When Napoleon executed Louis Antoine in 1804, a decision which turned the European aristocracy against Napoleon, an advisor reportedly quipped “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake.” Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of the War in Vietnam reportedly quipped the same thing about Vietnam. A full-scale invasion and occupation of Ukraine by Russian forces would be a strategic blunder by Mr. Putin. Such an occupation would likely have very high costs with little chance of success. It would be worse than a crime. It would be a mistake.
Peace Is in Russia’s Best Interest
An occupation of Ukraine would be easy for Russia to pull off, but hard to sustain. Stephen Budiansky estimated that a successful occupation requires one soldier for every 40 civilians. With over 40 million citizens, it would take more than a million occupying Russian soldiers. With only one million active forces, and with many of those performing other functions, Russia would have to dip into its reserve forces, which would be economically taxing and difficult to sustain. Another obstacle is that polling suggests millions of Ukrainians would offer armed resistance. An unwilling populace is very difficult to govern, and can become a sinkhole of time and resources. Thousands of Russians and Ukrainians may perish in the guerilla fighting that would continue after the defeat of the Ukrainian military. Such a state of affairs would only further threaten the popularity of Mr. Putin’s governance. Though they are far from an impartial observer, the Atlantic Council has for this reason predicted that a Ukrainian occupation could spell the end of Mr. Putin’s regime. At the very least, it is a very real possibility that a full-scale Ukrainian occupation would be like the failures of the US in Afghanistan and Vietnam. Tactically, the Russian forces would dominate, but the likelihood of peaceful incorporation of Ukrainian territories into the Russian state is very slim.
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