On October 3, Elon Musk put on his policymaker’s hat and proposed the following solution to
end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
There are five main questions that Musk’s plan raises:
the possibility of a settlement more broadly
whether negotiating over Crimea is feasible
issues with water rights
Ukrainian neutrality
and how to get a vote to work for the oblasts that form the Crimean land bridge.
Let’s cover them one a time,
beginning with the settlement.
This is the part that social scientists would agree on:
in principle, settlements exist that should leave both Ukraine and Russia better off than
if they continued to fight until one side’s military was completely defeated.
The vast majority of wars end in some type of settlement, and long-time viewers of this
channel know why.
The basic idea is straightforward.
Imagine that this line represents what each side expects to capture in the event of a
full conflict.
We’re doing this with Ukraine here, but it could just as easily apply to Mars—
it’s good to know that our logic works on whatever planet we are on.
Everything to the northwest remains Ukraine; everything to the southeast becomes Russia.
But people will die if the conflict continues, and the space between the white and red lines
represents that for Russia.
And the same is here between the yellow and white lines for Ukraine, having converted
death and dollars to square kilometers.
Erase the white line, and you get a range of settlements that both sides prefer to war.
The only real caveat here is that Putin’s political survival may depend on his ability
to deliver more than just the war expectation.
This may raise Putin’s personal red line beyond what Ukraine would ever concede.
If you are willing to overlook this problem—and that’s a big if—
then this part of the tweet is fine.
In any case, it seems that the war will almost certainly end in some sort of negotiated settlement
rather than a complete military defeat.
Russia demonstrated a total inability to project its power into Kyiv, and Russia is …
Russia.
History tells us that fighting a land war into heart of Moscow is not something the
Ukrainian army is prepared to do.
As a result, the war is likely going to continue until one side decides that accepting the
division is better than paying the costs to remain on the battlefield.
Even a coup that removes Putin must still leave a new leader who decides that prolonging
the fight is not worthwhile anymore.
But the devil is in the details.
This takes us to part two: negotiating over Crimea.
Russia officially taking the Crimean peninsula overlooks what I see is the central problem
with the war right now.
Settlements existing in principle are not the same as settlements working in practice.
If everyone in is agreement that the lines look like this, then great.
However, it appears there is significant disagreement between the two about what the likely war
outcome will be.
It seems that Ukraine has a compelling case that its counterattack will continue to be
successful and push Russia back to the pre-2014 borders.
Negotiating over Crimea does not make sense because Ukraine can get more by fighting to
retake it.
Russia appears to disagree with this assessment—its mobilization will be effective and allow Russia
to keep its precious Crimean land bridge, if not more.
Until that question gets resolved, trying to divide Crimea is a non-starter.
That complicates the third part: Crimean water rights.
For now, we’ll just have to assume that Ukraine does negotiate away Crimea.
If so, Russia will have to receive water rights, otherwise Russia will still reject it.
The problem actually starts way up further north, into territory that Ukraine held up
until the invasion, at the Dnipro River.
Crimea used to get its water from a canal that runs from it.
Fittingly, it’s the North Crimean Canal, and it was the peninsula’s key source of
fresh water.
But after the 2014 annexation, Ukraine dammed the canal.
You can see how the waterway immediately dries up as a result of the barrier.
Crimean agriculture has correspondingly withered, costing the area untold amounts of money and
forcing Moscow to look for solutions.
The water crisis is in part why Russia constructed the Crimean Bridge, allowing policymakers
to transport aid and raise local support for the annexation.
At the beginning of the war, Russia destroyed the dam.
And without water free flowing, holding Crimea is a tall task for Russia.
As such, a deal that concedes Crimea implicitly must also include water rights,
so Musk’s tweet is right on the mark given that caveat.
But we are back to the harder parts with issue number four: Ukrainian neutrality.
Over the short term, this is not an inherent problem.
NATO makes stable internal borders a prerequisite for membership.
It is in part of why Russia invaded Georgia back in the summer of 2008.
It is a central part of Putin’s complaints in his public addresses regarding the war.
In that regard, the war has been a self-fulfilling success,
with the huge caveat that NATO is about to reach Russia’s northern border because of
the war.
Maintaining this over the long-term is prohibitively difficult.
It’s ultimately a self-determination question,
and Ukraine has a clear preference for membership despite the war.
Or perhaps again because of it.
The deeper problem is that Ukraine has long viewed NATO support as a way to make its borders
defensible, and the war has only reinforced that.
Put differently, Russia has created an incentive structure where Ukraine would want to break
the commitment at the first opportunity to do so.
Thus, the promise is irrelevant.
The biggest problem comes with the fifth point on running elections to determine the fate
the invaded territories.
These are Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk.
The issues are twofold.
First is that I have no idea how such a vote would work in practice.
Those that remain in each of the regions are disproportionately pro-Russia: they knew Putin’s
troops were coming and they stayed anyway.
And who knows how many of the pro-Ukraine citizens who stayed behind to resist have
been killed in the process.
In sum, any such election immediately tips the scales against Ukraine.
But there is also a huge problem with such voting in principle whenever two states try
to divide things in this indivisible manner.
Imagine for a moment that, despite the uphill battle, Russia loses the votes.
Then what?
With apologies to the United Nations, the international system does not have a police
that will automatically enforce the rules.
If Russia thinks that it can obtain this drawn quantity through war, then that is what matters
toward obtaining a settlement that will actually work in the long run.
Voting is meaningful when there is rule of law.
But by virtue of the fact that a war is ongoing here, we don’t have that.
The votes therefore mean nothing, and in turn there is no purpose in running them.
And that’s why Musk’s plan overall will not work out.
Have another solution?
Let me know in the comments.
If you want to know more about the war, you will love my book that purely focuses on the
causes of it.
Check below for more information on that.
And if you enjoyed this video, please like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next
time,
when I draw more lines on Mars.
Take care.