The Media Are the Fog of War -- Civil War Edition
Meanwhile, the Russians have put a predictable and predicted offer on the table. Can the media clear the fog and inquire with the Ukrainians about their counter-offer?
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Union and Confederate armies became expert at tearing up railroads and rebuilding railroads. This kind of thing was much in evidence when William Tecumseh Sherman led his army from the important railroad hub of Chattanooga, Tennessee to the more important railroad hub of Atlanta, Georgia. After taking Atlanta, Sherman’s army would cut loose from the rail lines and march through the Georgia countryside all the way to the port of Savannah on the Atlantic coast. This was “Sherman’s March to the Sea.”
Taking Atlanta made for a tough business for everyone on both sides, but once Sherman’s army regrouped, it cut loose from the railroad and headed towards the sea. But, cutting loose from the railroad (and from ready access to supplies) also amounted to cutting off from electronic communications (by telegraph). These were conditions under which the media could best generate the greatest volume of fog in the “fog of war”. Why? Because the newspapers in the South and the “copperhead” press in the North—newspapers sympathetic to the Confederate cause—could print whatever they wanted without the discipline of actual news dispatches coming in over the telegraph lines.
The accounts of Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs about the conduct of the media during the Civil War, and especially during Sherman’s march in the wilderness, could just as well have been composed during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sherman’s army would disappear in the wilderness. Starvation and local resistance would whittle away at the army’s ranks until the whole of it dissolved with little trace. That’s how the papers read.
Sherman’s army, it turned out, showed up outside Savannah right on schedule. His forces secured the port just as a British ship, a “blockade runner,” entered the harbor “unaware that management had changed.” Thus reported Sherman in his own memoirs.
The Union navy had blockaded Southern ports, but British and French ships made a lucrative business of skirting the blockade and picking up prodigious volumes of cotton. The cotton trade may have been diminished, but what remained of it financed the Confederate war effort. It also kept textile mills in Britain and France humming.
Neither Britain nor France were sympathetic to the Union cause. They had to keep the stream of cotton going, and, as Grant suggests, they may have been keen to see the American experiment with representative, republican government crash and burn. It certainly had the appearance of crashing and burning. The European leadership was not displeased. Think about that.
In 2003 a single American mechanized division swiftly moved north from Kuwait to take Baghdad. It got hung up in “the mother of all sandstorms” south of the “Karbala Gap”. The Gap constituted the last best place on the way to Baghdad for Iraqi forces to hold up the Americans. But nature did the work, at least temporarily.
The sandstorm lasted two days, sapping morale and twice turning the setting sun the color of blood. Lt. Col. Steven E. Landis called the slanting and choking sands ''the wrath of Allah.''
Supplies of water and ammunition ran low in these first days of the war as Iraqi fighters launched unexpectedly fierce attacks on troops and supply lines that now stretched nearly 300 miles to the rear.
…
The rapid march that Capt. Adam J. Morrison had at first called ''the cannonball run'' threatened to become a crawl, if that.
That was the New York Times in a piece titled “Discovering Doubt and Death On Drive Toward Baghdad,” more than two weeks after the division regrouped as it waited for the storm to pass.[1]
One might imagine being a member of the First Brigade of the Army’s Third Infantry Division. Sitting around anticipating attacks by a nearly invisible enemy must have made for a stressful affair. And, to be sure, one could find reason to doubt that things would work out. Indeed, a few weeks earlier the Times reported that,
After 10 days of watching smart bombs, sandstorms and stiff resistance from the Iraqi regime, a capital that usually embraces the president and his strategy in wartime is beginning to show fissures.
Few have openly split with the president, or the decisions made so far. But one does not have to scratch deep to hear the doubts.
There are the Central Intelligence Agency analysts, quietly complaining that their warnings that Saddam Hussein's government might not crack like peanut brittle were dismissed. There are ex-generals on nightly television, expressing unease about a plan that relied more on speed than on numbers, and that seemed overly dependent on welcoming cheers from the Iraqis. There are field commanders like Lt. Gen. William Wallace, whose public complaints of an enemy that was ''different from the one we'd war-gamed against'' set off alarm bells and denials at Central Command.
There are the terse comments of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who, in an interview on Friday, declined to say whether the Iraq war planners were in danger of violating the famed ''Powell doctrine'' -- the use of overwhelming force. He assured two visitors to his office that he was certain the Pentagon would, in time, ''bring decisive force to bear'' -- and then changed the subject.
That was in a piece on March 30, 2003 titled, “As a Quick Victory Grows Less Likely, Doubts Are Quietly Voiced in Washington.”[2] The Best-and-brightest in Washington were hedging their bets. But, not long after the storm passed, the advance on Baghdad proceeded with or without the application of “overwhelming force.” American forces may have set their plans back a few day and regrouped, but that made for an effective adaptation.
Imagine the headline, “Americans Wait Out Storm, Take Opportunity to Regroup.” That would have been less cinematic, less emotionally manipulative, less passive-aggressively anxiety-inducing, and yet, more representative of what had actually been going on. Indeed, it was not long after the storm passed that those same American forces took Baghdad. Colin Powell may have been closest to correctly forecasting how events unfolded.
Ukraine has been handily winning the information war with Russia: Putin and Russia are evil. Zelensky is a Churchillian hero. The Ukrainians are heroes. The Russian advance is bogged down. But, what if in the next few days the Ukrainians were to accept terms proposed by the Russians? Specifically, suppose the Ukrainians would accept the secession of two provinces in the east and Russia’s claim to the Crimea. In addition, suppose the Ukrainians were to commit to not joining NATO or the EU in the future. Could the Russians yet credibly commit to respecting the territorial integrity going forward? Would all of these items not comprise a durable settlement?
The television news does not talk about resolution. The news talks about ratcheting up military force and economic warfare. It talks about schemes like no-fly-zones that would amount to bringing NATO to war with Russia. Meanwhile, there are observers situated at alternative news sources who complain that Zelensky is just another bought-and-paid-for politician beholden to one or another Ukrainian oligarch. Some of the same voices illuminate the fact that the Ukrainian resistance includes hyper-national “Nazis” in their ranks. What is really going on?
One possibility is that everyone, including the Russians and even the Ukrainians themselves, have been surprised by the vigor of the Ukrainian resistance. At the same time, however, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Russians are slowly squeezing the Ukrainian resistance much like a bow constrictor slowly squeezes the life out of its prey. But, the information war involves ignoring that. Meanwhile, both sides may perceive advantages to committing to some type of settlement sooner rather than later. But, that does raise a question: Does one side have appreciably more capacity to wait than the other?
A little bargaining theory would suggest that the more patient side should more likely get what it is fighting for, and all the noise about neo-Nazis and oligarchs mostly amounts to just that: noise. Even if all of the noise were true, it is inconsequential. The consequential action might be the fact that Ukrainians have not required inducement to fight the Russians once the Russians invaded. The Ukrainians have abundant, historical reasons for wanting to stand up for themselves and fight. Those reasons number in the millions if we were to count them as Ukrainian lives taken by the Russians in civil war and famine in the 1920’s and 30’s. No one needed to launch propaganda campaigns to get the Ukrainians coordinated and fired up. Their bravery and valor is a real thing.
So. Will the Russian bow constrictor ultimately achieve its objective and extract much of the settlement it has offered? Or will it suffer near death by a thousand cuts and commit to a less demanding settlement? And will a settlement obtain over the course of the next few days? Finally, will the established media start talking seriously about settlements, or will it just push the propaganda of one side or the other to the end?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/world/nation-war-field-third-infantry-division-discovering-doubt-death-drive-toward.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/30/us/nation-war-mood-quick-victory-grows-less-likely-doubts-are-quietly-voiced.html