Category Archives: Articles

Articles

Ukraine needs cluster bombs to defeat Putin – we must provide them

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2023. © Richard Kemp

President Biden is undoubtedly right to send cluster munitions to Ukraine and we are wrong to suggest otherwise. There is little time for some academic discussion on the balance of harm when Ukraine is fighting for its very survival. Indeed, this week’s anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, when our own country faced an unrelenting military onslaught, should be enough to remind us just how high the stakes are.

Russia has been attacking freely with cluster munitions since the war began. For anyone to attempt to tie Ukraine’s hands by denying her forces battlefield parity is nothing short of perverse.

Cluster bombs can hit more targets with fewer shells, inflicting devastation over a much wider area than conventional artillery. They are particularly effective against the sort of heavily defended positions that Ukraine is trying to overcome in its offensive. The clear advantage these weapons provide is particularly important for a country that is fighting outnumbered in men, planes and artillery.

It’s also a question of simple mathematics. Ukraine is burning through thousands of rounds of Western-supplied 155mm artillery shells every day to hold the Russians back – and supply simply cannot keep up with demand. As American and European stocks fall to dangerously low levels, with industry unable to keep pace, large quantities of cluster munitions sit idle in American warehouses. Sending them to Ukraine will create breathing space for arms manufacturers to catch up.

Despite hand-wringing from the sidelines, supply of these weapons by the US or their use by Ukraine does not contravene their own international obligations, as neither country signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Unlike their European counterparts whose utopian thinking ruled out ever going to war again, the wisdom of successive US administrations in maintaining freedom of military action whenever possible has just helped keep Ukraine in the fight.

Of course, there is no doubting the long-term danger to civilians from unexploded cluster bomblets, often for years after a conflict has ended. Estimates of the hazard, however, are sometimes based on older types of munitions. For example, the bomblets the Russians have been firing in Ukraine have a very high dud rate; perhaps over a third will lie unexploded but still dangerous. The US versions which are to be supplied to Ukraine will likely have a significantly lower failure rate.

In an ideal world, Kyiv would opt not to use them, especially on its own territory, but there is currently no alternative. We do not live in Continue reading →

Articles

Any Deal with Iran Requires Congressional Approval

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 9 July 2023. © Richard Kemp

Iran is pretty much a nuclear threshold state, having enriched enough uranium to build multiple nuclear bombs within a few weeks while hard at work weaponising them in a timeframe that is so far unknown but probably under a year.

Much of this came to pass during Joe Biden’s presidency. When President Donald Trump pulled out of President Barack Obama’s flawed JCPOA nuclear deal, Iran’s uranium enrichment was under 5% and Trump kept it there with his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign of sanctions. The ayatollahs were also running scared of Trump and didn’t want to tempt him to kinetic action, a fear reinforced by his targeted killing of the international terrorist and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

When Biden entered the White House a year later, he wanted nothing more than to resurrect the JCPOA, as part of his obsessive undoing of everything Trump had done — except leaving Afghanistan — along with a determination by him and his Obama-inherited staff to restore their former boss’s legacy. Added to which, Biden decided to slavishly return to Obama’s wrongheaded strategy of rebalancing power in the Middle East by giving Iran the upper hand. So he eased off on sanctions and made it blatantly obvious he would do almost anything for a deal.

The consequence has been uranium enrichment from 5% to 60%, and with some material up to 84%, according to IAEA suspicions — verging on the levels needed for a bomb.

Biden was so fixated on gaining a deal that he allowed Moscow to take the lead on international negotiations, and his plans even envisaged Russia getting control of Iran’s highly enriched uranium. All of this as Putin has been threatening the West with his own nuclear weapons and savaging Ukraine while US taxpayers spend billions of dollars to counter him. Continue reading →

Articles

The fact that the IDF killed no civilians in Jenin is a marvel

In most operations in urban areas, even those conducted by Western armies, more civilians than fighters are killed

Article published in The Jewish Chronicle, 6 July 2023. © Richard Kemp

The IDF defensive operation in Jenin — the most intensive military action in the West Bank since 2002 — has concluded after 48 hours of fighting without any civilian deaths. That is a remarkable achievement unparalleled in any comparable campaign worldwide. Twelve Palestinians were killed, at least eight of whom have been claimed as fighters by the terrorist groups involved.

In most high-intensity operations in urban areas, even those conducted by Western armies who adhere strictly to the laws of war, more civilians than fighters are killed, sometimes in a ratio of 3-5 to one. This is of course not deliberate but an unavoidable consequence of fighting an enemy among the population who themselves dress as civilians, occupy civilian buildings such as mosques, schools and hospitals as bases of attack, and use innocent civilians as human shields.

Israel’s enemies in Gaza and the West Bank go further still, using tactics that deliberately try to lure the IDF to kill their own citizens. You might wonder why any force that sets itself up as protectors of its people would do that. It is because they know they can never defeat or severely damage the IDF on the battlefield, and they can rely unfailingly on journalists, academics, international bodies and activists to blame Israel for these deaths, leading to vilification, condemnation and isolation.

This tactic was used in Jenin and as a consequence around 100 people were wounded, some of whom were civilians. Despite close surveillance, strict rules of engagement, extensive training in preventing civilian casualties and tight battle discipline, it would have been impossible in these circumstances to completely avoid any uninvolved civilians getting hit. To understand that you just have to put yourself in the boots of a young Israeli soldier in a fast moving and chaotic situation with explosives and gunmen potentially around every corner, bullets maybe with your name on scything through the air and every step you take liable to set off a lethal booby trap. Don’t forget, operating on their own turf, the terrorists had plenty of time to prepare the ground for the incursion they knew would come sooner or later.

In this situation it is quite remarkable that the IDF were able to avoid killing any civilians at all. I doubt any other army would be able to achieve that. I was in Israel a few years ago with a group of retired Continue reading →

Articles

Russia’s time has almost run out

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2023. © Richard Kemp

Even if Ukraine’s counter-offensive might be unfolding more slowly than many expected, it is Moscow not Kyiv that is running out of time. Since the operation began weeks ago, little territory has changed hands. That is despite expectations stoked by Kyiv’s allies, who have been eager to show bang for their buck to electorates keenly aware of the cost of the war.

But immediate gratification was always going to be elusive. Even with billions of dollars of Western aid, Ukraine lacks the kind of overwhelming force that allowed the US-led coalition to rapidly crush Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Amid a succession of probing attacks to find weakness in the Russian lines, hopes of a quick breakthrough such as we witnessed in Kharkiv and Kherson last autumn are being displaced by fear that Kyiv’s Nato-equipped forces will be dashed to pieces and Russia will go back onto the offensive.

Indeed, that seems to be Russia’s current strategy: to wear its enemy down against a hard defensive belt prepared over many months and then either force President Zelensky to come to terms or to rampage again into a weakened Ukrainian army.

Putin will very much prefer the first option, because he no longer has confidence that his forces can prevail in large-scale offensive operations. He may also fear escalation by the West, whose support for Ukraine against all expectations sent him into shock. That fear will have been reinforced by a resolution introduced last month in the US Senate that any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine will be viewed as an attack on Nato itself, requiring an Article V response.

Ukraine’s slow-going offensive, which has already sustained significant casualties in both men and tanks, might seem to be playing into Putin’s plan to wait it out. But how much time does the Russian president actually have, especially after Wagner’s abortive insurrection? Continue reading →

Articles

Ukraine is buying us precious time – and we’re wasting it

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

Last week the deputy commander of Nato, British General Sir Tim Radford, complained that our army is too small and now the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Patrick Sanders, is saying the same thing. They could not be more right. The British Army has been continuously run down for decades, with regular forces slashed from 97,000 to 76,000 in the last 10 years and another 3,000 slated to follow them out of the door. Tank numbers are being cut by a third from an already derisory 227 to just 148 and tracked armoured infantry fighting vehicles got rid of altogether.

Sanders compared this dire situation with British military neglect in the 1930s, but it is far worse than that. By the time Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg in Poland, our political leaders had woken up and were frantically re-arming. Now, in the face of the worst European war since 1945, with every other Nato member building its forces, Britain dementedly continues to cut.

Numbers are not everything, but if it were not already obvious, the Ukraine war has again demonstrated the supremacy of mass – in men, tanks, guns, planes and artillery. Bakhmut, the most intensive battle in Europe since the Second World War, with powerful Ukrainian forces defeated after months of combat, is a case in point. Commanders who were fighting there told me how sheer numbers of men, armoured vehicles and above all an endless stream of artillery shells had prevailed. Despite superior Ukrainian battle tactics, leadership, morale, surveillance, intelligence and cyber, brute force – as always in war – won the day.

That sort of thinking went out of fashion years ago in an increasingly woke Whitehall, with too much emphasis on so-called ‘soft power’, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, propping up the NHS, environmentalism and mentoring other people’s armies rather than the dirty business of mud, blood and violence. That helped influence the prioritisation of nice clean fighting tools like cyber, robotics and IT Continue reading →

Articles

Netanyahu is not showing contempt for Biden, US by going to China

Article published by Ynetnews.com, 29 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

We don’t know what the White House thinks of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned visit to Beijing, but despite the horror expressed by so many commentators in Israel I wouldn’t be surprised if Jerusalem and Washington discussed the invitation before it was accepted. Whether or not that happened, to use Menachem Begin’s words in 1982 to then-Sen. Joe Biden, the Israeli prime minister should not in any case be ‘a Jew with trembling knees’. He should take account of his greatest ally’s perspective, and then follow his own perception of Israel’s sovereign national interests.

Those who have attacked the planned visit as poking a stick in Biden’s eye after he failed to extend an invitation to the White House, or even suggested Netanyahu is looking for an alternative partnership to the US, are clearly mistaken. The former thought underestimates Netanyahu’s political savvy – whatever anyone thinks of his policies and character – and the latter is simply laughable.

Netanyahu is never going to lead his country closer to the Chinese dictatorship at the expense of the fundamental relationship with America, just as the first Israeli prime minister, David Ben Gurion, was never going to opt for Soviet patronage in defiance of America despite immense pressure from Stalin to do so. The US is and will remain Israel’s closest and most important strategic and military ally and the two countries share common cultural, liberal and democratic values. China’s repressive communist autocracy, on the other hand, is anathema to Israelis, including the current government.

The reasons Netanyahu needs to go to Beijing are obvious. China is Israel’s third largest global trading partner, although a trend of growth between the two countries has slowed mainly as a result of Israel’s own national security considerations and accommodation of US concerns, especially regarding key national infrastructure. Balancing such enormous economic interests with security issues and the US position is critical and has potentially far-reaching consequences. In an interview at the end of last year Netanyahu emphasized the difference between Israel’s deep relationships with Continue reading →

Articles

Putin’s downfall is only delayed. It’s coming

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

Vladimir Putin’s short-term Special Military Operation to bring Kyiv to heel has escalated into a two-front war with his control slipping away. He was having enough trouble on the Ukrainian front, with an enemy that refused to buckle, backed by unexpectedly obdurate allies. His own army has been exposed to the world as a rotting façade rendered inadequate by decades of complacency and corruption.

Prigozhin’s abortive coup d’etat has now opened up a home front that has similarly exposed the regime’s weakness and the vulnerability of the country’s internal security. Prigozhin was able to seize and hold Moscow’s command centre for the entire Ukraine war without a shot being fired. His heavily armed mercenaries could then advance hundreds of miles towards Moscow, largely unmolested, and with reports of Russian soldiers surrendering in their path. On the way to Moscow, Wagner forces reportedly shot down seven helicopters and a transport plane – if true, one of the deadliest days for the Russian air force since the war in Ukraine began.

As with the recent incursions from Ukraine into Belgorod, the Kremlin lacked forces to secure even key targets inside Russia. They had to depend on another private militia, Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechens, who apparently sent 3,000 men from Ukraine to confront Wagner. Moscow’s critical vulnerability will not be fixed without withdrawing already stretched forces from the front line.

As we have seen so often in Ukraine, Russian forces are unable to respond to unexpected crises without orders from above. This helps explain why Prigozhin’s men could get as far as they did. That those stop orders were not forthcoming exposes Putin’s weakness. His desperation to avoid violent clashes between Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries led to paralysis in the Kremlin accompanied by a frantic search for a way to shut Prigozhin down without bloodshed, eventually pressing Belarus’s Lukashenko into action. It’s not likely Putin cared about casualties on either side, but he did care about the potential disintegration at the front line caused by violent Continue reading →

Articles

Ukraine must seize the moment to triumph on the battlefield

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 24 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

Russia’s armed mutiny has come at the worst time for Putin and the best time for Kyiv, with Yevgeny Prigozhin dealing a devastating blow against Moscow’s ability to project itself on the front lines in Ukraine.

It isn’t just that the Kremlin’s authority is under fire, but that crucial military resources – such as the Rostov-on-Don headquarters of the Southern Military District, a critical logistics hub – are now on the verge of paralysis. The consequences for troops on the frontline will be severe. They may soon be without direction, either at a political or tactical level.

And even if somehow, the Russians are able to continue their logistical support to troops, the front has already been weakened by the departure of Wagner troops. The mercenary group, don’t forget, was perhaps the most effective element of the Russian army, having fielded one in four of Moscow’s ground forces in this war and delivering the only Russian victory in the last year, at Bakhmut.

To compound its problems in Ukraine, the Kremlin may in due course need to withdraw tens of thousands more troops from the front to deal with Wagner inside Russia. Putin will do everything possible to avoid that and to talk down Prigozhin without violence. He has already got General Sergei Surovikin, deputy commander of forces in Ukraine, to make a public appeal to reason.

Yet so far there have been few reports of Russian security forces clashing with Prigozhin’s troops, and there are even suggestions that some of them have surrendered to Wagner or switched sides.

That doesn not mean we won’t see violence between the two factions. The Kremlin has been trying to figure out what to do about Wagner for some time now, and Russian forces are not known for seizing the initiative without orders from above. If it comes to a crunch, the big question for Putin is, how will that play out among troops at the front, many of whom have fought side by side with Wagner?

Already, Prigozhin’s rhetoric has been inciting division between soldiers fighting in Ukraine, as well as the high command and Moscow’s elites. It is, as some have noted, the kind of alienation that contributed to the collapse of the Russian army in 1917. Now he has directly said the invasion was based on lies, denying Putin’s excuses that Ukraine and Nato represented a threat to Russia and that Kyiv had to be ‘de-nazified’ – it is a claim which will resonate with soldiers who are already questioning why they are being forced to fight and die for a cause they don’t understand.

Meanwhile, at this time of greatest Russian weakness, the Ukrainian armed forces remain poised for a major offensive. Probing attacks so Continue reading →

Articles

Prepare for Ukraine’s counter-offensive to falter

Article published in The Sunday Telegraph, 17 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

Nato needs to brace itself for the prospect of Ukraine’s counteroffensive failing to achieve major success. Indeed, so far, Kyiv has attained only limited gains. But those who expected a lightning breakthrough were always going to be disappointed. This is not German panzers against Polish horse cavalry, nor is it American shock and awe against demoralised Iraqi forces in antiquated tanks with no air cover.

Instead, we are seeing something closer to an attritional style of warfare, with attacking forces battering against heavily fortified defences. Current operations are at the stage of reconnaissance-in-force along four separate axes of advance, with Ukrainian units probing Russian positions to identify weak spots that can then be softened up with artillery and exploited by armoured reserve forces. Commandos and partisans are said to be working behind enemy lines to create confusion and disrupt command and control centres. Long range strikes are being used to hit headquarters.

Critical here is deception, attacking in as many areas as possible to keep the Russians guessing where the major thrusts will come. But in war, operations rarely go to plan and the odds are stacked against Kyiv. Russia’s General Valery Gerasimov has had a lot of time and resources to prepare effective defences in multiple lines .The Russians also have numerical superiority in pretty much everything, from men and tanks to, perhaps most critically, artillery.

Then there is air power. Almost every attacking force from the Second World War onwards has succeeded only with air superiority or supremacy. This the Ukrainians do not have, and we have already seen the cost of that with battlefield footage apparently showing American-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard 2 tanks picked off by attack helicopters.

So this counter offensive could go either way. But one thing is certain: a Ukrainian victory is very far from guaranteed. We can Continue reading →

Articles

Biden’s appeasement of Iran is a disaster in the making

Article published by Ynetnews.com, 17 June 2023. © Richard Kemp

A new interim nuclear deal between the US and Iran may be imminent. US denials that such a deal is on the table are likely motivated by an intention to frame it as an informal understanding rather than an international treaty in order to avoid the need for Congressional endorsement, thus reflecting semantics instead of reality.

Leaked details of the ‘non-deal’ suggest Iran would agree to cease enrichment activity and give other undertakings, including freeing US-Iranian dual citizens currently held in custody, in return for sanctions relief that would immediately release around $20 billion of frozen Iranian funds with hundreds of billions more to follow.

The White House knows that no diplomatic understanding with Tehran is worth the paper it’s printed on and no such undertakings will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state.

So why are they heading down this path? There are two reasons. The first is to give Biden a win on the international stage that he so badly needs after the debacles over withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China supplanting the US as power broker in the Middle East.

The second is to pile pressure on Israel and this again has two parts. Part one is to deter Jerusalem from executing a major military strike against Iran’s nuclear programme which has become more plausible since Benjamin Netanyahu resumed the premiership.

Despite the catalogue of foreign policy failures that arose directly from craven weakness in Washington, the White House does not seem to have learned that deterrence is the most effective means of averting war and remains fearful not only of wielding a credible military threat against Iran but also of Israel doing so. Biden and those around him know that an extant nuclear agreement with Tehran, supported by the Europeans, complicates any military action by Israel. Continue reading →