As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States began offering
military assistance to the Kyiv government. That is not surprising. Ukraine pivoted to
the west during the eight years prior, and there is no love lost between
the United States and Russia. However, four months into the war,
some U.S. intelligence officials began expressing frustration.
Apparently Ukraine was not transparent regarding its military plans.
Some level of operational security is standard. You don’t want to let
the enemy know if you are truly weak or where your next attack is going to be.
In fact, states will go to great lengths in order to deceive their opponents.
Perhaps the most famous of this was Operation Mincemeat—
now a major film— when the United Kingdom planted
fake information about the “invasion” of Greece, when they were actually headed toward Sicily.
Looking at these strategic concerns from the outside,
you might think that this type of deception would be reserved for geopolitical rivals.
Nevertheless, it is normal in military partnerships
and does not foretell of a greater rift between the two countries.
To begin, let’s talk about communication more broadly.
In particular, we should compare the tensions between allies and partners. And to accomplish
that goal, we turn to some lines on maps. For the sake of illustration, suppose that
this white line represents the expected division of Ukraine at the end of a war.
Everything to the west remains Ukraine; everything to the east becomes Russia.
War is costly, though, and we can represent Russia’s losses using this red line.
The space between the white and red lines captures those costs in terms of square kilometers of land.
We can do the same for Ukraine’s costs with this yellow line.
The key insight is that the red and yellow lines form a “bargaining range” where any division
between them is mutually preferable to war. That’s because such a deal is similar to
what war would produce but does not come at the expense of lost soldiers or destroyed property.
In principle, this means that states should settle their differences short of war. Reality,
however, is more complicated. And part of that is the subject
of Chapter 8 of my new book, “What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War?” Check the video
description below for more information about it. As an example, Russia might not know whether
Zelensky views the sacrifice of Ukrainian soldiers as a tiny price to pay to maintain
the geographic integrity of the country. If that is the case, then Ukraine’s costs are
small. Note that the bargaining range becomes more favorable to Ukraine and less favorable to Russia.
In contrast, if Ukrainians cared less about the land,
then their perception of the costs of war would extend a lot further out. Now the
bargaining range becomes less favorable to Ukraine and more favorable to Russia.
The problem with negotiating a solution here is that it is hard for Russia to
guess exactly how Ukraine feels about the issues. If Russia thinks that Ukraine is highly resolved,
then Russia should scale back its demands, lest it provoke an expensive fight.
But if Russia thinks Ukraine does not care too much, then it should press for deeper concessions,
anticipating that Ukraine would cave. The bigger issue here is that if Russia
thinks this latter case is true and is wrong, then war results.
The seemingly obvious solution here would be for Russia to just
ask what Ukraine’s sticking point is. After all, if Ukraine is actually resolved,
both have an incentive to negotiate a solution to avoid the inefficiencies of war.
The problem is that Ukraine has a conflicting incentive to deceive Russia.
If Ukraine’s true bottom line were way out here because it did not care all that much,
then Russia would up its demands. And even though Ukraine might not
have strong preferences over the land, keeping it is still better than losing it.
In turn, when Ukraine says things like “we will fight to the last man”, Russia cannot directly
infer whether that is the truth or a bluff. Of course, this incentive is not special to
Ukraine. If there was the same sort of uncertainty over Russia’s costs,
then an unresolved Putin would want to feign
the same low costs and not have Ukraine drive a harder bargain.
As a result, basically everything we hear in the media from both Russia and Ukraine is meaningless.
What they say may be true, but there is no way to know just from the words being spoken.
“Talk is cheap” may be a cliché, but it is an accurate one in international relations.
The same is true when there is uncertainty over the outcome of war.
As an example, that expected distribution could be here,
or it could be over here depending on how cohesive Ukrainian troops are as a fighting group.
In the more cohesive case, Ukraine wouldn’t even have to make a concession
to still convince Russia to go home. More generally, the bargaining range becomes
more favorable to Ukraine the more powerful it is. But therein lies the problem with communication.
If Ukraine tells Russia “we are fully capable of beating you”,
Russia has no way to distinguish whether that is true or a manipulative lie that
is designed to move Russia’s perception of the bargaining range further west.
Like before, this problem is not special to Ukraine.
Russia has the exact same incentive to lie. Again, this means that everything we hear in
the media from each side about the predicted outcome of the war is essentially meaningless.
The fact that Ukraine and Russia cannot effectively communicate
with each other might not be surprising. But it may seem weird that Ukraine and the United
States would suffer from a similar problem. After all, both would agree that the best
bargaining range is the one drawn furthest east possible.
Indeed, this cooperative dimension is the reason why NATO countries have provided aid. Broadly
speaking, they want Ukraine to be in a position where it can demand to uphold the pre-war borders.
Where they differ is in the cost of accomplishing that task.
When it comes to free armaments, Ukraine faces no tradeoff. More is better.
Thus, the incentive is to do whatever convinces the west to provide the most aid.
In contrast, donor countries have a tradeoff. The United States cares about its bang for its buck.
Imagine that the situation was near-hopeless for Ukraine.
Even if the U.S. sent ample arms, it would only have a minor effect on the outcome.
In that case, Washington would want to save the expense
if the aid is barely going to have an impact. This would still disappoint Ukraine, as some
marginal increase in its probability of victory is better than none from its perspective.
Oddly, Ukraine encounters the same problem if the situation is near-hopeless for Russia.
Like before, military aid only has a minor impact on the war’s outcome.
Once more, the United States would want to save on the expense.
And although this expected outcome is better than the previous case for Ukraine,
it would still want as many donations as it can receive.
Instead, the goal for Ukraine is to convince the United States that the
aid will be pivotal to the war—that the aid will drastically shift the war in favor of Ukraine.
That entices the United States to send the most aid because both the U.S. and
Ukraine get a ton back in return. And that is why U.S. policymakers
are getting a bit of a runaround from their Ukrainian counterparts.
It’s a perfectly normal thing even when there is complete agreement
on the ideal border between Russia and Ukraine from their perspectives.
This does not mean that all communication between Ukraine and the United States is futile.
Around the same time U.S. policymakers lamented the communication problem,
Zelensky made a hard push for the West to supply ammunition.
The key thing here is not a declaration of quantity. It is a specific type of good.
Ukrainians are the ones with the actual boots on the ground, so they
have a better idea of what they need to win. The United States might not know whether Ukraine
needs Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-tank missiles,
or just plain bullets. Let’s hold the U.S. budget fixed,
but Ukraine has the choice of which weapons system to spend that money on.
Each has an associated probability of winning the war, which Ukraine might privately know.
If the U.S. offers Ukraine its choice of which of the three to take,
Ukraine will want to choose whichever shifts things furthest east. But that’s also what the
U.S. wants, and it is all coming at the same cost. Thus, the United States can directly infer the
veracity of Ukraine’s need for, say, ammunition, and focus the aid there.
Zooming out, meaningful communication between states is difficult.
But there are some cases where it can work.
If you want to learn more about the subject, check out my new book
“What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War?” It’s 42,000 words on that title’s topic, with
a healthy dose of issues relating to uncertainty. And if you enjoyed this video, please like,
share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.