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  1. War’s Changing Character and Dynamic Nature

War’s Changing Character and Dynamic Nature

The fact that the conflict in Ukraine is also a war amongst the people raises an important question about the relationship between war’s character and its nature. To be sure, the US military believes war’s character—the institutions that participate in armed conflict, the weapons and doctrines employed, and the whole process of warfare itself—changes over time and varies across cultures. However, the US military also believes war’s nature is constant because every armed conflict, no matter how large or small, consists of political motives, human emotions, and the element of chance. While that point is demonstrably true, it merely tells us what the common denominators are that unify all wars without telling us that they, too, fluctuate and interact. They are dynamic, perhaps even more so than the institutions that make up war’s character.

We can find an important example of that dynamism in the current war in Ukraine in which human emotions, especially enmity, have motivated the defenders to resist the superior numbers of the Russian invaders. They are essentially fighting what Clausewitz would have recognized as a war of national resistance or national liberation in which the citizenry often takes up arms. But in this case, the spirit of enmity has more than a tactical significance. It has become a strategic multiplier thanks in large part to the support most of the free world is showing toward Ukraine with massive amounts of military and other aid.

The Ukrainians have threatened to continue resisting by means of an insurgency should their regular military be defeated. Insurrections were one of the reasons Clausewitz saw the defense as the stronger form of war. By his reasoning the defender had the easier task, to survive; while the attacker, who must subdue the defender, had the harder mission. A military force can be defeated, and its government overthrown, but until its citizenry consents to the aggressor’s terms, or is subdued, the fighting will not end. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the West’s campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan during this century have shown us what insurgencies can mean for an occupying force.

So, while research efforts into the conflict in Ukraine examine what aspects of war’s character might have changed, they would do well to consider war’s nature as well. The result might have serious implications for policies of defense and deterrence in Eastern Europe where conventional forces backed by trained and equipped irregulars might prove cost-effective indeed.

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