180: Sandor Fabian: Europe is Learning the wrong lessons from the conflict in Ukraine

Today, Jack Gaines hosts Doctor Sandor Fabian, who published 
"The Illusion of Conventional War: Europe is Learning the wrong lessons from the conflict in Ukraine." 

This ten-point contrarian op-ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs. 

Article link: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-illusion-of-conventional-war-europe-is-learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-conflict-in-ukraine/

Sandor Fabian's Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandor-fabian-ph-d-3422b639/

---

One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

---

Special thanks to Jazz Bois for the sample of Mellow Hive Live @ Root Budapest. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/EhGCsaiVm0I?si=zG3B1_1zaHjC_K2j

---

Credits

Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association

Host: Jack Gaines

---

00:00:04    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website, at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes. Today we welcome Dr.

00:00:41    JACK GAINES
Shander Fabian, who published The Illusion of Conventional War, Europe is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Conflict in Ukraine. This 10 -point contrarian op -ed is focused on helping smaller nations build better national defense programs. I have a link to his bio and the paper in the show notes. So let's get started. One thing that caught my eye thinking about your paper are the points where you say that most observers are ignoring or misinterpreting things that they don't agree with. In other words, they have confirmation bias or they have a blind spot to things that they don't understand or refuse to include in their ideal.

00:01:24    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. And the base of my argument is... I traveled all over Europe and look at European capabilities. So throughout my personal experience and also studies in Europe, that these small countries, especially former Warsaw Pact countries, are trying to get integrated into the NATO system, which is driven mostly by the U .S. and the U .S. frame of reference of warfighting.

00:01:48    JACK GAINES
Sure. Division on division.

00:01:50    SANDOR FABIAN
Division on division. But the issue is these countries could not. purchase, maintain, sustain big ticket items. Right. And small countries have very small training areas. You cannot train officers to conduct division on division war fighting. So you are missing major opportunities in the education and training of the professional military officers and NCOs as well. Tanks are very expensive.

00:02:19    JACK GAINES
Right.

00:02:19    SANDOR FABIAN
These countries can buy maybe 10 tanks. When you buy 10 tanks, then you cannot really train with them because it's very difficult and expensive to actually get them to the field. You need the train system. You need the training areas. You need the ammunition for them. You train as you fight. These countries cannot afford to train as you fight. So by that definition, you actually going into any kind of war. in a suboptimal setting because you did not prepare your soldiers as they are going to fight. So there's a huge disconnect compared to France or the UK or the US.

00:02:56    JACK GAINES
Right. Because they can field larger armories and have more of a supply system to support them.

00:03:01    SANDOR FABIAN
You have the supply system. You have a large training and education infrastructure behind it that actually prepares your military leaders to understand and to fight such kind of wars. And you have the infrastructure behind it and all that that is completely locking in smaller former Warsaw Pact countries. Right.

00:03:17    JACK GAINES
Right. Switzerland was able to stay neutral during World War II. And the strategic calculus that Nazi Germany had for not invading Switzerland was that their form of warfare didn't work well in Switzerland with all the mountains. So they would have had to change all their tactics. And they knew that the Swiss didn't have battle tanks. They had an air force. They had a lot of snipers. They had a lot of riflemen in the mountains that knew those mountains well. just realized that by going through those mountains trying to take Switzerland would have been such a cost that it wasn't worth it. So as you're saying, they created warfare in a way that was successful for them instead of trying to emulate what would have been the popular military style of that time.

00:04:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely. And it's not just the Swiss. Ivan Ergun Toft, he wrote a book about how the weak actually defeats the strong. And he looked at all the wars of the last 150 years. And the primary determinant of who is actually succeeding in war is exactly what you just described. And the Ukrainian war actually shows that too. When you are not presenting a war to your enemy that he is understanding, he is organized, trained, educated for, he's active for, that enemy is immediately in trouble because you refuse to fight on his terms. So when you have a lot of main battle tanks and your enemy don't have main battle tanks... those battle tanks are not going to be useful because who are they going to fight with? What type of targets are they going to hit? And if that enemy has a million high -tech IEDs against your main battle tank, but zero battle tanks, that creates a huge dilemma for you. And also the Western frame of reference of the warfighting is when we win conventionally, we won the war. And the Iraq invasion showed that it's completely wrong. We run through a country, we occupy the country, we won all the engagements, and now we won the war. That actually has been shown throughout history. It's not the case anymore.

00:05:21    JACK GAINES
Right. You know, and that reminds me, H .R. McMaster in his book was talking about how when he went into Iraq with his tank division. I can't remember the size of the unit. I apologize. It was his famous battle where he went over the hill. And he knew that the Iraqi tank commander had trained in the U .S. because as they saw the formation, It was laid out exactly the way they had taught them how to do it. He was proud of them for doing that, but also he knew how to unscrew that type of defense and it was a very effective offense. He wiped out the adversary's tanks. So that's the other half of it is when you are living in somebody else's strategy, they also have control of how that strategy falls out.

00:06:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely.

00:06:05    JACK GAINES
Now, your observation is never present your adversary with a type of war that they are organized, trained, and equipped for, which we've already started discussing. And thinking of that and also the introduction about how people ignore or are blind to different aspects of a conflict, one thing that reminds me of is right now in Ukraine, there was a supply gap between what the U .S. and the EU were providing in weapons and material to Ukraine. But Ukraine didn't collapse, and it's because of something that no one's talking about, and that is that Estonia and the Czech Republic were finding weapons and material and delivering them. They were also going into the black markets in the underground to find other people willing to donate and give weapons and material. But then they also started fundraising public money in order to buy 155 rounds or other munitions to help the Ukrainians continue the fight. while the traditional Western systems were dry. And it's just not talked about. But it really comes down to that notion that Ukraine is not just at war with Russia. It's Ukraine and their network at war with Russia and their network. And that network is critical on who is going to win, who is going to succeed at different phases. So that just really struck me to your first point.

00:07:22    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, Ukraine in this case didn't collapse, thankfully, but they also didn't win. They are presenting the same type of war and we kind of enabling them because we are providing the tanks, we are providing the armored personnel carriers, we're providing artillery and so on. So we are incentivizing and pushing them into the corner of fighting along the terms of Russia. As long as that's happening, we are creating a situation when the two networks that you described is fighting pretty much a material war against each other. So the outcome is going to be determined who can sustain longer on both sides.

00:07:56    JACK GAINES
Right. And actually, the Czech Republic were also fundraising for combat drones. So they're trying to see through and around this quagmire that you're talking about.

00:08:05    SANDOR FABIAN
Well, another thing I don't talk about in the paper that has been fascinating me for many years, we on the West are fascinated with fighting the war. But we don't determine what winning means and what's happening afterwards. So everybody celebrated that now the U .S. is providing all this aid again to Ukraine to win. But what win really means in this war?

00:08:27    JACK GAINES
That actually feeds to your fourth observation. Friends are important in war, but they can be detrimental as well. especially for your defense efforts, which is what you're bringing up now. And that is if your vision of success, of strategic success as a Ukrainian is to take back all territory and have Russia in a position where they can no longer fight, then that's success. But if your Western allies, if their vision of success is that you have sustained yourself and that... Russia can no longer go further. Their support is only going to go so far because once you have hit their success lines, that's when what they're providing you starts to dry up.

00:09:04    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, and the Ukrainian president has made it clear several times that the official goal is getting everything back. And that's obviously the communicated Ukrainian goal, understandably, because they are a sovereign, independent country who lost quite a bit of territory to an aggressor. I'm not necessarily seeing the same very clear message from all the Western allies. However, obviously, you can make the argument there is no counter communication made. So the public and everybody else can assume that on the West, we think along the same way. However, again, if you are a very cold headed, completely objective analyst, then the evidence on the ground points to a different direction.

00:09:48    JACK GAINES
That's what I'm seeing. It's almost that Madeleine Albright, Saddam Hussein moment where Saddam asked, do you have an issue if we invade Kuwait? She said, the U .S. doesn't have a position. And he thought, oh, that means that they are okay with me invading Kuwait. But it wasn't. It just caused a misunderstanding that ended up with an invasion that started this whole mess in Iraq. So I get what you're saying. And the signals are never clear between nations on intent. And so you're right. You have to look at the behavior on supply and on policy and what they're giving away to help you in order to succeed. And I think it's going to be limited. So I would imagine Ukraine in itself is going to have to have a plan B in case the U .S. says, you know what, you've gotten 80 % back. I think that's fine. We're going to end our support there. Or the EU says the same thing and they're kind of stuck.

00:10:42    SANDOR FABIAN
It is a very unique case. So when other European countries are looking at the Ukrainian case, I think they should be very careful because Ukraine could actually marshal a global network behind her struggle against Russia. And the same kind of support, the same kind of geopolitical situation, what we are sitting right now might not be recreatable in the future for some other countries.

00:11:06    JACK GAINES
Like Myanmar, the national unity government. just doesn't have the global network of support that Ukraine has. And it's a very different scenario, but it's also an excellent example of what it's like to not have that kind of support. Now, one thing that you were bringing up is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to Ukraine, as an example, because it's all in the field, it's all in trenches, it's very traditional. And one of your arguments, one that you have in this paper as well as in other papers, is that we need to start thinking about urban warfare, The fighting is going to hit the streets more often than not.

00:11:42    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, absolutely. Many analysts and previous studies are pointing to the war is actually back in the trenches, far away from urban areas and far away from the civilian population. It's not true. Right now, the current situation is more out of urban areas, but still the majority of the fronts includes small villages, small towns, and larger built -up areas. The Russians are attacking those urban centers because those have operational and strategic importance. If you look back at the early months of the invasion, almost all the targets that the Russians were going after were urban areas. If you kind of step back and look at the conflicts of the last 20 years, 30 years, urban areas are the future. We are in a very unique opportunity here that we can actually build our future battlefields. We are building the buildings. We are looking at road networks. We are wiring the CCTV networks, the communication networks in the cities. So why we are not thinking about this in how we are going to utilize our buildings, our underground structures, our communication for military or defensive purposes. And if you look at it, it's nothing new because the Finns are very good at this. During the Cold War, they had an amazing network of underground tunnels, caches, protective areas for the civilians. The Swedes developed the Gripen, which actually are designed to land on highways and can be serviced very easily in the field expedient context. So there is a lot of historical examples out there. It's just a matter of will. and understanding to dust them off and develop them to the requirement of the 21st century.

00:13:25    JACK GAINES
Unless you're South Korea or you're Finland or Sweden, you just don't see an enemy until they're on you.

00:13:31    SANDOR FABIAN
they're on you. Another point that I have been arguing for many years is NATO and the NATO structure itself is based on this idea of interoperability. We fight together, we look like the same and we develop the same capabilities. And if you look through Europe,

00:13:31    JACK GAINES
they're on you. Another point

00:13:46    SANDOR FABIAN
What you just said is absolutely true. The Portuguese and the Spanish don't see Russia the same way as the Latvians and the Estonians, for example, or the Finns. But the Portuguese and the Spanish and the French, they have a different problem set. So in NATO, it's a defensive alliance. Main task is collective defense. So people would argue there are two types of defense, proactive and reactive defense. But if you want to defend, the first thing you do is you build a defensive line. which is completely locking right now. So that's why I'm arguing that the Eastern European countries mostly, they are absolutely not postured to actually resist a potential Russian aggression. The whole plan there is they're going to lose and then a large NATO counterattack, and then the territories will be retaken. But originally, NATO will never be able to actually withstand a Russian aggression. Right.

00:14:37    JACK GAINES
And that's probably why Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, they're so vigilant. on defense because they've seen how close they are to an adversary and what happens if you're not prepared.

00:14:50    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes, absolutely. And I don't know if you've seen an article just came out a couple of weeks ago that the Baltic states decided to build a line of trenches and fortresses along the border. So that's actually preparation for defense. So why are we not doing something similar at the NATO level, the whole Eastern Bloc? Why are we not preparing the urban areas for defense? Just imagine how deterrent that would be. First of all, it would take away any kind of narrative from Russia, going, look, NATO is aggressive, because in action we would present defensive actions, preparing for defense. And then the other thing, any conventional aggressor would understand, okay, now these guys are turned their cities into fortresses. They have all this unconventional capabilities, equipment, training. They're not going to fight our T -72s with other tanks, but they have a million javelins or you name it. So it would be such a strong deterrent because, first of all, they would not understand what they are looking at because we would not present the fight or kind of war that they understand. So it would be such a deterrent that it would actually, I argue, be more effective than whatever we have right now.

00:16:01    JACK GAINES
Interesting. Now, in your observation three, strategic depth is critical for survival. Is this what you're trying to describe in that paragraph? Yes,

00:16:11    SANDOR FABIAN
absolutely. So you need to build a multi -layer defense. And in many countries, the size itself is so small, you have very limited artificial or natural obstacles, like the Swiss example. So if you think about defense, you have to either create or reinforce existing obstacles. And that's when urban areas can come in. You can look at the rivers, you can look at dams, just like Ukrainians did flooding your own territories. So you have to exploit what you have. And if you don't have something, then you have to generate artificial obstacles, artificial opportunities that put any kind of aggressor into a major dilemma. And then you have to organize your defense around that. I'm also arguing it's not just a physical sense, but also if you look at some country's population, they are very thin on the human capital they can tap into. When you have 2 .5, 3, 4, maybe 10 million people, and then you look at the military age available, you have to understand that you have very limited resources as far as human capital, and you have to make sure you are not wasting them. Most of the countries, they have maybe 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 professional soldiers. in theory, is the top 10 % of your society. So what's happening with the small military is if a Russian aggression comes, they are going to be the first destroyed and killed or injured. So you are losing your best and sharpest and strongest right at the beginning, and then you have to work with whatever you have left.

00:17:41    JACK GAINES
Right. So you're saying that these smaller countries need to build more of a reserve out of their population, either the mandatory one to two year, like an annual refresher. or to keep a larger number of the population in a reserved status?

00:17:55    SANDOR FABIAN
In Europe, conscription is a very, very sensitive topic. However, I am a strong believer that a 21st century version of conscription is actually very necessary for several countries in Europe. A modern version of conscription. And it's not only for the defense of country in case of a conventional kind of war, but also resiliency building at the society level. Before Ukraine started, the big buzz was the Russian hybrid warfare. And everybody was talking about how Russia is using different tools, different parts of the national power, cyber attacks, proxies, the church, economic levers, and you name it, 30 -something techniques that the Russians were using. And everybody came to the conclusion that you need a resilient whole -of -society approach to counter these malign activities.

00:18:44    JACK GAINES
And preparation, because it's hard to stir that up in the middle of a crisis.

00:18:48    SANDOR FABIAN
That's absolutely true, yes.

00:18:50    JACK GAINES
So your next one is pre -war exercises should be platforms for losing and learning instead of always winning. But what I think you're saying is that we need to red team our exercises and exploit every gap in our strategy and operations so that we can see what the ramifications of those blind spots are so that we are better as a strategy and operational team. And you can only do that by being open to that type of loss and criticism.

00:19:20    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it goes back to that Western view of exercises. You do individual training and then you go fire team training, you go squad training, you go platoon training, company battalion, you name it. And then the exercise, you do collective training and then you master the skills and you learn how to win as you described. The exercises are serving evaluation purposes. You pass or you fail, and usually you pass. And it's very difficult to academically kind of support with evidence. But I'm telling you, in my 20 years, I've actually seen only one exercise in NATO where we failed.

00:19:58    JACK GAINES
Who got fired? Because that's usually what happens.

00:19:58    SANDOR FABIAN
that's usually what happens.

00:19:59    JACK GAINES
that's usually what happens.

00:20:00    SANDOR FABIAN
Exactly. So there is an organizational culture, and this incentivizes failure because... you might actually see examples of somebody got fired. And in former Warsaw Pact countries, I think it's even more true because you still have some of the kind of heritage from the post -Soviet system when the sky is always blue, the grass is always green, everything is fine. We can do whatever, we never say no to anything and we always succeed. Ukrainian pre -war exercises showed how important that when you have an enemy... You feel on your skin that war is imminent, that you actually are willing to look at those gaps and willing to solve those gaps and experiment with those gaps. There were exercises when the Ukrainians identified the military cannot do this because they don't have the capability. They looked at intelligence services and they said, OK, they have the capability, but they don't have the authority. So one of the outcome. of the exercise was a legislative change, removing certain tasks or requirements from the military and pushing it to the intelligence community because they had the capability but no authority. Other areas they identified as certain problems that cannot be solved with military tools or it can be solved but it's suboptimal and it doesn't meet the overall requirements. But the civil society has solutions. For example, Ukraine is very big on computer game developers and software developers. And those guys created apps for mobile phones that the Ukrainian intelligence community could pretty much crowdsource intelligence collection to the people. And they practiced it in exercises. And then you now are flooded with information, how your military system is dealing with that, the classification, how you're processing that data, and so on. So again, it was a big fail, but they find the solutions.

00:21:49    JACK GAINES
That's really interesting because one of the things that I've seen is when the U .S. faces a problem, they have a gap that they do spot, that they only look at DoD -style solutions. They don't look at cross -agency solutions. They don't look at commercial solutions. They certainly don't look at how the public can be involved in helping win a war. And it's happened. It's happened in the past. I've seen it, but it's not something that military will... formalize or even document.

00:22:20    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah. And you are talking about the US? Yes. Now, if you look at small European countries, that problem set is even larger because they do actually much worse on that level as well. One other issue pointing back to NATO and the interoperability idea, everybody needs to be a small US. Interoperability and influence by France is killing adaptation in small countries. When you say, no, you have to look the same way, wearing the similar boots, similar uniform, the same helmet, the same weapons, and this is the doctrine you should follow. That takes away the time to think innovatively and you turn them into this uniform NATO soldiers. One of my examples from Afghanistan, we went there first and we worked with the US guys there. My soldiers, you know, after two months started to say, oh, I want the same Oakley and the same baseball hat and the same body armor and the same weapon. I'm like... OK, and slowly became this more American looking and acting soldiers. We started to lose those guys who use the Swiss army knife to solve the same problems that a logistics platoon is solving for an American soldier. So there are obviously a lot of positives of interoperability and working together. But we have to also understand that actually that leads also to capability and capacity loss.

00:23:38    JACK GAINES
Interesting. Well, I'm going to leave it there because I can't imagine. more valid point than that, than encouraging small unit and small nation diversity in thinking about defense. I think that was brilliant. So number six? Absolutely. Intimate knowledge of your enemy is an invaluable force multiplier. And we saw Ukraine leadership and government and military use that intimate knowledge of Russian practices and standards and culture in the very beginning of the war by communicating to the Russians, hey, we're not far apart from each other. We shouldn't be doing this. Demand that your sons and daughters that are on the front come back home, organizing identifications so that Russian soldiers that were killed in the field and the Russians didn't want to notify the families so that there wasn't a bad public response.

00:24:22    JACK GAINES
so that Russian soldiers that were killed in the field and the Russians didn't want to notify the families so that there wasn't a bad public response. The Ukrainians did it on their own. They reached out and they started setting up networks to help people find. their soldiers. And that's always been a strategic strength, I believe, is having not only the willingness to fight and kill your adversary, but also understanding that the people in the back, yeah, they support the war for the opposition, but when it's over, they have to have some point of reference in order to cooperate. And I believe that what you're talking about here, the intimate knowledge, is good as a way to spot and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your adversaries, formations, movements, thinking process. But it's also a great way to understand what's going to be the second and third order effects. For example, let's say that Ukraine actually pushed Russia out of Crimea and all of the outlying territories and they declare success. And kind of like in the first Chechen war goes, all right, we're going to write a treaty. And they write a treaty. And then in about 15 years, they build up their force and reinvade when Ukraine's not ready for them. These things happen. And if no one's thinking about the behavior of your adversary, you're going to run into a blind spot by not thinking past what you think of as strategic success.

00:25:52    SANDOR FABIAN
On the West, we have this obsession of fighting the war, but not thinking about what winning looks like and what after the war. So what is coming after the war, how we are going to ensure it's not happening again in 10 years. We don't have that long -term thinking. And obviously there is large literature on why does it happen. But it has been done in the past. The Cold War is a primary example of long -term containment of Russia and winning itself. But going back to the knowledge on the enemy, it has an effect on the cognitive space, understanding the society on the other side, the soldiers on the other side, their education, their training, how you can influence certain parts of the adversary society. And Ukrainians for a very long time were obviously winning in the information operation. not just towards the West marshalling support, but also towards certain parts of the Russian society as well. And the other thing is, at the beginning of the war, one of the key to their success was exactly knowing the Russian order of battle. They knew how a armored formation would actually move. and they were attacking them at the weakest point. So that understanding acted as a force multiplier, and they organized around that specific knowledge. So if you look at European countries, there is no teaching of Russian order of battles. There is no teaching anymore the capabilities of T -72s. There is no teaching of the capabilities of Russian artillery pieces or airplanes. I remember my first two years in the Hungarian Military Academy. We were looking at thermal images of Russian and American equipment and area pictures and things like that. And we had to recognize that in the middle of the night, that there is no such understanding or knowledge, not even at that basic level. And then when you talk about culture, you talk about language, it would add an extra requirement for our countries to actually educate and train future military leaders in a completely different level. Right.

00:27:49    JACK GAINES
This is a great point because when Ukraine first started doing exercises with the U .S. and Western partners, they were very Soviet in the way they thought and performed. And I'll be honest, if they had stuck to that mindset when this conflict started, their over -homogenization would have caused them to collapse immediately. I think the Russians would have been able to get a lot further than they did now. But because they have a hybrid notion by having both experience with the Soviet military and with the Western concepts of conflict, it helped them to be more creative because they knew the good and the bad of both sides of it.

00:28:30    SANDOR FABIAN
Yeah, and actually a very important point there that the Ukrainians had the privilege to actually still have that kind of officer and NCO who still had knowledge from the past. but they also had training and education from the future or from the Western side. Now, most of the European countries now, we are in a disadvantage, I would argue, because our leaders, almost all of them grew up in the global war on terror kind of environment. So everybody's expert on countering insurgencies, countering terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan, serious scenarios, but nobody is really a master anymore of prosecuting a large -scale war. in Europe. So now we have a generation or generations of military officer and NCO Corps who is unable to say no, obviously, because the military is like, yeah, we are capable of doing anything. But if you look at it realistically, we changed our training and education infrastructure to the requirements of the global war on terrorism. So there is a huge gap and that gap is very sad. But at the same time, I argue it creates an opportunity to start building a different type of officer and then CO corps that is actually not presenting this kind of war to a Russian aggressor, but a more realistic one that is designed for the realities of these smaller countries.

00:29:47    JACK GAINES
You know, I've been arguing the same thing about strategic competition, that this global war on terror mindset is not going to help you succeed or survive in global competition. So let's move on to number seven. Forget armor and other big ticket military platforms, traditional military platforms. Now, you're mostly talking small countries to stop over homogenizing with the U .S. That's one of your points. And one of those positions is don't go for the big battle tanks. Don't go for the C5s. Unless you absolutely need them, they're a cost waste to your defense.

00:30:27    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. So first of all, you are spending on something that is not going to do you any good. So when you can... afford 10 main battle tanks. 10. And you can offer 200 armored personnel carriers or fighting vehicles and maybe 20 helicopters and then 15 artillery pieces. And that's actually costing the 2 % of your GDP or even more. Let's put emotions to the side and be very objective and completely cold -headed here. What those pieces is really going to give you against thousands or hundreds of similar... capabilities when it's coming to a potential war or aggression. Nothing. You are going to lose them very quickly. You are going to lose the best trained and most educated people very quickly because you gave the enemy a type of war that they understand. You are disadvantaged when it comes to a material war, no matter what. There are many reasons why these countries cannot sustain a meaningful capability. Many countries were given the NATO capability goals to build a heavy brigade. It took them 15 to 20 years and they are still not there. And then if they have the capability, then there are so many issues, lack of training and education and infrastructure, lack of training areas, lack of culture and an understanding of combined arms maneuver warfare at the national level. prevent them to be successful or effective with those kinds of capabilities. The last thing I didn't really write about is in European countries, there is this misconception that capability equals capacity. I am able to do something once. It's not the same thing that I'm capable of doing that 30 days on a sustained level. So when you have 10 tanks and they are destroyed, You lost your capability and then you cannot recreate another 10 tanks and 10 tanks and 10 tanks for every single day with all the trained people and all that. So capability does not equal capacity. And that's a huge problem in most European countries that they build some capability. Yes, we can fight one day, combined arms, maneuver warfare. What's happening tomorrow? Our soldiers are tired. We don't have refuel. We don't have ammo anymore. We need five days to be able to fight one more day again. It's not effective. They have to look at some different approach and different type of war to present to this challenge. So the Ukrainian war also shows the utility of these small, salty, easy -to -build platforms that are very lethal, killing tanks. The Ukrainians sank one -third of the Black Sea fleet without a single maritime platform. They only used remote -controlled platforms. Without the Navy, they actually sank one third of the Russian Black Sea fleet. That is very telling. And the Ukrainians are killing tanks. They are killing artillery pieces with drones. They have like a shoestring and they tie a hand grenade or a mine on a drone and then destroying a $10 million worth of battle tank. So that is very telling. And that's something that the European countries should really, really take a serious look and then understand. What are the implications for their national defense systems?

00:33:44    JACK GAINES
Maybe the sense of defense is not just being on the front lines, but also if you're a finance person, you know, building funding and building financial networks that support the cause. What is your thoughts on national defense is not only a military or government function?

00:34:02    SANDOR FABIAN
You are absolutely right on that. And even if you talk about the U .S. Like 75 % of the transportation capability is owned by the civilian society or businesses. 90 % of satellite communication capabilities are owned by private companies. And those are even stronger in Europe. So the government has to realize that the 21st century battlefield or war itself is much more complex than I take my military, they will fight it out. And then if we lose, we sign the papers. And if we win, then we won the war. That has not been realistic since World War II. So the people, the society, the civilian businesses, the churches, the NGOs, they all had to understand that they have a role to play in national defense. Everybody has something to contribute. And not everybody will fight. Not everybody should fight. But everybody has something to contribute at their own individual or organizational level. Some capabilities. Look at Starlink, for example. Without Starlink, the Ukrainian communication would have been destroyed. And without that capability, their command and control disabled and potentially have a major negative effect on the outcome. And it goes back to the earlier discussion about exercises. You have to identify those gaps and then you have to actively go out to the society and the private sector and fight those who have capabilities in those fields. Can't just hand wave and say,

00:35:28    JACK GAINES
just hand wave and say, we'll take care of it. We've got satellite dishes. Oh no, we're fine.

00:35:31    SANDOR FABIAN
no, we're fine. Let's be honest. That's what the military does. We identify this problem. So we will take 10 years to develop a military capability for satellite communication. Instead of going out and say, OK, let's look at Company X. Do you have the capability already? OK, how we incentivize you to provide this capability to us during peacetime and during war and then how we work together and what we are doing. Even the U .S. has major problems in this kind of space. Then imagine a small European country with much less GDP, much less economic power and so on. They should tap into their entire society, private sector, industry, everything to give a chance to their national defense to be effective. Right.

00:36:14    JACK GAINES
Fantastic. All right. You ready for number 10?

00:36:17    SANDOR FABIAN
I am ready for number 10. Okay.

00:36:19    JACK GAINES
Deception is still a force multiplier.

00:36:22    SANDOR FABIAN
Absolutely. It goes back to the earlier argument about the intimate knowledge of your enemy. We actually stopped teaching deception. We stopped educating our officers and NCOs about the value of deception. We also stopped producing tools for our militaries in mass, serving only deception purposes. Where are the inflatable tank divisions? Where are the inflatable... aircrafts or helicopters. There are the deceptive platoons who work on deceiving the enemy and making them believe that you are a brigade when it's just two people exchanging radio communication. We kind of stopped doing that. And then obviously with the cyberspace, we had an extra domain, an extra space opened up. And again, we are not effective on utilizing this tool of deception. We are not training our leaders. And also, I have not seen an exercise besides camouflaging the command post. The military formations are actually effectively and actively try to deceive the enemy. It's all about force on force. It's all about fire, destroying the target and so on. Deception itself is not there. And deception is very important, I argue, for small countries with limited resources, with no main battle tanks and so on. Because if... the enemy's capabilities cannot see your target, then they cannot hit it. Or if you present them a fake target and they hit it, they are going to extend a lot of resources. So there are so much to deception that we are just not appreciating anymore.

00:38:00    JACK GAINES
Do you think it's because we overclassified deception? You make it so heavy with authorities and classification that it makes it impossible to do an exercise.

00:38:09    SANDOR FABIAN
I think that's one thing. And also, I think we became slaves to our superiority and to our technology because our tanks, our tank formations are so big. It's pretty much... almost impossible in the 21st century to hide them. So we are more like, okay, we show them how big we are. We show them how effective we are. And then they are not going to oppose us. It's going to be deterrent. We don't have to deceive them. So I think it's more about our dominance in this space and the belief in our dominance that led to this underappreciation of deception. When you're a smaller country and you have... way less capabilities even if you investing in tanks and 20 helicopters then you should be incentivized to protect them and one way to protect them is to deceive the enemy to hide this right and then present them with fake targets or deceive them every way it's possible but you cannot deceive effectively without the tools for deception and then from training and educating to people how to use those tools to effectively deceive your enemy right wow

00:39:10    JACK GAINES
Yeah, I see the challenge and I've heard it from other people who focus on psychological operations and intelligence and counterintelligence about how difficult it is to actually run a deception operation.

00:39:23    SANDOR FABIAN
maintain the illusion that they can actually challenge that enemy on its own term. If you are not a heavyweight boxing champion, you cannot challenge a heavyweight boxing champion in a ring based on the rules of heavyweight boxing with the referee keeping everybody in check. You are not going to win. That's not going to happen. So the best way for an underdog to defeat the stronger enemy is to present a dilemma. Something that he is not prepared for, he is not organized for, he is not trained for. And if you present that, then you have to make the logical step that you develop specific capabilities in support of your alternative strategy. You cannot fight an alternative type of war with a conventional military. You can, but it's going to be suboptimal. Conventional militaries were developed specifically for conventional war. If you decide that you cannot challenge your conventional aggressor and you decide to go with a different strategy, then you have to develop a training, education to support your alternative strategy. And I think that's the future. And that must be the reality for most of the European countries.

00:40:49    JACK GAINES
If you try to fight an enemy on their own terms, you'll lose. But if you change the rules to where that heavyweight fighter has to go to a knife fight, then it's different. Absolutely. Those boxing gloves won't save you anymore. If you take him to the alley in the dark and you have actually a thousand needles and he is still in his boxing equipment and you just jump around.

00:41:02    SANDOR FABIAN
If you take him to the alley in the dark and you have actually a thousand needles and he is still in his boxing equipment and you just jump around. He's going to.

00:41:13    JACK GAINES
to.

00:41:13    SANDOR FABIAN
have a bad day. He's going to have a bad day, yeah. And logically, you might lose again, but you have better chance in the dark alley with your needles against that boxing champion than trying to box according to the rules in the ring.

00:41:13    JACK GAINES
day. He's going

00:41:21    SANDOR FABIAN
that boxing champion than trying to box according to the rules in the ring.

00:41:25    JACK GAINES
Right. And the ultimate success is that champion comes to that alley and then goes, I'm not going in there. It's not worth it for me to go and fight. And then you've won without the battle.

00:41:36    SANDOR FABIAN
Yes. Absolutely. I think you are understanding my overall argument, so I'm very happy. Good,

00:41:42    JACK GAINES
good. I appreciate it. This has been terrific.

00:41:45    SANDOR FABIAN
I just want to say thank you for the invitation. It was a pleasure to talk to you today, and I really appreciate it.

00:41:52    Close
Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you're interested in coming on the show or hosting an episode, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. I'll have the email and CA Association website in the show notes. And now, most importantly, to those currently out in the field working with a partner nation's people or leadership to forward U .S. relations, thank you all for what you're doing. This is Jack, your host. Stay tuned for more great episodes. One CA Podcast.