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A Perspective on the War in Ukraine: Hypotheses and Implications

A Perspective on the War in Ukraine: Hypotheses and Implications

A Perspective on the War in Ukraine: Hypotheses and Implications

러시아

우크라이나

미국

Ⅰ. Assessing the Hypotheses on the War’s Causes
Ⅱ. Outlook on the War and its Implications


Ⅰ. Assessing the Hypotheses on the War’s Causes

The Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24th 2022 violently shook all of us complacently curled up in the wonted world order. Before gazing into the crystal ball\ it is necessary to first examine the various hypotheses on the war’s causes.


1. On NATO’s Eastward Expansion

NATO’s eastward expansion is often cited as a cause of Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. Going further back\ some point to NATO’s Bucharest Summit Declaration of April 2008\ which proclaimed “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO”. By invading Georgia in August of the same year\ Russia made its opposition clear and unequivocal.
 
Later decisions by NATO to hold joint military exercises within Ukrainian and Georgian territory could be criticized as having exacerbated Russian paranoia. Led by Russia-watchers\ such criticism is now often levelled by those in academia. Professor John Mearsheimer has long warned of the dangers posed by NATO expansion. However\ it should also be taken into consideration that NATO’s joint exercises were reactions to Russia’s earlier invasion of Georgia and the occupation of Crimea. Security concerns cannot be a Russian monopoly.
 
After having invaded Georgia under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians\ Russia is repeatedly using the same formula. Russia’s casus belli of protecting ethnic Russians and de-nazifying Ukraine do not constitute jus ad bellum for self-defense. Martin Kimani\ the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN addressed the Security Council on February 21st: “had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic\ racial or religious homogeneity\ we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.” There are scores of other countries to which his remarks apply.
 
Those who blame NATO’s eastward expansion as a cause of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine perversely distort cause-and-effect insomuch as arguing that WWII broke out because the Lebensraum of the Third Reich was not respected. There is no evidence that NATO rushed to admit Ukraine since the Russian invasion of Georgia. It was the Ukrainian government that strongly pursued NATO membership.


2. On Ukraine’s Pursuit of NATO Membership

Ever since its independence in 1991\ Ukraine has been struggling with political corruption it inherited from its days as part of the USSR. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko won the 2004 presidential election despite an assassination attempt involving dioxin. Even after this ‘Orange Revolution’\ however\ the government faced tough ordeals due to resistance from political opponents and oligarchs. In January 2009\ during Yushchenko’s presidency\ Russia cut natural gas supplies in mid-winter after declaring a breakdown of negotiations.
 
Yushchenko’s successor\ pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych\ reversed his predecessor’s decision to have the lease of Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea Fleet to expire by 2017 and instead extended the lease until 2042. As he abruptly reversed the decision to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement on November 21st 2013\ the Ukrainian people undertook massive protests which came to be known as Euromaidan. Yanukovych fled to Moscow and has been in exile ever since. Throughout the process\ Ukrainian public opinion became deeply divided between the pro-Western west and the pro-Russian east. Ukraine’s case in which the division of a people was used by its neighboring power as a pretext for intervention is illustrative for all countries bordering great powers.
 
The 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea intensified anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine. It was against this backdrop that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government has so enthusiastically pursued NATO membership. Since Russia invaded Ukraine using this as a pretext\ Ukraine’s security concerns have now turned into reality. Nonetheless\ if Russia’s security concerns about NATO hold water\ at least the same\ if not more\ amount of validity must be ascribed to the security concerns of Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia. Paranoia has a tendency of fulfilling itself. By invading Ukraine with military force\ Russia has effectively created itself a neighboring people with the deepest anti-Russian sentiments in history.


3. On the US Response

Some argue that by publicizing military intelligence and suggesting February 16th as the likely date for a Russian invasion\ the Biden administration might have left little room for diplomacy. Through this unprecedented move\ President Biden might have been seeking to regain the credibility he lost in the area of military intelligence during the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021\ even at the risk of revealing intelligence assets. Seen in early February 2022\ this could have given spectators the impression that the US was unnecessarily making a war unavoidable. However\ given that Russia\ which claimed that it had no intentions of invading and was only moving its forces for military exercises\ has begun its invasion\ US intelligence has ultimately proven accurate.
 
Earlier on December 17th 2021\ Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanded that the West promise in writing that NATO would cease its expansion and disallow Ukrainian membership as a condition for resolving the situation concerning Ukraine. As most experts agree\ these were unacceptable terms for the West. More important than the fact that the terms were unacceptable is that they were announced publicly. Diplomatic negotiations\ for even far less sensitive issues than this\ are not carried out via the media. One might safely say that the room for a diplomatic solution\ in the normal sense of the word\ practically vanished after that day.
 
President Emmanuel Macron of France attempted last minute mediation by meeting President Vladimir Putin on February 7th 2022. Judging by media reports\ the discussions likely evolved around establishing and mutually ensuring Ukraine’s neutrality. However\ as ensuing events have demonstrated\ such a proposition turned out to be unworkable. The events unfolding thereafter point to the likelihood that by this time Russia had already decided to put its plans into action. The fact that Russia had deployed almost all of its troops along the border\ even including its Far East divisions\ and that the invasion took place in tandem with the end of the Beijing Olympics implies the premeditated nature of the attack. 


4. On a Possible ‘New Cold War’ between the US and Russia

Some view the current crisis as a clash of powers between the liberal international order and Slavic order. We should remember\ however\ that the post-WWII order based on the Bretton Woods System was born within the specific context of the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War\ the liberal international order had already served its original purpose. Moreover\ the share of its dividend taken by the US has progressively decreased.
 
Meanwhile\ China has been increasingly benefiting from the liberal world order\ even as it has emerged as the US’ next primary rival. In addition\ the Shale Revolution has led Americans to care less about what happens abroad. Of course\ the US seemingly projected its hard power mainly against radical Islam for approximately 20 years\ from the September 11 Attacks until the withdrawal from Kabul. The US has largely lost much of its appetite and motivation for taking the lead in maintaining the order since the end of the Cold War. American isolationist tendencies have been noticeable since at least the time of the Obama administration.
 
The might that prevented revisionist powers from forcefully changing the status quo\ the might that prevented the defeated countries of WWII from rearming\ the might that peacefully bound Europe as a union\ and the might that prevented nuclear proliferation is one and the same – a.k.a. the liberal international order. What we witness in Europe today is not a clash between competing orders but the decline of the existing order. What we need to discern from the Ukraine crisis is not the emergence of a so-called ‘New Cold War’\ but the reemergence of geo-political conflict that fills the vacuum of a retreating order.
 
It is more pointless than it seems to debate whether the decline of the existing world order is caused by diminishing American resolve to maintain hegemony or by increasing challenges against the status quo. It is a tautology. To say the path down from the peak is steep because the peak is high is the same as saying the path down is steep because the valley is deep. It is an immutable reality of international politics that revolutionary powers constantly seek opportunities to challenge the status quo\ while the status quo power operates only within the bounds of its willingness and interests.
 
The story of the Syrian people who protested and fought against Bashar al-Assad’s iron-fisted rule is no less tragic than the tragedy that has just begun to befall the Ukrainian people. In the face of brutal attacks\ the international community was initially incensed\ and then saddened\ frustrated\ helpless\ fatigued\ and\ eventually\ oblivious. As a supporter of the Assad regime\ President Putin experienced first-hand such a process\ and hence the limitations of the international community’s intervention. It was reported that Russia would deploy\ after Chechen warriors\ even Syrian government troops to Ukraine. Thermobaric and cluster munitions are being used in civilian residential areas. These events symbolically declare that the coming era will be an age of Hobbesian geopolitical struggle.


Ⅱ. Outlook on the War and its Implications

1. Russia’s Strategic Interests

It would be rational to assume that Russia has used force to protect or further gain a perceived interest. Had Russia limited its military deployment to the Donbass region\ the West would have applied sanctions as long as there was combat. One may argue that a Russian military operation regionally limited to the Donbass could have prevented some of the toughest sanctions\ such as the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 project or exclusion from the SWIFT system. Nevertheless\ President Putin could not have concluded that such sanctions were absolutely impossible in the face of even a limited invasion. The more likely he assumed harsh sanctions would materialize anyway\ the more reasonable it would have been for him to aim for a larger target.
 
What does Russia seek? Moscow is less than 500km away from the Russian border with Ukraine. War is definitely more costly than peace. However\ if President Putin was comparing the cost of acting now versus acting after NATO missiles are deployed in Kharkiv\ the calculus changes. The goal itself may be to crush the Ukrainian people’s pro-Western aspirations completely. More specific objectives can also be discerned. There is no native water source in the Crimean Peninsula. Most of its water had been supplied via the North Crimean Canal\ which began construction in 1957 and brought water from the Dnieper River via the Kherson region into Crimea. Following the Russian occupation of Crimea\ the Ukrainian government sealed the entrance of this canal. Since then\ the Russian government has had to supply Crimea with water brought in by trucks via land routes. Despite spending 2 to 3 billion roubles per year\ this supply method was insufficient and resulted in water rationing in Crimean cities. The first thing Russia did when it attacked the Kherson region was to reopen this canal.
 
A rational person often makes the mistake of assuming the other party will also be rational. If President Putin truly believes his own message regarding this war\ his rationality may be that of a different era. His language is more reminiscent of that of Alexander I\ who ruled Imperial Russia in the early 19th Century than that of his contemporary counterparts. As difficult as it is to guess President Putin’s motives and calculations\ it is difficult to forecast his endgame and the outcome of the on-going war. Even if the situation in Ukraine further deteriorates\ NATO will find it difficult to send in ground troops. Providing NATO jets or enforcing a no-fly zone will be likewise hard to realize. Now that the US has even announced a ban on importing Russian energy on top of the exclusion from the SWIFT system\ the list of possible sanctions grows short. Short of any further innovative measures or an act of God\ it seems we must wait for the sanctions to take their toll.
 
At this juncture\ neither NATO nor Russia can accept a loss of face in the form of a defeat. All in all\ the two most critical remaining factors are: 1) how well the Ukrainian people can resist and 2) how long the Russian government and people can withstand sanctions. If the most positive confluence of all these factors occurs\ we may see Russia pull back from Kyiv within a few weeks in return for a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO and Russian control of the Donbass region (a Kyiv-α scenario). Otherwise\ the international community may witness a prolonged war with rising casualties. If Russia deems it has successfully occupied Ukraine\ we may then have to brace for another iteration of Russian adventuristic irredentism striking other bordering areas (a Ukraine+α scenario).


2. Implications

This war would send complex signals to China seeking to alter the status quo in Asia. The points that may catch Beijing’s attention are: 1) that Western troop deployment is limited to its allies\ 2) that its ‘Dual Circulation’ strategy and the separation of its intranet was a useful choice against potential Western sanctions\ 3) that it is difficult to explicitly support Russia’s invasion given China’s advocacy of territorial integrity and national sovereignty as the most fundamental principles of its foreign policy\ 4) that Russia’s irredentism based on historical and ethnic claims could prove problematic in relation to ethnic minorities within China\ but could provide a model for cross-strait relations or in the South China Sea\ and 5) that this war is a chance to test the strength of the alliance network centered on the US\ and the strength of the world order itself.
 
There are also lessons for Korea. Seoul must 1) respond adeptly and quickly to the war’s developments as a fellow nation located along geo-political fault lines\ 2) not welcome a solution that results in the partition of Ukraine\ 3) considering the breakdown of global value chains\ shore up supply chains in and market access to trusted countries that share values\ 4) further strengthen the US-ROK Alliance\ and 5) retailor the denuclearization negotiation strategy vis-a-vis a North Korea that will have renewed its convictions on the necessity of nuclear armament in the wake of this war.
 
The risk of strategic ambiguity is growing bigger. Korea’s stance on every issue will have to be formulated based on its identity and the spirit of its constitution. As foreshadowed by Germany’s recent decision to increase defense spending\ debates in Japan about being a ‘normal country’ will likely accelerate. In order for Korea to not become irrelevant to the context of such a transition\ Seoul needs to marshal cooperation with Tokyo through a renewed bilateral relationship. Extrapolating from the demise of the Joseon Dynasty and the dire consequences its people faced\ it is too risky a business to attempt unprincipled and opportunistic hedging with or against major powers in the era of a retreating world order and upcoming geo-political struggle.


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러시아-우크라이나 전쟁(2014)

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