By Michael F. Duggan
Over the past day or so, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Andrei Kelin, have both stated that Russia will not use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. On its face, this would appear to be extremely good news.
For those of us who have studied the Cuban Missile Crisis and who realize the ideological fervor and determination of the U.S. foreign policy Blob, and the fact that Putin tends not to bluff, this would seem to be best possible news (other than a ceasefire) in what has otherwise been an unmitigated human tragedy. And as far as it goes, it is good news. But it also has ominous implications, if we read between the lines.
In June, John Mearsheimer pointed out an irony in the Ukrainian war, a dangerous inverse ratio that he referred to as ”a perverse paradox.” It is really quite simple and is as commonsensical as a sliding supply and demand chart in economics: if Ukraine and NATO begin to win the war, the odds of an increasingly desperate Russia using nuclear weapons go up proportionately: i.e. as you begin to win, the chances of everybody losing catastrophe also go up. Therefore, the announcement that Russia will not use nuclear weapons suggests confidence on the part of the Russian leaders that they will win the conventional war.
How is this possible? After all, the network media has reported sweeping Ukrainian victories in the northeastern part of the country, small but increasing gains in the southeast around Kherson, and the fact that Russia has not been able to occupy all of the territory of the four provinces it has annexed. Think of the news you are getting as being akin to the movie Money Ball and the idea of Sabermetrics: facts, figures, and numbers—statistics—are important, but they have to be the right numbers, the relevant facts and figures.
What the nightly news is not telling you is that the gains Ukraine is making in the southeast are likely coming at a high cost. As a historian, one of my primary areas of interest is the First World War, and if I have learned anything from that conflict, it is that in a war of position, when one side launches protracted offensives that make small gains against an enemy in strong defensive positions backed by heavy artillery, those gains usually come at a heavy, perhaps extreme cost.
My sense is that most Americans have little idea just how badly Ukraine has already been damaged in this war. An economic basket case before the Russian invasion, it would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild. At the present time, Russia is engaged in a long-term missile and drone campaign to systematically degrade—destroy—Ukraine’s energy networks and other infrastructure related to day-to-day life. What will happen in a nation of 40 million people with greatly diminished access to clean water, heating, lighting, power, transportation, etc., once winter sets in? This is to say nothing about the economic state of Western Europe and its capacity to support its proxies in a raging, open-ended conflict, and to deal with the millions of refugees that have already left Ukraine (will an already over-stretched Europe be able to afford expensive natural gas from the U.S. now that cheap Russian gas is off the table?).
When analyzing the war in Ukraine, do not just look at it in narrow Jominian terms of battles won or lost or who occupies or has retaken what territory, whether it be in areas lightly defended by the Russians like the western Kharkiv region, or in fiercely contested areas along the broad front in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. These things certainly matter, but are only a part of the larger calculus. Rather, look at the war more broadly in Clausewitzian terms of the overall resources of the respective sides. The Russians are getting artillery shells from North Korea and drones from Iran, but Ukraine remains far more dependent on outside support. It is fair to say that almost all of the Ukrainian war effort is being subsidized by the West as Russia mostly supports itself and appears to be positioned to do so indefinitely. Will the people of the Western democracies be similarly committed in economic hard times of their own?
Inflation in the Eurozone stands at 10.7%—higher than in the U.S.—and energy costs are up 42%. Other than these, I do not have the specific numbers of European economics at my fingertips, but I believe that the relevant economic statistics regarding the prosecution of the war would show a considerable Russian advantage. At this point, I infer—and this is mostly just a hunch—that Russia is holding most of the good cards in this war: its economy is more insulated and more capable of autarchy than the nations of the European Union and the United States (and certainly more so than Ukraine). The great danger now is that NATO will expand the war if it becomes apparent that the proxy war strategy (or popular support for it) is failing.
We should all be guardedly relieved that Russia has declared that it will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (of course there is always the possibility of an accident or miscalculation by either side). But if we look at the bigger picture, to include the domestic and international economics related to the support of Ukraine, it is difficult to see how such support can be sustained. The time to open a back channel to end this war is now (assuming that one is not already open). Perhaps it could be done through a third party with connections to both sides, like Turkey.