"Russia is winning”

The defeat of Ukraine will clearly be the defeat of the collective West, but it is the West's fault, said David Betz, professor at King's College London, in an interview with Magyar Nemzet. The professor visited Hungary to attend the 3rd Danube Geopolitical Summit organized by the Danube Institute. We interviewed him about the Ukraine that have been raging for 19 months now.

20230922 Budapest David Betz Fotó: Mirkó István Magyar Nemzet Fotó: Mirkó István

The Russia-Ukraine war broke out 19 months ago. During this time, the parties have used a number of new technologies and strategies to gain an advantage. How have the events so far changed our understanding of modern warfare?

I would answer that question by referring in the first instance to what we expected modern warfare to be and to mean and what we thought it would look like. And then talk about what we've actually seen to the extent that we can tell. There are lots of caveats about that because it's very difficult for people like us who are not involved in it, who are looking at it through the media fundamentally and the images of the various combatants on either side to know. What we expected of modern warfare from a Western perspective was something that would be faster, characterized by more movement, by more precise but also more limited application of firepower. Reality looks different. The combat in the Russo-Ukraine war looks a lot like the First World War. If you look at these battlefields from the top down, you see continuous trench lines crossing the landscape. You see Ukrainian fields that are clearly peppered with shell craters all over the place and in mass amounts.

So it's massive, it's at scale and what seems to count on the battlefield, why Russia is winning and has been winning since February of 2023 is because it retains quite a lot of old industrial military muscle. Stuff that was thought to be, if not quite obsolete, then not as important.

Ukrainian soldiers in a trench. Source: Telegram: Volodymyr Zelensky

But then there is drone warfare, which is being used in an unprecedented way by both sides.

The use of drones should not be underestimated, specifically the use of relatively low grade, low cost, often commercial drones. Cheap machines with the ability to lift maybe a few tens of kilos of hardware into the sky. One can see the reality of this on both the Ukrainian and the Russian side. There has been a massive investment in the building up of the manufacturing capability of these drones in a way that looks like an industrial conflict of the 20th century: it seems to matter a lot which side is able to put more of these and better of these into this new airspace. And they're both pushing very, very hard on this and also drawing on the assets of their allies. Notably in the case of Ukraine, effectively, NATO. Ukraine is being used. Ukraine is a proxy of NATO.

What impact may these developments have on the defense industry?

There's a massive amount of money going into defense industry in 2023 and probably in 2024 or 2025. And across the defense sector, there is intense effort in scaling up production of a wide range of systems. That's very difficult because of the pre-war configuration of the Western Defense Industrial Base, which has been designed over many years now to produce small numbers of extremely expensive weapons systems. 

In this respect, the Russian defense industry is at an advantage: its ability to churn out artillery shells, and also new and/or refurbished tanks is very, very high.

In addition, in the field of hyper-sonic weapons, certain aspects of missile technology, Russia's considerably ahead, surprisingly. The Western defense industry is changing very rapidly, but I'm not sure it's changing fast enough. And ultimately, third part the answer is that all of the things that I've just talked about relate back, as everything in war, to the underlying strength of the society that is supporting the war. And the fact of the matter in my view is that the Russia-Ukraine War is a colossal blunder for the West. We have propelled Russia and China into a strategic compact that they would not have achieved independently because of their mutual antagonisms. This is a development in geopolitics that has the potential to be of importance for a century. Secondly, we've poured massive amounts of money, largely in the form of borrowed money, into the war directly, which will not get back. Thirdly, through the sanctions regime, the viability of the West European industrial economy has been torpedoed. We've caused ourselves massive injury, economic injury which can only be counted in the hundreds of billions of euros and that is a cost which will continue as long as the war does until cheap energy is turned back on.

How will cheap energy be turned back on, you may ask. Is there a single politician in the West who is prepared to expend the political capital to do that. I don't think so. You can imagine how massively humiliating that act is going to be, it will be described essentially as a surrender and probably rightly because that's effectively what it will be.

When can this happen?

It's a good question. I think that the fighting has another year to run. I think that Ukraine has enough available cannon fodder to continue to sustain the kinds of casualties which it is experiencing now probably for another year. On the other hand, the Russian military may develop an offensive, but I don't see sign of it happening yet. If they go on the offensive and the Ukrainians are in the defensive, it may become very much more costly for the Russians than it is at present. It could go more quickly depending what happens internationally considering political, economic and military support. If that falls off more quickly, that could accelerate events. In the last couple of days, there's been lots of interest in Poland's behavior in this respect and underlying that is this question of how long can the Ukrainians keep up if Poland isn't supporting to the level that it had been. Economically, I'd say that the West probably has the capability of keeping this up for another two years or so. It depends how long people can put up with it. 

I think the major factor is the upcoming presidential election and that puts a firm date on things. 

If the Biden administration continues, it may or may not mean continued support for Ukraine at the current levels. If we get a second Trump presidency, I think the answer is the political support to the continuance will stop. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden in front of the White House with their wives. Source: Twitter

In this context, Ukraine's defeat would also mean the defeat of the collective West as well. In the current changing world order, what is this signals to, for example, China or India or Brazil or the whole BRICS bloc?

The defeat of Ukraine will clearly be the defeat of the collective West, but it is the West's fault.

It was the West that decided to make this war about the shape of the world order.

Right up to February 22 it was a stoppable war. Even into March and April of that year, but it wasn't prevented and wasn't stopped. Both of those were Western political decisions that elevated the conflict from the level of regional one between two Post-Soviet powers. So we made that decision to elevate the conflict into something much more important and significant. And so when we lose, it's going to be very consequential. There will be serious ruptures between Europe and the United States over this on account a lot that the decisions I just mentioned about what to make the war were primarily American decisions. Very much of that relating to the fate of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. German voters are going to start asking questions about who blew up our economic infrastructure and why. And the answers to that will be very uncomfortable and potentially friendship-breaking. As far as China, India and other powers, I think that they're probably pretty relaxed about the situation. They don't need to rush. They don't need to push. 

They can afford to wait while the West effectively suicides itself.

Cover photo: David Betz, Professor at King's College London (Photo: Istvan Mirko)