As reported by FOX News, over the weekend, Russian parliament member Oleg Matveychev made an appearance on Russian television and demanded that the United States return the State of Alaska and Fort Ross in California, as well as pay reparations to compensate the Russian Federation for the economic losses from sanctions and the cost of the “special military action” in Ukraine. The United States purchased Alaska and Fort Ross from the Russian Empire back in 1867.
Faced with crippling sanctions by the US-led coalition against his country for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Matveychev’s outburst is an indication that, contrary to the Kremlin downplaying the cost of taking Russia down the path of becoming a hermit kingdom like North Korea, members of Russia’s Duma are concerned that the quality of life in their country is about to suffer. My own assessment of this is that Russia will experience a social catastrophe far greater than the mid-90’s depression that beset the nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Matveychev’s imagination wasn’t limited to asking the USA to turn Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan’s stomping grounds over to the newest Tzar, Vladimir Putin. Matveychev also said that Antarctica was discovered by the Russians, and therefore it belonged to them.
When I read this the first thought that came to my mind was, “Wow! There’s an out of the box thinker.” It reminded me of the kind of out-of-left-field proposals that were common during the presidency of Donald Trump, who was never shy about making proposals coming from angles that no one expected the US to explore.
Russia’s Precious “Correlation of Forces”
It hit me. Creative unpredictability is what the United States is lacking in its leverage in this current crisis regarding Ukraine. And I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me for a moment as I explain a very critical Russian foreign policy concept called the Correlation of Forces (COF). The term was used by retired General Wesley Clark in an Atlantic Council panel discussing whether Vladimir Putin could use nuclear weapons to attack Ukraine. It brought me joy.
COF is a topic that most foreign policy analysts hear. Correlation is the key word in Russian strategic planning. in English, the mathematical term correlation as it applies to Russian policy is best understood as asking the question, “How sure are you that nothing will go wrong with this plan?” And for Russians, the line from the movie “Hunt for Red October” about no Russian captain starts anything without a plan most certainly applies. In this particular instance, what matters to Russia’s plan is how sure Vladimir Putin is that Joe Biden will play into his hands.
At the moment, I believe we are playing right into the Russians’ plans. He believes that his statements provide clarity about US positions, and so Putin understands where it is safe to cross. However, he has been doing exactly the opposite of what the US wants. We are giving Mr. Putin exactly the information he needs to mathematically compute the risks and rewards of his posturing and actions in a way that lets him plan around our naïve predictability. Our government plays into the COF mathematics used by the Russian General Staff and Foreign Intelligence Services to forecast whether the Russian plan would prevail.
This must stop immediately.
Our goal is to become an unpredictable enemy that interrupts our enemies’ plans by surprising them at the moment with unpredicted responses. We win these “rock and a hard place” confrontations by doing things the Russians don’t anticipate and can immediately see raises uncertainty in how things will turn out. In COF terms, what makes America a superpower is that we can turn our enemies’ plans into mush by our ability to turn on a dime in a crisis.
Here’s an example:
Harry Truman designed the Berlin Airlift as a way to keep that city from being lost to Russia. John F. Kennedy told Nikita Chrushchev mutual assured destruction could occur if Russia puts missiles in Cuba. Ronald Reagan developed the Strategic Defense Initiative which makes it difficult for Russians not to be certain how a general nuke war would end. Their correlation of forces calculations were ruined by the SDI. This is something I am very familiar with. This calculation was my invention. Here we are, again, at the margin of a struggle of wits among two hegemons.
Biden could ask Bush, Obama, or Trump to help him brainstorm. I think this would be a strategic move in the national interest of America. Richard Nixon was the first to make China open to him and he continued his efforts to establish diplomatic relations with China after his departure from office. President Biden should consider that part of his problem in outmaneuvering President Putin is that he’s fighting with one hand tied behind his back. I’m only half-kidding that I could see Biden appointing Special Envoy Donald Trump to say things like, “Hey Vlad, you give us Ukraine back, we’ll help you not tailspin Russia into an economic collapse. We don’t want you to lose what’s left of the Russian Federation. You know it’s going to go to China. All the items in Target’s equivalents Walmart and Target are made in China. Wake up and smell the coffee already.”
It’s not as farfetched to think this way as one might think. It’s how foreign policy breakthroughs actually happen. Adding on, in the spirit of the “We Want Alaska Back” narrative, here are some other change-the-game things the United States could ponder plopping into the calculus to mess up Mr. Putin’s correlation of forces calculations.
The Diplomatic Narrative should include Abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
It is worth telling Putin, Mr. Biden, that the threats of nuclear weapon use have fundamentally changed the state of deterrence. He must tell him to stop abandoning the ABM Treaty.
An American Initiative to Create a Global Nuclear Weapons Shield is Announced
Mr. Putin’s favorite intimidation story to the world is the Russian first use of nuclear weapons doctrine known as “Escalate to De-Escalate.” It involves telling the world that you have an advantage in the inventory of tactical nuclear weapons, which the Russians do by around 2,000 versus a paltry number in Europe opposite NATO. NATO must back down immediately after the use of a small tactical sub-kiloton weapon. Russia escalates, then immediately de-escalates the situation by offering terms of compromise to NATO, who being horrified, will either give up or pretend it didn’t happen.
That’s not really going to work. It’s probably better to try to get everyone in NATO together and say this. War doctrines such as “Escalate to De-Escalate,” or the use of any nuclear weapon by the military of any nuclear capable nation against any target, will be considered a crime against humanity. All use of this force can result in the destruction of any nation’s military forces by combined arms from the US and other allied countries who join us on this mission.
US Space Force will work with other US resources to make this threat credible. They will also be responsible for maintaining surveillance in order to locate and attack the original source of nuclear attacks. As a priority, we will develop the technology to be able to destroy and engage the origin points forces. To prevent this type of war crime from being repeated, we will not need any additional warning. In order to safeguard the safety and security of mankind from any nuclear threats, the US will also invite China and NATO to join the effort. The goal of our mission is to stop nuclear weapons being used.
Get Tinkering with China’s Posture
The Unites States should confer with China and support China’s position of neutrality and encouragement of a diplomatic ending to the Ukraine crisis. China must be made aware by the US that Russia cannot wage war against Ukraine. We know the Russian Army’s equipment and supplies are limited, that they cannot sustain a prolonged campaign against a determined Ukraine without assistance. It is not in the national interest of China to deliver that assistance because it will negatively affect the valuable mutual economic relationship across the Pacific Ocean between the world’s two largest economies, China and the United States.
As to territorial ambitions, the “thinking out of the box” message that the US should note to China is that Taiwan is a lot like Ukraine. It’s an arduous fight against a resistant population of 23 million people. And in the end, it’s still an island lacking in the raw materials China needs. The Chinese might look towards Siberia as their military areas have been forced to move westwards in order to become extinct in Ukraine. If the war goes badly for Russia and their country collapses, that’s a lot of oil and mineral resources.
Maybe to get to that diplomacy end game, China might want to encourage Mr. Putin to pull some of those eastern district forces out of Ukraine and not rely so much on China’s squabbles with America as something to base his foreign policy and hegemony aspirations on. Behaviors are changed by hungry eyes.
It is vital that Ukraine remains alive in order to achieve US global economic goals
This is on top of continuing to supply Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Ukraine with conventional weapons so that there is no way the Russian military can ever hope to conquer the country, aided or not. War is not about firepower; it’s about logistics. Russia is far less logistically savvy than the West. The ability for Ukraine to destroy Russian supply lines, and to move ships far back from the frontlines where Russians are busy bombing civilians is crucial.
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