Now that we are counting the length of the Ukraine-Russia War in months, it’s
time to start thinking about how it might end. So armed with the knowledge of political science
research on that subject, here are ten ways Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could conclude.
Number 1: Afghanistan Syndrome No, not the Afghanistan War that the
United States recently withdrew itself from. This Afghanistan War against the Soviet Union
from the 1980s. Brezhnev invaded to prop up a floundering communist government
that could have pivoted westward otherwise. The conflict ultimately became the Soviet
Union’s version of the Vietnam War: A long fight that lost political
support at home and ended with the superpower withdrawing with little to show for their effort.
The outcome for the Soviet Union was even worse: the economic turmoil led
to Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power and the subsequent breakup of the country.
The parallels today are stark. The United States, led by Congressman Charlie Wilson’s efforts,
were pleased to provide military assistance to Moscow’s opponent.
If the trend continues, the war in Ukraine will last for years. Putin will keep enough
of his political opponents at bay to survive for a long time, but the war will go nowhere,
and Putin’s popularity will eventually disappear. Ukraine “wins” but at an enormous cost.
Number 2: Putin Removed from Office While public approval numbers for Putin paint
him as a popular leader, it is difficulty to know exactly how popular he truly is.
Autocracies aren’t exactly known for eliciting truthful responses from their citizens.
If Putin were actually unpopular, this could lead to Putin’s removal from office in a few ways.
As we have discussed before, a popular protest could unexpectedly arise, overwhelm security
forces, and storm government buildings. A single unhappy individual with good
connections could assassinate him. Or a more organized group of disaffected
politicians and generals could initiate a coup to remove Putin from office.
The commonality here is that the new leader would then remove Russian troops from the
war and build a fresh regime, free from the burdens of the floundering conflict.
Number 3: Victory Day “Victory”
Circle your calendars now, because this one is coming up.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered to end the European portion of World War II.
This occurred late at night in Berlin, which therefore made it May 9 in Moscow.
The end of World War II was momentous for all the allies. But the Soviet
Union suffered more casualties than any other country during the war.
As a result, Victory Day became a major holiday until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Under Boris Yeltsin’s administration, the celebrations became muted.
The country was in the process of eliminating Soviet institutions, and that was one of them.
However, the holiday returned since Vladimir Putin came to power.
And it is a huge celebration once again.
If you have seen photos of the Russian army on parade, it’s probably from Victory Day. And one
theory is that Putin will wait until May 9 to declare mission accomplished in Ukraine.
He will sell the gains made in Eastern Ukraine as fulfilling the purpose of the war.
This might give Putin a politically convenient way out of the conflict, and stop the mounting
casualties from ending his rule over the country. Russian troops might formally withdraw at that
point, but the conflict will go back to 2021-levels of intensity:
fewer and unmarked Russians still participating in a Ukrainian civil war.
Number 4: Putin Gambles for Resurrection A May 9 end to the war would require that Putin
feel comfortable with what Russia is currently holding onto if it ends active operations.
But that might not be enough. A settlement is only as good as a leader’s ability
to politically survive it. Let’s go back to World War I.
By the end, it was clear that Germany was very likely to lose and that a settlement
would be better for all countries involved. Nevertheless, Germany continued to fight.
The problem was that making the appropriate concessions to the United Kingdom and France
would have forced the autocratic regime to make democratic concessions at home.
Erich Ludendorff, a member of the de facto military dictatorship, described that the
hypothetical granting of equal enfranchisement “would be worse than a lost war”.
He subsequently increased his demands against the opponents despite the German military fading.
Ludendorff reasoned that “If Germany makes peace without profit,
then Germany”—or at least his preferred version of Germany—
“has lost the war.” Political scientists call this
“gambling for resurrection”, and it might be at play today with Russia.
If Putin is vulnerable politically—something very hard to deduce from the outside—then he
may find the war’s current progress insufficient to negotiate on.
That means a longer war that either ends after Putin can secure a larger swath of territory
or continued Russian military defeats and a political disaster at home for Putin.
Number 5: Negotiated Settlement
It’s also possible that Putin is not facing much domestic pressure at home.
After all, from the Russian perspective, this is still a “special military operation”, not a war.
If so, both Ukraine and Russia would be better off thinking
about what the eventual outcome of the war would be—perhaps something like this,
as a hypothetical—and just implementing that without continuing the war to its bitter end.
This would give them exactly what they would anticipate receiving if they continued to fight,
except the soldiers that might otherwise die in the process survive instead.
As we have discussed before, however,
such agreements require consensus on what the eventual outcome would be.
If Ukraine thinks the eventual division would look like this
But Russia thinks that the eventual division would look like this, then negotiations won’t work out.
Number 6: Zelensky Eliminated This, at least, was Putin’s hope at the
start of the war. Reports indicate that a Russian strike team tried to parachute in on Kyiv, storm
the presidential compound, and take out Zelensky. In theory, without a head of state to rally
around, the rest of Ukraine would immediately fold.
That plot failed, of course. And at this point, a successful attempt would seem unlikely to
lead to a quick end to the war in Ukraine. The past couple of months turned a relatively
unpopular Ukrainian president into a national political hero.
Assassinating Zelensky, arresting him, or whatever might even backfire now, as it would
only turn him into a martyr for Ukraine’s cause. So perhaps we can scratch this off the list.
But that does not mean that Ukraine can breathe easy because at
Number 7 we have the Complete Military Defeat of Ukraine
Oh how far we have come. Ukraine’s defeat seemed inevitable to many at the beginning of the war.
But Russia’s poor logistics—especially in the western half of Ukraine—suddenly
made the former superpower look very mortal. Still, Russia is learning from its mistakes
and has reoriented itself to focus on the east. It’s still plausible that the Russian
army militarily defeats Ukraine, even if it might take a lot longer than Putin initially thought.
The lingering question is what Russia would do next.
Was the entire point of this war just to secure ties to the Russian-speaking portions of Ukraine?
And the initial attack on Kyiv was a feint? Or is Putin willing to pay the costs to
administer the entire country over the long term? And that first assault on the capital
was not a feint but a failure? We still don’t really know,
and we may never find out absent Ukraine suffering a complete military defeat.
Number 8: Ukraine Destroyed It’s also possible that Putin’s
motivation for the war has nothing to do with Ukraine itself but is rather a renewal
of Cold War-era east-west tensions. NATO has drifted eastward over time,
and Putin might fear that Ukraine joining the fold would give the United States a
newfound military advantage versus Russia. This is the preventive war motivation for
the conflict, which we have previously covered. One way preventive wars end is when the underlying
source of the power shift is no longer possible. If Ukraine is no longer capable of arming itself
or becoming a meaningful alliance partner, Russia has no need to continue the war at that point.
There is a lot of variation in what this could mean, and those differences are
substantial from Ukraine’s perspective. An economy in shambles is one thing.
The use of low-level nuclear weapons is another.
Number 9: It Doesn’t The Ukraine-Russia War is just a new phase
of a civil war that began in 2014. The difference now is that Russia is formally intervening.
Interstate wars are notorious for being much, much shorter than civil wars.
In fact, your average interstate war lasts less than a year.
By contrast, civil wars can drag on forever. Syria’s current civil war began
during the Arab Spring, all the way back in 2011.
This length of a fight isn’t abnormal. The civil war between Sri Lanka’s government
and the Tamil Tigers began in 1983 and didn’t end until 2009.
Civil wars are so bad that ongoing fights just accumulated over time during the Cold War,
as did the average duration of those wars still ongoing.
The main issue is that when a rebel group reintegrates with the opposing government,
it must lay down its arms. But governments can later exploit the disarmed
rebels. Anticipating this, the rebels continue to fight even when they are likely to lose.
That may happen here. Even if Russia withdraws tomorrow, rebels in the Donbas
region might keep going, and it would take a complete military defeat for them to stop.
Number 10: World War III
The good news is that I think this option is very unlikely—far less likely than
the other options discussed in this video. As bad as things are now, they are nothing
like to peak of the Cold War. This isn’t the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world ground to a halt
thinking that the world might be coming to an end. That might be of little comfort to you. After all,
if World War III did start, it would be the worst thing to ever happen to humanity.
Russia has about 6000 nuclear weapons. The United States has about 5400.
Both of these numbers are substantially greater than the next most-armed country: China at 350.
The good news is that these figures are well below the historical highs of 39,000 and 21,000 in 1985.
The bad news is that they are still way more than necessary to destroy
all significant human population centers.
Precisely because of that, it is unlikely that either party would willingly start World War III.
The problem is that accidents or misunderstandings can happen.
For example, back in 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was heading from Anchorage to Seoul.
The flight was supposed to avoid Soviet airspace.
Instead, a navigational error put it directly over the Soviet Union.
Moscow scrambled some interceptors, which shot down the plane. Everyone on board died,
including a U.S. Congressman who just so happened to be on the flight.
Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union mounted.
And just three weeks later, an early warning alert system just outside
of Moscow detected an incoming missile. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and
this didn’t spiral out of control. World War III had not started. Instead, the system had mistaken
a high-altitude cloud for a nuclear weapon. The point is that accidents can happen,
and a history of near misses does not mean that we are safe from all future risks.
What if the Russian plane that violated Danish and Swedish airspace on April 29
had a trigger-happy pilot. NATO might then have invoked Article V of the
North Atlantic Treaty and respond by attacking the airfield from which the flight originated.
Putin might have escalated, NATO could have retaliated in kind,
and then we would have been off to the races.
And those are ten ways the Russia-Ukraine War might end. Have any other ways that I didn’t
cover here? Let me know in the comments. And if you enjoyed this video,
please like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.