The element of surprise in politics and war

Keeping a secret in this modern age has become almost impossible.  There are eyes and ears everywhere, and the internet sits there ready to spread information the moment it is uncovered. 

But recently, we have seen two examples of the power that keeping a secret still has:  Joe Biden was able to keep secret his decision to suspend his campaign until the moment he announced it on July 21.  And Ukraine was able to keep secret its plans to launch a major military cross-border incursion into Russia in the area of Kursk on August 6.  Both secrets were extraordinarily difficult to keep for entirely different reasons, but secrecy was what gave them the power of surprise.

Biden had been under pressure to step aside for weeks, ever since his disastrous debate performance nearly a month earlier.  The pressure was at first incremental, with a single congressman calling for him to step aside, and then one other, but outside the confines of the Democratic Party, the pressure grew faster and was louder.  Pundits took up the call for Biden to leave the race first, and then the cable news hosts and commentators started weighing in.  A week after the debate, it was nearly impossible to turn on MSNBC without seeing a murderers row of talking heads running through the latest polls showing Biden losing ground to Trump and talking darkly of what a loss in November would mean to the country.

Biden was described as resolute, however.  Sources told reporters that Biden and his top aides still believed he could win in November, and there were zero leaks from Bidenworld.   Not even on July 20, the day Biden is reported to have made his decision at his summer house in Rehoboth, Delaware, did the secret leak out. 

Why was keeping Biden’s decision secret so important?  All you have to do is follow the bleating and whining coming from Donald Trump about how “unfair” and “unconstitutional” it is that Biden pulled out.  At both of his recent press conferences, Trump has made a show of how frustrated he is that his opponent isn’t Joe Biden but the much younger and more energetic Kamala Harris. 

What being able to keep a secret gives you is the element of surprise, which the Harris campaign has used to maximum advantage.  Harris was informed on Sunday morning, July 21, and as has been endlessly reported, she sprang into action, making more than 100 phone calls to party leaders and donors by the end of that day, and making her first appearance as the Democratic candidate for president the next day.

The phrase that has described Trump and his campaign since then has been “back on his heels.”  The Trump campaign was utterly unprepared for both Biden’s decision and Harris’ rapid movements to consolidate the Democratic Party behind her candidacy in the days and weeks following July 21.  She has shown herself since then as decisive, determined, and as evidently prepared for a presidential campaign as any Democratic candidate in memory, especially when you consider that, beginning with Biden’s decision, the whole campaign was to be only 100 days long. 

The element of surprise is no good if you’re not ready to carry through.  Kamala Harris clearly was prepared, and Trump very obviously was not ready to switch focus and message in mid-stride.  Harris is still benefitting from the shock that Trump suffered.  She took the momentum that surprise afforded her and ran with it.

Surprise has been the key to the success – so far, at least – of Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory in the area of Kursk, not far from the Ukrainian border.  Keeping secret its intention to send offensive forces into Russia was a far more difficult task than the secrecy surrounding Biden’s pull-out as a candidate, but Ukraine was somehow able to manage it.  The rapid attack across the Russian border launched by Ukrainian regular army units on August 6 caught Russia completely unawares.  By August 7, Russian military bloggers were reporting that Ukrainian armored units had penetrated 15 kilometers into Russian territory and had taken control of 11 small settlements.  By August 8, at least 1,000 Ukrainian troops were on Russian soil moving north toward Kursk.  Ukraine was reported to have taken the outskirts of the town of Sudzha, and the first reports of Ukrainian units taking Russian prisoners reached the West.

Since then, Ukraine has continued to push toward Kursk, taken more Russian prisoners, and forced the evacuation of some 130,000 Russian citizens from villages and settlements between the border and Kursk.

Keeping secret a military operation of the size Ukraine has launched into Russian territory is nearly impossible in the age of satellite and drone surveillance.  Russia’s satellite intelligence coverage of Ukraine is known to be spotty, and unless Russia had some hint of Ukrainian intentions, it is doubtful that Russian defenses along the border region had many surveillance drones. 

Ukraine was apparently able to conceal its armor units in a forest near the border with Russia in the area where they initially crossed.  It may be that Ukraine moved its heavy tanks and armored personnel carriers into position using trucks to keep the sound of armored vehicles to a minimum.  (Tanks and armored personnel carriers are tracked vehicles with diesel engines and make a LOT of noise when they are moving, especially at night when it is quiet.)

Ukraine’s big offensive last spring along its eastern and southern front lines of the war was unsuccessful for several reasons.  There was no surprise involved.  Talk of the spring offensive had been going on all winter.  And Russia had been able to dig an elaborate defensive line of trenches and anti-tank barriers along nearly the entirety of the 600 miles of the war’s eastern and southern front lines.  Russian defenses proved impossible to penetrate.  Since then, Ukraine has been left defending its own lines of defense in the northeast region near Kharkiv and further south near Dnipro in the Donetsk region. 

It is unknown if the U.S. supplied Ukraine with satellite surveillance of the area of the border with Russia across which Ukraine attacked, but it is doubtful.  The U.S. has repeatedly warned Ukraine that “poking the Russian bear “using American military equipment risked causing a wider war.  This has been a bogus argument since the beginning of the war, as the U.S. increased its level of military support of Ukraine and began supplying longer range missiles and more sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-missile technology, and now F-16 combat fighters.

What is evident nearly 10 days into Ukraine’s surprise attack is that Russian defenses along its border did not contemplate the level of incursion Ukraine has launched.  Recent satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies show anti-tank defensive trenches being dug south of the E38 road that leads east-west into Kursk, which Ukraine would need to control if they want to occupy that city.  So, right there is yet another advantage of Ukraine’s ability to use the element of surprise in its attack.  Russia was caught unawares and unprepared, the dream scenario of any military planning an attack on the scale of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia. 

The Institute for the Study of War is reporting that Russia has begun moving some of its major combat units from defensive duties along the front in Ukraine north to defend Kursk against the Ukrainian incursion.  It’s now a two-front war for Russia, yet another surprise to Vladimir Putin, who thought two years ago the war would last only a week, and the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv would be his.

The problem with the element of surprise is that its power diminishes with each hour and day after the secret that had been kept is revealed.  In the case of the Harris-Walz campaign, surprise has enabled them to use the political momentum they gained from the very start and extend it all the way to this weekend, only days before the Democratic Convention is set to begin.  The Trump campaign has reacted by bringing on Corey Lewandowski and apparently inserting him above the two campaign managers who had until now reported directly to Trump.  Yeah, I know – oh, boy!  They’re calling up the sexual abuser reserves!  Trump’s move with Lewandowski is evidence of the panic that has set in, with Harris going ever-upward in both the national and battleground state polls, and Trump headed ever-downward.

The element of surprise, it turns out, works best when it’s used against unprepared and arrogant bullies like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.  Vice President Harris was even able to make her choice of Tim Walz as her running mate a surprise to Donald Trump, who has remarked repeatedly that he thought she would pick Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, for whom the Trump campaign was apparently better prepared.

Now, as they say, it’s going to be back to trench warfare between Democrats and Republicans in U.S. politics and Ukraine’s war to expel Russian forces from within its borders.   

But in politics and war both, there will always be surprises, so stay tuned.  The next several months are going to be interesting over there and over here both.