With Russia and Ukraine deadlocked in the Donbass region, could it be that each is actually fighting the wrong war?

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Marilynn Haynes
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2 Are Both Kiev Who and 3D Moscow Prints What Fighting in 2033? the Wrong Wars? With Russia and Ukraine deadlocked in the Donbass region, could it be that each is actually fighting the wrong war?

3 2 Are Both Kiev Who and 3D Moscow Prints What Fighting in 2033? the Wrong Wars? With Russia and Ukraine deadlocked in the Donbass region, could it be that each is actually fighting the wrong war? The conflict has set back the Maidan Revolution s European ambitions, pushed Ukraine s economy to the brink and severely tested its new leaders, many of whom came to power unprepared to rule. Russia is paying a heavy price as well. Economic sanctions imposed by Western countries after it annexed Crimea combined with low oil prices and governmental corruption to produce the worst economic crisis Russia has seen since Vladimir Putin came to power in Economic growth almost came to a standstill in 2014, and between 3.5 and 4 percent negative growth is expected this year. The ruble lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar in six months. Inflation hit 16.7 percent in February. ABOUT US Wikistrat is the world s first crowdsourced consultancy. It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a patent-pending Collaborative Competition methodology to provide a variety of analytic services. Scenario generation, policy planning, risk assessment and red-teaming exercises are conducted by Wikistrat on a realtime, interactive online platform.

4 3 WIN THE WAR, LOSE THE PEACE Perhaps Kiev ought to hope it doesn t win the war at all. Even if it wins on the battlefield, Kiev may then lose the peace, being burdened with a war-ravaged region that needs to be rebuilt and an alienated local population to be reintegrated. Its economy is already in free fall. Ukraine s gross domestic product tumbled 6.8 percent in 2014 and the International Monetary Fund predicts it will shrink another 5.5 percent this year. Its foreign reserves fell 64 percent in 2014 and declined from $7.5 to $5.6 billion in the first quarter of At this rate, they will be exhausted by the end of the year. It could even get worse, especially if Kiev holds on to the Donbass by acquiescing to Moscow s demands and turns away from the West. How much authority would the leaders in Kiev have then, as ultra-nationalists denounce them as quislings and local strongmen, populists and oligarchs marginalize the government in a country awash with illegal guns, refugees and traumatized veterans? Ukraine could start to look like a failed state on the edge of Europe. THE MAKING OF THE NEW UKRAINE The freezing of the conflict would be a devastating blow to the identity of the new Ukraine, but it offers perverse advantages. The war would grind to a stalemate, with Ukraine and the Russian-backed Novorossiyan People s Republic pseudo-state glowering at each other across an unrecognized but all-too-real border marked with barbed wire, trenches and mined no-man s-lands. Russia, suffering a serious economic crisis unlikely to soon resolve itself, would be forced to arm, guard, feed and support its puppet fiefdom. Admittedly, the worst case would be that Ukraine, haunted by its failure to hold its borders, slips into cycles of vicious political squabbles and intolerance. Politics in Kiev could become dominated by a new wave of nationalism, which would alarm its Western friends. But losing the Donbass could just as easily be the making of the new Ukraine. The rump state could gain a new cohesion through the shared experience of struggle, while the West eager to teach Moscow a lesson would both require and support the often-painful processes of political and economic reform the country so desperately needs. Ukraine would still be beset by problems of corruption and poor productivity, and notwithstanding the efforts to diversify its trading and energy partners would need to maintain a relationship of some kind with Moscow. Yet, a younger generation of Ukrainians would have embraced an ambitious national identity in which the struggle to modernize and join a democratic, free-market Europe takes center stage. In this context, the ideal for both Ukraine and the West would appear to be as neat a bisection of the country as possible, leaving the aging industries and rubble-strewn cities of the Donbass for the Russians and their local proxies. Conversely, Moscow s interests are best served by forcing the rebellious regions back into Ukraine, like a rusty nail to poison the country s bloodstream. What then can the various actors do to attempt to drive events in the directions of their choosing? A FUTURE DEFINED BY ECONOMICS Any actor wishing to win hearts and minds in Ukraine must provide an economic alternative. For example, if the Russian economy manages to rebound more quickly and vigorously than expected, then it acquires new scope to win Ukraine back into its fold through the offer of cheaper energy or wider trading opportunities within Putin s Eurasian Economic Union. However, without such soft-power options, the Kremlin is forced to stick to its playbook of subversion, destabilization and outright military intervention. It certainly has the capacity to maintain the current situation indefinitely, or even escalate it by strengthening its own forces in the region or waging a campaign of terrorism in the rest of Ukraine. However, these all have serious costs, from increased sanctions to the direct expense of fighting a war and supporting the Donbass.

5 Likewise, if Europe and the United States want to reengineer Ukrainian politics, they need to be willing to underwrite this process with very substantial aid and credit. There are historical models. A new Marshall Plan, inspired by the postwar reconstruction of Europe, would mean not just massive and targeted aid, but a parallel requirement that Ukraine adopts governance reforms to strengthen its democracy and address the serious problem of corruption. It is possible to conceive of a rump Ukraine taking real steps toward European Union membership, or the government taking the time to rebuild and restructure its army to be able to reconquer the Donbass or even the Kremlin deciding to cut its losses and withdraw. In each case, though, there is a great risk that other actors and events will interfere. The rebels could make it difficult for Moscow to disengage, for example, while Russia could respond to any government escalation with an escalation of its own. Absent the economic resources and the political will for major, game-changing initiatives from any of the involved actors, Kiev and Moscow are only locking themselves into destructively counterproductive strategies. ATTRIBUTIONS [Cover] This work, cover, is a derivative of LKJUKL by MARIAJONER, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license; Map of Ukraine by United Nations Cartographic Section, published into the public domain; Adam Mickiewicz square in Lviv by ru:ipesin, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; Visite officielle du Président de la République d Ukraine Petro Porochenko au Conseil de l Europe, Strasbourg 26 juin by Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; Flag of Ukraine with clear background (for portal banner) by Alex Maisuradze based on 3d work by UP9 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Cover is licensed under CC BY by Daniella Mordehai.

6 June 2013

RUSSIA S SYRIAN MILITARY SURPRISE: STRATEGIC TAKEAWAYS FROM A WIKISTRAT WARGAME

1 RUSSIA S SYRIAN MILITARY SURPRISE: STRATEGIC TAKEAWAYS FROM A WIKISTRAT WARGAME President Putin s decision to begin the withdrawal of most of his forces from Syria is sensible. Having stabilized the