IMPACT OF WAR ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

INTRODUCTION

What are the true costs of war and how can they be measured? One might
consult the records of statesmen, the popular press, or the pages of scholarly
books and journals, but the approaches to this question vary as widely as the
precision of the answers. However, it is fair to say that most analyses have at
least one thing in common: a focus on the direct costs, traditionally measured in
terms of the loss of life and the resources used to wage war—essentially, men
and materiel. To this, occasionally, are added costs of lost and damaged
property, although the accuracy of these figures are much more doubtful. Here
we examine some major indirect costs of war that have never previously been
examined.A growing theoretical and empirical literature provides strong support
for the relation of bilateral trade flows to measures of joint economic activity
and costs of trade. These so-called gravity model relationships have been
utilized as benchmarks from which to assess the trade impact of economic
disturbances and policy regimes, such as exchange rate variability . In
conversation with James Ivory in Niger, 1973. In a speech to civil war veterans
in Columbus, Ohio, 1880. In related literature, Hess (2003) estimated the impact
of war on consumption losses directly using 1960–1992 data. In work
independent of ours, Blomberg and Hess (2004) have studied the impact on
trade of various forms of violence, including war and terrorism. Their data
covers only the 1968–99 period; our data covers a much longer period including
the two great wars. (Thursby and Thursby 1987), preferential trade
arrangements (Frankel, Stein, and Wei 1996), and currency unions (Rose 2000).
Time series event studies for selected country pairs have also yielded
ambiguous results (e.g., Barbieri and Levy 1999; Anderton and Carter 2001). In
addition to failing to provide any uniform conclusion, these studies suffer from
several design defects. First, the samples typically are restricted to “politically
relevant” cases, defined as country pairs involving one or more major powers
and/or geographically contiguous states. The rationale is to exclude country
pairs that are especially unlikely or unable to engage in conflict. While this
sample restriction limits data collection needs and raises the frequency of
conflicts in the data set, it introduces the possibility of bias in the selected
sample. Secondly, these studies do not take account of the possibility that war
may have lagged as well as contemporaneous effects on trade. If war resolves
outstanding disputes and creates conditions for profitable exchange soon after
war’s end, trade may resume rapidly and it will also can boost the economy.
The economy may suffer devastating impacts during and after a time of war.
According to Shank, "negative unintended consequences occur either
concurrently with the war or develop as residual effects afterwards thereby
impeding the economy over the longer term". In 2012 the economic impact of
war and violence was estimated to be eleven percent of gross world
product (GWP) or 9.46 trillion dollars. Everyday activities of a community or
country are disrupted and property may be damaged. When people become
misplaced, they cannot continue to work or keep their businesses open, causing
damages to the economy of countries involved. A government may decide to
direct money to fund war efforts, leaving other institutions with little or no
available budget.
In some cases war has stimulated a country's economy (World War II is often
credited with bringing America out of the Great Depression). According to
the World Bank the event that conflicts subside in the country, and in the event
that there is a transition to democracy the following will result in an increase
economic growth by encouraging investment of the country and its people,
schooling, economic restructuring, public-good provision, and reducing social
unrest. Conflict very rarely has positive effects on an economy according to the
world bank "Countries bordering conflict zones are facing tremendous
budgetary pressure. The World Bank estimates that the influx of more than
630,000 Syrian refugees have cost Jordan over USD 2.5 billion a year. This
amounts to 6 percent of GDP and one-fourth of government's annual
revenues". One of the most commonly cited benefits for the economy is higher
GDP growth. This has occurred throughout all of the conflict periods, other than
in the Afghanistan and Iraq war period. Another benefit commonly mentioned is
that WWII established the appropriate conditions for future growth and ended
the great depression. In previous cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV,
the Franco-Prussian War, and World War I, warfare serves only to damage the
economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia's involvement in World
War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed and
greatly contributed to the start of the Russian Revolution of 1917. War has been
one of the constant features of human history. The frequency of wars has
increased as time progressed, with the past century alone witnessing more than
a hundred skirmishes. Along with the increase in the number of wars, the gory
and bloody nature of the war has terrified humanity and made the world a more
insecure place to live in. Economists have often tried to assess the cost of war in
economic and monetary terms, from the defence expenditure of a nation to the
cost of walls wreaked in a city that has been attacked. Any representation of a
country’s economic growth will show that wars, strife and other similar unrests
have been major points of change in the growth of an economy. We can argue
that armed struggle is often a cause of a paradigm shift in the way an economy
runs or is run. Assessing an economy before, during and after a war is a very
good mechanism to study various types of policies applied in an economy and
the various approaches to running an economy. The major wars in the 20th
century were the two world wars. These wars did in fact witness an amazing
economic and technological growth in many countries, especially the USA and
to an extent Germany and the erstwhile USSR. But a huge volume of examples
to argue on the other side can also be presented. Iraq and Afghanistan are
present day examples which are staring at our face. History offers many more
similar examples of countries whose economies have been ruined by war.
Economists mostly treat wartime periods as natural macroeconomic experiment,
from which conclusions can be drawn keeping in mind the various factors
prevalent during the time period. It is one of the few instances in which
economists have come close to having a “laboratory setting” to conduct a large-
scale study. The paper is a general assessment of the effects of war on economy,
keeping in mind a few specific cases.
 NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

 Studying the causes and nature of armed conflict reveals

that technological progress, better education and nutrition, global trade,
and increased prosperity has not eliminated or reduced wars, but often
made them more brutal and destructive.
 War can be seen as a growth of economic competition in a competitive
international system.

OBJECTIVES
 It reveals how technology is not much utilize for human well being.
 To study in how many ways war has affected the world .
 CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
FIRST WORLD WAR:

Over the course of the 19th century, rival powers of Europe formed alliances.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. Great Britain,
France, and Russia formed theTriple Entente. Political instability and
competition threatened those alliances. (Italy, for example, eventually entered
World War I in opposition to Germany and Austria-Hungary.)
Tensions grew between Austria-Hungary and Serbia as Serbian nationalists
attempted to unite all Slavic peoples living in the Balkan region into a single
state, including South Slavs of Austria-Hungary.
German success in the Franco-German War established the German Empire.
Germany’s takeover of Alsace-Lorraine created a desire for revenge by the
French.
The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by
Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, suddenly stirred up
brewing conflicts in the region.
Austria-Hungary used the assassination as an excuse to settle its dispute with
Serbia. In anticipation of Russia’s support of Serbia, Austria-Hungary gained
support from William II of Germany before presenting a warlike ultimatum to
Serbia.
Serbia accepted most of Austria-Hungary’s demands but sought international
arbitration on some issues. Convinced that Austria-Hungary was ready for war,
Serbia appealed to Russia for support.
Austria-Hungary severed diplomatic relations with Serbia, and, on July 28,
1914, declared war on Serbia. Within a week most of Europe was at war.
Effects

As many as 8.5 million soldiers and some 13 million civilians died during
World War I.
Four imperial dynasties collapsed as a result of the war: the Habsburgs of
Austria-Hungary, the Hohenzollerns of Germany, the sultanate of the Ottoman
Empire, and the Romanovs of Russia.
The mass movement of soldiers and refugees helped spread one of the world’s
deadliest influenza pandemics, also called the Spanish flu.
The map of Europe changed forever as territories were divided among the
victorious Allied powers.
The war led to the October Revolution in Russia, which put the Bolsheviks in
power of the Russian government.
The United States emerged as a world power.
Chemical weapons, such as mustard gas and phosgene, and new technologies
and developments, such as machine guns, tanks, and aerial combat, were
introduced. A protocol signed at the1925 Geneva Conference for the
Supervision of the International Traffic in Arms restricted the use of chemical
and biological agents in warfare.
foundation for World Growth of nationalism in central and eastern
Europe set the War II.

LAURA .A . DOAN:
"War as a climactic moment in history," David Bevan writes, "is well-placed to
advance the critical quest for the status of (the) text, and . . . war literature is
thus very much in the mainstream of recent theoretical debate." The current
proliferation of critical studies on the relationship of war in the twentieth
century and literary production certainly lends considerable support to Bevan's
assertion. In 1989 alone, the publication date of this present collection of
fourteen essays, at least two other major studies appeared: Paul
Fussell's Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War and
the anthology Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary
Representation (eds. Cooper, Munich, and Squier). Unfortunately, Literature
and War, despite its exciting breadth (the essays range throughout the century,
including World Wars One and Two, the Spanish Civil War, Portuguese
colonial war, the National Liberation Movement in Uruguay, and Vietnam),
fails to deliver in terms of depth, and measures unfavorably against these other
studies. Part of the problem stems from the fact that most of the essays were
originally papers delivered at a 1989 conference on "Literature, Revolution and
War" held at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The editor seems to
have done little more than arrange the essays in some unspecified manner
(roughly chronological?) and add just over a page of "introduction." Although
there is nothing wrong with using a conference as the starting-point for an
anthology, the reader expects more than mere "proceedings," unless, of course,
the editor is up-front from the start and clearly labels the volume as such. .
Several of the exceedingly brief essays, when not explicidy peppered with the
worries about time and space constraints peculiar to the conference paper, suffer
simply from a lack of development. No sooner does the reader settle into an
essay than one reaches its conclusion. For example, an essay (in fact, a mere
twelve paragraphs) on the novels of Claude Simon and the philosophy of history
gestures provocatively toward significant questions investigating how the writer
negotiates historical experience and ahistorical vision in order to reconceive the
boundaries of generic expectation, but the discussion is too clipped or
abbreviated to account adequately for such complex issues. The extreme brevity
of this piece (and others) is offset by a few excellent studies, especially Knibb's
analysis of the war text and language, Carchidi's reading of Malraux against T.
E. Lawrence, and Ball's revealing scrutiny of the underground press of the
French Resistance. The final result, however, is a volume that as a whole is
uneven.
In his opening remarks, Bevan indicates that such a volume is particularly
timely, as we are now in the midst of media commemorations of "sundry fatal
anniversaries, including the birth of Hitler, the end of the Spanish Civil War,
and the beginning of World War II." This anthology works best to remind
readers of this fact and to call more urgently for scholars to join in exploring,
perhaps more fruitfully, the relationship between the war experience and literary
representation.

WORLD WAR II

Causes of War

The major causes of World War II were numerous. They include the impact of
the Treaty of Versailles following WWI, the worldwide economic
depression, failure of appeasement, the rise of militarism in Germany and
Japan, and the failure of the League of Nations.

Treaty of Versailles

 Following World War I, the victorious Allied Powers met to decide

Germany’s future. Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
 Under this treaty, Germany had to accept guilt for the war and to pay
reparations. Germany lost territory and was prohibited from having a large
military.
 The humiliation faced by Germany under this treaty, paved the way for the
spread of Ultra-Nationalism in Germany.
Failure of the League of Nations

 The League of Nations was an international organization set up in 1919 to

keep world peace.
 It was intended that all countries would be members and that if there were
disputes between countries, they could be settled by negotiation rather than
by force.
 The League of Nations was a good idea, but ultimately a failure, as not all
countries joined the league.
 Also, the League had no army to prevent military aggression such as Italy’s
invasion of Ethiopia in Africa or Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in China.
Great Depression of 1929

 The worldwide economic depression of the 1930s took its toll in different
ways in Europe and Asia.
 In Europe, political power shifted to totalitarian and imperialist
governments in several countries, including Germany, Italy, and Spain.
 In Asia, a resource-starved Japan began to expand aggressively, invading
China and maneuvering to control a sphere of influence in the Pacific.
Rise of Fascism

 Victors’ stated aims in World War I had been “to make the world safe for
democracy,” and postwar Germany was made to adopt a democratic
constitution, as did most of the other states restored or created after the war.
 In the 1920s, however, the wave of nationalistic, militaristic totalitarianism
known by its Italian name, fascism.
 It promised to minister to peoples’ wants more effectively than democracy
and presented itself as the one sure defense against communism.
 Benito Mussolini established the first Fascist, European dictatorship during
the interwar period in Italy in 1922.
Rise of Nazism

 Adolf Hitler, the Leader of the German National Socialist (Nazi) party,
preached a racist brand of fascism.
 Hitler promised to overturn the Versailles Treaty, restore German wealth &
glory and secure additional Lebensraum (“living space”) for the German
people, who he contended deserve more as members of a superior race.
 In 1933 Hitler became the German Chancellor, and in a series of
subsequent moves established himself as dictator.
 Moreover, in 1941 the Nazi regime unleashed a war of extermination
against Slavs, Jews, and other elements deemed inferior by Hitler’s
ideology.
Policy of Appeasement

 Hitler openly denounced the Treaty of Versailles and began secretly

building up Germany’s army and weapons.
 Although Britain and France knew of Hitler’s actions, they thought a
stronger Germany would stop the spread of Communism from Russia.
 An example of appeasement was the Munich Agreement of September
1938. In the Agreement, Britain and France allowed Germany to annex
areas in Czechoslovakia where German-speakers lived.

o Germany agreed not to invade the rest of Czechoslovakia or any other

country. However, in March 1939, Germany broke its promise and
invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.
o Even then, neither Britain nor France was prepared to take military
action.
Key Turning Points of the World War II

The Start

 Three years of mounting international tension - encompassing the Spanish

Civil War, the union of Germany and Austria, Hitler's occupation of the
Sudetenland and the invasion of Czechoslovakia led to deterioration of ties
between Axis Power and Allied Powers.
 However, the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and
subsequently two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
 This marked the beginning of World War II.
Phoney War

 The western Europe was very quiet during the first few months of the war.
 This period of war is known as 'phoney war'.
 Preparations for war continued in earnest, but there were few signs of
conflict, and civilians of the western european countries (allied powers)
evacuated to safe places.
Ribbentrop Pact

 By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become
determined to invade and occupy Poland.
 Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support
should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland
anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union
would resist the invasion of its western neighbour.
 Secret negotiations in August 1939, led to the signing of the German-
Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow.
 Further, Russia followed Germany into Poland in September and Poland
was carved up between the two invaders before the end of the year.
Winter War 1940

 The 'winter war' between Russia and Finland concluded in March, and in
the following month Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.
 Denmark surrendered immediately, but the Norwegians fought on - with
British and French assistance - surrendering in June 1940.
Fall of France 1940

 After war with scandenavian countries got over, Germany invaded France,
Belgium and Holland.
 During this phase, the western Europe encountered the Blitzkrieg - or
'lightning war'.
 Blitzkrieg: Germany's combination of fast armoured tanks on land, and
superiority in the air, made a unified attacking force that was both
innovative and effective.

o Despite greater numbers of air and army personnel in Allied powers,

they proved no match for German Forces.
 In France an armistice was signed with Germany, with the puppet French
Vichy government.
 Having conquered France, Hitler turned his attention to Britain, and began
preparations for an invasion.
Battle of Britain 1940

 Lasting from July to September 1940, it was the first war to be fought
solely in the air.
 German took decisions to attack from airfields and factories to the major
cities, but somehow the Royal Air Force managed to squeak a narrow
victory.
 This ensured the - ultimately indefinite - postponement of the German
invasion plans.
War Getting Global

 With continental Europe under Nazi control, and Britain safe - for the time
being - the war took on a more global dimension in 1941.
 Following the defeat of Mussolini's armies in Greece and Tobruk, German
forces arrived in North Africa and invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in April
1941.
Operation Barbarossa

 After facing defeat in Britain, Hitler broke the Ribbentrop Pact and

invaded Russia in 1941.
 The initial advance was swift, with the fall of Sebastopol at the end of
October, and Moscow coming under attack at the end of the year.
 The bitter Russian winter, however, like the one that Napoleon had
experienced a century and a half earlier, crippled the Germans.
 The Soviets counterattacked in December and the Eastern Front stagnated
until the spring.
Pearl Harbour

 The Japanese, tired of American trade embargoes, mounted a surprise

attack on the US Navy base of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on 7 December
1941.
 This ensured that global conflict commenced, with Germany declaring war
on the US, a few days later.
 Also, within a week of Pearl Harbor, Japan had invaded the Philippines,
Burma and Hong Kong.
American Entry Into the War
 Through the Battle of Midway 1942, the US entered World War II. In this
battle, US sea-based aircraft destroyed four Japanese carriers and a cruiser,
marking the turning point in World War II.
 Also, the news of mass murders of Jewish people by the Nazis reached the
Allies, and the US pledged to avenge these crimes.
Reversal of German Fortunes

 By the second half of 1942, British forces gained the initiative in North
Africa and Russian forces counterattacked at Stalingrad.
 In February 1943, Germany surrendered at Stalingrad to Soviet Union. This
was the first major defeat of Hitler's armies.
 Further, German and Italian forces in North Africa surrendered to the
Allies.
 As the Russian advance on the Eastern Front gathered pace, recapturing
Kharkiv and Kiev from Germany. Moreover, Allied bombers began to
attack German cities in enormous daylight air raids.
 The Russians reached Berlin (capital of Germany) on 21 April 1945.

o Hitler killed himself on the 30th, two days after Mussolini had been
captured and hanged by Italian partisans.
 Germany surrendered unconditionally on 7 May, and the following day was
celebrated as VE (Victory in Europe) day. The war in Europe was over.
Nuclear Bombing And The End

 Plans were being prepared for an Allied invasion of Japan, but fears of
fierce resistance and massive casualties prompted Harry Truman - the new
American president to sanction the use of an atomic bomb against Japan.
 Such bombs had been in development since 1942, and on 6 August 1945
one of them was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
 Three days later another was dropped on Nagasaki.
 No country could have withstand such attacks, and the Japanese
surrendered on 14 August.
 With the surrender of Japan, World War II was finally over.
Aftermath of World War II

New Superpowers

 World War II brought about changes in the status of countries and

continents. Britain and France lost their positions of preeminence as
superpowers and yielded place to the USA and the USSR.
Start of Decolonisation

 After the war, Britain and France were confronted with various domestic
and external problems. Both of them could no longer hold onto their
respective colonies Thus, the post-war world witnessed the end of
colonialism in Africa and Asia.
Birth of UN

 One of the momentous results of the war was the birth of the United
Nations Organisation.
 Although the League failed to deliver, mankind did not altogether lose its
hopes of making the world a safer and happier place to live in.
 The UN Charter enshrines the hopes and ideals of mankind on the basis of
which countries can work together to maintain lasting peace.
 However, the establishment of the UN was agreed, much before the end of
World War II under the Atlantic Charter.
Start of Cold War

 After the end of the war, a conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, to
set up peace treaties. The countries that fought with Hitler lost territory and
had to pay reparations to the Allies. Germany and its capital Berlin were
divided into four parts.
 The zones were to be controlled by Great Britain, the United States, France
and the Soviet Union.
 The three western Allies and the Soviet Union disagreed on many things
and as time went on Germany was divided into two separate countries: East
Germany, which had a Communist government and West Germany, which
was a democratic state .
 This laid the foundation of the Cold War.
New Economic World Order

 Bretton Woods Conference, formally United Nations Monetary and

Financial Conference, meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (July 1–
22, 1944), during World War II to make financial arrangements for the
postwar world after the expected defeat of Germany and Japan.
 It drew up a project for the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD-now known as World Bank) to make long-term
capital available to states urgently needing such foreign aid, and a project
for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to finance short-term
imbalances in international payments in order to stabilize exchange rates.
 Also, the US dollar was established as a reserve currency for the world
trade.
India and World II

 World War II had taken an immense toll on the British Empire. Britain had
lost a lot of capital and they were looking to their colonies to help them get
the status of world power back. However, Mahatma Gandhi at this time
organized Indians against the British.
 Also, World War II broke out to contain Hitler's intention of having
German colonies beyond its borders, the same colonial occupation that
Britain had already been practicing for centuries.
 Thus, after the war, people all over the world started supporting voices
against British occupation over its colonies.
 When the Labour Party came to power in 1945 in Britain it inclined
towards internationalism and racial equality, among other liberal principles.
 Soon after coming into power, Prime Minister Clement Attlee (Labour
Party) began the process of granting India its independence in 1947.
J.V.D.DENEN:

Even casual inspection of the literature reveals the following, incomplete, list
of ‘war’ terms: limited war and total (or all-out) war, cold war and hot war,
local war and world war, controlled and uncontrolled war, accidental war and
premeditated war, conventional and nuclear war, declared and undeclared war,
aggressive or offensive war and defensive war, general war and proxy war,
international war and civil war, tribal and civilized war, preventive or pre-
emptive war, protracted war, absolute war, war of liberation, war of conquest,
war of commerce, war of plunder, revolutionary war, political war, economic
war, social war, imperialist war, guerilla war, psychological war, strategic war,
counter-insurgency war, dynastic war, monarchical war, ritual war, agonistic
war, sacred war, instrumental war, genocidal war. Much of the complexity
stems from the fact that the epithets refer to different aspects of, and
perspectives on, war: e.g. war as condition, techniques of warfare, alleged
motives and/or objectives of war, or assumptions about belligerent behavior and
the causes (causative factors, determinants, conditions, etc. ) of war (cf. Grieves
1977). War is a species in the genus of violence; more specifically it is
collective, direct, manifest, personal, intentional, organized, institutionalized,
instrumental, sanctioned, and sometimes ritualized and regulated, violence.
These distinguishing features and dimensional delineations are not limitative. It
should be perfectly clear, however, that war, or the state of belligerence, is a
very special category of violence (van der Dennen, 1977). Some of the listed
war terms reflect concern for attitudes and behaviour, linked with assumptions
about the cause of war. The term ‘imperialist war’ reflects both an attitude about
the root causes of the war and an assumption about which States are guilty of
having caused it. Also, much of the ‘nature of war’ is found not on the
battlefield, but in the hostile behaviour and attitudes that characterize a state’s
foreign policy. Q. Wright (1942; 1965) calls attention to the discussion of this
psychological aspect of war in Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’, where the oscillations of
war and peace are compared to the weather.

Ernest Hemingway(first world war)

There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war.
The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One
reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers”
Edgell Rickword (first world war)

“In sodden trenches I have heard men speak,Though numb and wretched, wise
and witty things; And loved them for the stubbornness that clings Longest to
laughter when Death’s pulleys creak;”

Isaac Rosenberg (first world war)

“I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not
master my poeting; that is if I am lucky enough to come through it alright”
 CHAPTER 3 : RESEARCH WORK

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION :

The problems identified in the interstate wars, particularly wars among the great
powers during the 1495–1815 period. The definition of war as substantial armed
conflict involving the organized military forces of independent political units
leads directly to three major sets of problems regarding the operational
identification of wars: identification of the actors whose wars are to be
analyzed; specification of a minimum threshold of violence or intensity of
interaction for qualification as a war; and boundary problems concerning the
determination of the beginning and end of a war and the aggregation or
disaggregation of simultaneous or sequential wars. Problems of index
construction, validity and reliability, data sources and biases, and data
availability are critical. Problems involved in measuring the attributes of war,
including its duration and severity, are dealt with primarily in terms of their
relevance for the issue of identifying wars, though I include a brief note on
problems with the intensity indicator based on national population data.

Two basic theoretical considerations underlie the collection of data on major

power‐minor power conflicts. Both perspectives have major power‐minor
power relations at their core, and are developed more fully in The Onset of
World War (Midlarsky, 1988). First, an hierarchical equilibrium structure
consists of two components: (1) two or more alliances (or other loose
hierarchies such as loosely‐knit empires) of varying size and composition but
clearly including a great power and a number of small powers within each, and
(2) a relatively large number of small powers not formally associated with any
of the great powers. Time periods during which the hierarchical equilibrium was
obeyed did not experience systemic war, while those in which it was violated
experienced this type of warfare. The second major theoretical basis is the
overlap between great power conflicts exclusively, on the one hand, and great
power‐small power conflicts on the other. This combination was a major
contributor to the onset of World War I as well as other systemic wars such at
the Thirty Years’ War and the Peloponnesian War.
Russia – Ukraine conflict :

The precipitating conflict between Russia and Ukraine was not anticipated the
way it has evolved. When Russia recognised the breakaway republics of
Donetsk and Luhansk, it was clear that Moscow was going to take matters head-
on, but no one expected it to go for an all-out war against Ukraine. The
separatists control barely one-third of the territory of the two regions, while the
Ukrainian forces control two-thirds. Therefore, the moot point was whether
Russia would try to take the territory controlled by Ukrainian forces. Hence, one
would have expected that Russian President Vladimir Putin would take some
such action.

CAUSES AND SOLUTUION TO THE CONFLICTS

Disagreement continues over both the causes and potential solutions to the
conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The conflict that emerged in 2014 had its
roots at the very outset of the post-Cold War period, because from the very
beginning, Russia sought to prevent Ukraine’s independence and, when this was
unavoidable, sought to limit it both in terms of sovereignty and territory. As
Angela Stent astutely points out, ‘Every U.S. president since 1992 has come
into office believing that, unlike his predecessor, he will be able to forge and
sustain a new, improved relationship with Russia…. Yet each reset has ended in
disappointment on both sides’. Similarly, structural problems undermine efforts
at re-setting Ukrainian-Russian relations; even the most pro-Russian Ukrainian
presidents (Kuchma and Yanukovych) struggled to find a stable accommodation
with Russia. n terms of national identity and tactics, the story begins even
earlier. As, the approach to information warfare and the use of unconventional
tactics (‘active measures’) has deep roots in the Soviet era, even if the specific
tactics of cyber warfare have taken advantage of contemporary technology. The
spread of disinformation, brazen lying, ‘whataboutism’, and targeted violence
were all tactics used by the Soviet Union, particularly in its long-running battle
against the Ukrainian independence movement. Russia’s conception of its
national identity – including the view that Russians and Ukrainians are one
people – has sources going back centuries.

This is not to say that military conflict was inevitable, or that the events of
2013–2014 did not provide both added incentive and opportunity for Russia to
use force. But it does indicate that the desire to revise the territorial arrangement
in Ukraine did not emerge in response to NATO or EU enlargement. While
those developments undoubtedly were seen as dangerous to Russian interests,
Russian interest in controlling Ukraine predates them.

Looking forward, this interpretation has important implications. While the

nature of Putin’s regime helps explain the decision to intervene in Ukraine in
2014, the notion that Ukraine is in part or entirely Russian territory is not
limited to Putin or to a narrow slice of the Russian elite. To the extent that the
Russian creation myth centres on events in Kievan Rus, and to the extent that
the territorial expansion under Catherine the Great is seen as the basis
for NovoRossiya, it would appear that Russia’s territorial aspirations in Ukraine
have not been satisfied. The effort to promote further separatism
in NovoRossiya in 2014 indicated that had the opportunity existed, a much
larger slice of Ukrainian territory might have come under the sway of Russian
proxies.

This leads us to a second important conclusion, which is that realist analysis,

while it contributes much to understanding the dynamics of conflict, does not
yield a clear policy recommendation without the help of further assumptions.
The most prominent realist analysis of the conflict, that of Mearsheimer, is
based on the assumption that Russia was a defensive power, protecting the
status quo. To the extent that this assumption is true, the West’s acceptance of
that status quo might be seen as the basis for a stable peace going forward.

However, the assumption that Russia seeks further revision of the status quo is
equally plausible. Territorially, the NovoRossiya probe, threats against the
Baltic States, and continuing pressure on the front lines in the Donbas indicate
that Russia might take more territory if it can do so. Just as few expected Russia
to seize Crimea in 2014 despite its long record of claiming the territory, we
should perhaps take Russia’s hints about Kiev and Novorossiya seriously. Put
differently, having revised slightly the territorial status quo of 1991, will Russia
be satisfied that this status quo still leaves the western boundary of its influence
far to the East of where it was from 1945 to 1989, and leaves Odesa and Kiev
beyond its control? Leaving aside the question of whether Russia is satiated
territorially, it clearly seeks revision of the norms that Europe and the US
presume have underpinned the security of Europe since 1989, two of which are
that states’ choices of institutional affiliations cannot be vetoed by third parties
and that borders will not be changed by force.

Therefore, depending on whether we believe Russia is or is not satisfied with

the status quo, realism points the West to opposite strategies. If Russia is
satisfied with Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, then the West can aid its own
security by acquiescing to these gains and thus making Russia less aggressive.
But if Russia is not satisfied, then realism, as it traditionally has done, would
counsel that power be met with power. The most basic realist argument is that
force is the ultimate determinant of outcomes, so if there is no agreement on the
dividing line between Russia’s sphere and the West, then it will be determined
by the use or threat of force. In this view, the best way to prevent conflict is to
deter it with the threat of force.

Clearly, the West erred in believing that Russia could be satisfied with a
Ukraine integrated into Western institutions. But, it remains unclear what
Russia would be satisfied with. Russian leaders themselves may disagree, and
they may not even have a fixed idea. Just as the possibility of Ukraine joining
NATO was not on the West’s radar screen in 1991, Russia’s notion of where its
sphere of interest might end could well be determined as much by opportunity
as by some pre-determined notion. As hard as it is to assess intentions looking
backwards (scholars still disagree on what motivated Soviet policy during the
Cold War), it will be even harder to assess them looking into the future. As a
result, we should continue to expect that policy recommendations toward the
Ukraine-Russia conflict reflect the authors’ assumptions as much as any
analysis that comes from those assumptions.

The conflict will not be easy to resolve. Repeated attempts at ceasefires have
not lasted more than a day, and a proposal by Ukraine to invite UN
peacekeepers into the Donbas has been blocked by Russia. Russia’s own
proposal for peacekeepers was rejected by Ukraine and the US over the
fundamental question of where to station them. Ukraine and the US seek to have
peacekeepers on the internationally recognised Russian-Ukrainian border while
Russia proposed that they be based on the ceasefire line. Putin’s proposal
therefore resembled earlier proposals during Yeltsin’s presidency when ‘CIS’
(read Russian) peacekeepers froze conflicts that Russian proxies had won on the
ceasefire line in the Trans-Dniestr, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Perhaps, rather
than thinking of how to resolve the conflict, we should be thinking about how to
manage it. It is in this respect that the analogy with the Cold War might be most
fruitful. While discussions on both sides about winning the Cold War never
ceased, over time increasing attention was paid to managing the conflict to
minimize the danger of it spinning out of control.

The conflict is unlikely to be resolved for two reasons. First, the various sides’
understandings of the sources of the conflict and the acceptable solutions
remain far apart. Even though many in the West recognise that Russia is
extremely unlikely to reverse its annexation of Crimea, and are prepared to
accept that, recognising it officially and legitimising it will be much more
difficult. That is even more true for the government of Ukraine. Assuming the
territory is not to return to Ukraine, finding a way to legitimise Russia’s
annexation will be necessary for a complete resolution of the conflict, and it
does not appear that many in the West or in Ukraine are near to finding that
acceptable, in part because doing so might set a dangerous precedent. Second,
the damage done to various relationships cannot easily be undone, even if there
were the desire to do so (and that itself is questionable).

The assumption after 1991 that a harmony of interests had largely replaced
conflict of interest in the West’s relations with Russia helped smooth over a
large number of disagreements. Now, the assumption that the two sides are
adversaries again undermines cooperation. Trust is at a minimum and bad faith
is widely assumed, undermining the conditions to even search for common
interests. Moreover, in the US and Russia (and perhaps in other countries as
well), domestic politics rewards an adversarial stance toward the other.
Especially after Russia’s influence campaign in the 2016 presidential election, it
will be very difficult for a US administration to be seen as making deals with
Russia. For much of the Cold War, attempting to deal constructively with
Russia led to accusations of naiveté or ‘softness’. Today it is likely to lead to
allegations of treason.

This increased level of hostility means that even if a deal were brokered to
recognise a new status quo including Russian sovereignty over Crimea and
Eastern Ukraine, neither Russia’s relations with the West nor Ukraine could
return to the antebellum state of confidence, low as that was. Western
governments would have to continue to live under the new assumption that
military action is now part of relations among these countries.

The fundamental consequence of Russia’s intervention in Crimea and Eastern

Ukraine is that the ‘state of war’ now prevails again in Europe, in Hobbes’
sense that war is ‘on the table’ even if not actively underway. Even if those who
believed that war had been eliminated from European international relations
were naïve, that viewpoint had a powerful effect on the nature of relations
between the West and Russia, and hence on Ukraine. That confidence could
potentially have become as powerful as that between Germany and France,
where the belief that war is impossible helps make it so. Instead, we are seeing
the re-militarising of relations between East and West.

This discussion of conclusions belies the reality that at this point we have far
more questions than answers about the evolving nature of relations between the
West, Russia, and Ukraine. Here we point to two related crucial questions. First,
how will the regimes in Russia and Ukraine develop, and second, how will that
affect their relationships with each other and the West.

While Russia appears to be in a period of international ascendance, most

observers believe that it is fragile domestically. The economy continues to
depend heavily on natural resources and to be plagued by corruption and crony
capitalism. The political system has become increasingly personalised, leading
to the question of whether it can survive beyond Putin himself. We simply do
not know. Nor do we know what might replace Putinism.

Ukraine’s future is also uncertain. After two ostensibly democratic revolutions,

the country’s oligarch-driven politics appear remarkably unchanged. The
contest among oligarchic groups for power and access to the benefits of
corruption and rent-seeking drives the political system. Sustained Western
support for reform after the Orange Revolution produced few reforms and no
structural change. Following the Euromaidan, economic, fiscal and energy
reforms have made headway but Ukraine continues to be characterised by
oligarchic influence on the economy and media, limited progress in
transforming Ukraine into a rule of law state and the slow fight against high-
level corruption. As a result, the country remains poor and susceptible to
Russian penetration and influence and reliant on Western financial support.
Poroshenko continues in a long line of Ukrainian presidents to support NATO
and EU membership. ‘The one path we have is a wide Euro-Atlantic autobahn
which takes us to membership in the EU and NATO’, Poroshenko said on the
26th anniversary of Ukrainian independence, adding that the Association
Agreement is ‘convincing evidence of our ultimate – de facto and de jure –
break with the empire’.

Nevertheless, both, organisations are only offering integration without

membership; the EU has never offered a membership prospect to Ukraine while
NATO cooled on this question from 2008. NATO remains cautious because of
on-going territorial conflicts with Russia which if Ukraine was invited to join
would become NATO’s war. The West has additionally been routinely
frustrated by Ukraine’s inability to meet all of its commitments to reform,
particularly in the areas of the rule of law and corruption.

How will these domestic politics influence international politics? Since the Cold
War, much policy has been based on the presumed link between democracy and
peace, much to the derision of realist scholars. Rather than rehearse that debate,
we ask what the future might hold if Russia becomes more democratic; or if
Ukraine does not.

Would a more democratic Russia be a more peaceful Russia? That has been the
guiding assumption of Western policy not only since 1991, but throughout
history. The assumption could never be put to the test until 1991, and the
evidence since then is not conclusive. But the electoral success of Russian
nationalist parties, and the need of Yeltsin to use his extensive powers to push
back against revanchists in the 1990s, provides some evidence against the
argument that a democratic Russia would be pro-Western. The majority of
Russians, irrespective of their attitudes toward Putin, share a consensus that
Russia has the right to control the Crimea and that Ukrainians are not a separate
people.

Would a more autocratic Ukraine turn towards Russia? People in both Russia
and the West have assumed this, but the evidence is mixed. Yanukovych was
autocratic and sought Russian support for his autocracy, but he was not always a
willing participant in Russia’s efforts at integration. Kuchma, who moved
Ukraine toward a competitive authoritarian regime in the late 1990s and early
2000s, and paved the way for Yanukovych to try to steal the 2004 election, also
drove a concerted effort to strengthen Ukraine’s ties with NATO and to
consolidate Ukraine’s ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy. The West supported
Kuchma’s heavy-handed methods of adopting a constitution with very strong
presidential powers because it was seen as needed to overcome leftist
conservatives in parliament.

In sum, the relationship between regime type and foreign policy is less clear
than many appear to assume. That is a crucial point, because a major contributor
to conflict has been the West’s desire to spread democracy (assuming that in
doing so they are also spreading peace) and Russia’s desire to prevent it
(assuming that in doing so it is preventing states from aligning against it). Both
policies rely on the assumed links between regime type and foreign policy, and
both therefore rely on flimsy foundations. Ironically, breaking the presumption
of a link between regime type and foreign policy might help ratchet down
tensions here and elsewhere.