Reflections from the River

A new strategy for Ukraine, Hitting Russia’s center of gravity

March 13, 2022 Bill Enyart
Reflections from the River
A new strategy for Ukraine, Hitting Russia’s center of gravity
Show Notes Transcript

Like every retired military person in the world, the situation in Ukraine has occupied much of my mind for the last several weeks. In a phone conversation with another retired general last week, my former mentor asked me how I would go about defeating Putin’s attack. 

Here's that strategy...

A new strategy for Ukraine, Hitting Russia’s center of gravity 

Like every retired military person in the world, the situation in Ukraine has occupied much of my mind for the last several weeks. In a phone conversation with another retired general last week, my former mentor asked me how I would go about defeating Putin’s attack. 

I responded: “I wouldn’t go after the tanks. I’d go after the fuel resupply.” Without fuel the tanks stop dead in their tracks and you can pick them off at your leisure. Which, is, of course, exactly what the Ukrainians are doing.

“Bill,” he replied, “you’re thinking tactically. What did they teach us in War College? You gotta think strategically.” Army War College is the prep school for generals. Required for all who wear a star, or two, or three, or four. 

I hung up the phone and started asking myself. What’s the Russian center of gravity. For you non-military folks, the center of gravity is that one spot you can hit that defeats the enemy. Although there is some debate, most experts say there is but one center of gravity in any conflict. 

It didn’t take long for me to realize the center of gravity is Putin himself. Senator Lindsey Graham, with his talk of dispatching Putin, clearly arrived at the same conclusion. I should note that Graham is a retired Air Force Reserve colonel and had to attend the Air War College, which likely taught him a few strategic concepts also. 

The question is how do we attack the center of gravity without an act of war on our part, which would likely trigger World War Three. I puzzled over this as I sit in Belleville, Illinois, a few miles from Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, home of the military’s Transportation Command and a likely nuclear target, my thought processes spun.

There are real people dying. Lots of them. More will die. Lots more. If Putin is in fact the center of gravity for attack on Ukraine, he is the one who must be leashed. We the West, NATO, the US are not going to directly confront his military. The risk of nuclear war is simply viewed as too great. 

Instead, we must indirectly confront him, so that internal Russian societal forces leash him. That’s the reason for the economic sanctions, for freezing the oligarch’s wealth, for taking away Muscovites’ MacDonalds hamburgers and Starbucks’ lattes. Starve the Russian government of the thirty-five per cent of its revenue that comes from oil and gas. Theory being that sooner or later Russian society will tire of the leader who brought this on them.

That’s a long, slow process. If it takes as long as the first cold war did, it could be decades. How do we speed up the process to save lives, to save a country whose very existence is being devastated by Russian artillery, bombs, and missiles?

World opinion has turned dramatically against Putin. How do we turn Russian opinion against him and this aggression he labels defense? 

Perhaps the images of Russian shelling of a maternity hospital are an inflection point. These are photos and video that may determine the war. How do the Ukrainians (or we) use them to their greatest effect? How can they impact the center of gravity? 

Even more damning, Putin’s forces have damaged or destroyed thirty hospitals in their assault on Ukraine.

Shortly after the bombed out maternity hospital photos appeared, a photo of Putin with an attractive young woman popped up on my computer screen. The caption described Putin with his daughter, a pediatric physician. Interesting data point. 0200 hours this morning, I jolted awake: “That’s it! That’s the way we get to Putin. Through his daughter.”

Although I’ve raised two sons and zero daughters, every tv show and every movie, not to mention real life, tell me that daughters have their daddies, even daddies like Vladimir Putin, wrapped around their little finger. Is Putin different? Not likely, that’s probably one reason why he so fiercely protects their privacy.

Maria Vorontsova, his eldest daughter is a pediatric endocrinologist. As a pediatric doctor, I think we can assume that, unless she has the evil soul of a Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who conducted gruesome “experiments” on Jewish children, she cares deeply about children. What would she think about daddy’s armies destroying maternity hospitals, as well as other medical facilities, all the while killing mothers and children. If she believes those facts, likely she won’t approve. Does she have any influence with Putin? If so, how much? 

It seems the oligarchs are afraid to cross him. It seems the military and secret police follow his every order. It seems everyone in Russia is afraid to confront him with the truth and even if they confront him are likely to be dispatched. What about his pediatric doctor daughter?

Unlike oligarchs, military members, or politicians, she can confront him without fear of reprisal. Her husband by the way is Dutch. The Netherlands is, of course, a member of NATO. She has spent much time in Western Europe and was educated largely with Western European children. With that background she may be more open to the idea that a European-oriented Ukraine is not a mortal enemy to Russia than is her father.

Can she convince Putin? Likely not by herself, but if she provides a shield for the oligarchs whose wealth is suffering, the generals whose military is being chewed up and the diplomats whose treaties are shredded, so they can, with her, present Putin the truth, perhaps he will listen.

She can’t do any worse than the generals or the oligarchs or the diplomats have done to date. It’s certainly worth a try because we haven’t succeeded elsewhere, and the Russians aren’t in danger of running out of tanks anytime soon. Although the Ukrainians are making a valiant stand, many more civilians, mothers and children, will die if this doesn’t end soon. Perhaps she can convince him that leaving a legacy of bombing maternity hospitals, killing women, children, and medical personnel, is a legacy she and her children would prefer not to inherit.

The longer, slower way is for more and more caskets of Russian soldiers to go home. The mothers and grandmothers burying those soldiers will turn. They will eventually take Putin down but at what cost? Too many deaths.

How do we, or the Ukrainians get to Maria? I’m the strategist, not the spy, nor the communications guru, I’ll leave that up to the folks at the CIA, or more likely the folks at Instagram and Twitter and Meta, just get the photos to her. Get her to believe them. Wounded, pregnant women on stretchers with rubble in the background tell a powerful story.

 

© William L. Enyart

Reflections from the River, www.billenyart.com, Email: bill@billenyart.com