Ukraine Conflict: Veteran U.S. Commander Says 'Wars Aren't Won On The Defense, Wars Are Won On The Offense'

James Dubik is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general with operational experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, and in numerous NATO countries. He is a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War and a professor in Georgetown University's security studies program.

In an interview with RFE/RL's Georgian Service, Dubik talked about gauging success in the Ukrainian counteroffensive, avoiding misperceptions about "decisive" blows, and the element of surprise in a "transparent war."

RFE/RL: Before we go on discussing the situation on the battlefield, let me ask this: What is the Ukrainian counteroffensive meant to achieve? What would be considered a success or, on the opposite spectrum, a failure for the Ukrainian counteroffensive?

James Dubik: Well, campaigns are judged on how much they contribute to the strategic gains. So, [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy's strategic aim is to secure his country's political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and that sets conditions for economic prosperity. That's how I read them. And so, a successful counteroffensive will achieve all of those or move toward achieving those.

So, what that means on the ground is that Ukraine's forces have to seize back enough territory from the Russians to, at the minimum, force the Russians to negotiate from a position of weakness and from a position that Zelenskiy can secure political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and thus economic prosperity. So, it's not an objective of how many miles, how many cities. It's the relationship of the campaign and the strategic objectives that determines success.

RFE/RL: Would it be correct to say that it's less about winning a decisive victory but more about gaining a better hand at the negotiating table?

Dubik: "Decisive" is a word thrown around that has multiple meanings. Sometimes people use decisive and that means, in this case, every single Russian soldier is kicked out of Ukraine.

RFE/RL: The war is won.

Dubik: That's one definition. Another definition of decisive is if it's successful enough on the ground for Zelenskiy to negotiate and achieve his strategic objectives. That's decisive. That's a decisive victory -- even if, as a result of negotiations or in the negotiating period, Russian forces are still leaving the area. So, I think the first version of "decisive" is much less reflective of reality than the second notion of decisive.

RFE/RL: And on the other side of this political coin, could a modestly successful or a failed counteroffensive invite pressure on Kyiv to accept some sort of unsavory cease-fire?

Dubik: Yes, that could happen. And of course, the Zelenskiy administration wants that not to happen. And I would say, the U.S. and NATO want that not to happen. Because part of the strategic aims of NATO and the United States are not just the strengthening of NATO and the defense of NATO but to assist the Ukrainian government in achieving their objectives and thereby reinforcing the international convention against aggression to change borders. So, a less-than-decisive victory in the second sense of decisive would not be a success for Ukraine or the U.S. or NATO.

RFE/RL: On the counteroffensive proper, many have dubbed the initial phase of this counteroffensive as "shaping operations." What are the Ukrainians shaping it up to?

Dubik: Look, I think the West has forgotten how difficult conventional war is. Let's look at D-Day (when in 1944 the Allies undertook the largest seaborne invasion in history to liberate France and shift momentum against Nazi Germany on the Western Front). It took two months for 350,000 soldiers on a 50-mile [80 kilometer] front to secure the beachhead in such a way as to break out. Kyiv is attacking across 155 miles and not with any 350,000 soldiers. So, the complexity is something that I think we all ought to keep in mind.

The counteroffensive has to do multiple things simultaneously. The first is find a weak spot. They've been trying to do that. They've had shaping operations, they've got intelligence operations, they've got limited attacks trying to find a weakness or create a weakness. I noticed that CNN, the other day, talked about four areas in which Ukraine is conducting offensive operations. All that means is that those are the four areas we can see now. It could well be the case that the Russians make adjustments to those four areas and the main punch comes from a fifth…. Based on the Russian response, the Ukrainians might not choose one of those four.

So, the first thing you do [is] intelligence operations, you do shaping operations; they've been doing these right along. Then you have to penetrate -- and not just the security zone. The defense that the Russians have had time to put in has a security zone. And the purpose of the security zone is to strip away the enemy so they don't reach the main battle area. And then there's a main battle area that generally has two lines of defense: complex obstacles and trenches. So, we don't know whether they've reached even the main battle area.

What the Ukrainians have to do is penetrate not the security zone but the main battle area. And to do that, they need to fight a close battle that we read about in the news all the time -- a deeper battle that attacks logistics, command-and-control, infrastructure, to facilitate the movement forward, and then after the breakout to exploit the rear area of the Russian defenses. This is not going to happen in a week or two weeks; this is going to take some time. Simultaneously with that, the Ukrainians have to defend the rest of their country. And that's no small task either.

Further, they have to set the conditions for a continual flow of logistics from the rear to the front and a continual flow of damaged equipment from the front to the rear and fix it. So, let's look again at D-Day: two months from the time we landed to the time we could break out, and then many months to the end of the year, 1944, we get into Germany, and then the Germans counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge at the end of the year. You know, the West, I think, has lulled themselves to sleep with this notion that all wars are rapid, decisive operations like the first Gulf War. And we allowed ourselves to rest on this false belief for 20-some years.

James Dubik (file photo)

And now two things should wake us up: The first [is] 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, not conventional but prolonged. And now a prolonged conventional war. That tells us that the form of industrial warfare that we saw in World War II is not over, even though some theorists have claimed it is. So, the war the Ukrainians are fighting, may well be, in retrospect, the last war of the post-Cold War period. And if we're successful, the next period will have one hue. If it's not successful, the next period will have a whole different hue. Because Russia, if they're successful, will not stop with Ukraine. Everybody knows that; if they don't by now, it's their own choice not to know. And there are other nuclear-power nations around the world, and some who want to be nuclear powers, who are watching very closely to see whether the West is successful in reinforcing the norm of not using force to change borders.

RFE/RL: On this penetration, or the need to breach the main defense line of Russia: What is Ukraine betting on with a numerically inferior force against the fortified, echeloned defense line of Russians? It has been described, by the way, as "some of the most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere since World War II."

Dubik: Well, the aggregate numbers are deceiving in war. They matter, but they're really deceiving. What matters is at the point of battle: What's the combat ratio there? So, it could be -- it is -- the case that Ukraine is outnumbered in the aggregate; that really doesn't matter if they can have overwhelming firepower in all the places they want to have it through a combination of ground forces, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), air forces, long-range artillery, rockets, all that stuff. You can concentrate combat power at the place and time of your choosing and create combat ratios that are way to your favor. So, again, like the term "decisive" gets thrown around, this term of "combat ratio" gets thrown around without much careful analysis.

RFE/RL: For the better half of the year now, we've been hearing how Russia's relentless frontal assault on Bakhmut was "suicidal" and that Russians were sending their men into the "meat grinder." How is Ukraine's counteroffensive different from the Russian one in this regard?

Dubik: I think what we've seen so far is that the Ukrainians have been very careful in choosing when, where, and how to attack, and to set the conditions so that -- at least at the start -- they believe they will have combat superiority. That's way different than the human-wave assault of Russians in Bakhmut, for example, where they just drove forward and [waited to] see what happens. President Zelenskiy, I think, is very judicious and respectful of the lives he is using; [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not.

RFE/RL: I've heard it said many, many times that defensive positions, however skillfully built, are only as efficient as the people manning them. Given the poor morale and training that we've seen from the Russian forces so far, could that be the trump card for Ukraine, if it's able to breach the initial line of defense?

Dubic: From my angle, good defensive positions can be used even by poor troops pretty darn well. And the Russians have a long history of being pretty good at setting up their defenses. They have interlocking fields of fire…they integrate artillery and ground fire, air attacks, air defense. So, if you're a mediocre soldier in a really good defense, you're in a strong position. The issue is, though, if you're a mediocre soldier and, all of a sudden, the enemy is in your rear, that's when you worry, that's when you panic, that's when you withdraw. And so, this makes the penetration much more important. Now, it's also the case that under very severe bombardment and pressing attack, weaker troops will buckle faster. That's also true. But I think you have to hold all three of these things simultaneously in your mind: number one, poor troops and good defenses still can do a lot of damage; number two, weak and low morale makes troops fold easier under attack; number three, when you get in their rear, weak soldiers generally panic faster. All three are simultaneously true.

RFE/RL: Is there room for tactical surprises in what has been described as the world's first truly "transparent war," when most of what happens is seen and observed via satellite imagery?

Dubik: I don't know if there's a rule; there is a desire [from] all commanders at all levels to surprise your enemy either in the place of attack, the time of attack, or method of attack. And when you can do that, you do gain some degree of strength from surprising your enemy, because you're forcing your enemy not just to fight in either a different direction or a different way than he expected but to think differently.

Ukrainian soldiers target Russian defenses on the front line in the Zaporizhzhya region on June 24.

Once you take your enemy out of his cognitive comfort zone, then you're forcing that enemy to adapt to you. And if there's one thing that the Russians have not been good at since February [2022], it is adapting to unfolding realities quickly on the battlefield. As long as things are going according to their plan, they do fine; if the plan stops, one of the weaknesses…is that their commanders stop and wait for orders. And so, you know, that is an advantage of surprise.

RFE/RL: Do you think Ukraine can employ some of that [element of surprise]?

Dubik: Yes, I think there's plenty of room for that.

RFE/RL: Speaking of tactical surprises, curiously enough, Ukraine. from what we've seen so far, has gone for the age-old trick of operating mostly under the cover of night. Many ascribe it to the effectiveness of Western-supplied night-vision equipment. How potent a tool in Ukraine's arsenal might this end up to be?

Dubik: I don't know that. But let me talk about surprise two ways. First tactically. It is a huge advantage, being able to see at night, to shoot and hit what you're aiming at at night is an incredible advantage to someone who's staring into the dark. To have night-vision devices on individual crew-served weapons is just a huge tactical advantage.

But let's talk about surprise at the operational level, for example. Let's just say CNN is right, for the purposes of argument, that there are four areas in which the Ukrainians have been initiating counteroffensive operations. The Russians don't know which of those will end up being the main effort right now. They don't know if there's a fifth. So, the Russians now have to decide what to do in reaction to these four. How do they ship forces? Where do they ship forces? Do they ship forces?

And once they make a decision, the Ukrainians have the room for operational-level surprise -- where the Russians had kind of bet, let's say, on Location Two, and all of a sudden One or Four becomes the main effort. And now the Russians are caught way out of their comfort zone and have to react to something they have not anticipated. So, you have surprise at various levels. There's surprise in the place, the time, or the method. So, it could still well be that there are methods that the Ukrainian forces have developed [and] that they have not shown their cards and are waiting for the right time and place to do that. That's operational-level surprise that there's still room for us to see.

RFE/RL: Given the amount of military assistance the West has provided to Ukraine in preparation for this counteroffensive -- all the Bradley fighting vehicles, the Abrams and Leopards tanks, and Storm Shadow cruise missiles -- is it fair to say that the West's military prestige is also riding on Ukraine's counteroffensive?

Dubik: I don't know. There's probably an argument to say that; I don't know how strong that argument would be. Because the equipment itself -- the Bradleys, the Abrams tanks, all the other Western equipment, Leopards -- they have been proven in other wars. So, the equipment itself has been proven to be the best in the world.

RFE/RL: Not against Russia.

Dubik: Not against Russia, that's right. But I'm kind of hopeful, kind of thinking that it'll turn out fine, technically. But it is always how the equipment is used that really matters, not merely having the equipment. And it's also having the equipment when and where it's needed. So, the logistics of this counteroffensive are hugely important, as is the flow of equipment from the West to Ukraine. Because all wars have usage rates, and good logisticians have tables -- I've seen them -- that say, "if you're going to be in this kind of fight for this number of days, you can anticipate this number of battle-damaged equipment."

So, it's not just what you have to start. It's do you have the flow forward to do the replacements? Do you have the flow forward to maintain the momentum once a breakthrough is seen? And do you have the flow backwards to keep repairing? All that matters.

And the other thing, while we're talking about this, I think is really important for us to remember: This is the Russia-Ukraine war. Putin started the war illegally, aggressively. And Ukraine is justifiably defending itself. And according to international law, other nations can come to the aid, to its self-defense. This is not a proxy war. People may say, "This is a proxy war between NATO, the U.S., and Russia. No, this is not a proxy war. This is the West, the United States, and NATO, supporting a legitimate self-defense against illegal aggression.

RFE/RL: On this flow that you mentioned, Ukraine has received plenty, but there still are some glaring holes in what Ukraine has requested and the West has been willing to provide -- most notably, ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) and fighter jets. Let's start with the former. How important are ATACMS for the outcome of this counteroffensive? How much could the absence of ATACMS hobble Ukraine?

Dubik: It's all about range. And I think the ATACMS would be very helpful to continue the attack in the depth necessary to achieve a penetration. So, you have close weapons, artillery, mortars, indirect weapons; you have a little bit deeper, the HIMARS (light multiple rocket launchers); then you have the ATACMS, the deepest, and I think they would be very useful to the Ukrainians and we should have provided them a long time ago.

Ukrainian High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) on the move in the Kherson region, (file photo)

RFE/RL: With that in mind, should we expect them to be perhaps delivered during the counteroffensive, or come to regret not doing so?

Dubik: Well, personally, I think we should have already provided them to Ukraine. So, I've already regretted that, as a personal opinion. I don't know what the [U.S.] administration will say whether they regret it or not. But I believe this was a weapon that was necessary -- and known for me to be necessary -- as early as last summer. You can see [expressed] in my writings that [I believe] we should have been providing all the stuff necessary for a counteroffensive. Because wars are not won of the defense, wars are won on the offense.

RFE/RL: Regarding the F-16 fighter aircraft, or rather their absence, the Ukrainian forces seem to be attacking without any air support, while their air defenses are tied down with defending the civilian targets Russia is relentlessly bombing. How costly might that prove?

Dubik: Well, casualties will go up without control of the air, there's no doubt about that. But F-16s aren't necessarily the answer to that problem. You have identified the right problem: protecting the airspace over the counteroffensive and protect the airspace over the rest of Ukraine. That's the task. And that can be done in any number of ways without deploying F-16s. And I think the West has been a little slow in identifying the varieties of air-defense weaponry that are necessary across the board, from a tactical level through to the strategic ones and operational ones like the [U.S.-made] Patriots.

RFE/RL: Slow or reluctant?

Dubik: I don't know which one. But the net effect is the same, so it doesn't matter. There's insufficient air defense to cover all of the things that need to be covered.

RFE/RL: And the second part of the question: How costly may that prove for the Ukrainian counteroffensive?

Dubik: Well, it's going to cost more. How costly? I don't know, I can't answer that. That's quantitative and there's no way for me to judge that now. But again, like you concentrate ground and indirect forces to get a combat ratio to a certain place, you can concentrate air-defense systems and take risk in other areas. I don't know what the Ukrainians are doing in that regard. But in my view, the air-defense platforms ought to increase in the flow to Ukraine, not decrease.

RFE/RL: Let's talk about the losses Ukraine has sustained so far and is doubtless going to suffer as the counteroffensive goes on. We've seen pictures of destroyed Leopard tanks celebrated in Russia. Then we've seen those photos from different angles, or photoshopped, celebrated once more. So, what would be your word of advice regarding the expectations-management strategy, both in Ukraine and in the West, when it comes to the cost of this entire venture?

Dubik: I think that part of the political leadership's responsibility -- Ukrainian, NATO, U.S. -- is to continually engage their populations to be realistic in what is achievable, what is being achieved, and the costs. There's a fine line. You can be overly realistic and cause a panic, a lack of support, and a lack of legitimacy of what you're doing. And you can be underly realistic and be accused of masking the costs. I think there's got to be more effort -- at least as I read the U.S. news -- in describing in that realistic zone, what's actually going on and how things are going. I don't read the Ukrainian news, so I don't know there.

RFE/RL: Vladimir Putin recently claimed, in an apparent slip, that Russia has lost 54 tanks in Ukraine since the start of this counteroffensive. He then seemed to regain his composure and went on to insist that Ukraine's losses were "catastrophic" and that Kyiv had lost 160 tanks and 360 armored vehicles, which he says is roughly one-third of what the West has provided to Ukraine. Just how big is the grain of salt we should be taking his words with?

Dubik: I think you need to take a sack of salt, not a grain. That's part of the battlefield now, though, isn't it? It's this information space that's going back and forth. And that's why it's so important for political leaders: a) to maintain their own credibility, and then, b) to use that credibility to engage their public to ensure that the public sees their efforts as legitimate efforts and continues to support them.

And engagement is important, because you've got all these wild claims that are out there, propelled and accelerated in social media, changed in social media. And so, without a credible, trustworthy, reliable flow of information from the government, then you risk public support, you risk legitimacy. And that's a very important part of waging a war.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.