Eight months have passed since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. A lot has happened
over that time, but one critical thing has not yet arisen: an end to the war.
Historically speaking we are almost at a cutpoint. 53.8%
of what political scientists define as wars last at least eight months.
If we broaden the discussion to militarized interstate
disputes—which include cases where bargaining ends
conflicts before mass casualties—only 16.6% last as long as this one has.[]
It’s also been five months since the last time we discussed what
is stopping the conflict from coming to an end.
Given all that has happened in between, it is worth revisiting that question,
now that we have more information in hand.
The way I see it, there are three plausible explanations for what we are observing.
Each is individually sufficient to understand what
has happened, and they all have unique expectations for how the war will end.
It is possible that they are operating in conjunction with one another,
which would complicate things. Unfortunately, given the asymmetry between what analysts
observe and what goes on in the Kremlin behind closed doors, it will be hard to make a firm
determination of what the true causes are until well after the war has ended.
But let’s do the that best we can, starting with Ukraine’s momentum.
I’m choosing this one as a starting point because it is not something we have covered
directly on this channel before. However, the mechanism is similar to the shifting power
story that Putin was feeding the global audience at the beginning of the war—
that Ukraine and NATO will become more powerful once they join together,
and fighting a war to forestall that is better than suffering the consequences of that later.
Whatever validity that may have held is irrelevant now. NATO makes internal stability a prerequisite
for membership, and the war has killed that for Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, there is a good case that the power shift concerns are now flowing the other way,
with Ukraine feeling the need to fight while the getting is good.
Think about two metrics: the distribution of power
between the combatants as the war is currently being fought,
and the would-be distribution of power between the combatants immediately
after a hypothetical settlement has been reached.
For any war to end, these need to be roughly equal. This configuration is fine.
But this one is not.
The underlying issue is most pronounced in civil wars.
Oftentimes, a settlement requires the rebels to lay down their arms and rejoin the government.
Of course, as soon as they do that, power shifts immediately in the government’s favor,
and the government can renege on whatever terms it previously agreed to.
Recognizing that this will happen, rebel groups simply refuse to negotiate.
Consequently, about four in five civil wars end in the military defeat of one side,
and those find peace before then tend to have a relatively
powerful third-party actor to act as a guarantor of the terms of settlement.
Interstate wars can have the same problem. The Iran-Iraq War provides one example.
Iraq began the war by making some reasonable gains. However,
Iran eventually repulsed the Iraqi attack,
leaving Saddam Hussein militarily vulnerable to a counterattack.
Negotiating a settlement required Iran forgo that opportunity. Consequently, the war continued
until things eventually stabilized, and ending the war would not cause a massive power shift.
Applied to the current war, Ukraine has caught Russia flat-footed with its counterattack.
The territory it recaptured in the north was substantial.
Meanwhile, Kherson in the south is feeling the pressure,
and no one would be surprised if it is the next domino to fall.
By continuing to ride the momentum, Ukraine can permanently dismantle a
significant chunk of the Russian war machine. But if Ukraine stops now,
it cannot restart the fight on as favorable terms even a month or two later. The distribution of
power right now does not match the distribution of power post-settlement, and so the war continues.
From this perspective, the war will end once those two metrics of power stabilize.
Conceivably, that would be whenever Ukraine’s counterattack stalls out.
The pace has slowed since the beginning of September,
but it is unclear whether the counterattack will break on its own.
One possibility is that autumn’s rainy weather will prevent Ukraine from maneuvering as quickly
on the battlefield, shutting down the advantage thanks to the rasputitsa mud.
On the other hand, the rain could have a greater effect on Russia’s supply lines
coming from the east. If so, then Ukraine’s momentum will continue,
especially as Ukrainian soldiers appear better equipped to handle
freezing temperatures than their invaders.
Still, there are a couple of reasons to be skeptical as
this being the explanation for the continued war.
For one, we have seen something like this before.
As I discuss in my book on the causes of the conflict,
many argued that Ukraine had a similar momentum after Russia’s attack on Kyiv failed.
But then Russia repositioned those troops to the east,
and we hit a period of stalemate, when both sides had practically no momentum whatsoever.
The war persisted anyway, so it seems that something else was
driving the conflict—at least back then. Maybe that’s different now.
Regardless, this narrative overlooks a critical aspect of
the long-term outlook between Ukraine and Russia.
For the foreseeable future, Moscow is going to be grappling with a domestic economic disaster.
Conceding the battle will relieve economic sanctions and mitigate the
problem to some degree, but it will not simply go away.
In contrast, Ukraine seemingly will continue to
have the support of the majority of the world’s economic powerhouses.
Merely surviving is therefore a long-term win for Ukraine and
ought to mitigate the downside of forgoing its momentum.
The caveat here is that it assumes that the West will continue its resupply efforts,
and if Russia restarts the war down the line,
that the support coming from the West will match what is happening now.
If Kyiv thinks a renewed war will just give the West a bout of “Ukraine exhaustion”,
then that’s all the more reason to press the advantage.
The second explanation for the continued war is an information gap between the combatants.
There is a reasonable story to be told that Russia is more optimistic than Ukraine that
Russia’s mobilization is going to be effective. Or, along the same lines, Putin is more optimistic
than Ukraine that the mobilization will not lead to a dovish usurper removing him from power.
This leads to a classic bargaining gap,
where Russia believes that the expected outcome for war is over here,
while Ukraine thinks it is all the way over here.
Even if you throw in some costs for both sides, there may still be no room to negotiate.
Note my careful phrasing from a moment ago.
I did not say that Russia needs to think that its mobilization will be super effective.
All public indications are that the military is having all sorts of problems.
Instead, the condition I used was that Ukraine is less optimistic than Russia about it.
Thus, if Russia privately believes that the mobilization is going to be merely
“fine” whereas Ukraine would classify it as a complete disaster in the making,
you would still get the gap between the lines
seen here. And thus you would still get bargaining failure.
From this perspective, the war will end when enough of the mobilization has taken
place that Russia and Ukraine begin to agree on its overall effectiveness,
and Putin’s control over the government becomes clear.
There is a big caveat here that we have been in similar situations before,
but the next steps of the war just raised new informational barriers.
At the beginning of the war, the question was whether Ukrainians
cared enough about their country to stand and fight with their president.
Putin appeared skeptical but learned quickly he was wrong.
Nevertheless, Russia ended up with a large chunk of Ukrainian territory under Moscow’s control.
The next question was whether Ukraine could mount an effective counterattack.
This was the focus of our previous examination of possible ends to the war from five months ago.
Once more, Russia was skeptical.
Ukraine ended up surprising most observers by initiating an effective push back in the
waning days of summer. Again, question asked and answered.
That takes us to the current question of the war:
Russia’s mobilization, and now Ukrainian skepticism.
It is not immediately obvious what the next source
of uncertainty and disagreement could be, but there are some possibilities.
If Russia succeeds in mobilizing troops to the front lines but fails to halt Ukraine’s advances,
Russia may attempt a larger and perhaps this time more deliberate mobilization.
This would raise deeper questions about Putin’s stability in office given the
problems he is already facing with the more modest deployment.
If Russia’s mobilization is successful,
then the question may turn back to Ukraine’s ability to counterattack.
The September and October successes did not reveal Ukraine’s deeper ability
to mobilize and train its masses into an effective fighting force.
Rather, Ukraine took advantage of HIMARS artillery to thin out Russia’s supply lines,
and then outmaneuvered Russia on the battlefield.
The point of Russia’s mobilization is to have enough manpower to cover the sprawling frontlines.
Once there, the numbers game for Ukraine becomes a pertinent question mark.
The final plausible explanation for why the war is continuing is Putin’s own political future.
When he announced the mobilization,
we discussed this issue at length. Not much has changed since then,
so I will keep this part brief. In sum, the war may have put Putin’s political career on the line.
If Russia exits without anything to show from the fight, then Putin may be as good as gone.
Personal benefits are crushing for the possibility of an end to the war. We
can’t wait for momentum to stop or for the parties to learn about each other.
The conflict just continues because the minimum Putin needs to be satisfied is
more than the maximum that Ukraine is willing to concede, full stop.
There are a few ways out. Russia could start winning the war again,
and convince Ukraine that it is in no position to recapture Ukrainian territory.
That will be a challenge, though given the free-flowing western weapons.
Putin could get removed from office,
and a fresh leader could recognize Russia’s poor military reality and pull out.
We may be seeing the first steps of that with the resistance to mobilization,
but there’s still a long way to go from a coup or popular uprising.
Finally, some opportunity could open up in the war
such that Putin could wash his hands clean of the conflict.
Maybe that’s possible, but the problem here is that I do not know what that looks like.
Signing into Russian law the annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk
seems a lot like a point of no return. But the internal politics within the Kremlin are weird,
and Putin has shown an iron grip on Russian politics more broadly,
so perhaps there is needle he can thread here.
And those are the three plausible explanations I see for why the war rages on.
Which do you think is doing the heavy lifting? Or do you think there’s a fourth explanation?
Let me know in the comments.
If you want to know more about the origins of the war,
you can always read my book on the subject. Check below for more information on that.
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