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The time is now for Ukraine to conduct a winter shaping operation to set conditions for an offensive next summer to end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine and its Western benefactors.  

Building on its successful fall operations in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, Ukraine must take advantage of the winter freeze to put itself in a position to deliver a decisive blow to the Russian invasion in the summer and force Russia into a disadvantaged negotiating position. That blow should come in Crimea, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly has stated, but Ukraine’s military is not yet in position to threaten Crimea directly.  

A winter offensive in the south can put Ukraine in a position to make good on Zelensky’s vow to recapture Crimea. However, Ukraine cannot successfully carry out a winter operation, let alone a major summer offensive, without a commitment and substantial ramp-up of military and financial assistance by the U.S. and its allies now. 

Ukraine cannot afford to postpone operations until spring, because further delay will enable Russia to fully integrate its mobilized reservists, acquire more munitions and hardware, and prepare for its own spring offensive while the destruction of Ukrainian energy and water infrastructure and its devastating impact on the Ukrainian population continues unabated.  Furthermore, Western resolve and assistance may wane after next summer. Thereafter, the conflict likely will become frozen until Russia has recovered its military capacity to continue the hot war. 

Eventually, all wars end in negotiations. This war will end in a negotiated settlement, but as with any war, the facts on the ground vastly shape the decision for negotiations and eventual settlement. Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote in “On War” that since “war is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration.” Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has no intention of giving up his objective to subjugate Ukraine, despite the incomprehensible losses of manpower and materiel Russia has suffered in the war.

Yet, short of the unrealistic complete destruction of the Russian army, the surest path Ukraine has to dissuade Putin from his objective is to convincingly threaten or recapture his prize — Crimea — which may make his already damaged domestic position untenable. 

The West’s incremental assistance to Ukraine, by design, has prevented the war’s escalation into broader war with NATO but has not decidedly hastened Russia’s defeat. In some respects, this policy has lengthened the duration and destruction of the war without a durable and better peace in sight. According to the recently released U.S. National Security Strategy, America and its allies are “helping to make Russia’s war on Ukraine a strategic failure”; however, the level of Western assistance to Ukraine seems to merely offer Russia a strategic setback. Time will tell, but time is short. A decisive Russian military defeat in Ukraine could certainly make Russia’s strategic failure in Ukraine possible.   

In the near term, the Western allies must provide intelligence and operational planning support to the Ukrainian army for a winter offensive and future operations. They must provide the Ukrainians a combination of advanced and tactical drones and counter-drone capabilities.  Already months late, the recent announcement by the U.S. to deliver advanced air defense systems, such as the Patriot missile system, will take some of the destructive pressure off the Ukrainian energy infrastructure and help shield Ukrainian army forces for a winter offensive. 

In the intermediate term, the West must provide equipment and training to the Ukrainian military to prepare it to conduct a sustained, combined arms offensive in the south next summer to force Russia to abandon their objective of subjugating Ukraine. Reports have at once praised and decried the U.S. for failing to deliver the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and extended-range munitions known as Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which would allow Ukraine to strike targets as far as 300 kilometers away. The point is not about the system or munition, but about the critical Ukrainian need to reliably target deep to enable its close fight — without which a large summer offensive is not likely to succeed. 

The Ukrainian army has demonstrated an aptitude for exercising combined arms maneuver using a variety of equipment sets. They will need equipment and crew training for artillery, tactical and integrated air defense systems, manned and unmanned attack aircraft, light naval craft, and protected mobility in the form of tanks, fighting vehicles and sapper engineering equipment. The West should offer existing NATO equipment based in Europe, rather than continuing to trade out NATO ally-held Soviet-era equipment. It is difficult to envision a post-war Ukraine exclusively going back to antiquated Cold War equipment. German Leopard tanks and Marder fighting vehicles finally could get some use. All of this takes time to train, so the time for equipping and planning for subsequent decisive operations and training is now. 

The U.S. and its allies must apply the means to achieve the National Security Strategy’s objective for a Russian strategic failure by next summer. The West’s incremental military support to Ukraine so far has balanced two competing strategic interests: Ukraine’s sovereign right to defend against and repel Russian imperial aggression, and the prevention of a NATO-Russia war that might lead to nuclear escalation. 

This winter is the moment to shape a decisive operation to end the war in the summer on terms favorable to Ukraine and the West. Typically, the ground in southern Ukraine along the approaches to Crimea freezes around the beginning of January, making cross-country maneuver feasible before the spring melt in early March. The Orthodox Christmas occurs on Jan. 7, which seems about right to start a winter shaping operation for the summer.   

Bob Ashley Jr. is a retired lieutenant general who served over 36 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer. He was the 21st director of the Defense and Intelligence Agency (DIA) from October 2017 until November 2020. He previously served as the Army G2 and the Commandant of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center. He works as a private consultant for defense and security affairs.

Dan Soller is a retired colonel who served over 31 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, including more than 12 years in Europe beginning in the era of the Soviet Union’s collapse. He has worked with the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He works in the commercial space industry. 

The authors’ views expressed in this article are their own and do not represent the U.S. government’s position. 

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The Intercept 

When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for a vote on a war powers resolution that would block U.S. support for the Saudi-led war effort in Yemen, the Biden administration immediately pushed back. The resolution, the White House warned, would upset diplomatic efforts and bring about the war it was trying to end.

“The Administration strongly opposes the Yemen War Powers Resolution on a number of grounds, but the bottom line is that this resolution is unnecessary and would greatly complicate the intense and ongoing diplomacy to truly bring an end to the conflict,” read White House talking points circulated privately. “In 2019, diplomacy was absent and the war was raging. That is not the case now. Thanks to our diplomacy which remains ongoing and delicate, the violence over nearly nine months has effectively stopped.”

The White House’s claims that its diplomacy is working, however, are undercut by its own political moves and the reality on the ground. President Joe Biden’s envoy for the conflict has consistently sided with the Saudi coalition against the Houthi movement that controls much of the country. And though a ceasefire during the spring and summer provided a respite in civilian casualties due to bombings, the ongoing Saudi blockade and economic warfare against Yemenis perpetuates the humanitarian crisis in the country — which the United Nations has deemed the worst in the world.

Without taking an even-handed approach to the conflict in search of a political solution and the mitigation of the humanitarian crisis, the Biden administration’s machinations can hardly be considered good-faith efforts at diplomacy, critics of U.S. policy in the conflict said.

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever,” Jamal Benomar, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen until 2015, told The Intercept. “There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them. So an all-out war can resume at any time.”

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever. There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them.”

The divisions in Yemen — with the Saudi coalition controlling southern oil fields and ports, and the Houthi-led government controlling territory in the north that houses some 80 percent of the country’s 30 million residents — are only growing more entrenched. Instead of asking concessions of its allies in the Saudi coalition, the administration’s one-sidedness has contributed to the breakdown of diplomacy.

Though violence has not returned to earlier levels since the expiration of the ceasefire in October, fighting continues along some of the war’s frontlines. The Houthis have warned that their restraint won’t last long amid the current impasse and continued blockade of fuel imports; if the embargo is not eased, they said, they will reciprocally blockade a nearby waterway crucial to the global oil markets. The situation is only growing more explosive.

“There’s been a lull in the fighting, but since there was no concerted effort to move the political process forward, the lull is a temporary one and all sides are preparing for the worst,” said Benomar. “The situation is extremely fragile because Yemen has fragmented now and you have different areas of Yemen under the control of different warlords.”

Truce

The largely diplomatic push cited by the White House in opposing the Sanders war powers resolution — a so-far ineffective push that gives Saudi Arabia room to maneuver — follows a pattern it has held since early in the administration, when Biden pledged to work toward ending “offensive operations” to the Yemen war, and Saudi Arabia engaged in its most aggressive bombing campaign under the rubric of “defensive operations.”

Under such conditions, progress toward a treaty has remained elusive. While the Houthi movement has steadily gained territory — and political support in the country — the Saudi-backed government and other allied militia groups maintained control of oil-rich areas and ports in the south, enabling the punishing blockade. Biden balked at calls to pressure Saudi into easing the blockade when it sparked the worst fuel crisis in Yemeni history. Instead, when administration officials have commented, they have avoided naming the Saudis, calling instead on “all parties” to allow unhindered import of fuel.

As the blockade continued and the fuel crisis worsened, the Houthis attacked the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in late January 2022 in two separate attacks, with one reaching a U.S. military base. In March, the Houthis targeted a storage site belonging to the Saudi national oil company, marking the second boldest attack against Saudi oil facilities. Instead of convincing the Saudis to deescalate, the Biden administration pledged to defend Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against what they’ve called the “terrorist” attacks.

Yet the threat to the global oil supply was becoming clear, a risk the White House was uninterested in running amid both a midterm election and a war between Russia and Ukraine. A week after the attack on Saudi’s oil infrastructure, the United Nations, backed by the U.S., managed to have all parties agree on a truce that would allow for talks on a settlement to the yearslong conflict. “The Saudis accepted the truce after belatedly realizing that they were losing in an expensive quagmire,” said Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA analyst and Brookings Institution senior fellow, in an email. “Biden’s team helped get them to that point along with a lot of help from the UN and Oman.”

The two-month truce allowed for a halt to all Saudi airstrikes and ground fighting and an ease on fuel imports to north Yemen, in return for a halt to Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia.

No Renewal

The ceasefire largely held up and kept getting renewed until October 2, when the Houthi government refused to renew it again.

The Houthi government laid blame with Riyadh and the U.S. for avoiding the issue most important to the Houthi-led coalition: monthly salary payments of the state employees. Since 2016, the Saudi-backed government relocated the Central Bank of Yemen to territory it controls, accusing the Houthi government of diverting the bank’s funds to the war effort, a charge international observers and aid groups found baseless. The Saudi-backed government promised to keep the bank’s policy of paying all public servants, estimated at 1 million employees who support around 10 million others, but it broke its word, denying millions of Yemenis their only source of income.

The Houthi-led coalition put the salary payment issue as a condition to renew the deal, but the Saudis agreed only on paying workers in the health and educational sectors. The Houthis maintained that the revenues from oil exports in areas under the Saudi-backed government, which would account for nearly 70 percent of Yemen’s budget, should be allocated for the pay of all public servants. No Biden-led diplomacy — intense, delicate, ongoing, or otherwise — could persuade the Saudis to stop diverting Yemeni public-servant money back to Riyadh.

Little progress has been made on the question of paying public servants. The U.N. Security Council, Britain, the European Union, and the U.S. called the Houthi government demand to pay all public servants “unrealistic” and “maximalist.” During a congressional hearing in December, Biden’s Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking blamed the Houthi government for the current impasse, slamming “the last-minute Houthi demand that the Yemeni Government divert its limited oil export revenues to pay the salaries of active Houthi combatants.”

What the U.S. deemed unrealistic has in fact been a demand of Democrats on Capitol Hill. What Sanaa demanded as a condition to renew the deal wasn’t impossible or even unrealistic. A group of 16 senators — along with many aid groups — called on Biden in May 2021 to end the Saudi blockade. While the Biden administration angled to keep the blockade as leverage in negotiations, the senators said the embargo “must end today and be decoupled from ongoing negotiations.”

For critics, the Biden administration’s stance — considering the payments to Yemeni public servants too great a cost for establishing a new ceasefire — isn’t a serious approach to ending the war.

“These demands benefit ordinary Yemeni workers, not the Sana’a government itself,” said Shireen Al-Adeimi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, referring to the Houthi government in the capital of Sana’a. “What’s ‘unrealistic’ and even cruel, however, is to continue denying millions of public servants their salaries for multiple years and to derail ceasefire negotiations because of a humanitarian, not a political or military, demand.”

Diplomacy to Nowhere

The relative calm in fighting and a halt to bombing witnessed since April has been rare. Its impact on the most vulnerable, however, has been small. Much of the Yemeni suffering has been caused by the blockade and other economic warfare tactics, not the bullets and bombs.

The status quo leaves the Houthis little incentive to maintain a truce that delivers misery to the population it governs without any serious concessions around the blockade or payments to public-service employee payments. In return, the Houthi government has offered to cease its bombings of Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners. Saudi, emboldened by White House support, agreed on only easing restrictions on fuel imports.

Late last month, Omani negotiators were back in northern Yemen, urging the Houthis to sit down with the Saudis to discuss both issues. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the Houthi movement’s leader and the one calling the shots, rejected the offer as another Saudi bid to evade addressing the economic crisis first, which he and his aides stressed should be decoupled from any other issues being negotiated. The Houthi message was simple, according to a source briefed on the talks: Pay the salaries of all public servants, lift the blockade on the northern port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport, and then the parties can sit together to negotiate other terms.

The Saudis and the Emirates, however, seem unlikely to budge. So far, they have only granted concessions in the face of violence directed at Abu Dhabi and at Saudi oil fields, not through Biden-led negotiations.

That may be the dynamic at the heart of the White House’s opposition to the Sanders war powers resolution: Without U.S. support for its warplanes, the Saudis would be effectively grounded, perhaps emboldening the Houthis, who are poised to relaunch strikes and send global oil markets spinning to win an end to the blockade. So far, Houthi attacks intended as warnings have dissuaded tanker captains from offloading millions of barrels of crude oil that would have otherwise benefited the Saudi-backed government.

Facing the reality of the Houthis escalating their attacks, the Biden administration could dig in and refuse to meet reasonable Houthi demands while fending off congressional opposition to the war. Or the White House could pressure the Saudis into a genuine end to the war. In fighting the Sanders resolution, the White House has chosen to dig in. The Biden administration diplomacy is “ongoing,” but it’s not clear it’s going anywhere — making a resurgence of violence now seem inevitable.

The post Biden’s “Diplomacy” in Yemen Means Taking Saudi Arabia’s Side — and Could Spark All-Out War appeared first on The Intercept.

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