A Bridge to Defeat: Athenian and Russian Hubris
The similarities between the Ukrainian war and the Athenian war on Syracuse
On 2 March 2022 Ukraine nearly lost the war. How? Read on.
Many desperate battles have hinged on a single piece of human technology: the bridge. Where warriors cannot capture them built, they cross using their own bridging. Failing to capture a bridge and cross with sufficient force allows the enemy to rethink and prepare, such as what happened to generals Roy Urquhart at Arnhem or Ambrose Burnside at Antietam. In both cases, early success was essential for victory. In both cases, the principles of war were not applied or violated altogether.
The Ukrainian war has uncanny similarities to the Athenian invasion of Syracuse in 415 BC. That war did not end with a failed bridging, but it did begin with a beautiful, contrived one.
The overall commander, Nicias, ordered an ostentatious show of military technology: an expensive floating bridge paid for by the cocksure, but superstitious commander. While choruses sang, Athenian soldiers marched along this bridge and boarded their ships:
Then, with the bridge of boats which he had brought along with him from Athens, where it had been made to measure and signally adorned with gildings and dyed stuffs and garlands and tapestries, he spanned during the night the strait between Rheneia and Delos, which is not wide. --Plutarch's Nicias 43. At length the great armament proceeded to cross from Corcyra to Sicily. It consisted of a hundred and thirty-four triremes in all, besides two Rhodian vessels of fifty oars. Of these a hundred were Athenian; sixty being swift vessels, and the remaining forty transports: the rest of the fleet was furnished by the Chians and other allies. The hoplites numbered in all five thousand one hundred, of whom fifteen hundred were Athenians taken from the roll, and seven hundred who served as marines were of the fourth and lowest class of Athenian citizens. The remainder of the hoplites were furnished by the allies, mostly by the subject states; but five hundred came from Argos, besides two hundred and fifty Mantinean and other mercenaries. The archers were in all four hundred and eighty, of whom eighty were Cretans. There were seven hundred Rhodian slingers, a hundred and twenty light-armed Megarians who were exiles; and one horse transport which conveyed thirty horsemen and horses. --Thucydides
After the beautiful and pompous pontoon bridge ceremony, almost everything else went wrong for this giant army and navy.
Athens went to war against Syracuse, a small city-state on Sicily, because Syracuse was picking on an ethnic ally of Athens, the Egestaeans, who lived on the western side of Sicily. The Egestaeans were Ionic Greeks while the Syracusans were Doric, like the Spartans, the Athenian’s ancient enemy. The Athenians, humiliated by their defeat in the first half of the Peloponnesian War, felt compelled to support their ally, but also saw an easy target. Syracuse was a puny state compared to Athens, an easy target. Athens could in enrich itself through conquest while simultaneously cowing all the states in Sicily, Ionic and Doric, into submission, thus denying Sparta any succor from the west. Athens also believed such aggression would not break the shaky peace with Sparta, called the peace of Nicias. The Syracusans had spurned alliance with Sparta in the previous war.
Like Putin and his commanders did with Ukraine, the Athenians seriously underestimated the Syracusans patriotism and the reaction of the surrounding states (and beyond), including Sparta. Like the Russians, the Athenians claimed their effort was limited to helping their ethnic cousins against oppression.
Thucydides writes that many Syracusans reasonably believed the Athenians meant them no harm. They did not believe Athens, still beleagured by the 10 previous years of war and domestic problems, would attack them intent on conquest.
The Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the Syracusans was Hermocrates, a young general, who told his fellows that the Athenians had bigger plans:
The Athenians, wonder as you may, are coming against us with a great fleet and army; they profess to be assisting their Egestaean allies and to be restoring the Leontines. But the truth is that they covet Sicily, and especially our city. They think that, if they can conquer us, they will easily conquer the rest.
Hermocrates read the politics of the situation perfectly: That Athens, however respected, would be considered a bully by all the city states on Sicily, Ionian or Doric, if it invaded.
And do not you be dismayed at their audacity and power. They cannot do more harm to us than we can do to them; the very greatness of their armament may be an advantage to us; it will have a good effect on the other Sicilian cities, who will be alarmed, and in their terror will be the more ready to assist us.
Hermocrates, knowing the challenges of military expeditions, understood Athens was risking a lot sending an army so far from their homeland. He predicted if all Syracusans were united in their defense, the Athenians could be defeated or at least repelled.
Rarely have great expeditions, whether Hellenic or Barbarian, when sent far from home, met with success. They are not more numerous than the inhabitants and their neighbours…
The general also wanted the make the coming war international and recommended envoys be sent abroad, especially to Corinth and Sparta, to ask for help. Syracuse had previously refused to help their Doric cousins in the first part of the Peloponnesian War.
They are now attacking us because they do not believe that we shall defend ourselves, and in this opinion they are justified by our neglect to join with the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) in putting them down. But, if they see that they were mistaken, and that we boldly venture, they will be more dismayed at our unexpected resistance than at our real power.
Having come over with slender supplies and prepared for a naval engagement, they will not know what to do on these desolate coasts. If they remain they will find themselves blockaded; if they attempt to sail onwards they will cut themselves off from the rest of their armament, and will be discouraged; for they will be far from certain whether the cities of Italy and Sicily will receive them.
While there was much dissent against war, news came that the Athenians had arrived at Rhegium with a force exceeding that needed merely to help the Egestaeans. This removed any doubt about Athenian intent. The Syracusans knew that the Athenians were the better soldiers and sailors, but also knew it was to be war of looting and ethnic cleansing. So they stood their ground. The similarities between these events and the Ukrainian war are self-evident.
However, Athens, in its hubris, went to war with a fractured command, religious controversy, murky objectives and no sense of urgency. They violated nearly every principle of war (the American ones, anyway.) from the time they boarded those ships on that ritzy pontoon bridge.
The first battle comes and Thucydides waxes poetic in these lines, being fair to both sides:
The two armies advanced; the Syracusans to fight for their country, and every man for life now, and liberty hereafter; on the opposite side the Athenians to gain a new country, and to save the old from the disaster of defeat; the Argives and the independent allies eager to share the good things of Sicily, and, if they returned victorious, to see their own homes once more.
Had the Athenians recognized their political peril and pressed the early attacks, they might have won. Instead, the Athenians dithered over a year while the Spartans arrived. They became tactically moribund while their ships and crews decayed from overwork. The fleet and army found themselves trapped in Syracuse harbor, out-fought and out-witted and suffered crushing defeat.
Like the Athenians, the Russians, too, have run out of options and, in my humble combat engineer opinion, are fated to a war of attrition. Which means that is the fate of the Ukrainians as well, sadly.
Remember I wrote that the Ukrainians nearly lost the war 2 March?
For the Russians to end the war quickly (short of nuking the whole country) after the early gambits, they had two choices:
Utter conquest from east to west using well coordinated armored spearheads in Zhukov style.
Take Odessa, link-up with the toadies in Transnistria and isolate Ukraine from all but Poland.
Only option 2 was feasible. The Ukrainian counter-offensive begun days ago is proof that the Ukrainians have spotted the Southern Bug River as the key to their survival. None too soon. On 2 March, after the Russians took the outskirts of Mykolaiv but could not take it's bridge over the river, a large unit bypassed Mykolaiv, sped along the north bank of the Southern Bug (pronounced, “booge”) intending to capture the bridges at Voznesensk (one railroad, one automobile). The Ukrainians put up a spirited defense against a battalion of Russian tanks and mechanized infantry and even repelled a commando style helicopter assault (see the Wall Street Journal article.) The Ukrainians were victorious.
Had the Russians succeeded, the war might have been over by now, or close to a settlement. Not only would the bridges at Voznesensk have offered them a way south to Odessa, but the Russians would have been only 20 miles from the Bug river dam and nuclear power plant at Oleksandrivka.
The Russians will NOT get a second chance.
But what if they do? Could the Russians cross rivers, as so many armies have, on float bridges? After all, they were masters of the field against the Nazis and crossed rivers routinely. Yes, they could, if they didn’t suck.
Merely having the equipment and engineers to build mobile bridging IS NOT enough. The Russians recently failed Maneuver-for-Dummies trying to cross the Donets river (at ebb). The Ukrainians bombarded the area and defeated the crossing. The Russians lost two battalions worth of men and vehicles (see Wall Street Journal.)
The Russian bridging attempts on the Donets and an earlier at Irpin demonstrate a breakdown, perhaps a fatal one, of Russian maneuver doctrine and training. This is a meat-and-taters land war task and to do it with such disdain for the troops is, well, very Soviet of them.
Could they bridge the Bug? The Southern Bug is a fast and deep river with mostly steep banks and few beaches and fords. Tanks can ford rivers under water using snorkels and fighting vehicles, like the ubiquitous BMP, are amphibious. But the vehicles must be made water-tight by their crews, and it is highly unlikely those crews have trained very much on such an unnerving and unforgiving operation.
The steep banks of the Bug will prevent the Russians from crossing just anywhere. Furthermore, a deliberate river crossing requires all forces synchronize their fires and maneuvers. The opposite shore must first be occupied and that force protected. Artillery must prevent the enemy from approaching and counter enemy artillery aimed at the bridging. Anti-aircraft artillery must be brought forward, tanks must stage themselves to cross quickly yet not be an easy target, etc, etc. This fine blog entry from The Five Coat Consulting Group details the Russian bridging problems and their losses: SITREP.
Let us assume they do get bridge across the Bug. The Russian float bridging is largely a World War II design. They work, but a swift river current jeopardizes their integrity. Small tug boats are needed to build them and keep them in place. These same boats can move segments of bridge, laden with a vehicle, across like a ferry. All these options take time. A fully equipped battalion could take hours to cross, especially at night. Just like the Donets river, the Ukrainians are not going to watch a river bridging operation and do nothing. The first thing they would do is open the spillways of the dam up river sending a flood downstream ruining the bridges and killing men. Next, they will unleash their Czar of Battle, their artillery.
But the Russians won’t be making deliberate crossings anytime soon, if ever. Like the Athenians trapped in Syracuse harbor, the Russians are now trapped in Kherson. Both crossings over the Dniper river, a bridge in Kherson and the dam farther up river, were bombed and disabled, so the Ukrainians say. The Russians in Kherson, could soon be fighting for their lives with a river at their backs.
So it is all about the bridges ahead of you as well as the ones BEHIND you, comrade. We may see a major Ukrainian victory that would utterly demoralize the Russian army.
For the Russian’s part, without any prospect of taking Odessa, they and the Ukrainians are fated, for the time being, to slug it out along a thin band of front, hammered by artillery, and watched by snipers, gaining ground only when one side falls back a few hundred meters, exhausted.
At Kherson, Russians will not literally suffer the fate of the Athenians; they will not be routed and sold into chattel slavery. But in the eyes of their troops and their people, the effect may be the same as the news of the Syracusan defeat had on Athens. Any end to this war will be a peace bought by exhaustion and one distasteful to both sides. Such a peace, like the Peace of Nicias, always leads to another war.
Vale
References:
Plutarch's Lives; the Life of Nicias
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 6
John Hale, The Lords of the Sea