The Powell Doctrine and Ukraine

One of the best ideas in postwar geopolitics is the Powell Doctrine, developed by our late Joint Chiefs Chairman and Secretary of State Colin Powell. It underlay our quick win in Gulf I—the war to kick Saddam’s Iraq out of the Kuwaiti oil fields that it had seized. That win was our single major military victory since our useful (for South Korea) stalemate in the Korean War in 1954.

The Powell Doctrine is especially apt in the Nuclear Age, when all-out or “total” war is unthinkable. It allows major powers to achieve military victories by conventional means. It has three elements: (1) overwhelming force, (2) limited objectives, and (3) a clear exit strategy.

How would Vladimir Putin apply the Powell Doctrine to Ukraine? He already has assembled overwhelming force, and he appears prepared to use it. At least President Biden thinks so: he has urged Americans to get out of Ukraine by this weekend.

But what about the other two elements: the limited objectives and the clear exit strategy?

For objectives, the past is prologue. Putin already has annexed Crimea, a province of Ukraine in which Russians comprise three-quarters of the population. Sevastopol, the province’s capital, is the historical site of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, roughly analogous to San Diego for us. Also, Russian separatists have virtually annexed the coal-and-steel provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are and have been interwoven with Russian industry.

From the Russian point of view, the only objective that remains in doubt is the status of Ukraine as a whole. Russia wants to be sure that Ukraine will never become an outpost of the West, let alone harbor Western troops or strategic weapons. That means Ukraine never joining NATO or the EU. (In my view, Putin’s request for legal guarantees was just a feint: legal measures have not been kind to Russia. For example, the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pack preceded the Nazis’ invasion, which was catastrophic for Russia.)

Does Putin want to invade and occupy all of Ukraine? Unlikely, in my view. If Putin didn’t learn the lesson of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he no doubt learned it from ours. The last thing Russia wants is a long, grinding war of occupation, culminating in another losing and ignominious exit, when its main objective is just to insure its future border security, not with words on paper, but with deeds on the ground.

Russia’s most likely limited objectives seem threefold: (1) a pliable puppet government in Kyiv, (2) a reliable land route from Russia proper to Crimea, and (3) substantial autonomy, i.e., Russian hegemony, in Donetsk and Luhansk. Likely a pincer movement toward Kyiv could achieve the first and third objectives quickly, as (3) would follow directly from (1). The second objective could be achieved by a regionally limited application of overwhelming force in the south.

What French President Emmanuel Macron offered Putin in his private talks is unknown. But likely (1) and (3) were part of it, of course without the pejorative characterization of a “puppet” government in Kyiv. Apart from Macron, the US and Europe claim to insist on a genuinely independent government in Kyiv, with a perpetual possibility of joining NATO and/or the EU.

So diplomacy appears to have failed on the second point. That also made the third point of the Powell Doctrine fail as well. A clear exit, at least a durable one, is impossible for Russia unless it has the assurance of a friendly, or at least pliable, government in Kyiv. Without one, the land bridge to Crimea and the status of Donetsk and Luhansk would forever be uncertain, not to mention Ukrainian distance from the West.

I don’t normally post predictions. But if diplomacy remains hung up on this point, I don’t see any outcome as likely as a Russian blitzkrieg aimed at regime change in Kyiv. Its purposes would be ruling out Ukraine joining NATO or the EU and assuring a land bridge to Crimea and substantial independence of, and Russian hegemony over, Donetsk and Luhansk. I would expect Russian military operations to cease, and peace of a sort to be restored, once these objectives had been achieved. To the extent kept in place, or nearby (even inside Russia), the overwhelming force that Russia has already assembled could be a guarantor of Russia’s exit, at least from active war and whole-nation occupation.

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