WeeklyWorker

28.11.2024
Atacms launch: another red line crossed, another escalation followed

Notes on the war

Volodymyr Zelensky lost no time in using Atacms and Storm Shadows. In response, Putin changed Russia’s nuclear doctrine and issued orders for an intermediate-range ballistic missile strike. Jack Conrad assesses the growing dangers of walking towards the nuclear abyss

Frankly, I did not expect it. No, I thought Donald Trump would win on November 5. But what I did not expect was that, having held back for so long, Joe Biden - now a lame-duck president, after all - would give the go-ahead for Ukraine to use its Atacms (Army Tactical Missile System). No surprise, Britain instantly followed suit. Sir Keir’s government granted permission for Storm Shadows to hit targets inside the Russian Federation. Just a few days later, France did the same with its Scalps.

Germany, for its own reasons, is another matter entirely. Chancellor Olaf Schultz stubbornly refuses to even supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine - that despite constant nagging from his warmongering Green coalition partners.

Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to give his own go-ahead. A battery of Atacms was launched on November 19 - Russia claims it shot down five and damaged a sixth. US military sources, on the other hand, admit that, while two of them were indeed intercepted, six of eight successfully hit their target - an ammunition storage site in Karachev.1 Next it was Storm Shadows. Twelve were launched. Success is, of course, claimed by Ukraine and its western enablers. Either way, these missiles are not war winners … Ukraine has nothing like an endless supply. In fact, stocks are very limited. There usage is, therefore, more of symbolic than military importance at the present time.

Hence the knee-jerk assertion, made by the Morning Star’s editorial, that green-lighting Atacms and Storm Shadows is an attempt “to try and tip the military scales back in Kiev’s [sic] favour before Trump enters the White House”, reveals a truly profound ignorance of the real state of play.2 Methinks too that Ben Chacko still entertains a certain ‘official communist’ fondness for the occupants of the Kremlin - that despite nowadays their having far-right, deeply reactionary politics that ideologically closely aligns them with the Orthodox Church.

Nuclear doctrine

The Putin-FSB regime responded to yet another red line being crossed with Atacms and Storm Shadows, by changing Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Previously, the nuclear option was reserved for when Russia’s “very existence” was in jeopardy. Now the bar has been lowered to an attack, or attacks, that “create a critical threat to the sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity” of Russia and its neighbour and ally, Belarus. The new Putin doctrine also states that countries aiding and abetting an attack will be considered cobelligerents. Russia is therefore threatening Nato with a nuclear response to what is a Ukrainian attack using conventional weapons. A strategy widely known as “escalate to de-escalate”, but John Hyten - former chief of the US Space Command - says is more accurately rendered as “escalate to win.”3

To underline the new doctrine an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile - designed to carry a heavy nuclear payload - was launched from the Kapustin Yar rocket base in Russia. Some 15 minutes later it hit targets 500 miles away in Dnipro. Not only are such missiles very fast - 10 times the speed of sound - they can manoeuvre mid-course and are therefore very difficult to intercept. This one carried six independently targeted warheads, though, to state the obvious, none were nuclear (the US was given a 30-minute warning “through nuclear risk reduction channels”, presumably because they are strategic weapons4).

Incidentally, Atacms, Storm Shadow, Scalp, etc are regularly called “long-range missiles” in the popular media. This causes endless confusion - after all, they have a range of only around 150-190 miles. That is a lot, compared with battlefield anti-tank missiles, true, but they hardly give Ukraine the ability to strike “deep into Russia”.5 The country is, after all, rather big, with 11 time zones, and measures 5,600 miles east to west. Intermediate-range ballistic missile, note, have a range of under 3,420 miles. Intercontinental ballistic missiles over 3,000 miles.

Anyhow, The New York Times reports that Biden’s change of heart over Atacms was due to the deployment of North Korean troops to fight in Kursk.6 There are some 12,000 of them there at the moment and it is suggested that their numbers could eventually rise to 100,000.7 Russia itself has amassed an army of 50,000, ready for yet another bid to retake the Ukrainian-held salient captured back in August. The first failed, presumably because Ukrainian forces quickly dug in and put in place dragon’s teeth and other such defences. Russia reportedly counterattacked with tanks in the lead and sustained heavy losses. Nonetheless, Ukraine has already lost more than 40% of the territory it first took. At its peak, Ukrainian forces controlled roughly 531 square miles of Russian territory, this has now been reduced to approximately 309 square miles.8

But surely Biden’s main target with his Atacms decision is less Russian ammunition dumps, command posts and fuel silos. It is more the incoming Trump administration. After all, albeit hyperbolically, candidate Trump pledged to bring peace within 24 hours of being elected. No-one - no-one who is not irremediably stupid - believed that for one moment, but it is clear that he has every intention of forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table and offering Russia some kind of deal.

The Biden administration’s determination to use the Ukraine conflict as a “proxy war to hurt Russia” rather than help Ukraine win the war explains why the US has “done nothing” to promote a ceasefire or a peace agreement - the argument of the Make America Great Again camp. Trump’s pick for Ukraine-Russia special envoy, Keith Kellogg, therefore insists that “once” the Russo-Ukraine conflict “became a stalemate and a war of attrition, it was in the best interests of Ukraine, America and the world to seek a ceasefire and negotiate a peace agreement with Russia”.9

Basically Trump’s immediate plan is to freeze the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and establish an 800-mile buffer zone along the existing front line - Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, has already volunteered “boots on the ground”.10 Baltic, Polish, British, Netherlands and Nordic contingents are envisaged. Note, however, peacekeepers easily become peacemakers: ie, active combatants.

With fighting ended, negotiations follow. Trump, we are told, insists that Ukraine will have to cede Crimea to Russia and thereby allow it free access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Besides that particular bit of real estate, the deal could well see Ukraine compelled to concede either the whole or part of the Donbas. That or giving the two oblasts autonomous status within Ukraine. Zaporizhzhia and Kherson could be likewise conceded, divided or, conceivably, traded off in exchange for the Kursk enclave. There is talk too of Trump blocking the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to Nato - another strategic concession to Russia.

A grossly unequal treaty could, I have argued in a string of recent ‘Notes on the war’ articles, easily see Zelensky ousted by an Azov putsch. One can already imagine lieutenant colonel, Denys Prokopenko - comrade ‘Redis’ - contemplating his march on Kyiv. The putschists, if they succeed, would charge him with selling out, being a Jewish traitor, not being properly Ukrainian. But without powerful outside backers any such post-Zelensky regime could do nothing serious. Ukraine lacks, after all, an independent arms industry. Eg, though Ukraine can upgrade Soviet-era T-72 ‘coffins’, it is overwhelmingly reliant on western supplies of military hardware.11

Nor, when it comes to Trump’s peace plan, should we discount the fact that a Democrat-Republican war party exists and still exerts a powerful influence - yes, there is a vocal Republican minority in Congress that wants war, war, not jaw, jaw.12 Essentially what unites the war party is the plan to reboot US global hegemony outlined in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1987 bestseller, The grand chessboard.

At the cost of a relatively paltry $64.1 billion over what is now nearly three years since the ‘special military operation’ began, Russia has successfully been bogged down in what is a 21st century version of the 1914-18 western front.13 A quagmire that has so far claimed between 113,000 and 160,000 Russian lives.14 And, the more Russian casualties, the more Russia’s coffers are drained, the more inflation rips, the nearer comes a colour revolution and installing some pliant neocolonial regime - so goes the reasoning both in the Pentagon and Langley, Virginia. Ukraine must, therefore, be manacled hand and foot to the commitment to keep fighting till the withdrawal of every single Russian soldier from every single inch of pre-2014 territory ... a US strategic conception which serves the core aim of surrounding China and putting a stop to its ‘inevitable’ rise.

Remember then, Trump comes not only bearing an olive branch: he carries a big stick too. If the Putin-FSB regime rejects his peace deal, that would see the threat of “increased American support for Ukraine”.15 Perhaps Trump would embrace Zelensky’s victory plan in its entirety … that is, including its three secret clauses (reportedly supplying subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles with their 1,350-1,550-mile range and, far more importantly than that, the west providing a non-nuclear “deterrence package”16). In other words, though Trump is seeking some kind of accommodation with Russia, failing that, there is the “phasing into World War III”.

Morale matters

It is a commonplace amongst a neo-isolationist strand of US commentators - and echoed on the gullible left, not least the pro-Kremlin, the Z left - that the Russian invasion is succeeding; that Ukraine is doing terribly badly; that the Kursk incursion was a dreadful mistake, a brilliant Putin trap; that Zelensky foolishly diverted vital troops from the Donbas front; etc.

This can be seen from various contributors at a symposium on the Ukraine war staged by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in mid-August 2024 - sponsors include George Soros and the Ford Foundation. Ivan Eland: “Ukraine risks being surrounded by superior forces”. Mark Episkopos: “unlikely to yield any strategic benefits for Ukraine and will demand a massive sustained investment of troops and equipment that may weaken Ukrainian defences.” Lyle Goldstein: “legitimate questions can be asked regarding the wisdom of the new offensive.” Sumantra Maitra: it might “embolden the hardliners in the Russian government, and dissuade Putin from pushing for any negotiations for peace.” Stephen Walt: “a sideshow” which “will not affect the outcome of the war.” John Mearsheimer too: “a major strategic blunder, which will accelerate [Ukraine’s] defeat”.17

That sort of assessment about Ukraine’s successful Kursk incursion goes hand-in-hand with the claim that the US has met its limits in Ukraine. But no-one in Europe’s ruling circles, let alone America’s, seriously expected Ukraine to defeat Russia and send its armed forces scuttling back to its pre-2014 borders. That was never going to happen. No, not even with Javelin anti-tank missiles, Leopard II main battle tanks, F-16 fighter aircraft or Atacms cruise missiles. Indeed the widespread expectation was of a Ukrainian surrender in February 2022. Stalemate - even if Ukraine is on the back foot at the moment - is, therefore, a major victory, as far as hawks in the west are concerned.

Moreover, when it comes to Kursk, not only have Ukraine’s forces managed to hold the Sudzha salient - so far. It has been Russia which is being forced to divert precious resources in order to expel them - reportedly Putin has given a February 2025 deadline. If attackers need a 3:1 advantage over defenders, that certainly explains the 50,000 Russian troops readied for a “massive fight” in Kursk.18 It also explains the presence of those 12,000 Korean People’s Army soldiers.

Having said that, a Ukrainian collapse cannot be completely ruled out. Not simply due to the slow, grinding Russian advance on the eastern front. More than 386 square miles has been captured between September 1 and November 3, indicating that Russia’s forward momentum has marginally accelerated in recent months.

No, in conditions where a Trump presidency is just weeks away and where he is threatening to cut off arms supplies unless Ukraine agrees to a significant loss of sovereign territory, morale must be very low. Are Ukrainian troops going to be up for dying for a little sod of land that might well be traded away in some grand deal? Do they believe that they can still win? And, given that they are outnumbered and outfired, there must be a growing reluctance to go over the top in some futile counterattack. More and more will defy barking orders, sneak away at night, refuse to return from leave. Others, perhaps, will seek out the traitor in Kyiv. The most extreme expression of a loss of morale is “mutiny”, writes Edgar Jones of King’s College London19 ... in the case of the Azov brigade this would, ironically, be an expression of their continued esprit de corps.

Morale matters. It is far more important than all those Leopard II tanks, F-16s and Atacms put together. As Napoleon Bonaparte famously remarked: “In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.”20 Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put “moral quantities” at the centre of his classic 1832 study, Vom Kriege (‘On war’). Tellingly he writes of the physical components of war being “little more than the wooden hilt, while the moral factors are the precious metal, the real weapon, the finely-honed blade”.21

Not surprisingly, morale has long been explicitly acknowledged in official military manuals. Eg, the 1914 edition of the British Army’s Field service regulations: “Success in war depends more on moral than on physical qualities. Skill cannot compensate for want of courage, energy and determination …. The development of the necessary moral qualities is therefore the first of the objects to be attained.” The manual goes on to state: “Superior numbers on the battlefield are an undoubted advantage, but skill, better organisation and training, and above all a firmer determination in all ranks to conquer at any cost, are the chief factors of success [and a] lack of determination is the most fruitful source of defeat.” It also notes that the decisive point of a battle is achieved when the enemy becomes “morally and physically exhausted”.22

There can be little doubt, however, that the average Ukrainian soldier is more driven by moral considerations than the average Russian soldier. They - that is, the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians - are fighting for their homeland, their right to self-determination, their patriotic honour, their family, their friends, their children, their age-old traditions: that against a foreign invader which denies their very national existence and has already overrun some 20% of the country. So, despite a mounting death toll, power outages, the difficulty in conscripting new recruits and soldiers going AWOL, a Ukrainian collapse is unlikely … unless it foolishly decides to defy Trump.

What about Russia’s soldiers? What are they fighting for? A Greater Russia? De-Nazification? Halting Nato’s eastward expansion? Hardly worth a candle ... perhaps that is why conscripts are officially excused from serving in Ukraine. However, Russia is increasingly turning to contracted troops to do its fighting. Three years of service, room and board and lots of fringe benefits. That and a monthly salary of 200,000 roubles (about £1,500).23 Good wages in Russia - especially in poorer oblasts, where the majority of recruits come from.24 Of course, there is a high chance that they will not survive. In that case Russia has provided for a posthumous payment worth 11 million roubles for families.25 As for those poor North Korean buggers, they must be terrified. They are about to be fed into the meat grinder for the glory of the Great Successor!

When it comes to the Ukraine war, too much commentary concentrates on the purely physical components: men deployed; numbers killed, captured and wounded; output of artillery shells; missile capabilities; supplies of fighter aircraft; gas pipelines; electricity grids. It is easy to see, therefore, why the gradgrindian conclusion is so often reached: Ukraine must lose. Of course, leave aside that such an assessment ignores the cardinal fact that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war on behalf of Nato and the United States, the global hegemon, the question of morale is rarely treated with the seriousness it deserves.

The fact of the matter is that, while the morale of Ukrainian troops is doubtless low at the moment, the morale of Russian troops is in all probability an awful lot lower. Their lives are being squandered on a colossal scale in criminally irresponsible human wave attacks. Discipline is brutal. Food is appalling. Corruption in the higher ranks rampant.

For their own obvious reasons the Ukrainian military authorities circulated an FSB report captured in the Kursk region in August, which paints a vivid picture of morale amongst Russian troops. It cites the example of a soldier who killed himself in January this year. He had, the report said, “a nervous and psychological breakdown, caused by his prolonged state of depression due to his service in the Russian army”. Unit commanders were given instructions to ensure soldiers consume Russian state media daily to maintain their “psychological condition”. Further instructions on keeping up morale came in an undated, typed document, urging that soldiers should get 5-10 minutes a day as well as an hour once a week of political instruction, “aimed at maintaining and raising the political, moral and psychological condition of the personnel”.26

We want our sort of politics to feature here, of course. Not impossible if rank-and-file troops assert themselves over junior officers and NCOs, and elect their own political commissars. Many front-line soldiers will have parents and grandparents with an elementary knowledge of the writings of Marx, Engels and, above all, Lenin. There is certainly a collective memory about how an imperialist war was turned into a revolution in 1917. We know that that fear palpably haunts the upper echelons in both Ukraine and Russia.

A gut recognition that rank-and-file soldiers have got more in common with each other than the top brass, the grasping oligarchs and the corrupt politicians in Kyiv and Moscow - surely that already exists. Indeed away from the intense fighting around this or that front-line town or village, there are doubtless unofficial truces being observed in the freezing, water-clogged trenches and dug-outs, as soldiers abide by that old adage of ‘live and let live’ ... from here fraternisation is just one step away.

Middle East

There are some on the left who do not see how the war in Ukraine “could potentially trigger World War III.”27 With Russia possessing 5,580 nuclear warheads … and threatening to use them against Nato under its new Putin doctrine, such a view is hard to credit. After all, the US has its own arsenal of 5,044 nuclear warheads and a military budget that outstrips its nearest six or seven allies and rivals put together. Then there is Britain (225 nuclear warheads) and France (290 nuclear warheads), both of which are locked into the US-dominated Nato alliance.

Moreover, Russia has an ‘everlasting’ friendship with China, a country which boasts the world’s second largest economy and its third largest stock of nuclear warheads (500).28 And, as we have repeatedly argued - and demonstrated citing numerous reliable sources - America’s main target in getting Russia bogged down in a draining Ukrainian quagmire is China - its only serious rival. Surely a recipe for World War III.

Instead, we are told that, while the Russo-Ukraine war could become a full-blown Russo-Nato war, the “real trigger” for a World War III comes from an escalation in the Middle East. Eg, “With the intensification and spread of Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon, backed by US-led imperialism and fully supported by British and other capitalist governments, there is the distinct danger of (a nuclear) World War III.”29 Muddled thinking worthy of Ben Chacko himself.

In the Middle East there is just one nuclear weapons power - Israel. Though it neither officially admits nor officially denies its nuclear stockpile - pursuing a strategy of ‘deliberate ambiguity’ - it refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty, which would open it up for regular inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Despite that, Israel is widely reckoned to have between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads, which can be launched from land, sea and sky.30

Israel might conceivably attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities - which has given the country near weapons-grade uranium. Israel, note, launched such ‘surgical’ military strikes against Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007). However, neither Operation Opera nor Operation Outside the Box triggered a world war - not even a regional war.

If something like that happened in 2025 or 2026, the chances of Israel deploying nuclear weapons to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities remains around zero. Its nuclear weapons are there to deter. No, as in Iraq and Syria, Israel would use conventional missiles and bombs - although in this case it would have to include very powerful, precision-guided bunker busters. Iran has put its most valued nuclear sites underground and covered them with thick layers of cement and steel. So something up to and perhaps including America’s GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator would be needed, along with the sort of aircraft capable of delivering such a payload - the GBU‑57A/B MOP weighs in at a cool 30,000 pounds (far beyond Israel’s F-16s and F-35s). A B2 stealth bomber could do the job though … and maybe Trump would agree a lend-lease deal.

Either way, Israel would not fight a war as such with Iran - there will be no invasion for sure. No, Israel would seek to strategically degrade Iran … and that could only be done with the implicit say-so of the US - that or its direct participation. Eg, an initial Israeli ‘pre-emptive’ strike sees an Iranian retaliation, which, in turn, sees an extensive and intensive US blitz to prevent a second holocaust. Such would be the playbook.

Neither Russia nor China would, under these or similar circumstances, rush to Iran’s rescue. They will not - repeat, not - go to war with Israel over an attack on Iran. Nor, to state the obvious, would any other nuclear power (India, Pakistan, North Korea). To attack Israel, after all, would be to attack the US. No, there would be diplomatic protests … but little more than that.

The Arab street might well react altogether differently. However, that is another story.

  1. abcnews.go.com/International/new-russian-nuclear-doctrine-threatens-response-ukraines-western/story?id=115998090.↩︎

  2. Morning Star editorial November 19 2024.↩︎

  3. www.stratcom.mil/Media/Speeches/Article/1600894/us-strategic-command-space-and-missile-defense-symposium-remarks.↩︎

  4. www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/11/21/7485721.↩︎

  5. www.reuters.com/world/biden-lifts-ban-ukraine-using-us-arms-strike-inside-russia-2024-11-17.↩︎

  6. The New York Times November 17 2024.↩︎

  7. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-17/north-korea-may-end-up-sending-putin-100-000-troops-for-his-war.↩︎

  8. www.newsweek.com/russia-north-korea-kursk-donetsk-gains-map-1990741.↩︎

  9. americafirstpolicy.com/issues/america-first-russia-ukraine.↩︎

  10. The Guardian November 19 2024.↩︎

  11. mil.in.ua/en/articles/can-ukraine-produce-tanks.↩︎

  12. Eg, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul (Texas). Responding to Biden’s Atacms decision, he said this: “Better late than never, but it was late … I’ve been urging the administration to untie their hands for two years, and every weapons system they drag their feet and then they finally approve it … Let them use everything we’re giving them. Stop putting restrictions on them” (thehill.com/homenews/4998825-us-ukraine-missile-policy-shift-biden-gop).↩︎

  13. November 20 2024 - www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine. Remember the US annual ‘defence’ budget runs at around $900 billion - www.statista.com/statistics/262742/countries-with-the-highest-military-spending.↩︎

  14. The Guardian October 22 2024.↩︎

  15. The Independent June 25 2024.↩︎

  16. sputnikglobe.com/20241029/zelensky-requests-tomahawk-missiles-as-part-of-non-nuclear-deterrence-package---reports-1120718428.html.↩︎

  17. responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-kursk-incursion.↩︎

  18. www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/11/24/50000-russians-are-poised-to-attack-20000-ukrainians-in-kursk-ukrainian-brigades-are-bracing-for-a-massive-fight.↩︎

  19. E Jones Morale, psychological wellbeing of UK armed forces and entertainment: a report for the British Forces Foundation London 2012, p13.↩︎

  20. E Knowles (ed) The Oxford dictionary of quotations Oxford 1999, p538.↩︎

  21. C von Clausewitz On war Princeton NJ 1989, pp184–85. The term moral is used here in the sense of psychological outlook rather than ethical principles and right or wrong.↩︎

  22. War Office Field service regulations, part I, operations, 1909 (with amendments) London 1914.↩︎

  23. Ukrainian soldiers get something like half this amount. Their minimum monthly salary is 33,000 hryvnia (about £630). See english.nv.ua/business/new-benefits-for-ukrainian-serviceman-in-2024-50432568.html.↩︎

  24. www.forcesnews.com/russia/what-are-russian-soldiers-being-paid-fight-putins-war.↩︎

  25. www.intellinews.com/how-much-is-a-russian-soldier-s-life-worth-347848.↩︎

  26. The Guardian September 20 2024.↩︎

  27. Tony Clark, Letters Weekly Worker November 21 2024.↩︎

  28. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons.↩︎

  29. Ian Spencer, Bob Paul, Andy Hannah, Paul Cooper, Carla Roberts and Anne McShane, ‘Danger of World War III: the communist response’ Weekly Worker October 24 2024.↩︎

  30. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel.↩︎