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How to Invade a Country
3.1k Plays1 year ago
In the first episode of our second season, we interview Mick Ryan on how to invade a country. Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the U.S. Marine Corps University Command and Staff College and School of Advanced Warfighting. He has commanded at platoon, squadron, regiment, task force, and brigade level. General Ryan was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his leadership of Australia’s first reconstruction task force in Afghanistan. He completed his 35-year career with the Australian Army and transitioned to the Army Reserve in 2022. He is an adjunct fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute. He is also the author of War Transformed, released in 2022, and White Sun War, released in 2023, with a book on Ukraine coming in 2024.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. In each episode, we'll sit down with leading experts to discuss dangerous activities.
Exploring Dangerous Activities
00:00:13
Speaker
From assassinations and airliner shootdowns through to kidnappings and coups, we'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the Dangerous Act to seek and to conduct these operations, and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them. In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:34
Speaker
However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
00:01:02
Speaker
911, what's your emergency? I'm Louis H. Percent, the founder and co-editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm a researcher in the field of intelligence and espionage with a PhD in intelligence studies from Loughborough University. I'm an adjunct professor in intelligence at Science Pro Paris, and in my day job, I provide geopolitical analysis and security focused intelligence to private sector corporations. I'm Aleksandar Shokiewicz, a co-editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica.
00:01:31
Speaker
I'm a multilingual security and intelligence professional with a master's in international security from Sciences-Popari. I have served in both consulting and in-house roles focusing on threat monitoring, geopolitical intelligence, and security support to various public and private audiences.
Guest Introduction: General McRime
00:01:45
Speaker
So today we're going to be discussing how to invade a country. And our guest is General McRime. He's a retired Major General in the Australian Army, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the US Marine Corps University Command and Staff College and School of Advanced War Fighting. He's commanded a platoon squadron regiment task force and brigade level.
00:02:08
Speaker
General Ryan was made a member of the Order of Australia, AM, for his leadership of Australia's first Reconstruction Task Force in Afghanistan. He completed his 35-year career with the Australian Army and transitioned into the Army Reserve in 2022. He's an adjunct fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute. He's also the author of War Transformed, released in 2022, and White Sun War, released in 2023.
00:02:37
Speaker
with a book on Ukraine coming out in 2024. So General, thank you very much for joining us. That's great to be with you. Thank you. So our first question that we like to ask our guests is, you know, you've had an absolutely fascinating career.
General McRime's Military Journey
00:02:50
Speaker
How did you get into your line of work?
00:02:53
Speaker
Well, my first one, which was being in the Army, I got into straight from school. You know, I'd been wanting to be a soldier for most of my life. The only thing I ever wanted to be other than that was an archaeologist was after seeing Indiana Jones. But I decided to join the Army and became a combat engineer and spent 35 years, one month and 12 days doing that.
00:03:14
Speaker
spending a lot of time in lots of hot, sandy places and hot, wet places around the world. And, you know, after reaching the rank of Major General, I decided, well, I was interested in doing something else. Still loved the military and decided the best time to leave was when you still love it. And that's what I did 18 months ago.
00:03:33
Speaker
Today's topic, we're going to talk about how to invade a country. I suppose the big question is, we've seen some pretty spectacular examples of this exact challenge in the last year or so. When thinking about invading a country, this is a huge operation. There's a lot of moving parts. What are the sorts of things a leader should be thinking about in advance?
Planning an Invasion: Political Objectives
00:03:55
Speaker
Clearly, we're thinking at this from the red perspective here. I'm not, caveat is I'm not thinking about doing this myself personally. But if I was to put myself in the red team's shoes, first and foremost, you're thinking about, well, what's the political objective here? What are you trying to achieve? And actually, can you do it without having to use military force?
00:04:16
Speaker
You know, most times, not every time, but a lot of times, military force is the last option because this is a pretty serious commitment of time, of people, of resources. And very rarely goes according to plan, you know, almost never goes according to plan. So first and foremost is what's the political objective here? And secondly, can I do this any other way other than having to conduct a large scale military operation?
00:04:41
Speaker
So, you know, I think they're the two main considerations. And then I guess the third one is, do I have the military means to achieve the political outcomes I'm after?
00:04:52
Speaker
And, you know, I think as we've seen in Ukraine, the Russians did not have the military means to achieve the political outcomes. They wanted to take over all Ukraine. They had the military means to do far, far short of that. So the alignment of military as well as diplomacy and economic and all those things with the high level political objectives is pretty important to think about as well.
Invasion Timelines and Historical Examples
00:05:14
Speaker
And once the mine is actually set on conducting an invasion, what's the timeline for planning such an operation?
00:05:21
Speaker
And what are also like the key factors then that you would have influencing how much time should actually be budgeted for this.
00:05:26
Speaker
as much as possible. If you have a look back through history, D-Day is a great example of an invasion. They spent years talking about it, a couple of years planning in great detail, at least a year training and stockpiling. This is a pretty significant undertaking and it takes a long time. The Chinese have been planning to invade Taiwan since 1949.
00:05:54
Speaker
So somewhere between one year and 70 years is probably the answer. What the right one is will depend on the country, the one that's undertaking the operation, the operational culture of both militaries involved, how many resources you've got and what the political objectives are. But normally a couple of weeks won't cut it.
00:06:15
Speaker
What about notifying your troops? There was some reporting that some Russian troops were only told they were invading as late as a few hours before departure, including some of the junior officers. What sort of effect can this have?
Troop Notification Methods
00:06:28
Speaker
How really should that be done, gearing your army up psychologically for an invasion?
00:06:33
Speaker
I mean, the obvious answer is not like that. A large number of Russians allegedly did not know they were there to invade Ukraine until the last minute. And when they were told, they were told, well, okay, you're invading Ukraine, but it's only going to take 10 days. It's a march, a road march to Kiev. The government will fall. They're not really going to fight hard. The West isn't really going to intervene.
00:06:59
Speaker
You should be right and you'll probably be occupying for a little while and you'll be home in time for Christmas. None of that worked out for them. You need to be honest with all levels of your military about the challenges. You need to be honest with them about the political objectives so you can line military and political things for the war.
00:07:20
Speaker
And I think if you contrast what the Russians did, which was basically tell almost no one to what the PLA is doing, which is telling everyone it's going to do this, and every Chinese soldier knows that's exactly what they're going to do at some point, I think the Chinese method is probably, if you're in the enemy's shoes, a better method.
Strategic Surprise in Modern Warfare
00:07:44
Speaker
Then when we think about the idea of strategic surprise, something that's so crucial to military encounters, and in the run-ups, the invasion of Ukraine, we saw a lot made of troop build-ups, and was this an exercise? Was this really going to be an invasion? This is a country right next door over a land border, so it's a pretty simple endeavor by comparison to, say, an invasion of Taiwan.
00:08:07
Speaker
Is that sort of strategic surprise even possible in this day and age in the age of satellites, advanced surveillance, especially when you're looking at a kind of overseas invasion? And if so, what could you do to mitigate this lack of surprise if you are planning an invasion?
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's still possible. I mean, notwithstanding the very pervasive sensor network that covers the world now, both military and civilian, it's a mesh network. Just because you can see everything doesn't mean you know everything. You know, seeing a lot of things doesn't make you wise about what you're seeing. And I think the lead up to Ukraine was a great example of that. I mean, I think several European governments had convinced themselves that there's no way the Russians would do this.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I think, you know, there's examples of that from before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and a range of other events historically where people, despite all the evidence, convinced themselves that no rational actor would undertake this operation and then they go ahead and do it. You know, in some respects, the Americans before the Second World War thought there's no way the Japanese will go to war with us. They'll lose.
00:09:18
Speaker
And the Japanese went, we really don't want to go to war with the Americans because we know we'll lose, but they did anyway. So, you know, rationality is an important part of this, but it's still possible to surprise people. And if we have a look at, you know, the situation in Ukraine where there's a land border, a very long land border, I think surprise is still possible. And in somewhere like Taiwan, where you've got 180 kilometres of open sea between them,
00:09:44
Speaker
You know, if you're doing large scale exercises regularly and you normalise that, well, that's one way you might be able to achieve surprise as well. But, you know, it's it is harder. But surprise is an enduring part of warfare. We have seen surprise throughout this war in Ukraine. I mean, from the Kirschbridge attacks to attacks on Moscow to the Kharkiv offences.
00:10:10
Speaker
The surprise is just going to continue to happen regardless of how well surveilled the battlefield is. I mean, we served in Afghanistan, which until that time, or at least until Ukraine, was probably the most densely surveilled piece of Earth in the history of warfare. And we were still surprised all
Logistics and Supply Chains in Warfare
00:10:28
Speaker
the time. So seeing everything doesn't mean you know everything. And just linking back to that. So one of the surprises, I guess, that we also saw in Ukraine was kind of issues with supply chains. There were
00:10:39
Speaker
so many reports about challenges and getting sufficient ammunition to the front. How crucial are supply chains actually in conducting warfare successfully? Yeah, I mean, for me, the surprise was that people were surprised by that. I mean, this isn't exactly a new lesson. You know, ever since Rourke's drift, we've known that you need to get a lot of stuff to a lot of soldiers very quickly. Otherwise, you don't win. And the fact that we'd forgotten that since the end of the Cold War and we lulled into a sense of security in these very
00:11:09
Speaker
slow moving counterinsurgency campaigns we've taken. I mean, we've just forgotten hard learned lessons from the last 150 years or so. But at the end of the day, real strategy takes into account logistics and critical items. I mean, if you have a look at the Second World War in Europe and the Mediterranean,
00:11:28
Speaker
The pacing piece of equipment was LSTs, landing ship tanks, not combat divisions, not air force squadrons, not bombers. It was where are the LSTs and how many of them are there? That was the thing that drove where and when amphibious operations took place. That's just one example of the importance of logistics.
00:11:52
Speaker
But I think Ukraine has shown that the level of stockpiling as well as the level of productive capacity in the West is well, well short of what's needed, not just to fight a war, but to deter those who might like to engage in a war against us. I mean, I think.
00:12:10
Speaker
Your industrial capacity is part of a conventional deterrent that says to people, listen, we can now produce you. Don't try this on. And we've forgotten that. I think we're relearning it through the blood of the Ukrainians. And hopefully we take the right lessons from it.
00:12:26
Speaker
So I'm going to offer a very minor spoiler to White Sun War here. So if you haven't yet read the book, I'd suggest you mute me quickly. But in the book, one theme that you do touch on is supply chains being interfered with by insurgents, by kind of behind the front lines partisans. So how do occupying forces, especially when they're still in that kind of push phase trying to seize and hold territory, how do they deal with partisan activities behind the front lines?
Handling Partisan Activities
00:12:51
Speaker
Is there a tried and tested method for successfully doing this?
00:12:55
Speaker
have lots of rear area troops. Partisans attacking supply lines goes all the way back to Alexander's time, right? He never moved on until he formed a whole new logistics supply base in his move towards India. And good commanders have a sense of understood that you've got to secure backwards as well as forward when you're under taking a military campaign.
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, at the end of the day, you need to do what the Marines call single battle. You need to do a deep fight, which is well in advance. You need close combat. And then you have a rear battle, which isn't just logistics, but it's securing your rear areas and ensuring neither the enemy or civilians can't do things to interfere, not just with supply lines, but supply points, headquarters, transportation nodes and these kinds.
00:13:46
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's a numbers game and you need people on the ground that can do that. And unless we invent a whole range of clever autonomous systems that can do it in the future, it's within the realms of possibility. In fact, I was at University of Queensland today looking at some amazing robotic systems, but we're not there yet. So the way you solve this is throwing people at it. General Ryan.
00:14:11
Speaker
In white sun war, you place emphasis on timing regarding China's decision to invade Taiwan, notably exploiting distractions in the US. What else factors into timing and invasion? Some have also theorized that China's invasion of Taiwan would happen at China's economic peak. Does that seem reasonable to you?
Timing of Invasions: Influencing Factors
00:14:30
Speaker
I mean, politics clearly drives timing, not just the politics of your adversary, but your own, whether you're popular or not, whether you need something to focus people externally rather than internally. I think Chinese economy is a really interesting question. There's so many different views on this, but I think there is consensus that the Chinese economy is doing poorly at the moment.
00:14:55
Speaker
and distracting people from that could be a reason why the CCP do something catastrophic. But, you know, you also need to look at things like weather and terrain and geography, drive these things. I mean, I did a lot of research on typhoon season, for example, for White Sun War. I mean, there's bits of the year, you just can't do military operations in the Western Pacific because of the cyclone season or heavy rains, or you can't do large scale ones.
00:15:22
Speaker
So these things all have an impact. So, you know, there's a whole lot of layers when it comes to timing and locations, which drives the initial question you asked me about how long in advance should you be looking at things. I mean, you just can't turn these things on. It takes a lot of planning over months or years. And even if you wanted to do something quickly, if you're in the middle of typhoon season, it's just not physically possible to do some of these things either because
00:15:51
Speaker
You can't move across the ocean or you can't undertake cross-country mobility because it's mud, just like we see in Ukraine, of course. So all these things kind of play into it. There's the political, geography, weather, all these kind of things.
00:16:06
Speaker
You talked about the importance of things like having landing ships positioned in the right place. What about training and experience? Prior to D-Day, the Allies had conducted numerous landings across the Pacific and European theaters. Would you expect China to attempt smaller-scale operations on perhaps Taiwan's outlying islands to try and give them the experience ahead of any attempt on the main island?
00:16:31
Speaker
I mean, possibly they would, but you've got to ask, well, why would they do that? Because it's basically invading Taiwan, even if it's, you know, I was on Kinman Island in April, which is just a couple of kilometers offshore from mainland China. And you could do that, but that's pretty much a declaration of war. You could then kind of surmise, well, would the West want to intervene?
00:16:55
Speaker
Over that, I mean, Eisenhower didn't. You know, he was very clear, I'm not going to war over some rocks. But that's a very small scale problem compared to Taiwan. And, you know, the Chinese have really only been doing joint operations for less than a decade. They only established their theater commands in the east, the south, the west, the north, northeast from about 2015 on when it's been a priority as you
00:17:22
Speaker
That's a very, very short time. In the West, we've been doing it for decades, and it's still really hard for a range of cultural and other reasons. So we shouldn't expect the Chinese will get this right first or even the second or third time. And the larger the scale of joint operations, it increases the degree of difficulty significantly, not just by a little bit. It's orders of magnitude.
00:17:49
Speaker
So they've got a lot to learn, but they are doing a lot of exercising. I track a lot of the stuff they're doing. They are doing constant exercises, single service as well as joint, to hone their ability to do integrated operations whilst also breaking down enemy integrated operations at the same time.
Comparing Military Effectiveness
00:18:10
Speaker
I suppose that leads one final question before we start thinking about the defense and the blue force side of this, which is, I see a lot of criticisms against the relatively mediocre performance of the Russian military in Ukraine. And I wonder, is that leading us to a sense of complacency over the PLA? How do you feel qualitatively that the Chinese military is in terms of both troops and equipment? And how well would you expect them to perform in a similar operation?
00:18:39
Speaker
You can never predict this is the short answer. I don't think we can rest on our laurels and assume the PLA is the same as the Russians. They've certainly studied the Russians, but they've also studied us. They certainly studied the Americans for a very long time. I think they have invested more in individual training and collective training compared to the Russians. But at the same time, they do also have a very highly centralized command and control approach.
00:19:08
Speaker
So, I think the Chinese have looked at Russia and gone, we just do that better. I don't know we could assert that with any certainty, but prudence dictates we assume the Chinese would be much better than the Russians. I mean, if we assume that they'd be the same or worse, I think
00:19:29
Speaker
That would be dangerous and would probably lead us to bad places. So if nothing else prudence dictates, you've got to assume that they could do it much better than the Russians could. And to be quite honest, it probably wouldn't be hard to do things better than the Russians could. You have been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist, the podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica.
Closing Remarks
00:20:00
Speaker
If you like this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find at howtogettontowatchlist.com, where you can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast. Please also consider subscribing to the podcast on your streaming platform of choice, giving us a rating, and joining our Patreon.
00:20:35
Speaker
And now looking at an invasion from a different angle, from the defending forces angle, what should you be thinking about when defending against an invasion and what are the different elements you have to keep in mind?
Defense Strategies Against Invasions
00:20:46
Speaker
First and foremost, you want to invest in deterring anything like that happening, right?
00:20:50
Speaker
You want to build up your intelligence, your diplomacy, your military, and a whole range of things to deter it to the degree possible. And if it does happen, to shape it into the kind of fight that you want to fight.
00:21:06
Speaker
I've studied Taiwan for a while on this. For 60, 70 years, they prepared for a conventional fight against the Chinese. That's just not going to work now because China is a different country than what it was in 1950. You had Admiral Lee Tsimin in 2017 with the overall defense concept and a very different
00:21:26
Speaker
an asymmetric approach to Taiwanese defense. They're the kind of intellectual undertakings you need to look at. You need to have a good assessment of who's likely to present a threat, what kind of threats, and what's your ability to deter or to fight off that threat if it actually manifests.
Role of Alliances in Defense
00:21:47
Speaker
Another piece is looking beyond your own capability is alliances. One thing that we're very, very fortunate to have is alliances with the Americans, whether it's through NATO or in our part of the world, ANZUS or the Japanese have an alliance, Filipinos have an alliance. It's always better to fight with friends rather than fight alone.
00:22:11
Speaker
And there's, once again, thousands of years of history to provide evidence along those lines. Chinese don't have any friends that are going to file alongside them, so they've probably got an issue. They can probably only pull off one thing at a time because of that.
00:22:25
Speaker
So you've got to think through who's the most likely enemy? How are you going to fight? What's your alliance framework? And then you need to think about, well, what's your indigenous production capability? What's your indigenous mobilization capacity, not just with industry, but with people with mobilizing influence operations, these kind of things. I mean, I think Ukraine stands out as a singular example where one person
00:22:52
Speaker
has made such a profound difference that the war would have been different without that person. That's Zelensky, right? I mean, his leadership in unifying his country and soliciting aid from NATO and beyond has made the difference. So you want to make sure you've got one of them. And, you know, I call it the Zelensky test. I think there's a lot of politicians who look in the mirror, probably not now, but certainly in the first few weeks of the war, thinking would I pass the Zelensky test?
00:23:19
Speaker
And sadly, I think for many of our politicians, the answer would be no. But you need people who can lead, people who will take risks, people who will take the hard decisions in the national security enterprise, not just in the military, just as the Ukrainians have done. So that's kind of a long answer of what you've got to do to kind of deter or fight it. But you
National Will in Invasion Resistance
00:23:39
Speaker
need all those things. And the final one is will.
00:23:42
Speaker
national will, whether it's the will of the government, the ability to government to unify national will. I mean, if you go to Ukraine, you see the people there have will. They know what they're up against. They know through Bushar and Erpin and places like this, this is an existential fight and they are able to harness will to resist the Russians for, I think, as long as they need to.
00:24:05
Speaker
And you talked about the importance of intelligence. What are the different signals that you would be watching out for to make sure that you can actually detect a potential invasion early on?
Indicators of Potential Invasions
00:24:15
Speaker
There's a lot of indicators of warnings, right? There's simple ones, massing of transportation, whether it's aerial or ground or ships. Stockpiling logistics, another simple one. Stockpiling artillery ammunition and these kind of things. Massing of combat forces. I mean, these are all basic ones. There's some other ones that aren't as obvious. I mean, things like quiet call-ups of reservists, not all of them, but important ones.
00:24:45
Speaker
Stockpiling of blood products is a really interesting combat indicator. Stockpiling of things like raw materials used in national industries that might be subject to sanctions might be an indicator of warning, and that was certainly one in whitesome war. Certainly, there's some pretty obvious ones, but there's some not so obvious ones that if you have a pretty robust indicator of warnings framework, and I
00:25:14
Speaker
I'm pretty certain the Americans at Indopaycom have a pretty long and extensive indicators and warning program that looks at across the breadth of Chinese society to see is something changing in both the will and the capacity of the CCP to do something precipitous.
00:25:36
Speaker
Staying on the subject of intelligence, you talk about this a bit in White Sun War, the Chinese forces being shocked that they're facing resistance from Taiwanese civilians. It's something we've seen with Russian forces being similarly surprised, especially in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine.
Critique of Political Officer Systems
00:25:52
Speaker
Does this say something about the danger of a political officer system that we see in authoritarian militaries and their intelligence services? Is there something that we can learn and exploit there?
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we saw this not just at the beginning of 2022 in Ukraine, but we saw it in 2014 as well. I mean, if you have a look at some of the lesson study of the Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2014, their intelligence services made exactly the same errors about they'll be welcomed as liberators, all these kind of things. And when you tell your soldiers that and it doesn't happen, you know, it results in a form of psychological shock.
00:26:29
Speaker
The question why they were there can result in atrocities because they take it out on the local people, these kind of things, which we've seen consistently and systemically from the Russians. And we're probably likely to see it from the Chinese in Taiwan. They're told in China that Taiwan is part of China.
00:26:49
Speaker
It is a rebellious province. And we know what the Chinese do to rebellious provinces, right? Look at how they've treated Tibet or Xinjiang or Hong Kong, to be quite frank. And I don't think Taiwan could expect anything less. And I was there in April talking to the National Security Council and foreign minister.
00:27:11
Speaker
They don't expect to be treated very kindly if the Chinese ever seek to take Taiwan back. Taiwan will not look like anything like it does right now. If you get a Taipei, I felt like I was just in another European city, except it was a Chinese variant of that.
00:27:31
Speaker
vibrant, people could say what they want, do what they wanted, that would disappear. And so this all gets into will, can cause shock to an invading force when they see this because they're just not used to it.
Civilian Support in National Defense
00:27:45
Speaker
So having spoken a lot about the insurgency side of civil resistance, if you're not willing to take up arms, you're not able to take up arms, but you are a civilian that finds themselves caught up in an invasion, what can you do? What can the civilian population do to help with national defense?
00:28:02
Speaker
There's a few things. I'll go back to the overall defense concept for Taiwan. I mean, one of them is just national resilience, which is things like having a reserve force that can either supplement the military or act as a resistance force if there is an actual invasion.
00:28:19
Speaker
Just preparing people for disinformation, misinformation from the enemy. We're seeing in places like Sweden now that they're doing more to prepare people prior to and during warfare for enemy propaganda and misinformation. It's not something that a lot of countries in the West have done since the end of the Cold War. It's a game we need to get back into because it's something that's been practiced against us every day, 24-7, by
00:28:44
Speaker
You know, the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans and other malign actors. So that intellectual hardening of a populace is really important. I think convincing the population that things like national service are important and the kinds of national service are undertaken are important. I mean, national service doesn't just have to be military. It can be a whole array of different things, could be ambulance drivers, could be
00:29:10
Speaker
I don't know, people responding to bushfires in civil defence things. So these are all, I think, important areas where governments can influence populations in the lead up to major confrontations. And then during, as we've seen in Ukraine, we've seen
00:29:28
Speaker
Primarily provision of intelligence by people who were stuck in occupied Russia. So I think a lot of the targeting we see of large Russian supply dumps or transportation hubs is going. It would not surprise me if at least some of the intelligence for that is provided by local people in those occupied areas.
00:29:53
Speaker
So, you know, you see all that kind of thing. And, you know, the Russian response has been to deport people to Russia and to kidnap children. I mean, that's what Putin has been what we brought up to the ICC about is that kidnapping a children, among other things, eventually, hopefully. So there's an array of things that people can do beyond just joining the reserve or the resistance when it comes to these kind of situations.
Consequences of WMDs in Invasions
00:30:17
Speaker
And now having looked at the different things that our country can actually do to defend itself,
00:30:22
Speaker
What would be the worst case scenario when defending against an invasion?
00:30:26
Speaker
I think the use of weapons of mass destruction is kind of the worst case for a couple of reasons. I mean, clearly, the moral and humanitarian impact are profound. We haven't seen this on large scale since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. And I think the damage of a nuclear weapon would be really significant. The damage of a biological weapon would probably be orders of magnitude worse.
00:30:54
Speaker
that we've seen, you know, Covid was was a recent experience with that. Not only is that humanitarian and moral catastrophe is probably more likely to influence political decisions of the of the country it's used against as well.
00:31:10
Speaker
So, you know, that is the worst case, the use of weapons of mass destruction. Because if you use these things, the impact of them is lingering for a very long time, for generations, in some cases, but certainly for many, many years afterward.
00:31:28
Speaker
A moment ago, you touched on propaganda and disinformation.
Ukraine's Information Warfare Strategies
00:31:32
Speaker
One of the most successful actions by Ukraine, especially in those early days of the war, seems to be in the information warfare domain. It's been described as them conducting a terrific meme war. What do you see as the purpose of this kind of activity from a defensive side? What sort of benefits can that bring you? I think there's a couple of purposes. The most important one actually isn't to influence the West, it's to maintain internal unity in Ukraine.
00:31:57
Speaker
There's lots of different bits of Ukraine. It's split east-west in some views, split ethnically. It has different language regions. But the war appears to have unified people. And I have spoken to quite a few Ukrainians since the war. A lot of them who spoke Russian on 21 February had automatically just shifted to Ukrainian, both spoken text
00:32:22
Speaker
are all this kind of thing. So I think internal cohesion of the nation has been the most important element of Ukrainian information activities. But clearly, the secondary one has been external support. And whether that is for military assistance, diplomatic assistance, help getting sanctions against the Russians, humanitarian assistance taking in
00:32:47
Speaker
Ukrainian refugees. I remember at the start of the war, about 8 million Ukrainians became displaced. Not all of them, if Ukraine, but 8 million were displaced. About half of those have since returned, but there's still 4 million
00:33:02
Speaker
Ukrainians who are displaced from their homes, either in Ukraine or in Europe. So all these things are really important objectives of Ukrainian information operations. And it's something that they have to evolve, that they have to think about constantly, that they need to target at different countries slightly differently and accept that they're not going to get cut through in every country.
00:33:28
Speaker
and that the Russians, who are focused on South America, Africa, South Asia, are doing far better in those areas than Ukraine is. Now, that doesn't mean Ukraine has written them off. Clearly it hasn't. I mean, with the president and the participation in the peace conference in Saudi Arabia is about saying to South Asia, we'd like you to hear our side of the story as well. But at the end of the day, the Ukrainians have been tremendously effective
00:33:57
Speaker
And they've been able to kind of build a coalition of online warriors, hacktivists, the NAFO movement, bonking vutniks and all this kind of stuff, addressing Russian misinformation online, that I think is really unprecedented. There's no real precedent for what the Ukrainians have been able to achieve in this war. And you mentioned the importance of alliances earlier. Many defending countries will need to keep their allied support on side.
00:34:26
Speaker
make sure everyone's happy.
Impact of Alliances on Strategy
00:34:28
Speaker
What's the impact of that and how can that constrain their counterattacks or even strategy? Yeah, I mean, alliances always place some constraint on you, whether it is how you work, where you conduct operations, the level of resourcing you have, the need for you to commit to their defence as well as your own.
00:34:49
Speaker
So alliances are always going to have that impact. Churchill, I think, had some pretty choice quotes on working with allies. But at the end of the day, it's always a better way of working. We forget in World War II that the US and the Soviet Union were allies and it was a provision of British and American assistance in the first two years of the war that kept the Soviet Union in the war.
00:35:16
Speaker
They would not have been able to fight back if it hadn't been for that Lindley's program, to be honest. You'll never hear that from Putin. So alliances are vital and you have to pay a lot of attention to nurturing the relationships within alliances while seeking to break down the alliance frameworks of the adversary. I mean, it's not just about you. You want to break down your enemy's alliance systems as well. And there's a lot of ways you can, you know, nurture your own while destroying enemy.
00:35:45
Speaker
You know, there's the famous story of Eisenhower when he was the U.S. commander for U.S. forces in Britain before he became, you know, SACU and all this kind of thing. He sent home an American officer who'd had a fight with a British officer.
00:35:59
Speaker
and the American was really confused. He said, what, you're sending me home for calling him an SOB? And he said, no, I'm sending you home for calling him a British SOB. So Eisenhower could tolerate professional tension and allowed it, and you kind of have to if you want good solutions. He couldn't tolerate this kind of nationalistic bile in between two very, very important alliance partners.
Elements of a Successful Counter-Offensive
00:36:27
Speaker
And when it comes to fighting back, so going from a defensive posture to counter offensive, what are the essential ingredients to make sure that you have a successful counter offensive and how do you make sure that you can time it right?
00:36:40
Speaker
I mean, timing in particular is pretty important, right? I mean, politics is very important. Counter-offensives might be military activities, but they have political objectives. So political timing is vital. And we've seen that in the lead up to and during the conduct of this counter-offensive. I mean, the timing was also reliant on how much can you build up
00:37:02
Speaker
supplies. Offensive operations go through far more consumables, whether it's fuel, water, ammunition, these kind of things than defensive operations. You've got to stockpile a huge amount and you've got to do it in the right places.
00:37:18
Speaker
At the same time, you have to make sure there's time to train your forces. Training people on tanks is very different to training a tank battalion or training a combined arms brigade. I mean, collective training of military forces is very hard. I commanded a combined arms brigade, and that's all we do, 365 days a year, and it's still really hard. When you're a brand new soldier in a brand new brigade and all you've done is trained on your vehicle or your weapon,
00:37:47
Speaker
and then being asked to undertake combined arms operations. It's extraordinarily difficult, so that individual collective training is vital.
00:37:56
Speaker
Another thing that drives timing is just the planning and wargaming of the best options. Where should the main effort be? Your terrain analysis. Where do you weight your forces? How much surprise do you want to achieve? How much confusion do you want to sow in the enemy's command and control?
00:38:17
Speaker
How many faints and demonstrations do you want to do versus actual real-time operations? All these things really take a lot of time to think through and plan as we saw in the lead up to this operation. But at some point, you've got to do it. You're never going to be able to launch a counteroffensive at the perfect time. It's always going to be a compromise between politics,
00:38:40
Speaker
military readiness, and of course, the enemy's capacity because they get a vote. So you've got to think about them all the way through this planning process as well.
Concerns About Strategic Surprises
00:38:51
Speaker
General Ryan, our final question we like to leave guests with is when thinking about national defense and security, what is it that keeps you up at night? What is it that really worries you? I guess the one thing is, what haven't we thought of?
00:39:06
Speaker
What are those things that will really surprise us that we may not be able to recover from? I mean, strategic surprise in previous years for a range of reasons, whether it's geography or resources or whatever, you had time to kind of recover. If you have a look at the fall of Singapore or the fall of France,
00:39:28
Speaker
The allies had time to recover and then go back on the offensive. People of France probably didn't appreciate that in all of the people of occupied countries. But I don't know whether we have that time in the current era. I don't know if.
00:39:42
Speaker
There's a massive surprise strike against Taiwan and US forces in the Pacific, whether we might have time to respond and fight through the shock. So if there's anything that keeps you up at night is do we get the ability to recover and respond in modern war? And I don't have a good answer for that one. Well, General McRyan, thank you very much for joining us. No, thanks. It's been a great conversation. Really appreciate the time to talk.
00:40:12
Speaker
You've been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist. Our guest for this episode was General Mick Ryan. A link to his latest book, Whitesun War, can be found in the show notes for this episode. Our producer for this episode was Edwin Tran and our researcher was Alex Smith. Thank you very much for listening.
00:40:31
Speaker
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