Part 3 of the “5% to Ukraine” opinion piece
How to define war and victory
To discuss how Ukraine can be victorious, we first have to define what this means
Part of the 5% to Ukraine opinion piece. The original Norwegian text was written to implore the people of Norway to invest 5% of our sovereign wealth fund in a Ukrainian victory and the future of Europe. It has been translated into English for a wider audience.
It’s difficult to describe what constitutes a victory in war, but we must arrive at a definition to understand what it will take for Ukraine to win. Let’s start with the theories of good old Clausewitz and attempt to simplify the concepts as much as possible.
Wars are about ideas.
A war begins because two or more nations have opposing views, which are so important to the identity of the nations that they are willing to engage in armed conflict over them.
Ukraine sees itself as an independent state. Russia believes that Ukraine should be, and always has been, a part of the Russian empire. In both nations, the political system is willing to fight an armed conflict to preserve their conviction for the future.
Therefore, war can be seen as a political tool used to impose beliefs on another nation that currently resists them.
A war is won when:
- The enemy’s political system can no longer sustain the ability to fight the ongoing conflict, and
- The war has led to a permanent political change in the losing nation, where their identity and beliefs no longer challenge the winner’s convictions in a way that leads to further conflicts.
What Ukraine is experiencing now is not a new war, but a new escalation of the war that began in 2014 when the Russians occupied the Crimean Peninsula. To win means to end all continuations of the war.
Let’s look at some examples.
A nation loses the ability to fight a conflict through a combination of losing the will to fight, like the US during the Vietnam War, and not having the means required to continue fighting, like the Nazis during World War II. The important point for both these examples, and the reason they are lost wars, is that the lost conflict also led to permanent political change.
In Nazi Germany, the regime was removed, the country divided, and the German mindset around imperialism, antisemitism, and war as a means of power changed forever. In the US, the Vietnam War led to a loss of faith in their ability to be victorious, strong opposition to future use of American military force abroad, and the adoption of the War Powers Resolution, which restricted the president’s power to involve the US in future wars.
Smaller nations that are invaded by a superpower do not usually win the war by storming their enemy’s capital, like the Allies did during World War II. They win by destroying the will of the opponent to continue the war.
This is what we must help Ukraine achieve.
How to destroy the enemy’s will to fight
Saying that a war is a battle of wills between the nations fighting it may sound heroic. However, the factor that challenges a nation’s will is the suffering the war inflicts on them. It might therefore be more accurate to define war as a competition in suffering. The contest is about how much suffering each political systems can endure, before one becomes incapable of continuing the war.
Both the degree to which a war can inflict suffering and a nation’s pain threshold, are deeply influenced by the structure of the nation’s political system. This plays out over so many factors that we cannot list more than a few of them in this section:
- How stable is the political system and how much power does the population have to influence it?
- How many inhabitants can the political system sacrifice for the war, before the people demand political change?
- How much is the war and sanctions affecting the elite and high standing members of the political system?
- How much money will the people allow the political system to divert from public and non-essential services to support the war effort?
- How many battles can be lost before the soldiers lose morale and demand change?
- How much control does the political system have over the population’s information channels, and how long can they use this control to stop information that creates suffering?
- How long are the nation’s friends and allies willing to send the support they need to continue the fight?
- How much suffering is required before the nation begins to look inward, instead of outward, to explain the suffering they are subjected to?
Let’s look at a diagram with a very simplified example of how suffering can affect two nations at war.
In this example the suffering begins when a war is declared. During the initial conflict the nations’ suffering increases, but as with the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, this conflict ends before the political systems of either warring party is forced to adopt the enemy’s beliefs.
The ceasefire lasts for a period, during which the nations actively reduces the suffering caused by the conflict, before a new conflict breaks out. This conflict is longer and bloodier than the first, and the overall suffering increases to the point where one nation no longer allows its political system to continue the war. This marks the beginning of a permanent political change in the country, where the beliefs that started the war are altered, making it possible to achieve lasting peace.
It is important to understand that both Russia and Ukraine are in a competition of suffering. They each have their own graph, with a separate line indicating how much suffering they can endure, and the competition is won by pushing the enemy over the threshold that triggers political change before reaching that point themselves.
The strategy for winning a war is therefore to minimise your own suffering whilst maximising the enemy’s suffering — without taking actions that raise the threshold for how much suffering the enemy is willing to endure.
How this definition helps us understand the war
While it may seem obvious that wars are won by minimizing one’s own suffering and maximizing the enemy’s, we in the West tend to forget this. This is what we need to help Ukraine achieve. This is the perspective we must apply to all statements from Putin and the Russian state apparatus, as this is the purpose of everything Russia says publicly.
Let’s take an example. Putin says Russia will not use nuclear weapons, but Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, simultaneously threatens that Russia is willing to use nuclear weapons — especially if the West allows Ukraine to use Western weapons on Russian soil. Russia’s statements are deliberately ambiguous, serving as a tactic to maximize Ukraine’s suffering while minimizing their own.
The ambiguity leads to uncertainty, which lead to discussions which in turn leads to actions being delayed. The West will look at Putin’s statements and say that Russia is not escalating the situation in a way that requires a Western response. Meanwhile, Medvedev’s statements make the West fear that we might escalate the situation. The result is that the next weapon shipments to Ukraine are delayed, smaller than initially expected and have restrictions added for how the weapons can be used. All of this benefits Russia and harms Ukraine.
When you next see a statement from Russia, consider what they are trying to achieve. Consider how they are using all means available to maximize Ukraine’s suffering while reducing their own.
This perspective also helps us understand who is leading in the war. Although the Ukrainians, through their existential struggle for survival, have a higher tolerance for suffering than the Russians, they are currently also suffering the most. It is Ukraine that is under attack, their civilians who are being bombed, their loved ones who have to flee the country and a larger portion of their population actively fighting and dying in the war.
Another problem we face is that Russians are good at suffering. It is indoctrinated in them through their education, history, literature, and culture. The state-controlled Russian media is constantly feeding Russians a diet of lies and propaganda to make them continue to accept suffering. We must not underestimate how much suffering needs to be inflicted on the Russians before they lose the will to fight. We must be prepared for this being a very long war.
The suffering Russia feels is also one of the reasons we cannot let them win the war. If Russia wins, their suffering will suddenly have meaning. It will be celebrated in the same way Russia annually celebrates the 27 million Soviets who died during World War II (nearly 7 million of whom were Ukrainians).
Instead of creating political change, we would reinforce the imperialist mindset in Russia with a confirmation that they are an empire — as long as they are willing to suffer for it.
Let’s put an end to the suffering. Let’s help Ukraine to victory.
Let’s give 5% to Ukraine.
All parts of the opinion piece
