If you have been following the crisis in Ukraine, you likely know it has something to do with
Ukraine wanting to join the NATO alliance, and Russia not being happy about it.
But let’s talk more about a mechanism that likely contributed to Russia’s decision
to start the war, and what has been done historically to mitigate that temptation.
The first thing to know about alliances is that they shift the balance of power in favor
of the group and away from the group’s competitors.
There are many reasons for this, but here are just a couple.
For starters, the alliance can coordinate how exactly to deploy its armies in the event
of a war.
This represents an improvement over coalitions that form in the middle of a war because they
do not need to come up with their strategies on-the-fly.
Second, they can specialize in their division of labor.
For example, the United States did not build any minesweepers in the 1980s.
Instead, Belgium and the Netherlands had that burden shifted to them.
Similarly, the United States only has two Arctic-capable icebreakers because it can
rely on Canada’s nine.
Specialization allows for more military goods to be produced and therefore more power for
the alliance.
The downside here is that obtaining the benefits from an alliance can take time.
This is obvious for the construction of specialized weapons---you can’t just pluck tanks off
trees.
But it also applies to coordinating battle strategies.
For instance, the 1894 Franco-Russian alliance took three and a half years to fully iron
out.
We can see how this creates an incentive for Russia to initiate a war in today’s world.
Suppose that under the current balance of power, Russia could expect to capture this
portion of Ukrainian territory in a war.
Everything to the left stays Ukraine And everything to the right goes to Russia.
We can let the military planners decide where exactly this line should be.
The point is that it is relatively favorable to Russia because Ukraine is on its own.
However, war comes with costs.
We can incorporate Russia’s cost here with this red line.
The area between the lines represents the price of lost lives and capital, converted
to square miles of land.
Now imagine what would happen if Ukraine joined NATO.
With the additional power of the alliance, Ukraine would expect to win more.
We can represent Ukraine’s future costs of war with this yellow line.
And with that, you might be able to spot the problem.
By fighting now before an alliance can form, Russia expects to secure up to here, net its
costs.
Looking toward the future, we can see we are in trouble.
At that later date, the best possible settlement Russia could extract out of NATO-backed Ukraine
must still leave Ukraine with at least this much.
But these respective demands are not compatible.
Russia would prefer a war in the present.
Such a conflict is called a preventive war---when one state initiates a fight to forestall a
power shift.
As an explanation for conflict, it is as old as Ancient Greece and the Peloponnesian War.
But wars in the shadow of this type of alliance formation are commonplace in world history
as well.
Think back to the American Civil War.
The traditional start of this conflict is the battle over Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
By that time, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Texas had passed secession resolutions.
However, nobody died during the battle.
And Lincoln’s next move was to decelerate the conflict in hope of reaching a settlement.
The Union imposed a blockade on the Confederacy, aiming to starve out their economy and supplies.
But Lincoln didn’t restrict the Union to just the blockade forever.
The invasion began on July 21 with the Battle of Bull Run, a full three months after Fort
Sumter.
What changed the Union’s policy?
One important concern that led to the switch in strategy was cotton.
Great Britain relied on southern cotton for their manufacturing sector---79% of its imports
came from across the Atlantic.
This economic interest led British Foreign Secretary---and later Prime Minister---John
Russell to warn the Union that he was “in no hurry to recognize the separation
as complete an final” but that “Great Britain must hold herself free to
act according to the progress of events as circumstances might require.”
The possibility that Britain might recognize the Confederacy---or worse, form a military
alliance with it---weighed on President Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward.
On June 3, Seward wrote that “the principal danger in the present insurrection
… was that of foreign intervention, aid, or sympathy; and especially of such intervention,
aid, or sympathy on the part of the government of Great Britain.”
Bull Run was a way to forestall that.
Another apparent preventive war occurred in 2008 between Russia and Georgia.
The story here starts in April in Bucharest, where NATO was holding its annual summit.
Since the 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia had sought become a member of NATO.
In 2004, NATO gave a Georgia an Individual Partnership Action Plan---an early set of
terms and conditions that would serve as prerequisites for joining the alliance.
The most historically important of these was that Georgia resolve two separatist claims
within its territory.
By the time of the 2008 meeting, President George W. Bush wanted to give Georgia a Membership
Action Plan---the process that would actually allow them to join the alliance.
NATO decided put this on the agenda for their next meeting in December.
This did not well with Vladimir Putin.
Two days after the summit ended, Russia extended diplomatic relations to the two separatist
regions.
This created a direct problem with the 2004 requirement that Georgia resolve its separatist
claims.
And by August, a war had started.
The good news is that there are a couple of ways to avoid war.
One way is to simply buy the opponent’s tolerance of the alliance.
This is what happened following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As Germany sought to unify, the Soviet Union worried about the implications of NATO taking
its first step eastward.
The West had a simple solution to the problem: throw money at it.
Helmut Kohl, armed with seemingly endless supply of Deutschmarks, offered giant loans
to the Soviet Union.
With the Soviet Union in disarray, Gorbachev had little alternative but to accept.
The former lands of East Germany were now in NATO.
An alternative strategy is to limit the extent of the alliance benefits.
This is part of why the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty did not induce mainland China
to initiate a preventive war.
Although the pact covered the defense of Taiwan, it deliberately left out Taiwan’s island
possessions near the mainland coast. which later became the subject of the Second
Taiwan Strait Crisis.
Of course, we now know that none of these strategies worked out.
Part of the problem is that, despite ample effort to create international law, there
is no central enforcement mechanism that functions around the globe.
And given that, it’s possible that Russia just figured that this is what the world looks
like and chose to initiate a war.