Intended Unintended Consequences of War

               When I was a Freshman History major at the University of Oregon, I took an introductory course on the History of War. This was during the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq, so I heard everything the professor said in light of the upcoming conflict. One of the main lessons I remember from this course was that wars have unintended consequences, and often lead to radicalization of goals and national identities.

              An example of unintended consequences: The Napoleonic Wars led to the creation of Germany as a unified state. When France invaded and captured territory of the Holy Roman Empire they consolidated the tiny little principalities into larger administrative states (many of them that still exist to this day). This made it much easier for Prussia to consolidate them all into a single country.

              An example of radicalized goals: At the outset of the American Civil War the Union’s goal was its preservation, returning the Southern states to the Union. As the war drug on, battlefield choices were made regarding freeing slaves to undermine the war fighting capacity of the Confederacy, and frankly the average Union soldier saw slavery up close instead of through the eyes of newspapers and Southern songs. In a variety of ways this strengthened the hand of the abolitionist cause, and eventually moved Lincoln to shift the goal of the war from the moderate goal of returning slave states to the Union, to the radical goal of the eradication of slavery on the continent.

              Another thing I remember is the professor saying that there are people whose job it is to game out possible unintended consequences of war. In other words, to discover unintended consequences of an action and make them intended consequences. This brings me to the current war in Ukraine. I wonder what unintended intended consequences and radicalization might be hoped for by people whose job it is to think about these things.

              I imagine Russia chose to escalate the war in Ukraine (because they’d been in a proxy war there for some time) as they did, with the hope of destabilizing the post-Cold War world order. They invaded so that “the West” would make choices that undermined their place on the world stage and bolstered that of BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Additionally, they likely hoped to draw BRIC nations closer together, at this point their main commonalities are rising economies, not alliances. I have noticed India is rather muted in their criticisms of Russia’s choice to go to war, and both they and China are buying Russian oil now that Europe and America have lessened their purchases.

              On the other side of the coin, Europe has responded more forcefully than expected. Russia may have singlehandedly re-armed Europe. Russia’s choice to invade may have prompted the European Union to seek a policy of knocking out their potential rival in the East out of contention as a regional player on the world stage as we move to being an increasingly multipolar world. Traditionally neutral-ish countries like Sweden and Finland are formally joining NATO, Ukraine might join the EU. There are reports that Russia has depleted its stock of some types of missiles, even as Germany is gearing up to create more such weapons as a deterrent.

              There is also a radicalization going on within Ukraine. From reports I’ve read, even the most pro-Russian mayors and governors are sounding like Churchill: they’ll fight Russia on the beaches, they’ll fight them in the forest, they will never surrender! If Russia’s assessment that Ukraine wasn’t a real state that they weren’t a real people, was true, their choice to go to war has radicalized “the” Ukraine, and it is now and forever only Ukraine. If they believed there were a bunch of Russians next door to them, who just happened to be living in a geographic region known as “The” Ukraine, now they have no choice but to acknowledge that their neighbors are Ukrainians.