It's Not Just Ukraine and Gaza: War Is on the Rise Everywhere

I would suggest the procedure for war goes something like this:

- Incompatible aims of the parties (in wars of aggression this may be expansion vs sovereignty)

- Miscalculation (failure to understand and accommodate the incompatible aims, if such compromise could even be found, and failure to appreciate the other's resolve to make those aims)

- Momentum (war has it's own terrible escalatory logic)

Democracies are less likely to wage wars than autocratic regimes.

So one way to view this report is as a sign of the world sliding back to autocrats / dictatorships.

1. Russian views invasion over its relatively indefensible borders as an existential threat, with the most recent example of such an invasion still in living memory, and thus maintaining border states is its number one priority. 2. Russian control of a warm water port on the black sea has been a primary foreign policy goal for 300 years. 3. With the Euromaiden ouster of the previous pro-russian government, Ukraine's shift to the West was all but a certainty barring exceptional circumstances, which would not only create a large indefensible border directly with NATO, but also place Russia's most important naval port in NATO territory. 3. Russia has had consistent success stopping countries from joining NATO by starting low level conflicts in break-away regions within those countries (see Georgia in 2008). 4. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Russian land forces were considered first rate, with western analysts predicting they Kyiv would fall within hours if Russia invaded. 5. Russian demographics are terrible, like absolutely fucked, with a massive birthrate crash in the early 90s after the fall of the soviet union compounding pre-existing problems. The late 2010s/early 2020s are the last time in the next few decades that Russia's military, which relies on numbers, would be able to conduct an offensive operation. 6. Europe was reliant on Russian natural gas and mineral exports, and generally at a weak point in its relationship with the US which was strongly focused on China.

Based on these givens, it makes perfect sense that in 2014 Russia would try to seize Crimea and support separatists in the east - it prevents Ukraine from joining NATO, it secures Sevastopol, it drives a wedge between Europe and the US, it demonstrates Russian military capability inexpensively, and it does all this while it still has the manpower to spare. This action was popular in Russia and reasonably successful from their perspective. If you ignore respect for international law, it was a rational decision.

But between water being cut off to Crimea, stalemate along the Donbass, and persistent western sanctions, the conflict was bleeding Russia white. It could handle this at first, but with impending demographic collapse it needed to wrap things up quickly. With a full scale invasion it could replace the Ukrainian government with a friendly puppet, guaranteeing its long term status as a border state, and legitimizing Russia's previous gains; Russia would demonstrate western division and impotence, once and for all convincing the remaining border states to remain neutral; Russia would demonstrate its military might to make its subsequent bluff as convincing as possible, and it would open the flood gates for China to make moves that would take the US's focus away; and finally Putin would see a surge in popularity at home just as he had seen in 2014. While all of this was of course wrong, it was not the fantasy of an isolated despot, but rather it was the prevailing fear in the West. And frankly despite not being true, it's unclear that Russia really had a better option (from its perspective) - letting the separatists crumble and NATO expand while its demographics collapsed would herald the end of Russia as a great power, and leave it as an untrusted, junior partner in orbit around either Europe or China.

Make Putin accountable, the war still happens, as the people he would be accountable to supported the decision. Ideology may have been used as an excuse but it played no role in the actual decision making. Bias, uncertainty, and unreliability, which all seem to be rehashing the same point - that we don't know ahead of time how a decision will play out - doesn't really have any explanative power. Maybe if we lived in a world where everyone was omniscient and brutally rational we wouldn't have war, but I wouldn't describe that as the reason war happens.

Let's hope it doesn't fit today.