In this episode:

A Race To Lose Men and Equipment- Fulan Nasrullah

A Peace Plan For Ukraine - Gen Mick Ryan

A US Strategy for Ukraine.. Finally- Gen Mick Ryan

Russia’s North Korean Connection- Dr Andrew Monaghan

Globalisation: Why It Went Into Retreat- Prof Michael Lind

A RACE TO LOSE MEN AND EQUIPMENT

On Monday, 11th November, 2024, I took part in an exchange on Twitter (here and here) about the sustainability of Russia’s way of war in Ukraine, in which I argued that Russia can sustain the levels at which it is fighting in Ukraine, despite the atrocious levels of losses in men and equipment it suffers.

In this belated episode of The Relevant Reads, I want to further expound on why I see the Russo-Ukrainian War, as a race to lose men and equipment that I don’t see the Ukrainian side winning.

On the eve of the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as tensions heightened and the US Government declassified intelligence stating Russia had mobilised up to 200,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, I formulated a hypothetical picture of how ideally the Ukrainians would choose to fight what was certain to be an overwhelming Russian invasion.

I speculated that in the initial stages the Russian Armed Forces utilising an overwhelming advantage in firepower would sweep across all of Eastern Ukraine up to the east banks of the Dnieper river, while the Ukrainians seeking to conserve resources and spare their eastern cities destruction. would conduct a fighting withdrawal of their main forces across the Dnieper, but would leave behind an extensive insurgency apparatus.

I also assumed that both sides would fight a pitched battle for only one major city, which is Kyiv the Ukrainian capital. In my thinking the Russians, simultaneously with their invasion across the east, would move either through Belarus or through Chernihiv Oblast to bring the fight to Kyiv, motivated by the political significance of taking Ukraine’s capital, and the historical significance of Kyiv being the birthplace of Russian civilisation and the site of the first ever great Russian state, Kievan Rus.

The Ukrainian insurgency force would make Russia’s hold on Eastern Ukraine tenuous, buying time for Ukraine to build the mass necessary - with American support - to retake the territories it had to forfeit during the initial invasion.

I was wrong in my assumptions of how the invasion would play out.

The Ukrainian side despite its relative weaknesses on paper, stood its ground and fought. It believed - despite the objections of basically everyone else - that Russia’s vaunted invasion force, was a potemkin army that it could at the very least halt with its own resources, and it could definitely beat if supported by the US and NATO.

Ukraine’s defenders stopped the Russian operation to take Kyiv, beating a Russian force with such terrible logistics that Ukrainian attacks on its logistical trains put it in a position that it would have completely collapsed if it didn’t withdraw, which it quickly did.

The subsequent Russian refocus on the Donbass was itself slowed and on many occasions halted in pitched, grueling battles at places like Bakhmut, as the Ukrainians - bolstered by NATO support - killed tens of thousands of Russian first, second and third line troops, destroying thousands of tanks and artillery systems.

Almost three years later, Ukraine’s belief in its abilities stand true.

Despite the overwhelming fire and manpower Russia has thrown into this war, it has so far failed to resolve the conflict on its terms. It has barely managed to increase territory it holds from the onset of the full invasion in 2022, with most of its advances this year being the retaking of territory recaptured by Ukraine during the 2023 Ukrainian Summer Counteroffensive Campaign. As a matter of fact Ukrainian forces this year conducted an offensive into Kursk Oblast of Russia, and as at the time of writing are still holding a significant amount of territory in Kursk.

Today I firmly believe that if this was a war that could be determined by which side is the better killing machine, if this was a war between two strategic level peer competitors at the conventional level, Ukraine’s forces would absolutely dogwalk the Russian Armed Forces. But it isn’t.

The Russian Armed Forces, are stymied by institutionalised corruption, a lack of NCOs, a military culture that discourages tactical innovation, a dysfunctional operational command and control system and other things on which much has been written by better qualified Russian and Western experts.

In a hypothetical conventional war between two strategic-level peer competitors, that would be determined by which side was the better killing, these deficiencies in the Russian Armed Forces would be a key determiner of the outcome of the conflict.

However the war in Ukraine has evolved - mostly by Russia making the political decision to stay in the war despite its initial setbacks - into a race to cause the other side to lose men and equipment, to the point where it no longer possess the ability to replace both easily. Thus the the balance of determination for this conflict has shifted from quality into quantity and expendability, to the disadvantage of Ukraine.

A War Of Attrition

The calculation that seems to be underpinning how Russia has chosen to fight the war once its initial invasion was blunted, is who would run out of capacity to replace men, equipment and resources faster, over a protracted period of time. This type of war plays into Russia’s strengths but not into the doctrine of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that has been largely designed to be western-oriented, with more focus on precision, lethality and less of an emphasis on mass, attrition, and expendability/replaceability.

The key determinants of an attritional war, and I am of course open to be corrected on this if I am wrong, such as the one Russia has chosen to fight in Ukraine, are: availability of manpower, strength and volume of industrial capacity (especially military industry), access to energy resources, access to key raw materials for industrial production, and food.

At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia had a population of 140m people vs Ukraine’s 38m-40m. Russia possessed a much larger military industrial capacity than Ukraine. Russia with its massive oil, gas and coal reserves was much more energy secure than Ukraine was. And Russia’s deposits of mineral resources meant it was also better positioned in this aspect than Ukraine. In fact the only area where Russia and Ukraine were sort of equal was in food production, as both countries are net food exporters and were food secure.

However this all meant that on paper, while Russia is optimised for a protracted war of attrition against a smaller country like Ukraine, it was not the same for the Ukrainian side against a country like Russia.

In reality however, the picture looked different enough to offer the Ukrainians a realistic possibility of victory even in an attritional war.

The known political vulnerability of the Putin regime to popular discontent should it choose a path of total war which would see it mobilise millions of Russian youth, meant that it could not afford to do so. This limited how much of the Russian population reserve it could afford to forcefully mobilise, which has forced it to rely on volunteers, most of whom only sign up because of the massive sign-on bonuses and salaries they could earn.

It was also not a stretch to imagine that the rot of corruption that hollowed out the Russian military and intelligence services, leading to their abysmal performance in the planning and execution of the invasion of Ukraine, would also have hollowed out Russia’s military industrial complex (MIC), significantly impacting on its production capacity.

Russia’s pipeline and refining network, can be made vulnerable to long range precision strikes launched from Ukraine, and since Ukraine’s allies in 2022 to 2023 were preaching the mantra of whatever it took - conventionally of course - to defeat Russia they were fully in, Kyiv seemed to have calculated that it would get the necessary volume of cruise missiles to knock out or at the very least seriously degrade Russia’s energy industry. This would have the knock on effect of starving the Russian invasion force inside Ukraine of energy, while simultaneously starving Russia of revenue from oil and gas sales.

Ukraine’s allies in the US, UK and EU, in a bid to significantly degrade Russia’s military industrial capacity, from 2022 placed sanctions on the sale of equipment and components that can be used by Russia’s military industrial complex (MIC) to produce weapons for use in Ukraine. This was in addition to deployment of the nuclear weapons equivalent of sanctions designed to cripple Russia economically and technologically.

The calculation that seemed to have prevailed in Kyiv, was that Ukraine could kill enough Russian troops that would not be easily replaced, while destroying tanks/aircraft/artillery that also wouldn’t be easily replaced. Meanwhile a combination of sanctions and well-placed missile strikes, would kill-off Russia’s ability to leverage on its energy resources to power its war machine.

This calculation and the assumptions underpinning it, were in my view completely realistic if one did not count in the willingness of Vladimir Putin and the hardline community in Russia’s establishment to resolve the Ukraine question through the blunt application of violence, and if one overestimated both the military industrial capacity of the West and the commitment of the American people to backing a war in Ukraine.

This would be in addition to overestimating the support of the rest of the world for an isolation of Russia, which would be critical in order for it to be effectively starved of access to manufacturing inputs and equipment its MIC would need to manufacture new weapons and equipment for combat in Ukraine. Also, isolating Russia would also be necessary in order to starve it of markets for its oil and gas exports.

Any half-serious observer of the US/Europe defence manufacturing and procurement world, knew as far back as 2017-2019 during the counter Islamic State group campaign that US defence manufacturing was sufficient for multiple small wars, but was not optimised for a major war of attrition as we have today in Ukraine.

In the same vein, the 2016 election of Donald Trump was partly possible because of widespread antiwar sentiment in the US, which made many people who voted for him see him as the antiwar candidate.

At this point let me point out that my personal understanding of this Ukrainian theory of victory has been largely informed by, and developed around, conversations with two Ukrainian defence attaches stationed abroad, some of the international volunteers in Ukraine, and Western, Middle Eastern and African diplomats working on the Ukraine file for their foreign ministries. These are in addition to the reading of the published analyses from think tanks and experts on the military affairs of Russia, and or Ukraine.

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Russian Adaptation

Manpower

In the face of the political constraints on its ability to mass mobilise its significant population, Russia has pivoted to using partial mobilisation of reservists, combined with recruitment of contract volunteers mostly from ethnic minorities and economically depressed boondock regions, in addition to recruiting paramilitary mercenaries, and even foreign fighters, to take up a term of service in ground combat positions.

This has given it the leeway to offset the political limits surrounding its ability to draft large amounts of Russians to fight in Ukraine.

Adaptation In The MIC

Russia has been conducting a significant anticorruption campaign at least since late 2023/early 2024, which has been clearing out corrupt functionaries in the Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD) associated with former defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, whose 12 year stay at the helm of the ministry, was riven with fantastic levels of corruption. This anticorruption campaign has also touched on the Russian MIC.

In addition, the effects of western sanctions on Russia’s MIC have been blunted through Russia’s substitution of western components for Chinese ones, and for local manufacture of these components where possible (a programme which has been off to a slow start).

This strategy of import substitution has been going on in tandem with a very extensive sanctions busting campaign, which is seeing western origin components, routed through a web of countries and customs jurisdictions, and hidden amongst civilian goods, since most of these components are dual use products, such as microchips in washing machines, refrigerators and smart TVs.

It should also be taken into account that the Russian military industrial complex has increased its capacity, by building new production lines, reactivating mothballed production facilities (as part of the Soviet-origin system of reserve), while expanding existing ones. All of which has been possible by the massive influx of money into the MIC since the decision was taken to double down and fight a protracted war in Ukraine.

The cumulative effect of these steps taken to expand the capacity of Russia’s MIC, has been to see Russia’s ability to produce new tanks rise to 1,200-1,500 in addition to refurbishing hundreds more older Soviet-era tanks from storage, plus produce between 3m-4m artillery shells per year.

Adaptation In The Energy Sector

Ukraine’s ability to degrade Russian energy and industrial production, has itself been castrated by its NATO allies not supplying it with very long range cruise missiles (such as Tomahawks or JASSM-ER) to strike deep within Russia, and the US/UK/France/Germany constraining its ability to use existing long range cruise missiles such as the Anglo-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG system, to strike targets inside recognised Russian territory, due to - in my view - justified fears of nuclear war.

On the energy front, Russia has also adapted to western sanctions on its energy and shipping, ensuring that it can continue to earn billions of dollars to fund its war in Ukraine. It has done that by deepening oil and natural gas sales to China using existing pipeline infrastructure. This has been in tandem to setting up a fleet of up to 1,500 ‘ghost’ ships, that is ships mostly not registered on international databases, to move its oil and expand its market share of crude, refined petroleum products, LNG and LPG in countries from Brazil to India.

Biden Out, Trump In. Negotiations?

With Joe Biden on his way out, and Donald Trump on his way in, there’s a sense that a chance to end the war in Ukraine is opening up.

Already prior to the US presidential elections, there was clear fatigue amongst Ukraine’s backers from Berlin to London to Washington DC, for a continuation of the war. The Starmer Labour govt in London, has dialed back the enthusiasm for continued support for Ukraine, with Keir Starmer himself not bothering to visit Kyiv in solidarity, as his Tory predecessors (Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak) did.

Plus the talks of negotiations to end the war, did not start in Kyiv, but rather in Brussels and Washington.

The conditions for Russia to engage in negotiations to produce a mutually agreeable peace with Ukraine do not exist, but for them to exist would require a significant increase in Anglo-American and Franco-German commitment to resourcing Ukraine’s military that I do not quite see happening. I also think that even if these two poles within NATO find the political will to commit to that increased level of commitment to providing aid to Ukraine, the industrial capacity to do so does not yet exist and will require massive capital investments into industrial production that will only begin to bear fruit probably two years down the line.

All this is to say that in my analysis, Russia will in the short-term only engage in negotiations to gain the objectives it has not yet won on the battlefield. I said as much on Twitter last Monday, but an article in Politico Europe which posits that there’s secret relief in Europe’s capitals that Trump may bring the war in Ukraine to an end, puts it even more bluntly in the quote below:

And now, for all the overt hand-wringing over the U.S. election and what it means for Ukraine, some European quarters— even Kyiv, for that matter — are now secretly relieved by the prospect of Trump bringing the war to an end.

After all, if he’s successful, European leaders and American hawks will have an alibi, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will have cover from likely angry front-line Ukrainian soldiers. They’ll all blame him for the broken promises, for the loss of the Donbas and Crimea’s continued annexation — because that’s what it will take to ink a deal. That, and an agreement that Ukraine won’t be joining NATO — neutrality will be a firm concession Moscow will demand.

Some call this an ugly deal. And it is.

The article titled “Trump Threatens To Be Good For Ukraine, Actually” was written by Jamie Dettmer, Politico Europe’s Opinion Editor, and can be read in full here.

It also goes on to say that:

Bu there’s no other alternative. Short of a “forever war” or Western powers becoming combatants themselves — or at least putting their economies on a war footing to supply Ukraine with much more than they currently are — that’s the cold hard reality.

Where I disagree with the Politico Europe piece, is the framing of Russia’s objectives in Ukraine which it must be given in order to make a deal, as being restricted to getting the Donbass, Ukraine foreswearing joining NATO, and continued annexation of Crimea.

I believe that Russia will not give up its claim to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, in addition to the two Donbas oblasts (Dontesk and Luhansk) and Crimea. This will be tied to Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty by acceding to permanent neutrality and undertaking significant demilitarisation of its armed forces.

The evidence for this perception of mine, lies in Vladimir Putin’s speeches and interviews - plus those by other senior Russian officials - even going back to before the full scale invasion.

Couple those speeches and statements with the Kremlin’s decision to continue fighting rather than work on securing a peace deal after the initial invasion was blunted and the cost of doubling down on waging this war became clear; and it becomes quite obvious that unless Russia suffers a strategic defeat in Ukraine, it will not agree to terms to end this war that does not include the aforementioned territories, and at least a partial surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Russia’s goal in Ukraine is to win, and the closest we can determine what its theory of victory is, is that it is either an outright collapse of the Ukrainian state at the end of this war, or a soft capitulation by Ukraine’s establishment via a negotiated peace treaty.

With demographic problems (8 million people estimated to have fled the country since 2022), the war continuing to eat up available manpower, its dwindling economic base, and spending fatigue in its supporters’ camp, plus the decreasing availability of ammunition and equipment that its forces are facing, Kyiv is not in a great position and everyone can see it.

That includes Russia, which has every incentive to believe it can outlast a weakening Ukraine and achieve its goals if it continues to drag out this war, and no pressure to find a mutually acceptable peace agreement with Kyiv.

The announcement by the White House on Sunday, 17th November, that President Biden was easing restrictions on Ukraine’s supply of the ATACMS short range ballistic missile system allowing Kyiv to use it to hit targets inside Russia, is definitely an important development as it allows Ukraine to hit up to 300km (187 miles) inside Russia, with the longest range ATACMS variant.

However this will not shift the strategic picture to better favour Ukraine given the max range of the missiles and the limited quantities the US typically supplies, which are not enough to conduct a sustained campaign of missile strikes that would have serious impact on Russia’s ability to resource its war in Ukraine.

Instead I would rather we look at it through the prism of the operational demands of breaking the back of the expected second Russian counteroffensive to reclaim the salient in Kursk that Ukraine is currently holding.

Russia has massed around 50,000 troops for that counteroffensive, of which 10,000-12,000 are North Korean soldiers. Utilising ATACMS, Ukraine can destroy logistics nodes, railheads, bridges and also strike marshaling points for Russian troops and equipment, relevant to the counteroffensive to retake the Ukrainian Kursk salient.

A second way I would rather we look at this Biden ATACMS announcement, is politics. Biden could either be escalating to give Trump something to deescalate with, without reducing the current level of support to Ukraine, or Biden could be escalating to tie the hands of Trump and give the pro-Ukraine camp on Capitol Hill a cudgel to beat the Trump admin with, should President Trump try to reduce Ukraine aid (as was done to him during his first presidency).

All in all what Ukraine needs is not so much limited ATACMS supplies, but more 155mm shells, more tanks, more AFVs/IFVs/MRAPs, more mine clearing equipment, and more men.

Unless Western governments put their defence industrial bases on a war footing for the weapons and equipment that Ukraine needs, the strategic picture remains one in which Russia attrits Ukraine to the point the choice becomes one in which Kyiv either surrenders part of its sovereignty at the very least, or it ceases to be an independent state.

Currently Russia, each year, produces 3m-4m rounds of artillery ammunition, North Korea also produces around 2m rounds of 152mm alone , per annum, and the figures for Pyongyang are based on peacetime manufacturing rates.

So far South Korea’s National Intelligence Service believes North Korea has so far supplied more than 9million rounds of artillery across all calibres to Russia, with Pyongyang also seemingly supplying artillery tubes and whole systems such as the Koksan 170mm self-propelled howitzer to Moscow.

Iran produces millions of rounds of artillery ammunition across all calibres including 152mm and 155mm.

This does not include Russian production of short range ballistic missiles, and North Korean and Iranian supplies/production of such systems, of which the US estimates that North Korea and Iran have supplied Moscow with a cumulative number that is in the low thousands so far.

The entire EU on the other hand is on track to produce up to 600,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition, with claims of 1m generally derided as padding of the facts. That 600k EU 155mm figure is roughly the same as what the US is aiming to produce by the end of this year.

With both Russia and North Korea increasing their production capacities for artillery ammunition and short range ballistic missiles, they are on track to far outpace what the US and EU are aiming to produce or can potentially supply to Ukraine under the current plans of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group - the umbrella body for coordinating planning relating to aiding Ukraine.

Finally, if the stated goal of Ukraine’s partners is to ensure the continuous existence of a Ukrainian state, which is free and sovereign, and preferably within its full 1991 borders, then the European members of NATO especially need to expand their defence industrial base enough to not only enable Ukraine’s armed forces keep up with attrition but to actually possess a superiority in volume and quality of fires over the Russian military on the ground in Eastern Ukraine.

Other Relevant Reads

A US Strategy for Ukraine.. Finally- Gen Mick Ryan

In September retired Australian major-general, Mick Ryan wrote a piece that looked at the Biden admin’s strategy for supporting and directing the flow of support to Ukraine. Over the last couple of days I reread it and did some thinking on what the final Biden strategy holds going forward.

As the Trump admin comes on board in January 2025, I believe some of that plan will still hold. I am in the camp of those that believe that even if Mr Trump personally leans towards cutting off aid to Ukraine, bureaucratic inertia plus Congress will slow down any movement by his administration on that front.

You can read Gen Ryan’s article through the embed below:

Futura Doctrina

A U.S. Strategy for Ukraine…Finally

The only time Ukraine and the West will be able to seriously claim a true victory is when, and if, the fighting ends in an acceptable peace. This means the United States and its partners need to look beyond the current battlefield. They need to determine what grand strategy they should pursue to shape the longer-term cour…

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2 years ago · 117 likes · 4 comments · Mick Ryan

A Peace Plan For Ukraine - Gen Mick Ryan

Gen Ryan also looks at what a possible Trump peace plan for Ukraine could look like.

The first standout point he makes in this piece for me, was his analysis that although Ukraine may have believed that the Kursk incursion would give it some leverage in negotiations over territory with Russia, by holding Russian territory at risk and changing the trajectory of the war, those objectives have not been achieved. Plus Ukraine may not any or much of that Kursk territory by the time negotiations begin.

You can read the article in full below

Futura Doctrina

A Peace Plan for Ukraine?

In the past few days, speculation about a potential ‘Ukraine solution’ from the incoming Trump administration has accelerated. There have been other plans supposedly developed in the past, including a May 2024 proposal written by retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg…

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a year ago · 119 likes · 12 comments · Mick Ryan

Russia’s North Korean Connection

Dr Andrew Monaghan a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., wrote this piece that examines Russia’s decision to turn to North Korea in the context of the bigger picture that is Russian Gran Strategy.

Rather than the rather ad-hoc manner many people have examined the budding Russo-DPRK alliance, Dr Monaghan points out that it sits firmly in the grand strategy prism in which Russia seeks to position itself in what it sees to be the shift in international affairs with the balance of power leaning towards the Asia-Pacific over the Euro-Atlantic region.

You can read that frankly very interesting piece in full HERE.

Globalisation: Why It Went Into Retreat

Prof Michael Lind, a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, also a columnist for Tablet Magazine, in this piece reflects on why he believes globalisation has gone into retreat, and the reasons fueling that retreat

His essay, which I recommend you read a few times is available HERE.

PS: I have decided to only write for free here twice a week, instead of the thrice I was aiming for initially. I had hoped to write short, concise pieces, but I realised since I started writing again that I love putting down words, which means writing ends up conflicting with my comments in my real life.

So for now I will only be writing one episode of The Relevant Reads for Mondays, and an edition of The Relevant Information on Fridays.

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Firstly, I would love to begin by extending my apologies to you, my loyal subscribers and readers for missing the last two Relevant Information newsletters. I was indisposed healthwise and had to deal with that situation. I am grateful for your support and appreciate that you have stuck around despite my short absence. Thank you so much.

And now back to regularly scheduled programming

Donald Trump is all but certain to be reelected president in the United States, as at the time I am writing this edition of The Relevant Reads, he has blown current vice president, Kamala Harris, out of the water holding 266 Electoral College votes to her 188, and needing just four more to officially cement his victory.

The GOP now has 51 Senate seats, compared to the Democrats’ 41, beating the 50 seats threshold to own their majority. Of course, JD Vance becoming Vice President of the United States, would ensure that in case where there is a tie on legislative votes, Trump’s VP would be able to use his vote as President of the Senate to break the tie into a majority for his agenda.

The House of Representatives is not yet solidly determined, and might not be determined for a week more, but the GOP have 201 seats as at time of writing, needing 17 more seats to gain control of the House. The Democratic Party on the other hand currently holds 173 seats, needing 45 more seats to gain the 218 slim majority threshold. Increasingly it looks like the GOP could for the first time in quite a while, take full control of all three branches of the United States Government.

With a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, a Republican Senate, a Republican Presidency, and what looks like it could end up being a Republican House too, total lock on the Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative branches. A United States of Nigeria if you will, where one party has a lock on everything.

And predictably, quite a number of people are already beginning to freak out, even though the Donald is not yet in office.

First on my list of freaked-outers are the folks from the Trans-Atlantic alliance defence and security communities, who are realising that their predictions of a Trump defeat and a Harris landslide, were nothing but fanciful dreams.

Trump’s victory has forced the conversation within the Trans-Atlantic security and defence communities about European strategic autonomy, and Europe’s ability to defend itself in the absence of NATO, back to the forefront.

Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at University of St. Andrews in Scotland, on his Substack delves into what Trump’s victory will mean for Tran-Atlantic Alliance Europe, and advocates that Europe must prepare itself for the probability of American commitment to European security weakening under the Trump administration. You should read his highly informative piece below.

On his Twitter handle, Mr O’Brien re-upped a piece he had written earlier for Foreign Affairs, titled “Planning For A Post-American NATO”, which I read and found educating and would recommend you guys check out. You can find it HERE.

Investor and driving force behind the Magnistky Sanctions, Sir William Felix Browder, KCMG, tweeted the below tweet, linking to a report by Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA):

The article was written by Edward Lucas, a former senior editor at the Economist, and longtime foreign correspondent in Russia, Germany and the Baltic states, who is now a senior advisor at CEPA. It was written in January and in it Mr Lucas argues for more than $300bn in Russian financial assets abroad to be seized and used to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion. You can read it HERE.

Edward Lucas also has a new piece out posted on CEPA’s website today November 6, 2024, titled Trump Cards: A Survival Kit (How Europe Should Prepare for Four Bumpy Years). It’s a relatively concise article, that raises some interesting points, I will point out that personally I disagree with its framing of Europe’s challenger - Russia - from the perspective of nominal GDP , and with its profered solution being European countries increasing their defence budgets to 5% of their GDP.

Europe’s problem is not that there’s not enough money, rather it is a crushing lack of capacity. Germany’s defence budget was miles above Ukraine’s in 2014 and also in 2022, but a stunning lack of actual capacity means that if it had been the Germans getting the short end of the Russian stick in 2022, they would have been pounded to dust. Anyways, you can read Mr Lucas’ arguments HERE

Gen Mick Ryan, has a feature on the website of the Lowy Institute, and Australian think tank, titled “Trump May Surprise Us On Ukraine”, and I cannot recommend it enough. You can find it HERE.

Finally on the security and defence community’s fears of what Trump 2.0 means for European security, I present you a policy memo by Matthew Burrows on the Stimson Center’s website, titled “Could Trump Be Good For Europe?”. Mr Burrows argues that there’s a possibility that Trump could be the trigger that sparks a renew desire in the European part of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, to renew itself and rebuild its capacity.

You can find Mr Burrows policy memo HERE.

Back home in Nigeria, Bloomberg has a good report that vaguely shines a light on export of refined petroleum products from the Dangote Refinery.

Despite multiple attempts by Aliko Dangote to get local authorities and fuel distribution cartels to purchase refined petroleum products from his refinery, the refinery’s sales graph remains flatlined, as his target market silently boycotts and undercuts him with imports of allegedly substandard gasoline and diesels.

However international trading companies such as Trafigura, are loading refined petroleum products from Dangote’s refinery in this interesting twist that Bloomberg reported on, which you can read HERE.

This week, African social media was on fire with reports, videos and explicit images of Baltasar Ebang Engonga, the head of Equatorial Guinea’s anticorruption and financial intelligence agency, engaged in sexual gymnastics with various women. The women have largely been identified as wives, daughters and sisters of many Equatoguinean ministers, generals, and other prominent figures.

A nephew of the Equatorial Guinea’s longserving president, he was rumoured to have fallen out with his cousin the Vice President (who is also son of the president), which led to him being investigated on charges of corruption and embezzlement and his collection of over 400 consensually shot sextapes being discovered and leaked.

The African Report has a great backgrounder on him which you can read HERE.

Finally, to wrap up this edition of The Relevant Reads, I leave you with this piece from Drop Site News (you absolutely should subscribe to their incredible reporting), which argues that railing-at-the-sky old man and current genocide excuser, Bernie Sanders could have won if he and his ideas had been allowed to run in 2016 or 2020 or even today in 2024.

Drop Site News

Bernie Would Have Won

Here’s a warning and an admonition written in January 2019 by author and organizer Jonathan Smucker: “If the Dem Party establishment succeeds in beating down the fresh leadership and bold vision that's stepping up, it will effectively enable the continued rise of authoritarianism. But they will not wake up and suddenly grasp this. It's on us to outmaneu…

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a year ago · 278 likes · 19 comments · Krystal Kyle & Friends

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Israel is losing but Netanyahu won’t back down on his war aims, so says a piece published on the website of the Royal United Services Institute(RUSI), Britain’s oldest defence think tank (probably one of the oldest in the world too). The article was written by Alex Wolf, a post-doctoral fellow at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan.

I haven’t previously read anything by Mr Wolf, and it appears this was his first time writing for RUSI, but his analysis was superb and I largely agree with his conclusions.

He outlined Israel’s war aims in both Gaza and Lebanon, and how it has fared so far a year since the current war started.

You can read it HERE

The EU Parliament’s largest grouping - the centre-right European People’s Party - seems to be normalising the so-called far right (I prefer their proper name- fascists - but that’s just me) by cooperating with them to set and pass policy, breaking the much vaunted cordon sanitaire Europe’s political class claimed to have placed around cooperating with fascists. This is happening despite most of Europe’s centre-right and centrists politicians continuing to pay lip service to the idea of opposing the ideas with the far-right.

But as we saw with French president, Emmanuel Macron’s cooperation with the the fascist National Rally of Marine Le Pen to ensure he got a prime minister to his liking, although the leftist New Popular Front coalition won the largest vote in the snap parliamentary polls he called in June this year; Europe’s center-right politicians prefer to ally with literal fascists aka the far-right and adopt their policies, even when there are less insane options on the left, like the Greens or Socialists willing to work with them.

Politico Europe, has a long piece out that delves into the new marriage between the EPP and all kinds of far-right movements from Giorgia Meloni’s(Italy’s PM from the fascist leaning Brothers of Italy movement) crew in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, to Viktor Orban’s(Hungary’s PM) new Patriots for Europe bloc, in the European Parliament; despite working with the Greens and Socialists to give Ursula von der Leyen a second five year term at the helm of the EU.

You can read the Politico piece HERE

Veteran journalist and scholar, Dr James M. Dorsey dissects why Israel’s limited retaliation to Iran demonstrates that the US can stay Netanyahu’s hand, despite how much folks are inclined to believe otherwise.

Dr Dorsey’s premise aligns with my specific reading of why Israel conducted such an underwhelming strike, especially as its operational ethos seems to be designed around loud, impressive and overwhelming action.

On a bigger picture note, America utilising its various levers of dominance to impose its will on Israel over Iran, is another clear indication that the genocidal war being waged on the Palestinian people by the regime in Tel Aviv, is being done with the full approval of the United States.

Dr Dorsey’s piece is embedded below

If there’s one thing Western mainstream media can be counted on to do, it is to serve as court stenographers and to whitewash the reputations of functionaries in their governments seeking to build a publicly loved career post government work, or just wanting to feel better about their moral cowardice while in actual positions of power.

Politico has a magazine feature out on US Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, which she (with Politico’s help) paints herself in the colours of the mythical impartial professional, while the administration she is a part of oversees a genocide in Gaza.

For those as fascinated as I am by such pieces, you can read it HERE

Recently retired Australian Army officer (major general), Mick Ryan, has a very insightful article on his Substack which I read last week on North Korea’s entry in the Russo-Ukrainian War. He does a really brilliant job breaking down what that would mean for the Russian side, in terms of force deployment, logistics and even command and control.

His article is embedded below

Futura Doctrina

North Korea’s Entry into the Ukraine War

It has become increasingly likely that North Korean combat troops will appear in Ukraine soon. According to Ukrainian and South Korean government sources, around 1500 North Korean special operations troops are currently preparing in Russia to deploy to Ukraine…

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a year ago · 69 likes · 8 comments · Mick Ryan

Still on Ukraine, Kyiv Independent is reporting that the Pentagon has informed Kyiv/Kiev that the US will not impose new limitations on Ukraine’s use of American weapons if North Korea enters the war. What that actual translates to in reality, remains to be seen, seeing as it is the White House and not DOD that actually has the final say on imposing or removing any limits, on US weapons supplied to Ukraine.

But Kyiv Independent’s piece which also talks about the destruction of the town of Vochansk in Kharkiv/Kharkov Oblast is available HERE

Closer to home in South Africa, the African Report has a really educating feature (paywalled) out on someone that usually flies below the radar, a key backer of ex South African president Jacob Zuma, Louis Liebenberg, a White South African business man with a particularly colourful past, currently facing trial on 42 counts of fraud, racketeering, money laundering among other crimes.

That feature can be accessed HERE

Sudan War Monitor has a piece out on how Russian cargo planes have helped both sides in the ongoing War in Sudan. You can find that feature embedded below.

Sudan War Monitor

Mercenary aviation: Russian cargo planes helped both sides in Sudan's war

Five days ago on the scrubland of North Darfur, at the edge of the Sahara Desert, a Soviet cargo aircraft crashed and burst into a ball of fire, leaving no survivors. Items recovered from the wreckage, including identity documents, indicated that the airplane and its crew had ties to Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and the United Emirates (UAE…

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a year ago · Sudan War Monitor

In Ethiopia, ACLED’s Ethiopian Peace Observatory published a weekly update that as always, shines a much appreciated light on the slow rolling collapse of Africa’s second most populous country.

A particularly interesting development for me was the bit about Amharan nationalist Fano rebel militias now clashing - in strength - with the Ethiopian National Defence Force in eastern parts of Amhara Region, which are mostly populated by ethnic Amharan Muslims, who are the opposite of the constituency associated with the Fano groups, that is, Amharan Orthodox Christians.

The Fano ideological current, has usually been linked to Amharan Orthodox Christian nationalism, so to find that Fano rebels might be getting stronger in Eastern Amhara where the anti-Abiy Ahmed rebellion has been relatively weak, might point towards a greater buy in to some form of ethnic secularised Amharan nationalism bhy Muslim Amharan communities in that area.

ACLED’s update can be read HERE

Ken Opalo, in his Substack publication, An Africanist’s Perspective, breaks down what an Harris or a Trump victory would mean for US policy in Africa. It’s a really superb piece of analysis that I am actually excited to recommend you go read.

One thing he recommended - that I totally agree on - was that the US should decouple its African policy from Europe (specifically France,), and the Middle East (specifically the UAE). I would go further and say that the US should decouple its Nigeria policy in particular from the UK, especially in the security realm.

France and the UAE are various levels of spoilers on the African scene, the French from a superiority complex that still refuses to engage with African states especially its former colonies, as sovereign and independent peoples that do not have to tow its preferred lines.

The UAE on the other hand is trying to build an 18th century colonial empire, where it extracts resources from African states it sets on fire by arming one side or the other in local political disputes in return for access to minerals and other raw materials, as part of its post oil economic future.

While the problem with the US tying its policies on Nigeria to the UK’s institutional knowledge and alignment, is that the UK has no clue anymore what it is doing in Nigeria itself. So where the US should be doing what veteran US diplomat Johnnie Carson has recently called for and deepen its strategic relationship with Nigeria, it is relying to a great extent on the UK that itself has no clue what it wants its own strategic relationship with Nigeria to look like.

You can read Ken Opalo’s fantastic piece which is embedded below

An Africanist Perspective

Harris or Trump? What the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election portends for America's Africa policy

Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe in order to receive timely updates…

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a year ago · 8 likes · Ken Opalo

To round off this edition of The Relevant Reads, I want to share two pieces that those with a love for history and strategy would love.

The first is from WarOnTheRocks and is titled “Attrition’s Apostle? Reading Vegetius In An Age Of Protracted Warfare”. If you are a military strategy nerd, you likely have heard of Publius Vegetius Renatus and his De Re Militari, or its original name Epitoma Rei Militaris so you already know the direction the featured WarOnTheRocks piece is heading towards.

I cannot recommend it enough, and you can find it HERE

And finally Engelsberg Ideas, has a new essay out titled “How The US Origin Myth Triumphed Over History”, you can find it HERE and its a really interesting read if you are trying to understand the American establishment psyche in particular.

I hope you enjoy and learn from these reads and as always, comments, critiques, and criticisms are appreciated and much welcome. Even in criticism there is something to be learnt.

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