Ukraine and the next russian move
People interested in strategic games, at "grandeur nature", must rejoice and enjoy the particular Ukrainian stage, where many actors are playing what has been christened as an imminent war by some American analysts. My personal interest is centered on the most eastern region, that of China. Nevertheless, some common strategic lines seem to link the Ukrainian actors to those of the far eastern front .
Many times through the last 11 years of this very modest post, I have pointed out that from my very personal quarter the most important variable of strategy, with capital S, is Time.
And from this particular point of view, the strategic world tale, being performed by USA, Russia, China, the EU and their corresponding satellites, is following multiple tension lines marked by the conscient use of time by both the euroasiatic and the asiatic players.
Meanwhile the western side of the strategic equation concentrates merely on the control of spaces by Russians and Chinese, they are, quite probably, strategic worlds and times apart, working in a clever way on temporal lines of action. If I am not completely wrong we are witnessing a real big "classic" indirect approach, being the spatial channeling and the temporal dilution of the American might the main goal.
In this way it is possible to endure the asymmetrical difference between americans (and their western allies),on one side, and russians and chinese on the other. Actually, with a third of the american military strategic strength, the chinese and russians cope that clear power difference, at global scale.
In this game, at these temporal and spatial scales, the most important thing for the non western side is the control of time, on the contrary the most important thing for the western side seems to be the control of space.
A classic and conceptually close strategic paradox has been explained already by Thucidides, commenting on the cause of the long conflict between Sparta and Athens, during the Peloponnesian War, some 2450 years ago.
Some time ago I have written on this but I would let the kind readers to find it out by themselves.
Again, at a closer scale the Ukrainian conflict seems to be a russian temporal-strategic exercise to accomplish a very limited spatial goal: to keep the control of the Donbas region where many ethnic russians live. The way to obtain this is throwing to the "air" a complete set of military desinformation, which always can bear in itself a dual life: to be or not to be true, and whether it is true finally, the spatial prize could be a mere fraction of that imagined by the western side.
This masking game using military electromagnetic signals is matching spatial movements which let the russian HQ to escalate at more than one main axis of progression the military forces. Whatever the final decision would be, they have installed in a notorious way a conceptual fog in the minds of both Ukrainian and western allies. This is in itself a previous nice prize, because they are not going toward the obvious goal: a massive russian attack.
We will see in a short time the partial end of this very dangerous but interesting move.
Igor Parra
en Vitacura Santiago de Chile
