATO members, like the Union’s long border with Canada, tends to temper the amount of aid allowed to its enemy due to fears of starting a direct war.
Some have concluded from the invasion and the scrambled Russian response that this demonstrates Ukrainian strength and Russian weakness. Don’t be so sure. Ukraine in 2024 also faces some of the same challenges as the Confederacy in 1863 behind the lines.
Ukrainian desperation, rather than confidence, may be the reason for the move.
A European Parliament Economic Governance and EMU Scrutiny Unit study shows that the outbreak of war erased nearly one third of Ukraine’s prewar economy. It includes United Nations estimates that recovery that brings the nation back to prewar indicators could cost $500 billion. Inflation of Ukraine’s currency hit 26.6 percent at the end of 2022. It stabilized, but will likely increase toward the end of this year.
A USAID backed study of social cohesion in Ukraine indicates that community cooperation in the country scored at a 5.5 out of 10, giving it a moderate rating. Social and economic strains from the war can have an effect on the bonds that hold Ukrainian peoples together.
In Emory Thomas’ “Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital,” he writes about how by 1863 “people living on fixed incomes felt the ruinous inflation” usually blamed on speculators. Divisions grew between the government and producers for the war effort over what constituted a “fair price” for goods and services.
The Center for International and Strategic Studies shares that the war has heaped additional costs onto agricultural production and that “most of these costs have been absorbed by Ukrainian producers in the form of lower prices.” Though the international community has assisted Ukraine in its export of products more than it helped the Confederacy unload its surplus cotton, these factors have not provided enough mitigation of problems such as “storage constraints” for unsold goods.
The Battle of Gettysburg approximately coincided with some of the strongest Union opposition to President Abraham Lincoln and his conduct of the war. His former Army of the Potomac commander, George McClellan, was openly critical and preparing to launch a political challenge against Lincoln. Days after the conclusion of the battle, authorities in New York City lost control as an event, better described as a pogrom against the black population than a riot, tore through the streets of the Union’s most prominent city. Also, throughout the war, Lincoln claimed the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus when necessary to tame the most active opponents to the conflict.
Putin has seen much less home front discord than Lincoln faced and retains a superiority in men and material over Ukraine, but faces similar pressures as the 16th president to achieve strategic goals and bring the conflict to a faster end.
After Gettysburg, Lincoln favored generals who advocated for total war. At the outbreak, Union generals conducted operations in gentlemanly fashion. Union general and future president Rutherford B. Hayes in 1861 punished some of his own men for needlessly burning a county courthouse and its records in what would become West Virginia. General In Chief Henry Halleck prior to the conflict compiled a book of the laws of war, many of which the Union Army later felt it had to break in pursuance of victory.
As the war passed, commanders and other soldiers grew more callous to humanitarian concerns. Union General George C. Crook’s 36th Ohio, operating mostly in the West Virginia mountains, described in his own postwar memoirs how, after a certain point, he ordered the execution of all Confederates captured. Union men under the command of Robert Milroy in Pendleton County ordered the bayonet execution of a Methodist minister who either would not or could not provide information on Confederate telegraph line saboteurs.
On a larger scale, starting in 1864, Ulysses S. Grant pursued a strategy of military, economic, and social attrition. The Russian Army, which has historically done this in most wars, relies on larger numbers to erode the fighting capacity of its opponents. Grant did the same to Lee, following Sun Tzu’s recommendation to attack what his enemy holds dear to compel him to waste his forces.
Grant early in the war also earned both foreign and domestic criticism, and some admiration, for his expectation of enemy commanders (except Lee at Appomattox) to surrender completely and without condition.
Putin has also turned to a more aggressive military leader in Major General Apty Alaudinov, a special forces commander. Some sources accuse him of allowing the torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Grant’s generals, William T. Sherman and Phil Sheridan, were turned loose on the Confederate heartland with the dual mission of breaking the will of the people to fight and destroying the enemy’s capacity to support the military, government, and people. They turned much of Georgia, the Carolinas, and the Shenandoah Valley into bleak wildernesses bereft of infrastructure and food, annihilating Atlanta, Columbia, Charleston, and other important cities.
Russia has never treated Ukraine as tenderly as Hayes did the rebels in 1861, but has also held back from conducting a war of annihilation as it did in East Prussia in 1944 and 45. Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, stated after the Ukrainian invasion that Russia should “mercilessly defeat and destroy the enemy” with strategy and tactics that “must remove any taboos.”
Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, also relentlessly pushed for more aggression, saying at one point “battles are to be won now and by us in the same and only manner they were ever won by any people, or in any age since Joshua, by boldly pursuing and striking the foe.”
As wars lengthen, their base brutality tends to deepen and worsen on both sides. Russia, as a nuclear power, likely has immunity against physical attack by Ukraine supporters if he decides to follow Lincoln’s example and unleash total war. Lincoln’s immunity came in the form of the latent threat he posed to British Canada.
It is more likely than not that Putin and Russia will ramp up the violence and brutality to hasten the end to the pointless war that has brought such destruction to both countries. Armchair analysts and politicians who never spent a moment in uniform may call for the United States and NATO to, in response, directly intervene – or at least make a credible threat to do so.
Why spend time illustrating and explaining these issues in a conflict half a world away in a local publication? Because without deft diplomacy and wise decisions in Washington DC, London, and elsewhere, this conflict could bring American servicemen and women into harm’s way, a possibility that should remain ever on the minds of those most likely to cause that collision of nations and interests.