News
In this section, BUDef develops a topical theme in the form of a recent article.
Conflict in Ukraine
The Russo-Ukrainian War Could End in '24
The price of the war in human terms and whether it’s acceptable could prove to be the decisive factor in ending it.
January 2, 2024
With the close of the year, it is once again time to reconsider the prospects for the end of the war. The major change, compared to our earlier analysis, is the elevated pace of Russian casualties. During November and December, the Russians lost just shy of 1,000 men per day, according to the official Ukrainian count. This is a spectacular pace of loss and, if continued, could shorten the war by as much as a year.
The length of wars is determined by a number of factors. These include the belligerents' economic and military capabilities, as well as their ability to maintain political cohesion. Military deaths are a key factor in the public's willingness to sustain a conflict. Prior wars can therefore provide some insight into the limits of, in this case, Russian perseverance.
The current Russo-Ukrainian war already qualifies as the fourth deadliest external conflict in Russian history. The third is the Crimean War (1853-1856), which lasted 900 days and cost the Russians 450,000 dead in a losing effort. At the recent pace of Russian losses, the current conflict will move into third place before Easter.
It is worth noting, however, that the population of the 1850s Russian Empire was approximately half of its current level. Therefore, adjusted for population, Russian eliminations would need to rise to 900,000 for the current conflict to qualify as third worst of all time and, by historical precedent, induce Russian capitulation.
At the lower limit, Moscow might plausibly face meaningful public resistance around 650,000 Russian military deaths, about twice the current number and half again as much as from the Crimean War of 1853.
This view is based on three factors. First, deaths are simply more visible today, even with the various censorship programs employed by the Russian government. Second, Russia is for all that a marginally more civilized country than it was in the 1800s, and the public's tolerance may be accordingly less. Third, and most importantly, this war is entirely discretionary for Russia.
Unlike World War I, which saw massive losses of Russian territory, including Finland, Poland, the Baltics and Bessarabia (largely today's Moldova), Russia is facing no territorial losses compared to the pre-war era. Further, no fighting is occurring on Russian soil, and no one has attacked Russia. The war poses no existential threat to Russia as did, for example, the German invasion during World War II. St. Petersburg is not under siege, no one has sacked Moscow, and there is no house-to-house, to-the-death fighting in Stalingrad (Volgograd today). Thus, the Kremlin must justify 650,000 deaths for what was supposed to be a mere three-day, special military operation entirely of Putin's choosing.
Russia's Achilles heel is exactly the low stakes of the conflict. Putin could order the troops home tomorrow, and Russia would be no worse off than in 2014, a time when Russia was actually seeing something of a renaissance.
At the current pace, Russian losses will reach 650,000 dead by late 2024. If this proves to represent a threshold of public tolerance, the war could end at that time. The next stop is one million Russian dead, which could be expected by autumn 2025 at the current rate of eliminations.
If the war extends so far, it will have lasted as long as World War I for Russia, and the media will routinely compare the conflict to the Great War, which saw 1.8 million Russian military killed (1.5 million adjusted for Russia's current population). Although Putin claims Russia will fight for five years, the Russian public found the losses of World War I intolerable and overthrew their government. If Russia continues to lose 1,000 soldiers every day, Russia will likely concede the war before the end of 2025.
For Americans, there are some important takeaways.
First, this is a major war. It will rank third in all of Russia's bloody history by the time the tulips bloom this spring. This is not some minor conflict in a faraway country, but a major European conflict requiring substantial determination and commitment.
Second, this is not a forever war. It will be resolved in some fashion within two years if hostilities remain at their current pitch.
Finally, independence is worth a very large number of Ukrainian lives. The outcome of this war will likely determine the fate of Ukraine and Europe for the next century, just as the defeat of the Ukrainian struggle for independence in 1917 determined Ukraine's narrative until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Bolshevik defeat of Ukraine's republic set the stage for the Holodomor, which claimed up to 5 million Ukrainian lives, and presaged the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe for a half century.
The Ukrainians need to decide what independence is worth. If I compare it to Hungary, from which my family fled in the closing days of World War II, we would have gladly fought and thought losses of two percent of the population worth it if Hungary could have retained its independence in 1945 or regained it in 1956. That equates to nearly one million Ukrainians, and at the current rate of exchange, 3-5 million Russians.
If it is worth the price to Ukrainians, the Russians will lose, as long as Ukraine's allies stand beside it.
Steven Kopits. The Russo-Ukrainian War Could End in '24. Kyiv Post, January 2, 2024. URL : https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/26215 (consulté le 02Jan24)
US election 2024
US election 2024: Who are the presidential candidates?
February 28, 20247:42 PM
Republican former President Donald Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are competing to be their party's presidential nominee for the 2024 general election, while President Joe Biden is effectively the Democratic Party's nominee. Several third-party hopefuls are also running.
Here is a list of the candidates.
DONALD TRUMP
The Republican frontrunner with
The former president scored victories in nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and is pushing for his allies to take over the leadership of the Republican National Committee ahead of the party's July convention.
Trump, 77, has said the criminal charges he faces are part of a political witch hunt designed to keep him from winning, a claim the U.S. Justice Department has denied.
Some of his legal challenges have reached the Supreme Court, including his eligibility for the ballot following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as well as his claim of presidential immunity.
If elected to another four-year term, Trump has vowed revenge on his political enemies, said he would not be a dictator except "on day one" and pledged to pardon those imprisoned over the Jan. 6 attack. He also wants the power to replace some federal civil service workers with loyalists.
He sparked criticism from Western leaders after saying the U.S. would not defend NATO members that failed to spend enough on defense and would encourage Russia to attack them. He pressed congressional Republicans to stall a military aid package for Ukraine.
Trump has made immigration his top domestic campaign issue, declaring he would carry out mass deportations, create holding camps and utilize the National Guard.
He would also end birthright citizenship and expand a travel ban on people from certain countries. However, his opposition to a bipartisan deal in the Senate that would tighten immigration enforcement has stalled, if not killed, the bill.
He has repeated calls to impose the death penalty on drug dealers, said other alleged criminals could be shot dead, and suggested he would unilaterally send federal troops into Democratic-run localities.
On abortion, Trump has taken credit for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, but he has criticized some Republican-led states' six-week abortion bans. He said he supported in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment access after an Alabama court ruling curtailed access in the state and raised questions about reproductive rights.
He has promised other sweeping changes, including eliminating Obamacare health insurance and undoing much of the Biden administration’s work to fight climate change.
NIKKI HALEY
A former South Carolina governor and Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Haley, 52, has emphasized her relative youth compared to Biden, 81, and Trump, as well as her background as the daughter of Indian immigrants.
She has gained a reputation in the Republican Party as a solid conservative who could credibly tackle issues of gender and race, but she trails Trump in the polls, drawing 19% support among Republicans in the Reuters/Ipsos survey.
Trump has increasingly targeted her, lobbing racist attacks on her ethnicity and amplifying false claims about her eligibility for the White House despite her being born in South Carolina.
Haley, in turn, has sharpened her attacks on Trump, calling him "diminished" and "unhinged" and arguing he is too chaotic and divisive to be effective.
Haley has said she would pardon him if he is convicted on federal criminal charges.
She has vowed to stay in the race and has deployed campaign teams to at least eight states voting in presidential nominating contests through March 12.
Haley has pitched herself as a stalwart defender of American interests abroad, citing Trump's praise of dictators and slamming his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's death.
She also backs changes to Social Security and Medicare safety net programs for seniors and vowed to dramatically reduce the size of the U.S. government by shifting some federal programs to states.
She has said she personally opposes abortion and has sought national consensus on the issue. On IVF, she has said that she believes frozen embryos are babies but that she backs parents' rights over them.
Haley has called for making some tax cuts permanent and eliminating the federal gas tax.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
JOE BIDEN
Biden, 81, already the oldest U.S. president ever, will have to convince voters he has the stamina for another four years in office, amid poor approval ratings and a special counsel report suggesting he suffered memory lapses.
Biden has blasted the report, and his allies say he believes he is the only Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump and protect democracy. The most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll put Biden at 34%, while Trump garnered 37% — close to the 2.9 percentage-point margin of error.
In announcing his candidacy, Biden declared he needed to defend American liberties and pointed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Vice President Kamala Harris is again his running mate.
The economy will also factor in his reelection campaign. While the U.S. escaped an anticipated recession and is growing faster than economists expected, inflation hit 40-year highs in 2022 and the cost of essentials is weighing on voters.
Biden pushed through massive economic stimulus and infrastructure spending packages to boost U.S. industrial output, but he has received little recognition from voters for the latter.
Biden has led the response of Western governments to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, persuading allies to sanction Russia and support Kyiv, and he has been supportive of Israel in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza while pushing for more humanitarian aid.
However, he has faced sharp criticism from some fellow Democrats for not backing a permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory, where Gaza health officials say nearly 30,000 people have been killed, thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and residents have insufficient food, water and medical supplies.
Biden's handling of immigration policy has also been criticized by Republicans and Democrats as migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border hit record highs during his administration.
In the Democratic Party's presidential nominating contests, Biden has easily won in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan.
DEAN PHILLIPS
Dean Phillips, a little-known U.S. congressman from Minnesota, announced in October he would mount a long-shot challenge to Biden because he does not believe the president can win another term.
The 55-year-old millionaire businessman and gelato company co-founder announced his bid in a one-minute video posted online, saying: "We've got some challenges ... We're going to repair this economy, and we are going to repair America."
Phillips failed to win any delegates in South Carolina and took second place in New Hampshire. He did not appear on the Nevada ballot.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
The best-selling author and self-help guru Marianne Williamson, 71, has re-launched her second, long-shot bid for the White House on a platform of "justice and love" less than a month after dropping out.
She ran as a Democrat in the 2020 presidential primary but dropped out of that race before any votes had been cast. In a statement, she said she had suspended her 2024 campaign because she was losing "the horse race" but was getting back in to fight Trump's "dark and authoritarian vision."
INDEPENDENTS
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR
An anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy, 70, is running as an independent after initially challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, but he is far behind in polling.
Some previous Reuters/Ipsos polls showed Kennedy could harm Biden more than Trump in the presidential election, where third-party candidates have affected the outcome of U.S. elections even without winning.
Trump's 6-percentage point lead over Biden held in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Jan. 25, the most recent to give respondents the option of voting for third-party candidates, including Kennedy, whose support stood at 8%.
Kennedy is the son of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his own presidential bid.
A surprise Super Bowl ad heavily featuring his connection to his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, angered his family members and prompted him to apologize.
He was banned from Instagram for spreading misinformation about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic but was later reinstated. He also lost a legal bid to force YouTube owner Google to reinstate videos of him questioning the safety of COVID vaccines.
CORNEL WEST
The political activist, philosopher and academic said in June he would launch a third-party bid for president that is likely to appeal to progressive, Democratic-leaning voters.
West, 70, initially ran as a Green Party candidate, but in October he said people "want good policies over partisan politics" and announced his bid as an independent. He has promised to end poverty and guarantee housing.
JILL STEIN
Jill Stein, a physician, re-upped her 2016 Green Party bid on Nov. 9, accusing Democrats of betraying their promises "for working people, youth and the climate again and again - while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place."
Stein, 73, raised millions of dollars for recounts after Trump's surprise 2016 victory. Her allegations yielded only one electoral review in Wisconsin, which showed Trump had won.
Reuters. US election 2024: Who are the presidential candidates?. February 28, 2024. URL:https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-are-candidates-running-2024-us-presidential-election-2023-09-19/ (consulté le 04Mar24).
Israël-Palestine
The deadly spiral to war
Akram Belkaïd
What did Hamas hope to achieve by its 7 October attacks on Israel? How far will Israeli retaliation go? And critically, who will be there to negotiate when the fighting stops?
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan told the Atlantic Festival on 29 September, ‘The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in two decades. To him, the normalisation of relations between Israel and several Arab countries in recent years signalled a regional thaw.
Yet that same week, Israel’s security forces clashed at the Gaza border with Palestinians claiming the right of return to the lands of their forebears, echoing the 2018-19 Great March of Return protests where Israeli snipers gunned down 200 demonstrators. Quieter? Really? On 27 September, Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator (UNSCO) for the Middle East Peace Process, had reported to the UN Security Council on the continuing settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law. An assessment released in late August by several Israeli human rights organisations highlighted the ongoing violence in the occupied territories: since 1 January 220 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. None of this seemed to disturb Sullivan. After all, as the saying goes in the Arab world, the Middle East situation only raises alarms when violence spills beyond Palestinians.
The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is unfathomable, and one wonders how this tiny territory can recover from such devastation
One week later, on 7 October, the situation was abruptly reversed. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood – codename for the surprise attack on Israel by various armed Palestinian organisations, under the aegis of Hamas and its military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam – plunged the region into turmoil. There could be no return to the previous week’s ‘normal’, given the number of Israeli victims (1,400 dead, the majority murdered civilians) and the profound shock to Israelis – many of whom blame Binyamin Netanyahu’s government for the disaster (see Israel unites, but for how long?) – and Tel Aviv’s drastic response: massive bombing backed by a ground offensive that had killed 8,000 Palestinians and injured thousands more as of 29 October.
Trying to understand does not mean justifying. Why would Hamas and its allies launch this attack, knowing that the retaliation would devastate the territory’s civilians? As researcher Sophie Pommier explains, Hamas presents its strategy primarily as a response to the blockade of Gaza since 2007 by Israel, along with Egypt. Another, associated, motive was invoked by the head of Hamas’s political bureau: the escalating policy of occupation and settlement building, the increasing incidents at the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, and the incessant provocations by Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has toughened conditions for the approximately 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Earlier in the year, on 26 February, an attack by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian village of Huwara in the West Bank had shaken Gazans, convincing many that Netanyahu’s far-right government had decided to expel part of the occupied territories’ population by force. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich had declared, ‘I think Huwara needs to be erased’. In contrast, Major-General Yehuda Fuchs, IDF commander in the West Bank, called the outrage a pogrom against the Palestinians. Apocalyptic discourse crescendoed on Palestinian social media, where a persistent rumour spread that Tel Aviv was preparing to send two million settlers to swamp the West Bank’s Palestinian population.
Hamas profits as PA falters
With its horrific attack, Hamas was claiming the role of standard bearer for the Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has for years been reduced to cooperating with the Israeli government on matters of security and law enforcement (see How Palestinians lost hope, in this issue). The PA’s decision to fire live bullets at Palestinian protestors in Ramallah and Jenin demanding that Mahmoud Abbas, 87, its unpopular president, step down, following the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arabi hospital in Gaza on 17 October, will without doubt increase Hamas’s political influence.
Hamas also claims to have shown the world that no amount of political talk can make the world forget the Palestinian question. But in recent years, normalisation between Israel and several Arab countries (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan) has done just that. It’s too soon to tell whether the new Gaza war spells the end of the 2020 Abraham accords, which facilitated this rapprochement steered by the Trump administration. And it would be premature to say that the discussions between Tel Aviv and Riyadh are completely dead (see Saudi-Israel talks on hold, in this issue). But one thing is certain: the process has suffered a severe blow. However little Arab regimes care about domestic public opinion, they cannot ignore the continuing appeal of the Palestinian cause, shown for instance by displays of solidarity by many players and supporters of teams from the Middle East and North Africa during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
In its post-attack propaganda, Hamas has sought to capitalise on what it presents as military victories: breaching Israel’s ‘hermetic’ security barrier in some 30 locations, striking and occupying strategic locations (the Erez border checkpoint and the headquarters of the IDF’s Gaza command) for several days, and capturing dozens of Israeli soldiers who were spirited away to Gaza as prisoners of war. While Western governments and media, including in France (see When France was a friend to the Palestinians, in this issue) have mostly focused on the violence against civilians, Hamas has been publicising its successful incursion deep into Israeli territory – something Lebanon’s Hizbullah has never managed. This nationalistic rhetoric hits home in an Arab world long resigned to the Israeli military’s crushing superiority, particularly its air power and cutting-edge, US-supplied equipment.
But Hamas will have to take responsibility for the many consequences of its attack. The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is unfathomable, and one wonders how this tiny territory – which has already endured six wars in 17 years – can recover from such devastation.
Meanwhile, with the world’s eyes on Gaza, settlement building has resumed with a vengeance in the West Bank. Day after day, settlers run riot under Israeli army protection, intent on terrorising a population left to fend for itself. Rural Bedouin villages have been hit especially hard. Between 7 and 17 October, the IDF killed 58 Palestinians, while hundreds were imprisoned.
Above all, Hamas will have to answer for its massacres of unarmed Israeli civilians, including 260 young people attending a rave in the desert near Gaza, and for the murders at the Kfar Aza kibbutz (see Daily invisible terror, in this issue). These atrocities – which are war crimes – have also shocked supporters of the Palestinian cause worldwide and horrified much of the peace movement in Israel. Like the taking of civilian hostages, these actions violate the law of war and inevitably provoke questions about the political future of Hamas and its possible role in peace talks. Who in Israel, even on the left, would now agree to negotiate with them?
Just how far will Israel go to exact revenge? Several of its leaders have called for Hamas to be wiped out – clearly not possible – or at least eradicated from Gaza. It seems Israel has chosen the second option. With its demands that civilians evacuate to the enclave’s southern end, Israel appeared to be laying the groundwork for their permanent expulsion into the Egyptian Sinai. Egypt, however, refuses to have Palestinian refugee camps on its soil and the US administration seems opposed to any such displacement, effectively a new nakba (catastrophe).
‘We mustn’t stop at mowing the grass,’ many enraged Israelis wrote on X (formerly Twitter). They feel that Israel should not limit itself to following the script of prior wars, where military response has been followed by negotiation via Qatar and Egypt and a return to the fragile status quo, with Hamas continuing to run the territory until the next flareup. Declarations by members of Netanyahu’s government and by military leaders suggest that they plan to ‘reconfigure Gaza’ and then pass the baton to a new leader.
But which one? Who knows? At this juncture, neither Egypt nor the PA seem equipped to play such a role. Netanyahu, meanwhile, will – if he keeps his job and if Hamas is significantly weakened – have to find himself an equally useful substitute enemy that allows him to frame in religious terms what is really a war of national liberation. The prime minister did, after all, tell his Likud party’s MKs in March 2019 that ‘anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support [our policy of] bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank’. That is, unless this war – eventually – leads to some form of peace initiative like the Madrid Conference of 1991. That was one of the rare moments when the US forced Israel to the negotiating table. Is it now just a distant dream?
Akram BelkaÎd. The deadly spiral to war. November 2023. Monde Diplomatique, URL : https://mondediplo.com/2023/11/01spiral (consulté le 02/01/2024)
Permanent closing of the Evere branch of the University Library of Defense
On Friday October 13th 2023 at 1500H the Universitary Library of Defence will permanenty close its branch located in building 6 at the Queen Elisabeth Quarter in Evere. This concludes an era of continuous operation and service for over 40 years on this location.
On behalf of our staff and management we want to thank our thousands of patrons through the years for using our library, be it as an information source, for recreation, as a conference room or as a meeting point.
Services provided in Evere will continue at the University Library branch on the Royal Military Academy campus, Campus Renaissance (CaRe) in Brussels.
From Monday, October 16th 2023 on, all front and back office services in the Evere library building will cease, and the building will be closed to the public. As of then, materials loaned in Evere can only be returned to the library branch at the RMA. This will also be the library's only point of contact by telephone or mail.
Our online presence remains the same, except for the webpage on our Evere branch which will be taken down. We apologise for any inconvenience and look forward to welcoming you in building P on the RMA campus, 30 Renaissance Avenue, 1000 Brussels.