Think for a moment about what caused the war between Russia and Ukraine. Your answers may
vary—you can let me know in the comments—but I can predict what the most common response will be:
Vladimir Putin. If that is the first thing that popped in your head, I am right there with you.
A few weeks ago, I published a video titled the 12 causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
It gave a comprehensive look at the motivations behind the conflict,
and I now have a book based on it. Check the video description below for more information on that.
The main idea of the book is that the conflict boils down to eight
substantive issues and six bargaining problems,
some of which are better than the others.
I could summarize the most common comment in response to the video with one word: Putin.
Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin Putin.
I understand the temptation to say this. Putin worked hard to start the war,
and I often shorthand him as a cause of the war myself.
He is a central part of any narrative of the conflict.
Nothing I am going to say for the rest of the video lets Putin off the hook.
If I had to pick one person to point the finger at, it would be him.
Putin is the culpable figure here, and it’s fine to casually describe him as a cause.
However, looking at this from a social science perspective,
it is a bad way to think about causation.
Let me be clear: Putin is responsible for the war. But to say he “caused” it
is imprecise. At most, he’s a half cause.
This distinction will ultimately matter if we want to think about how the war might end.
But first, let’s talk about the responsibility part.
Obviously, Putin is at the helm of Russia’s decision-making.
If you are the one giving the order to invade another country, you are responsible. All
we have to do to verify this is watch the video he published on the eve of the war.
This is why Russia has received widespread condemnation in the United Nations.
The only thing stopping a more formal resolution
is the fact that Russia has veto power within the Security Council.
Even China—which also has veto power—has
been abstaining on votes going through the General Assembly.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden described Putin as a war criminal following civilian killings in Bucha.
If Putin were ever to be brought in front of the International Court of Justice—the probability of
which is close to zero—he would be in a lot of trouble. But responsibility is not causation.
If x causes y, then when x is present, we get y. Or at least we do probabilistically.
When x is not present, we do not get y.
For example, when I publish videos about Russian politics, the Kremlin-hired
influencers in Saint Petersburg get to work and make the comments section an adventure.
(And they will be for this video as well.)
When I publish videos on other countries, they don’t.
When I publish videos on fun game theory puzzles,
they don’t. (Shout out to the subscribers who have been here for that long.)
Thus, the Russian subject matter causes the comments.
Putin as the cause of the war by this metric fails for two reasons.
First is the adage that you cannot explain variation with a constant.
Putin has been in de facto power of Russia since December 31, 1999.
From that point to 2014, there was no war in Ukraine.
From 2014 to February 2022, the War in Donbas was war-ish—not
quite what political scientists would describe as a true interstate conflict.
It’s only now that we have an actual war.
Putin was constant throughout that period. If he is the explanation for the war, then he is
also the explanation for the peace before then—which is an awkward conclusion to draw.
In essence, Putin by himself has no causal power.
Instead, the better way to think about this is through joint causation.
Putin has territorial ambitions. He just loves the land.
Whether that love extends to securing access to oil deposits,
collecting warm water ports,
capturing the wheatfields featured on the bottom half of Ukraine’s flag,
or restoring the former Soviet Union is unclear.
But whatever Putin’s preference is, it’s not new. And if you want
to explain what caused the war you also need to explain its timing.
In other words, why did we not have a traditional war from 2000 to 2021 but we did in 2022.
Bargaining theory helps provide an answer. Under normal circumstances,
states negotiate their way out of war.
Imagine this white line represents the expected division of territory following a war.
Everything to the west remains Ukraine; everything to the east becomes Russia.
War is costly, though. People will die and property will be destroyed.
This red line helps represent Russia’s costs.
The space between the red and white lines captures how Russia internalizes those costs
in terms of square kilometers of territory.
Thus, Russia is satisfied as long as it receives a division that goes at least to that red line.
We can do the same for Ukraine using this yellow line.
Ukraine prefers a deal to war as long as the concession does not extend past it.
Therefore, any settlement between the red and yellow lines is an agreement that both prefer
to war. They closely match what the expected outcome would be, but no one dies in the process.
Consequently, it doesn’t matter how much Putin loves land. If Putin “causing” the
war is shorthand for territorial ambitions, they should still be settling in that range.
It also does not matter where exactly those lines are. If they are here,
things are worse for Ukraine, but it is still in both parties’ best interests to settle.
If they were over here instead, then the pre-war division
is sustainable. But regardless, as long as war is costly, they should still be settling.
Even if you go a step further and say that Putin barely cares about the costs Russia pays,
that only narrows the range of agreements available.
And ironically, it makes them more favorable to the average Russian citizen.
Something else has to be happening here to explain the war.
For example,
this might represent today’s distribution of power.
However, an impending power shift between Russia and Ukraine
due to NATO integration might change things to look like this.
Russia must receive territory going to this red line at minimum to be satisfied right now.
But the most Ukraine will give up in the future is here.
The presence of an impending power shift between Ukraine and Russia due to NATO integration could
therefore make Putin prefer a war today to the best he could hope for in the future.
Under this scenario, Putin and the power shift are jointly causal.
Without the shift, there is no war.
The distributions today and in the future are the same,
so they can settle between the yellow and red lines.
Without Putin, then maybe Russia has a leader that lacks the same expansionist preferences.
The power shift ceases to matter because everyone agrees that the
existing borders are best for both countries.
The key thing here is that we need both a substantive cause
or a “Putin” cause and a bargaining friction
to get a war. One without the other just isn’t good enough.
The distinction that Putin didn’t cause the war but rather he is a part of a joint cause
is important for two reasons. For one, if we just care about understanding the war,
the joint cause explains the timing. If you buy into the idea
that NATO was actually threatening Russia, the war began on February 24, 2022,
because that is when the specter of NATO became sufficiently acute.
The second reason why the distinction matters is because it explains how the war could end.
If Putin alone is the cause of the war, then removing Putin is necessary to end it,
short of one side militarily defeating the other.
Viewing Putin as a joint cause gives a second
out. If Putin becomes convinced that no power shift will happen,
or the power shift will be minimal, then we are back
to a situation where the parties could negotiate an agreement instead.
There’s another fundamental problem with Putin as the cause as well. It presupposes
that if Putin had died on February 23 that all of never would have happened.
That may be true. But it is not obvious.
The war appears to be popular among Russian citizens. Putin’s approval rating has increased
since the war began. That may be because Russians fear giving a truthful response,
but they certainly were not shy before the war. It might be that they thought it was a
good idea because they are only hearing a very controlled narrative coming from the Kremlin.
Or they might generally share Putin’s desire to reacquire the lost Soviet lands.
Regardless, there’s an opportunity.
It suggests that the war in Ukraine would be politically convenient for
any Russian leader to use, be it Putin or some unknown successor.
Thus, if your preferred interpretation of the war is Putin using the conflict to lower the
chances of a coup or something like that, there are two distinct parts of the cause.
First is the underlying Russian preference to fight for control over Ukrainian territory.
That is not specific to Putin,
though he may have helped shape those Russian preferences over the last couple of decades.
Second is the coup threat. Putin can obtain a direct benefit from
fighting the war to create a distraction.
If that benefit is large enough,
it pushes beyond Ukraine’s maximum tolerable concession and leads to war.
This part is Putin-centric, but it is still imprecise to describe Putin as the cause.
Rather, it’s the hypothetical threat of the coup against Putin—or, even more precisely,
against a generic Russian leader—that moves the line.
Once again, this framing is important because it speaks to how the war
might end. Putin need not leave power. Just the coup threat needs to subside.
At that point, the benefit will have been achieved.
The cost line drifts back to where it should be, and we might start observing a settlement.
Again, this does not shield Putin from responsibility for the war.
It still points to him.
At a murder trial, you cannot say “but your honor,
if I hadn’t killed Timmy my friend Spike would have instead.”
If Spike really would have done that,
then a social scientist would say that you didn’t cause Timmy’s death.
But you still bear
responsibility for the action. You pulled the trigger. You are going to jail.
In the same way, Putin could not defend himself by saying his successor would have
taken the same actions. Maybe that is true, but he still did it. He is still responsible.
If you want to learn more about the causes of war, check out my new book:
the aptly titled What Caused the Russia-Ukraine War.
It’s 42,000 words with plenty of lines on maps on that exact subject.
It’s available in both physical and digital editions. And if you enjoyed this video,
please like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.