On February 24, 2022, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine,
focusing pressure from the north on the capital, from the south out of the Crimean Peninsula,
and in the east from separatist regions.
Five days into the invasion, it appeared that there may have been a diplomatic breakthrough.
Officials from both sides met in Belarus to discuss a possible peace agreement.
It didn’t go anywhere, at least that time. However, another summit is scheduled soon.
Some have suggested these talks are just a ruse by Vladimir Putin to stall fighting momentarily
while Russian troops regroup to prepare for a more serious offensive.
Well, are they? The answer is that I don’t know. And anyone who tells you that they do is either
lying or named Vladimir Putin---or, perhaps, both. But it does raise a broader question
of whether a settlement is possible, and if so, what such a settlement would look like.
To answer that question, let’s go to the research. Fortunately, what I can tell you is that reaching
a negotiated settlement would not be surprising. In fact, historically speaking, it is commonplace.
I understand that might seem a little weird. seem weird. In all likelihood, the wars that you are
most familiar with are conflicts such as World War II, which ended in Europe when the allies
captured Berlin, forcing Germany to surrender. And over in Asia, the war ended when Japan
unconditionally surrendered following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is also the case in some of the more salient wars in recent memory.
Take the Iraq War as an example. There,
the interstate portion ended after the U.S.-led coalition captured Baghdad and Tikrit.
Political scientists dating back to Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz refer to these as
“absolute wars”, or conflicts fought until the complete military defeat of one side.
Absolute wars stand in contrast to limited wars. The Korean War is one such conflict,
where the sides fought for a while before settling near the 38th Parallel.
The Spanish-American War is another limited conflict. The parties fought
for three months before Spain gave up Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
You might think that absolute wars are the more common type of conflict.
In school, you almost certainly spent more time learning about World War I than you did, say,
the 1995 Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador. Yet those limited conflicts account for almost
two-thirds of the 100 or so interstate wars
in post-Napoleonic history. And that doesn’t include smaller-scale conflicts. Some of
these are commonly referred to as wars but do not meet the casualty threshold.
The 2008 Russo-Georgian War is one such example. It also ended in a tacit settlement.
And these disputes actually dwarf the number of “true” wars by the thousands.
Even among the wars that meet the academic definition,
the average one is over rather quickly. This is a histogram of the lengths of wars in days.
For example, there have been 42 wars that finished within the first 100 days of combat.
You can see that such a short time period is the most common type of war.
Very few last past one year. And focusing on just the wars
that go under a year, even those are much more concentrated in the first three months.
Some of these are because one side obtains military victory almost immediately.
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait is one such case. But a good portion of them, like the Yom Kippur
War, are because the sides chose to stop fighting. The reason for all of this is because wars are
costly, and, in principle, settlements always exist that leave both sides better off.
Suppose for a moment that this is the expected border that would be drawn between Russia and
Ukraine if they fought to the bitter end. Everything to the left stays Ukraine,
and everything to the right becomes part of Russia’s dominion. However, people are dying,
and property is being destroyed right now. For Ukraine, we can represent that with
this yellow line. Everything between the yellow and white lines captures how much Ukraine
internalizes those costs in terms of square kilometers of territory.
Likewise, we can represent Russia’s costs with this red line. Everything
between the red and white lines represents how much Russia internalizes those costs.
Thus, any division between the yellow and red lines is mutually preferable to a fully-fought
war. This is why a settlement are still a reasonable expectation.
The problem for this argument right now is that war has already started. In other words,
the parties are fighting even though peace should be better for both of them. In turn,
if we want to explain how a settlement will arise, we need to identify why the parties were
unwilling to reach an agreement up front and what fighting has done in the meantime to change that.
The underlying bargaining problem causing the war right now isn’t clear,
but in this video, I want to focus on the one that is receiving the most attention in the media:
preventive action in the shadow of NATO ascension.
We have talked about this in earlier videos, but here is the short version.
The white line may be the current distribution of power, and the red line may be Russia’s
current costs, but that will change if Ukraine were to inevitably join NATO. At that point,
power would shift in favor of Ukraine, and so would the quality of Ukraine’s war outcome.
Even accounting for Ukraine’s cost of war at that point, no settlement may work out.
In the short run, Russia needs at least to the left of the red line to be satisfied.
But in the long run, Ukraine needs at least to the right of the yellow line.
These demands are incompatible, and thus the war began by this explanation.
Such a preventive war is hard to resolve short of the military defeat of one side,
but it is possible. In the 1970s, Saddam
Hussein signed an agreement with France to develop a nuclear reactor outside of Baghdad. This greatly
concerned Israel, though the facility was a long way from developing an actual nuclear weapon.
Regardless, in 1981, Israel executed Operation Opera, sending a fleet of bombers to the site.
The mission was a success, and the facility was destroyed.
War did not continue because the source of the bargaining problem---a
long-term shift in the balance of power---had gone away by virtue of the strike.
Obtaining such an outcome in the current crisis appears unlikely.
Keeping Ukraine out of NATO for the long term would seem to require removing Zelensky from power
and replacing the government with a puppet regime. This, in turn, would necessitate militarily
defeating Ukraine. So much for a settlement there. A more likely possibility is that the war just
naturally drifts to an unwinnable position for Russia. Allowing the power shift to
transpire at that point would be better than continuing a costly and unproductive war.
Another alternative is that Russia simply fights to a point where it can entrench itself into a
position in Eastern Ukraine such that NATO membership would not be able to change it.
Getting there in the present means that Russia can set up defensive fortifications.
Thus, if Ukraine were to join NATO at a later time and a war were to start, the new combined
forces would have a difficult time overturning the status quo distribution of the good at stake.
In terms of the crisis bargaining outlook, this has the effect of inhibiting Ukraine’s
war payoff post-shift. It is possible that the demands then yield a range of
mutually acceptable settlements that will be effective in the long run.
Unfortunately, though, there may still be a lot of war to be fought in the meantime.
I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please
like, share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.