We’re hearing a lot of commentary and justifiable outrage against Russia systematically targeting civilian infrastructure, schools, apartment buildings, and the like in Ukraine. For the Beltway press in Washington and the defense contractors who advertise on the Sunday morning talk shows, any comparison to the way that the US wages war in places like Iraq would be considered tacky.
But wartime rhetorical hypocrisy aside, the Russians are inflicting massive damage on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, and over a fourth of Ukraine’s population are external refugees or internally displaced persons. Ukraine was one of the poorest countries in Europe when the war started and still years away from meeting the economic and legal standards to qualify for EU membership. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, they would be in far worse shape than they were last February 23.
Both Russia and the US have geopolitical incentives to keep the war going. The Russians to weaken Ukraine and avoid humiliation, the US to weaken and humiliate Russia. Not that leaders in either country have no other options on how to proceed.
The EU and the reconstruction of Ukraine
Yanis Varoufakis has some thought to what the aftermath of a concluded Russia-Ukraine War might be for the European Union. Not without a bit of schadenfreude from his days as Greek Finance Minister during the euro crisis, he notes, “Had the EU seized upon the massive banking-cum-debt crisis of the post-2008 era to democratize its institutions, Europe might now be credibly represented by its president and foreign minister” in peace talks over Ukraine. As it stands, the EU’s clout in making a peace settlement is very questionable:
The EU will undoubtedly pay huge sums and orchestrate any postwar Ukraine accession process. But there is no reason to think this will guarantee the EU an influential role during the peace process. In fact, there are good reasons to think that the EU’s role as the main funder of Ukraine’s reconstruction will divide and weaken the Union more than even the crisis a decade ago.
The EU’s own European Investment Bank estimates the cost of Ukraine’s reconstruction to be around €1 trillion – the amount of the EU’s budget over the 2021-27 period and 40% higher than its post-pandemic recovery fund, NextGenerationEU. Already hamstrung by its domestic €200 billion plan to shore up Germany’s collapsing industrial model, and the €100 billion [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz has earmarked for defense spending, Germany lacks the fiscal space to provide even a fraction of that sum.
If Germany can’t pay, it is clear that the other EU member states can’t, either. The only way to pay for Ukraine would be for the EU to issue common debt, retracing the painful steps that led to the recovery fund’s creation in 2020. [my emphasis]
By “common debt,” he means debt backed by the EU as a whole, which means all member countries would be on the hook for the debt. When the euro crisis occurred, the phrase “optimal currency area” (OCA) made its way into public discussion. Because one of the key characteristics of an OCA is having debt instruments backed by the entire currency zone, and that “common debt” feature is something the eurozone lacked then and still lacks today.
Varoufakis is also an academic expert in game theory, so he gives a sketch of the kinds of disputes that are likely to break out within the EU when they have to start financing Ukraine’s reconstruction. He summarizes it this way:
After the 2008 financial crash, the EU only papered over the North-South fault line that emerged. The war in Ukraine inevitably produced a new East-West fault line. Once peace arrives, both fault lines will only grow deeper, uglier, and impossible to ignore.
Ouch!
And the longer the war, the bigger that problem becomes.
Three scenarios for peace negotiations to begin
Anatol Lieven reminds us how open the options are for an end to the war, focusing on three ???? scenarios. One is a breakthrough by Ukraine that leads to a big escalation by Russia such as the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which would involved the US much more directly and raise the immediate stakes enormously. In this scenario, the US might be more open to immediately negotiations but the Ukrainians much less willing to offer compromises in the negotiations.
A second possibility would be a Russian breakthrough that again shifts the military balance in Russia’s favor. But, Lieven writes, this “does not seem to be part of Russian plans in the short term, apart from limited moves to take the town of Bakhmut in the western Donbas.” And he is skeptical that even this development would put Russia in a position to quickly capture Kiev, as it apparently intended to do in February. But he also emphasizes Russia’s significantly greater capacity:
Western intelligence estimates are that Ukrainian and Russian casualties have been roughly equivalent — and Russia has three and a half times Ukraine’s population. In the war’s first months, Russia’s potential advantage in manpower was nullified by the Putin regime’s unwillingness (for domestic political reasons) to send conscripts into action and to call up reserves. These shortages are now being rectified by the call-up of 300,000 additional troops (albeit of very questionable quality). Russia is also producing considerably more artillery shells than Ukraine is either producing itself or receiving from the West, and it is not clear how far increased U.S. production can make up for this shortfall in the next few months.
And there are various possibilities for how Ukraine and the US/NATO would respond to a Russia bid for a peace agreement in the event they do succeed in establishing a more firm hold on the areas captured since the war began.
[A] Russian offer [in that circumstance] would also open up deep splits within the West, and between Western countries and Ukraine; for, with the possibility of Ukrainian victory fading into the distant future, and the prospect of an unending war, many in the West would argue that a ceasefire would be the best deal that Ukraine was ever likely to get.
The third scenario is basically the both-sides-fight-to-exhaustion option:
Barring a breakthrough by either side, the prospect is that of an indefinite and bloody stalemate along the present battle lines, reminiscent in many respects of the situation on the western front in World War I. The question would then be how long it will take — and how many people will have to die — before both sides become exhausted and decide that there is no point in continuing the struggle. [my emphasis]
A neoconservative dream come true? (Aka, a nightmare for most people)
Kelley Vlahos writes in a more polemical mode about how the Biden-Harris Administration’s framing of the conflict and American foreign policy more general as Democracies vs. Autocracies can contribute to shoddy and reckless thinking about policy. And, in particular, how they can lead neoconservatives and other war fans to think it’s a great idea to have a war go on and on and on:
These ham-fisted approaches befit the neoconservatives who wield them, as they did the same in the Global War on Terror, and to a great extent, worked to keep the Iraq War going for almost a decade and the war in Afghanistan shambling on for a full 20 years.“
I suppose with the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 after 20 years, the Global War on Terror - it was once considered a sign of sophistication to use the abbreviatione GWOT [see endnote] - was finally ended. But it took only a few months until Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine in 2022 became the occasion to christen a New Cold War, or the Democracies vs. Autocracies Era, or whatever we settle on as the standard label.
Maybe the conventional label with became the Tripolar Era, or even the Quintipolar Era. But neither label is likely to sound grand enough or American Exceptional enough for the neocons.
Threat inflation was a chronic problem was a common problem for US policymakers during the Cold War. And arguably even more so afterward, given the post-1991 “unipolar moment” where the US could militarily intervene in smaller and weaker nations without the kind of major power counterpart like the Soviet Union was to represent a restraining influence.
If every crisis means that the Other Side is encroaching on a US vital interest, if every confrontation is a rerun of Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich, the temptation to resort to military action sooner rather than later will be much greater than it should be.
***
The bottom line: the longer the Russia-Ukraine War goes on, the more damage will be done, the more lives will be lost, and the postwar reconstruction will be the more difficult. But how the war ends and what kind of peace follows it matter, too. And at the moment, there is no peace prospect in sight.
NOTE ON "GWOT": From an appropriate source: “The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were part of the Global War on Terror, or ‘GWOT,’ but the term was also used to describe diplomatic, financial, and other actions taken to deny financing or safe harbor to terrorists. Coalition partners from around the world also participated in the GWOT.“ Global War on Terror. George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
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