The war in Ukraine is not going to end any time soon. That, anyway, is what the available evidence suggests. The two competing sides have for the most part been clear; Russia is the invading force and aggressor, and the Ukrainians are defending their homeland. I have made my own position on the war clear.
One of many related, and highly contingent, matters that has not been raised has been the actual role of Nato and broadly speaking, of countries in the Atlantic alliance.
Conventional reports would have us believe that the states of the alliance are not actual participants in the war. From what we know it is probably true that countries like the United States, Britain, Canada or France do not have “boots on the ground”.
What is less clear in the fog of war, but not beyond the realms of possibility or thought, is the likelihood that Western Europe and North America have effectively privatised their role in the war through the provision of material support for the Ukrainians.
This is somewhat similar to the way that some countries did not supply “boots on the ground” during the First Gulf War, but sent Washington money instead. It can also be likened to the way that the US roped in private sector “specialists” and “experts” from third-party countries in its war against the Afghan people. Among these are people who feel no compunction about inflicting great harm on dark-skinned others.
Fighting wars remotely
All of this points to a “new” phase of warfare without soldiers on the ground. In this scenario advances in science and technology, especially artificial intelligence, but also genetics and neuroscience, “remove” soldiers from actual active combat. War is fought from the air and directed from control panels thousands of kilometres away.
A stand-out example of what is probably the start of this war without soldiers on the ground was Nato’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia — without backing from the UN security council. On the evening of 24 March 1999 air raid sirens rang across a fractured Yugoslavian society, and ordinary people fled into their basements when Nato, led by Washington as usual, began bombing cities across the region. Death rained on cities like Pristina, Belgrade and Podgorica across what remained of Yugoslavia — especially Kosovo.
One should not traduce the suffering of the people of the former Yugoslavia. The point that is made here is that, on the precept that Western Europe and North America are playing a concealed or “backround” role in the Russian war on Ukraine, it is consistent with the way that liberal democracies in the Atlantic alliance have, at least since the bombing of Yugoslavia, resorted to remote warfare.
This was as true in Yugoslavia in 1999 as it was when Nato bombed Libya, when the US-led coalition acted against the Islamic State in Syria, and the way the US Africa Command is training Ugandan soldiers.
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In all these cases violence is meted out from distant locations, or “outsourced” with a marked shift away from “boots on the ground” towards “light footprint” military interventions.
Sanitising war and letting others do the killing and dying
It is, therefore, conceivable that the US and its European allies are supplying Ukraine with drones, intelligence, private or training teams operating below the radar, so to speak. This light touch or outsourcing of war is usually driven by a belief that war can be sanitised, made more humane and under optimal conditions; people don’t want their daughters and sons to do the fighting, killing, and dying in distant locations.
Some questions and issues remain befuddling. Among these are whether “conventional war” is dead, and you don’t need boots on the ground to kill the enemy. Are we seeing a revolution in warfare and military affairs? And, if war was not hell, I would say it was amusing that Europeans have imagined they would never see war again.
Evidence shows that the Europeans, who have over centuries provided the theatres of war, are still at war — never mind the interlude that followed the end of the Second World War and the bombing of Yugoslavia, and now Russia’s war on the Ukrainian people.
While it is clear that the Russians and the Ukrainians are involved in a “dirty” war, and their people are doing the killing and dying on battlefields, the West remains intent on “humanising” warfare. By fighting remotely on the side of the Ukrainians, the Atlantic alliance is attempting to avoid human damage (to their own soldiers and civilians), and is supplying Ukraine with military hardware — and who knows what else.
It was reported last month that Britain would supply “scores of artillery guns and more than 1,600 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine in the latest supply of Western arms to help bolster the country's defence against Russia”. In June this year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised $1.2-billion in military support, bringing total UK support to Ukraine since the start of the war to almost $3-billion.
Here they may be telling the Ukrainian people, go and fight those monsters and enemies of Western civilisation. Use our weapons and do all the killing and dying, while our people stay safe in the comforts of their homes.
Enter technology and artificial intelligence
Deep in the background of developing new military technologies to fight remote wars — with extensive use of artificial intelligence and big data — are private corporations in Silicon Valley and “niche entrepreneurs backed by venture capital or recently floated businesses [seeking] to fill the gap and work through the challenge of applying AI to defence data”, as Matthew Ford and Alexander Gould, a couple of scholars from the UK have explained.
The US Defense Department in particular is aware of its own shortcomings and is turning to private sector companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft — almost all of whom have been hesitant to work on defence contracts.
Nonetheless, as Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and a member of former US President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology told the Armed Services Committee of that county’s House of Representatives in April 2018: “Any military that fails to pursue enterprise‐wide cloud computing [in complex information stacks] isn’t serious about winning future conflicts. AI is not achievable without modern commercial cloud computing that can store and secure the data DoD regularly collects.”
What we have in the open, and on the battlefields of Ukraine are soldiers killing each other — boots on the ground — fighting the “dirty war” while evidence suggests that the Atlantic alliance are sending funds and military hardware, and keeping their populations safe and sound.
All these efforts to humanise war, in the face of the brutality of the conflict in Ukraine, the application of information and communications technology, supplying funds and military hardware — effectively joining the war remotely, without its own boots on the ground - suggest that Europe has not seen the end of war and that Ukrainian soldiers are not “alone” on the battlefields — they are just doing all the killing and dying. DM