The National Interest



[The United States assumed that Russia would be scared of the risks to
go into Syria. That is a mistake that should not be made when it comes
to Ukraine.]

By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Feb. 12, 2022

enior U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and military
officers are all sounding similar warnings. “If Russia intervenes,
they face a difficult fight.” “Russian forces will have to cope with
an insurgency.” “As the bodies of dead soldiers return home, Vladimir
Putin will come under increasing public pressure.” “Russia will not be
able to achieve its objectives—and will become bogged down in a
quagmire.”

You might think this is referring to ongoing statements coming out of
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ national
security team trying to warn the Kremlin over starting a military
adventure in Ukraine, but these comments echo pronouncements that were
being delivered in September 2015 by the Obama/Biden administration
prior to the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war. There are
some important lessons from how the Russian military and security
establishment has pursued that operation that are relevant if the
Kremlin decides to choose military force as its option for coercive
diplomacy against Ukraine. These lessons may lead to a different type
of fight than the United States is expecting and has been training and
equipping Ukrainian forces for.

First, the Russian intervention in Syria focused primarily on
destroying capabilities and fighting formations of the anti-Assad
opposition, rather than on occupying territory. The Kremlin made the
decision to become directly involved in the Syria conflict when, in
the late summer and early fall of 2015, opposition forces acquired
sufficient capabilities and momentum to push on Damascus and attempt
to dislodge Bashar al-Assad. By focusing on airpower, missile strikes,
and unmanned systems, the Russian task force concentrated on breaking
up and degrading opposition military formations.

The subsequent reoccupation of much of Syria’s territory by Assad’s
military was a byproduct of the massive pounding the opposition took,
rather than the initial purpose of the intervention, which was to
stave off Assad’s collapse.

Second, the Russians have maintained a relatively light footprint on
the ground in Syria. They chose not to focus on occupying territory or
taking on the responsibilities of governance. Indeed, in a number of
cases the Russians brokered a series of ceasefires that left local
leaders and notables in control of their immediate territory in return
for accepting overall government control. To the extent that the
Russian military has defined areas of control in Syria, they are
focused on a few pieces of critically strategic real estate.

Third, whenever ground forces were needed, the Russians turned to
private military companies or other irregular formations, limiting as
far as possible the exposure of uniformed members of the Russian armed
forces. As in the United States, Russian public opinion seems to draw
a very clear distinction between “soldiers” dying for the motherland
versus contractors who signed up and took the risks.

Finally, the Russians demonstrated, particularly in the launch of
Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea Flotilla, Russian
capabilities to deliver lethal strikes from assets based inside
Russian territory. The subtext of the use of the Caspian ships was to
subtly demonstrate that key Russian capabilities did not need to be
sent out and “exposed” but could be utilized without fear of reprisal
or counterattack.

So, in contrast to the predictions that Syria would be “Putin’s
Afghanistan,” where a large land-based Russian force would be ground
down by insurgent attacks and eventually Putin would risk popular
unrest at home as casualties mounted, the Russians focused on
delivering strikes to disrupt and degrade Assad’s opponents. Watching
the Russian campaign unfold, I was reminded of comments that Sergei
Ivanov, then Russia’s defense minister, delivered at a U.S.-Russia
dialogue in 2006—in perfect English with a command of American
military jargon—about how the Russian military was closely studying
and learning from the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Avoiding
large-scale land deployments seemed to be one of them.

I do not know whether the Russians will go into Ukraine, or whether
U.S. assessments are correct that the Russians will seek to occupy and
control large pieces of Ukrainian territory and send personnel and
systems into Ukraine to engage in close combat. The Syria campaign,
however, would suggest that if the Russian government decides to use
military force against Ukraine, it would focus on long-distance
strikes to destroy Ukrainian equipment, particularly its stockpiles of
drones, and try to break up organized military formations. The Syria
case also suggests that the Russians would try to avoid having people
cross the border, whenever possible, and direct fire from across the
line. (This might be part of the hair-splitting on sanctions to
suggest to the Germans and others that the promise that economic and
energy sanctions on Russia would come only if Russia “invaded”—that
is, sent large, organized formations across borders—and that this
would qualify as a more limited “incursion.”) It would also raise the
cost of any response, because the United States and other NATO
countries would be very skittish about any Western weaponry crossing
the border in return to strike at Russian artillery or airfields. And
the Kalibr strike in Syria from the Caspian Sea could easily be
replicated with no one willing to respond by returning fire into the
heart of Russia. Finally, with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov
already talking about sending Chechen auxiliaries to Ukraine, the
pattern, as we have seen in Syria, Libya, Mali, and the Central
African Republic may hold here as well: any ground personnel needed to
take strategic sites or important nodes of communication would not be
formal Russian forces. Again, the Russian gamble may be that some of
the European states will hair-split and that private military
contractors would not constitute a formal Russian military
intervention.

Preparing Ukrainian special forces for partisan warfare, or assuming
that U.S.-supplied Javelins would be used against Russian tanks and
armored vehicles making the rapid dash to Kyiv, is not going to be
effective against the type of campaign Russia used in Syria. We have
been expecting a ground campaign to occupy territory, but the Russian
General Staff may be looking to destroy capabilities, demoralize the
Ukrainian military, and create conditions for political upheaval. And
if operations begin anytime soon, the types of military aid and
training that would be needed would come too late.

The United States assumed that Russia would be scared of the risks to
go into Syria. That is a mistake that should not be made when it comes
to Ukraine.

*

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research
Institute and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. The views
expressed are his own.