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People’s army or mobilization for the “hundred-meter race”?

The draft law on mobilisation has indeed provoked a national discussion. There has probably never been a draft law in the history of Ukraine that has been read so closely by every family. Some to understand when they will be demobilised, others when they will be mobilised, and others how to hide from the draft. However, each side sees these legislative innovations not as a solution to its problems and not as part of the Victory Plan, but as a manifestation of the government’s strategic confusion.

THE LONG WAR AND THE 100-METRE DASH

The mobilisation of 500,000 people does not solve the main issue of this war. What will we do in 2025, when the war continues, becomes quite intense, and the Russians expand the front to the entire border? What will happen when Moscow does mobilise and supplies more than 2 million slaves, not the 400,000 that Zaluzhnyi says? Already, British intelligence claims that the Russians are ready to lose up to half a million slaves per season without breaking a sweat. In two years, their losses have reached 350,000. Are we going to look for 500,000 new Ukrainians again? The military says that we have potentially 3 million men of conscription age. There are also women. Then we can once again lower the age of conscription and raise the age limit for demobilisation… But there is such a historical precedent as the “Paraguayan scenario”. I advise you to google it in detail.

Today, the military and political leadership is talking about a “long war” and “strategic defence”, but all their mobilisation and fiscalisation initiatives show that they are planning for the short term. Combined with lies and the generation of inflated estimates, they endanger the future of our country.

It seemsthat we are mobilising for a hundred-metre race, while we need to run a Grand Marathon. Are we ready for it?

RESOURCES OR ASSETS?

The systemic problem of the state leadership is that in its decisions on mobilisation, it uses the resource paradigm exclusively. For the General Staff and the Ministry of Defence, people are a mobilisation resource, just like ammunition, equipment and funds. The resource arithmetic of the military command is clear. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine seeks to reach a minimum manpower parity with Russia. It is purely arithmetic and very linear. But we cannot win the war by numbers.

This resource logic is transmitted down to the direct executors and gives rise to situations where, for example, some commanders consider the individual TROs (volunteers!) “added” to their brigades as a “consumable resource” that they use, with little regard for losses. Add to this the bureaucracy, the ‘army scoop’, the ‘bugging’, the ‘army slavery’ – it’s all there! The soldiers tell their relatives about it, and they spread the word, not to mention the enemy’s IPSO, further. And this becomes a powerful demotivator for potential mobilisers and volunteers.

Politicians have no less resourceful electoral logic. The political leadership takes into account ratings. They try to shift responsibility for unpopular decisions onto the military. They organise information wars, and defame popular military officers. This further undermines trust in the government as unable to manage processes, and it loses legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

We need to completely change the approach to war. People whoneed defence forces should not be a resource, but an asset. This is a different attitude towards citizens and soldiers. In economics, an asset issomething that needs to be preserved, something that needs to be invested in in order toreceive benefits from its use in the future.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

The state has a monopoly on violence, and this is what makes it a state. The use of this violence and coercion is justified, legitimised, when it is used for the common good. This is a well-known axiom. But most people forget that there is a second part to this formula – trust. If there is trust, then violence and coercion are transformed into self-restraint and service.

Can we say this about the current state in Ukraine?

The authorities call for defending the country, sacrificing their lives, but do not show any signs of genuine intentions. On the contrary, it generates a lot of signs of disintegration, ethical degradation and brazen corruption. And the state covers the existing deficit of trust by increasing coercion and violence.

– The government has broken the old “social contract”. The elites used to steal, but allowed ordinary citizens to survive in the unregulated “shadow zone”, where the “deep people” were. Today, the “food base” has narrowed and the government is trying to tax all processes even more. But it continues to steal. And it does so demonstratively. It also offers to legally pay off mobilisation. The rich do not fight, only the poor die.

– The government uses deception of citizens as a coercive technology. Blocking people’s travel abroad based not on laws but on verbal instructions and departmental orders. The intensification of mobilisation measures is taking place everywhere in violation of the procedures prescribed by law. And the lack of effective appeal against decisions/actions of the police or the TCC in courts delegitimises the state as such. The law has disappeared. Only violence remains.

And this is not the Russian IPSO, but a cross-section of people’s moods. This is what people talk about in kitchens, on public transport, in the trenches.

JUSTICE

Recently, we have seen and heard many important statements from the military. As the writer and military man Artem Chekh says, “if we don’t recruit those who can hold a gun, we will soon run out of men.” And the military has the right to justice, because they pay with their lives for Ukraine’s existence. But people “at zero” are really tired.

But is there a simple solution to this problem? To mobilise all those who can bear arms. Is this the right overall solution? Will it be fair?

Of course, a simple solution is not always a bad one. Simple does not mean primitive. But not in this case.

It is quite true that the idea of justice for the whole society cannot be imposed from the sofa, from the office or even from the trench. Sorry, but it is true. Justice is the result of a social consensus achieved by the authorities agreeing on the laws of the state and the perceptions of citizens about how and WHY they agree to be bound by the laws.

Thus, the deficit of justice and the provision of people for the front can only be overcome by the conclusion of a new social consensus or social contract. Is there no time for this? On the contrary, now is the time for it!

WHAT TO DO?

We are in an existential war for the right of Ukrainians to exist and preserve Ukraine. In such wars, not only armies fight, but also societies and their organisations in general. Russian society and its army are authoritarian in nature, so their main advantage is numbers, a management vertical of coercion and the attitude to people as expendable material (resource). Ukrainian society and its army are in a transitional phase from authoritarianism to humanity, where the quality of each person is unique and important. The internal battle is not yet over, authoritarianism is tempting and understandable, but humanity opens up strategic prospects.

We cannot rely on authoritarianism and the quantitative approach, because we will lose to Russia. It has an a priori advantage there. Instead, we can win the asymmetric war of quality over quantity. Therefore, our strategic choice towards humanity is inevitable, but the transition phase requires time that we do not have. In the transition phase and during a quantitative war of attrition, humanity that is not formalised in organisational forms is our vulnerability, including to enemy IPSOs. We cannot reform the army alone without reforming the society that generates it. Therefore, we need the People’s Army!

We said this back in March 2022: an adult society does not need a dictatorship, but a people’s army. What we can do now is to move in this direction. The goal of 5 million responsible citizen-soldiers based on the “Swiss-Israeli” model of service, which will provide the necessary mobilisation potential, personnel reserve, replacement of losses, timely rotation, continuity and quality of training and high motivation for a permanent army of 1 million people over time.

A roadmap for a phased transition from the current type of armed forces to the people’s army is needed, with clear timeframes and clear dynamics of key indicators. The frontline must be held during the transition period, this is an axiom.

• Involvement of EVERY citizen in the defence of the country. This means multi-level involvement of citizens in interaction at the level of competence of an individual, with the opportunity to acquire new skills and, in the future, when the time comes, to join the Armed Forces or go into military production.

Multi-level engagement means

– the first level of updating credentials and passing the VLC cannot be a reason for automatic assignment to a unit;

– completion of a one-month basic training course does not mean that tomorrow you will be discharged. Courses are the place where distrust of the Armed Forces disappears. The training can be as distributed as possible, with a wide involvement of civilian capabilities and practical expediency (first aid in hospitals, sapper work, construction of local fortifications, etc;)

– more recruitment, less coercion, increase the possibility of self-determination during mobilisation, allow units to directly select people for vacant positions;

– to determine the composition of the military by work experience rather than primary education;

– deployment to the combat zone without proper military training and education should be severely punished. Those responsible should be held personally criminally liable;

– saving the lives of personnel during a combat mission should be a criterion for rewarding and promoting commanders;

– to conduct an inventory of the mobilised in the Armed Forces. Find mechanisms to demobilise the outright ballast that does not fight and has no added value for the Armed Forces. Reduce the number of “paper army”;

– guarantee partial demobilisation after serving in the combat zone for 36 months, with a gradual reduction of the time limit;

– to define the role of professional military officers, graduates of military universities (5 to 7.5 thousand graduate annually), and not to fill the gaps with mobilised reserve officers (after the military department) without military experience;

– create conditions for those who wish to participate in defence production without interrupting their main job. There are already such proposals (for example, the Zhytomyr drone), and they should be scaled up across the country.

– the state should simplify the activities of volunteer production facilities and the supply of their goods for defence needs.

• At the level of strategy, it is fundamental to abandon the resource-based approach to people. Saving lives and creating conditions for unlocking everyone’s potential should be the basis of the Victory Plan. As military officer Svyatoslav Dubyna says, “Military doctrine should be about saving the lives and health of the military. There should not be a policy of heroes, but a policy of transferring the army to high-tech, precision weapons with minimal risks for the military during hostilities. Society needs to know how many soldiers were killed and what led to their deaths.”
• Involvement of large masses in the defence of the country will lead to an increase in public demand for the quality of government. We will not only be involved in defence, but will also be rebuilding the state through our interaction. This means that one of the key elements should be a new social contract – what kind of Ukraine do we want after the war? And what is happening in the country now, how does it motivate us to defend it?

This is a topic of justice, genuineness of intent, keeping promises, ethics. The authorities will have to show this authenticity. Otherwise, it will not exist, or the state as a whole.

Such responses (manifestations of genuine intent ) can be

– rotation of MPs to the front (“training in units” for a certain period);

– a mobilisation lottery for officials (not by determining the percentage to be mobilised, but through an open lottery of random selection);

– inclusiveness of government decision-making;

– the government’s compliance with its promises in the context of mobilisation and protection of the rights of the military;

– refusal to make wow-promises that the government cannot fulfil, as this devalues it in the eyes of the people;

– complete cessation of the practice of deceiving citizens as a form of coercion;

– rejection of repressive fiscalisation;

– frank discussion and debate instead of a propaganda “telethon”;

– expanding the space for self-organisation and interaction of citizens in the defence and security system.

The state should provide a meeting place for the informal/unmanifest and the formal/manifest. Not a place where the “deep people” will be arrested, digitised and sent to the front, deceived, but a place where such a meeting will generate a common interest in defending the country and building something new. Something that has never existed before.

When we have a people’s army, a living connection between the army and civilians, and the participation of millions in the defence of the country, we will have something to rely on after the war. Such a country can be defended, such a country you want to come back to, such a country is worth investing in. We will create our common asset as a common good for future generations.

Author: Vitaliy Kulyk, Director of the Centre for Civil Society Studies.