WAR 101

An introduction to “Warfighting,” the how-to manual for the US Marines, and its practical application in Ukraine. Part I of III

I suspect many Cosmopolitan Globalist readers, who not unreasonably thought the kind of war we’re now witnessing had faded into history, have given little thought over the course of their careers to the day-to-day business of war. I know some of you personally, am a paying subscriber, and sense many readers and writers in this group have been more professionally focused, perhaps, on the interplay of diplomacy and military threats to achieve strategic objectives.

I’ve been a combat leader in the US Marine Corps. I was in Kyiv and Odessa in 2014, although not as a Marine, about two weeks after the Russians occupied Crimea. I’ve been reading the same dispatches as you have since this war began, but I’ve been looking for clues from a different perspective.

For those with a military background, please forgive the simplifications and doctrinal liberties to come. My purpose is to orient Cosmopolitan Globalists to the environmental factors, simple and complex, that will determine the war’s outcome, and help them better understand the news reports, personal dispatches, and partisan claims now emerging from Ukraine, from a military perspective.

My intent is to get novices up to speed as quickly as possible. As I write, Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkiv are under siege, and the outcome is far from certain. You don’t have time to attend a military staff college or plow through a reading list to fully understand the burden that every able-bodied Ukrainian now carries. What follows is at best an imperfect education in warfighting. (But a good plan executed swiftly is better than a perfect plan delivered too late, as brave Ukrainians are showing us.)

If you’ve never heard of Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication-1, Warfighting, it is well worth a glance. Published in 1989 (and at the time controversial among Marines), the small book is mandatory reading for every infantry Marine, officer and enlisted alike. After more than three decades, it remains a basic how-to for professional warriors. As a philosophical treatise and the Bible of the Marine Corps, it shaped the way two generations of military leaders worldwide understand and practice warfare.

Why does a warfighting philosophy matter? First, Russian commanders (although not many soldiers) have probably read and studied Warfighting in an effort to know their enemy. They have their own warfighting philosophy, refined by combat experience—a viewpoint that places far more emphasis on terror, brutality, and violence—but they are confronting a Ukrainian adversary that has proven surprisingly adept in adopting warrior ways of their own.

It’s been said and should be restated: The courage we’ve seen from the Ukrainians defending their homeland is legendary. I spent years studying warfighting in theory before applying it in practice. From petrol attendant to president, the Ukrainians have learned and applied its essential elements in days. Every word ever written about valor, fortitude, and sacrifice has been brought to life. If through some pathetic combination of cravenness or cruelty you can’t bring yourself to say, “I stand with Ukraine” … go fuck yourself.

Friction. Uncertainty. Fluidity. Disorder. Complexity. These section headers in Warfighting’s opening chapter introduce readers to the nature of war. As media reports have shifted from one skirmish to another, interpretations of success or failure swirl like sports broadcasters forecasting “momentum” during a match. In part, this is because the outcome of recent wars has seemed overdetermined by military superiority. It’s no secret that Russia’s martial machine, in manpower and materiel, exceeds Ukraine’s by orders of magnitude.

The primary variable influencing war’s outcome is as complex as it is simple: the will to fight. Yes, Ukrainians need equipment, supplies, and basic tactical skills. But risking one’s life—even, and perhaps especially, when conscripted—is not easy. The will to fight matters above all. Can Ukraine maintain it? Women preparing Molotov cocktails in Dnipro, central Ukraine’s largest city, are offering their answer.

“The moral is to the physical as three is to one,” said Napoleon. In this case, “moral” doesn’t suggest a religious or pious quality, but the admixture of a grasp on reality and the abstract intangible of morale. Rational calculation (if Putin wins, I die) combined with the spiritual (everything I love and value is threatened) leads Ukrainians to conclude that fighting a violent, terrifying enemy matters above all else. Ultimately, the will to fight is an immeasurable variable. Like US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, you know it when you see it.

American combat leaders, when applying warfighting philosophy to decisions, recite the mantra, “Maintain the moral high ground.” From the strategic to the tactical level, Russian military units have demonstrated the willingness to kill; but reports of soldiers seeking Ukrainian women on Tinder in their mysterious free time suggest a less disciplined force then their leader might desire.

In audacity and fiction, the Kremlin’s propaganda pronouncements compete with Baghdad Bob’s. Landmarks lit up with Ukrainian colors and social media hashtags might not seem like much, but everywhere except in Russia and China, the moral high ground is Ukraine’s to lose. And, if victory is possible, Ukraine must hold that intangible terrain—at all costs.

Warfighting’s second chapter, covering the theory of war, explores two connected concepts advanced by Prussian military scholar Carl von Clausewitz. The first, centers of gravity, are those which, “if eliminated, would bend the enemy most quickly to our will.” These extend across strategy, operations, and tactics. They might be terrain, relationships, or intangibles like morale.

For now, let’s consider what Russia appears to see as Ukraine’s strategic center of gravity: the Ukrainian head of state. Russia is gambling much of the war’s outcome on massing enough combat power to take out President Volodymyr Zelensky, having determined this would reduce both the ability and will of Ukrainians to resist. Bizarrely, it appears the Russians have borrowed from the United States’ 2003 playbook against Saddam Hussein. The Kremlin seems to have miscalculated not just Zelensky’s response to Russia’s war machine, but that of hundreds of other Ukrainian oligarchs, generals, ministers, and authorities at the national, regional, and local level—not to mention Ukraine’s grandmothers.

For this reason, every nightly video of Zelensky proving that he lives—and remains in Kyiv—is as significant militarily as machinery and manpower: part fireside chat, part halftime speech. Miraculously, the former comic and actor, whose path into politics was as unexpected and circuitous as the titular character in the 1993 movie Dave, has demonstrated battlefield leadership to rival any wartime leader in recent centuries. Events demanded Zelensky overnight become FDR and Patton combined. He proved up to the task. Many expected him to flee under pressure; after all, his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, did precisely that in 2014, leaving behind a palace filled with imported marble, Italian crystal, precious woods, and ill-gotten zoo animals. We recently watched Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani weigh the odds and decide to get while the getting was good. It was far from clear, a week ago, that the world would rally as it has to support Ukraine.

Now a furious Germany is rearming, announcing plans to become one of the world’s most significant military powers. The European Union, for the first time in its history, is pouring lethal aid into Ukraine. Foreigners are arriving to join Ukraine’s volunteer army. The Russian economy has been flatlined by sanctions. The Russian army has yet to achieve a single serious strategic goal. There are many reasons for this, but above them all is Zelensky’s courage and heroism; it is not just Ukraine’s morale he has elevated, but that of the entire cynical and dispirited free world.

The theoretical corollaries to centers of gravity are critical vulnerabilities. On identifying the centers of gravity, combat leaders ask, “Where is the enemy vulnerable?” A critical vulnerability, according to Warfighting, is that which, “if exploited, would do the most significant damage to the enemy’s ability to resist us.” For example, if Ukraine’s strategic center of gravity is its head of state, several critical vulnerabilities are evident. They merit narration.

The most obvious critical vulnerability is his physical proximity to enemy territory. The Belarussian border is 150 kilometers away, and Russia’s supply line through Chernobyl will likely remain intact. Russia’s early seizure of Hostomel Airfield offers them a second resupply option on Kyiv’s doorstep, and the Russians may have held back operationally experienced units for a second attack wave. It’s difficult to see how Ukrainian forces can interdict Russia’s capacity to bring combat power to bear against the enemy.

On the positive side, the Russians have failed, thus far, to exploit an obvious critical vulnerability: the divisions among Ukraine’s fractious elites. As Cosmopolitan Globalist readers probably know, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was until quite recently President Zelensky’s sworn enemy; in mid-January, Zelensky accused the billionaire of “high treason” and leveled against him numerous criminal charges.

But just before the Russian invasion, Zelensky and Poroshenko, along with Ukraine’s leading oligarchs, buried the hatchet in a public display of national unity. At the time, it was difficult to determine if the rapprochement was just for show. But during the siege of Kyiv, Poroshenko backed Zelensky on CNN while brandishing an AK-47 and manning a checkpoint. Militarily speaking, there are far worse ways Ukraine’s political leaders could compete than by seeing who can show the greatest physical courage under fire.

How should this knowledge of centers of gravity and critical vulnerabilities influence our analysis? Functionally, the Ukrainian head of state is represented through military commanders, along with ministers, regional authorities, oblast leaders, police captains, mayors, and myriad figures of real and imagined importance. Given Zelensky’s elevated importance to Ukraine’s will to fight, a question many should be asking—including Zelensky—is how the Ukrainian state will hold if the worst happens and he, and Kyiv, fall?

Has anyone been designated—the vice president, a military commander, or another figure—as his successor? Would his cabinet and senior leaders swiftly recognize him?^[1]We are assuming it would be a man because as of now, no woman in the Ukrainian government or military would be a logical successor. Is the successor safely far from Kyiv? Will the oligarchs support him? Would the Ukrainian people rally behind him? Would NATO?

The moment when Zelensky publicly responded to offers of evacuation by saying he needed “ammunition, not a ride,” was critical to Ukraine’s fight. His calm, courageous presence in Kyiv, even the possibility of his martyrdom, may be precisely what enables Ukrainians to keep fighting and keep their state. But strategically, the state of Ukraine cannot depend on a single man. Zelensky must have a designated successor, and he should now be in a major city that can serve as a rallying and resupply point for his forces. This might be Lviv or could even be Dnipro. But it needs to be as far away from Kyiv as possible.

In Part II, we will move from strategy to tactics. Up next, we’ll discuss the skills that the Ukrainian men and women who are now being issued AK-47s and conscripted to defend their homeland must acquire. This takes us to Warfighting, chapters three and four, where we go from the nature and theory of war to its preparation and conduct.

Next in War 101: The main effort, intent, and tactical leadership

Tecumseh Court is an American combat veteran.