Crimea: Putin's Alamo
“Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity." ~ Gen. George S. Patton
It’s always been a trait of dictators and autocrats to build walls. In modern times, when you’re on the wrong side of truth, justice and democracy, you end up constructing fortified barriers either to keep others (including ideas) out or your own people in. We saw this in the United States recently with Donald Trump’s ill-fated efforts to squander billions on a “big, beautiful wall” along the 1954-mile U.S.-Mexican border. Only 15 miles were put up. And it’s falling apart.
Simply put, walls don’t work. At least not those ultimately with political aims.
History is replete with failing empires which sought to protect themselves by raising walls:
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall was actually a series of barriers built over two millennia spanning 5500 miles of northern China to stave off invasions from nomadic tribes. But this monumental structure was only selectively effective. In 1115, the Manchu breached it to conquer China. In 1264, the Mongols likewise stormed the Wall to subjugate the Middle Kingdom and establish the Yuan Dynasty. In 1644, the Manchus traversed the Wall to install the Ching Dynasty.
Hadrian’s Wall
Erected in the second century AD to protect Roman England from the Picts in what is present-day Scotland, Hadrian’s Wall was also only partially effective. The Picts managed to breach the structure repeatedly, forcing the Romans at one point to retreat to the west. In the late third century, they invaded Roman lands beyond York. And in 367-368, an alliance of Picts, Saxons and Franks pillaged Roman outposts and murdered two high-ranking Roman military commanders.
The Maginot Line
Built at a cost of $9 billion in today’s dollars, France’s 280-mile-long state-of-the-art bulwark to defend against a German invasion included scores of fortresses, bunkers, minefields and artillery emplacements. Constructed with reinforced concrete and 55 million tons of steel driven deep into the earth, it was designed to withstand heavy artillery fire, poison gas and mass troop assaults. The Germans, of course, simply went around the line via Belgium, successfully invading and defeating France in May 1940.
The Atlantic Wall
Hitler’s mega-project to defend against an Allied invasion spanned 2400 miles, from the Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees. The Atlantic Wall took two years and approximately 1.2 million tons of steel to construct — enough to manufacture more than 20,000 Tiger tanks; and 17 million cubic meters of concrete — the equivalent of 1100 Yankee Stadiums. The cost to build just the French section alone was some $206 billion in today’s dollars. It took the Allies a single day to breach the Wall at Normandy. Hitler clearly didn’t learn the lesson he dealt to the French with their own ill-fated Maginot Line.
The Berlin Wall
Shamelessly dubbed “The Anti-Fascist Protective Wall” by the communists, the Berlin Wall was essentially a prison wall, designed to keep East Germans in and alien ideas out. Over the Wall’s 28-year existence, some 5,000 East Germans managed to flee across it via underground, aerial and overland escape routes. Two-hundred died trying, most shot by communist border guards. The Berlin Wall came down along with the implosion of communism in the Soviet Union and its satellites.
The Alamo
The “Battle of the Alamo” rests prominently in American heroic mythos. A group of Texan gringo settlers, unhappy under Mexican rule, declared independence in 1836 and holed themselves up in an old Spanish mission called the Alamo. The two-hundred Americans didn’t stand a chance against 1800 professional Mexican soldiers and were defeated after a 13-day siege. The lesson here is that walls are largely ineffective against superior enemy strength and strategy.
Crimea
Russia is feverishly constructing an extensive web of defensive trenches and barriers around the Crimean peninsula in anticipation of an upcoming Ukrainian offensive to take back the territory that Moscow seized in 2014, according to recent Maxar satellite photos and reporting by the Washington Post. The images reveal labyrinths of zig-zag trenches to enhance cross-fire, anti-tank ditches and dragon’s teeth, depots containing tanks, artillery and armored vehicles. And Ukrainian military intelligence reports that nearly 90 combat aircraft and 60 attack helicopters are currently based in Crimea.
In war college, we analyzed Sun Tzu’s counsel on overcoming the enemy’s defenses: “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”
Ukrainian forces have clearly shown that they have taken this to heart. The Washington Post reports:
Since August, more than 70 suspected attacks by Ukrainian forces or their collaborators have targeted Russian sites in or near Crimea, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Many have been airstrikes, including attacks by drones. Some appear to have been the work of saboteurs. Though Russia intercepted some strikes, others succeeded — at times with devastating results.
In August, at least six explosions rocked Saki air base near Crimea’s western coast. Officials later said that Ukrainian special forces had carried out the attack, which damaged or destroyed at least eight military aircraft.
Strikes have also targeted Dzhankoy, a town in northern Crimea that is an important logistical hub for Russian forces in southern Ukraine. Explosions rocked the city on March 20. They were later linked to a drone attack targeting Russian cruise missiles that were being transported by rail.
This is also called “shaping the battlefield.”
According to Sun Tzu, “The best approach in war is to first attack the enemy’s strategy.” At the same time, “Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”
Ukrainian strategic planners are scrutinizing Russian defenses in Crimea. The key is to turn the Russians’ own strategy against them — i.e., maneuver a plodding giant into a battlefield grave he’s unwittingly dug for himself. Putin falls into the same trap Hitler did, with his ill-conceived and wasteful Atlantic Wall: “He who defends everything defends nothing,” as Frederick the Great warned.
By exploiting the weakest points, including softening enemy lines with artillery fire, the Ukrainians could then surge a battalion of some three dozen Western-supplied tanks past enemy lines. Then they would deploy army engineers to clear mines and anti-tank obstacles while simultaneously harassing enemy formations with drones and fighter aircraft. The objective should be to shock and then quickly encircle fairly static Russian forces, creating havoc and confusion and destroying enemy units in kill boxes before their commanders can send in reinforcements. This combined arms approach was employed by the Americans in the First Gulf War with devastating effect.
I view the Putin/Gerasimov defensive strategy in Crimea as basically a combination of the Atlantic Wall and the Alamo: static concrete and steel defenses vs a nimble, outside-the-box-thinking Ukrainian assault force. A variation on this would be for the Ukrainians to seize surrounding territory, control it with superior fire cover while panicking and starving the Russians out.
That master of mobile warfare, Gen. George S. Patton, was spot on when he observed, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity. If mountain ranges and oceans can be overcome, anything made by man can be overcome.”
Ex-KGB Lt. Col. Vladimir Putin is about to learn this the hard way, joining a rogue’s gallery in the ash heap of history, wooden dictators whose lack of imagination was exceeded only by their hubris.
For Putin, losing Crimea would be existential — physically as well as politically. Having made clear Ukraine’s attacking Crimea would cross a red line, a desperate Putin might very well resort to employing tactical nuclear weapons — a subject for a separate analysis.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.