俄乌冲突让五角大楼“莫名自信”
2022-03-29 19:42阅读：
其他人则认为，俄乌冲突证明了这一理念的失败。共和党人的最大批评意见是，拜登和五角大楼过早地排除了军事选项，过于担心美国向乌克兰提供武器的强势行动可能刺激普京扩大冲突。
Russia's failures in Ukraine imbue Pentagon with newfound
confidence
BY GREG JAFFE AND DAN LAMOTHE• THE WASHINGTON POST
For more than a decade, the Pentagon, pinned down in Afghanistan,
followed China's rise as a global power and Russia's ambitious
military modernization program with growing alarm. The consensus in
Beijing, Moscow and among some in Washington was that an era of
U.S. global dominance was rapidly coming to an end.
But one month into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, senior Pentagon
officials are brimming with newfound confidence in American power,
spurred by
the surprising effectiveness of U.S.-backed Ukrainian forces,
Russia's heavy battlefield losses and the cautionary lessons they
believe China is taking from the war.
'Let me put it this way,' said one senior Pentagon official of
America's standing in the world. 'Who would you switch places with?
Seriously, who would you switch places with?'
It's a stunning shift in tone for a department that in August ended
a 20-year war in Afghanistan with a chaotic withdrawal as an
ascendant Taliban returned to power. Even though the U.S. military
has not played the primary role in the American response to
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, senior Pentagon officials are quick
to tout the still-unfolding war as proof of America's economic,
diplomatic and military strength.
The senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of
anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said that the last few
weeks have shown that the United States can marshal its 'primacy in
the global financial system' and its network of allies 'in ways
that can absolutely pummel aggressors.'
The success of U.S. and NATO-trained Ukrainian forces has also
bolstered the Pentagon's confidence following the embarrassing
collapse of U.S.-trained militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan over
the last decade. The Ukrainian military's will to fight and ability
to inflict heavy losses on larger and more technologically advanced
Russian force has taken many at the Pentagon by surprise.
'I think Ukraine has been able to tie the Russians in knots in
large part because of what we've been able to do to help them since
2014,' the senior defense official said, adding that the failures
of Afghan forces 'might' have caused U.S. officials to
underestimate Ukrainian troops.
Such optimism isn't universally shared. Critics note that the
Russian invasion is only one month old and that the Russians
already are using their overwhelming firepower advantage to level
Ukrainian cities in an attempt to secure a brutal and bloody
victory. Even a partial triumph would allow Russian President
Vladimir Putin to say that he had stood up to the world and the
flood of arms from the West.
The United States also has relied heavily on European allies, who
have often taken the lead in leveling crippling sanctions on the
Russian economy at considerable costs to themselves. It's not yet
clear whether the current unity will fracture if the war drags on
for months.
'We need to demonstrate our [collective] power every day, and we
can only demonstrate it if we keep everybody together,' said Ivo
Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a
former U.S. ambassador to NATO. 'This is not something the U.S. has
traditionally done well.'
Some Republicans have charged that Putin's perception of the United
States and its allies as militarily weak or unwilling to fight gave
him the confidence to invade Ukraine. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas,
the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, this
month compared Biden to Neville Chamberlain, the former British
prime minister who sought to appease Hitler before World War
II.
'Weakness invites aggression. It's a historic axiom. And it's
true,' McCaul said in a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Pentagon officials contend that there was little they could do to
deter Putin, who expected a quick and easy victory in Ukraine, and
argue that their broader strategy of 'integrated deterrence' -
which leverages economic, diplomatic and military power to dissuade
potential aggressors - has so far worked to stop Putin from
expanding the war into NATO territory. The Biden administration has
made integrated deterrence the cornerstone of its soon-to-be
released National Defense Strategy, which was delayed as the threat
of an invasion grew.
'I don't think there's any doubt that the model of integrated
deterrence comes out smelling pretty good from this,' the senior
defense official said.
Others pointed to Putin's Ukraine invasion as proof of the
concept's failure. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in an
interview that he 'completely and strongly' disagrees with anyone
who cites Ukraine as an example of the success of integrated
deterrence. 'I cannot fathom how they can make that argument with a
straight face,' he said. 'Their whole deterrence strategy rested on
the idea that the threat of limited sanctions could deter
Putin.'
Gallagher added that the Ukraine conflict 'could still escalate in
ways that we don't foresee right now.'
The biggest critique from Republicans has been that Biden and the
Pentagon have been too quick to foreclose military options and too
worried that aggressive U.S. efforts to arm the Ukrainians might
spur Putin to widen the war.
More robust U.S. involvement 'would be an assurance that Russia
would lose the war,' said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and
defense policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
'If the Ukrainian military can fight the Russian military to a
standstill, imagine what it would look like if the United States
and its allies joined?'
Biden's worries about triggering a wider war against a nuclear
power, however, haven't constrained U.S. ambitions regarding
Ukraine. A few weeks ago there was grave doubt among senior U.S.
military officials about whether the Ukrainians could hold onto
their country if Putin was determined to launch an all-out
invasion. Now Pentagon officials talk of the need to make certain
Putin suffers a 'strategic failure.'
Such an outcome, these officials said, would have far reaching
consequences in Moscow but also in Beijing, where China's Xi is
almost certainly drawing lessons from Putin's struggles.
'Amphibious landings are the single hardest large-scale military
operations that there is,' the senior Pentagon official said. Since
the start of the Ukraine invasion, Russia has kept its amphibious
ships parked off the coast of Ukrainian cities, apparently afraid
to come ashore. At least one of those ships, thought to be carrying
armored personnel carriers and tanks, was struck by Ukrainian
forces Thursday in the Black Sea port of Berdyansk, resulting in a
huge fireball.
Compared with Ukraine, Taiwan is a 'hellscape' for an invading
force that combines open beaches, mountainous terrain and dense
cities, the senior defense official said.
Former defense secretary Robert Gates offered a similar assessment
Wednesday in an online conversation with Michael Vickers, his
former undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Xi and Putin
have both described the United States as 'in decline,' politically
paralyzed and eager to pull back from the rest of the world.
'Xi's got to wonder about his own army at this point,' Gates said
in the conversation, organized by the OSS Society. 'The resistance
of the Ukrainians has got to make him wonder, 'Maybe I've
underestimated the consequences of a military attack on T?''
Gallagher took the opposite lesson, arguing that even though China
recognizes Russia's struggles, Putin's gamble should spur a greater
sense of urgency regarding T. 'All of the evidence suggests that we
are already in the window of maximum danger,' he said.
A longer-term challenge for the Pentagon, which is prone to its own
fits of military hubris, will be to recognize the limits of its
power and the crucial role U.S. allies will play in containing
Russian and Chinese global ambitions, according to analysts and
even some senior Pentagon officials. In the 1990s and early 2000s
when the United States was at the height of its power, U.S. leaders
often treated allies as an afterthought. President George W. Bush
launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003 over the objections of allies
such as Germany and France.
'We had this sense where we could do it all and the allies were a
problem,' said Daalder, the former NATO ambassador.
More recently, Biden decided on a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan
with little input from America's NATO allies who had fought
alongside U.S. troops for two decades. Now Daalder said the
challenge for the Biden administration and possibly successive
presidents will be to hold together the global coalition of
democracies that came together to confront Putin 'not just for a
month or a year, but for a decade plus' as the United States and
its allies work to disentangle their economies from Russia and
eventually from a resurgent and increasingly authoritarian and
aggressive China.
Such an approach would require a new kind of humility, and new
deference to the allies on both military and economic
matters.
'If strong economic, political and military competition with Russia
and China is the priority,' Daalder said, 'we can't do it by
ourselves.'
