Nothing to Lose
Vol 18: New Battle Lines (Part II) - Where War's Going
This is the second installation of New Battle Lines, which is detailing what the future of warfare looks like.
This particular piece spends time looking at Putin’s motivations, and what’s at stake. Next week I will return to more of the technological changes, but I thought it was important to paint a picture of what’s happening today. I can’t profess to know what will happen, but I’m sharing the framework I’ve developed over the past year, which has helped me understand how the past two weeks unfolded.
The first part can be found here:
In summary, Part I put forth that before World War I, 1) everyone thought war was over, 2) one country wrote about why war was not only inevitable but necessary, and 3) that the people paying attention knew war was not only a possibility, but that new technologies would transform the battlefield entirely. They knew war would be different. And that brings us back to today.
Back to the Future
Now that we understand what the last century looked like, let’s take a look at today. After just two weeks, there’s a lot of ground to cover.
Perhaps the best place to start is with empathy. When people make decisions that you don’t understand, it’s usually a strong signal that you need to update your understanding of their point of view.
Morgan Housel talks about this at length in his essays and in his book, The Psychology of Money. What makes sense to you might not make sense to someone else, but that’s because you and I have different goals, priorities, and circumstances. We also are shaped by where we grew up and who we’ve met. You might balk at the idea of a $500,000 digital picture of an ape, but what if you made millions (or billions) off Bitcoin, and see an NFT as a fun way to express your personality? What if you’re trying to win the lottery, so to speak, and you’re hoping the NFT you buy becomes even more valuable? Time horizons and motivations matter.
Empathy is one of the ways you can try to see things in a clearer way, and it’s been a driving impetus behind my worldview expansion. In these efforts, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes more sense. It does not justify what Putin is doing, nor does it permit their military to commit atrocities.1 But it paints a picture that we can more easily understand. Having that understanding is important, because it helps us figure out what the immediate endgame looks like.
The Endgame: Nothing to Lose
Putin is aware of the optics of this invasion, and he’s fully cognizant that the unprecedented sanctions will crush the economy. He knows his time is limited, and that the longer this goes on, the more it will hurt, and the higher chance of failure is.
So why did he do it? This goes back to Peter Zeihan and Geopolitics. Russia has no geographic barriers to protect itself. You might not think that’s a big deal, but Russians do, because they’ve been invaded over 50 times. Putin knows this, and he knows that Russia’s demographics are deteriorating. Soon, there won’t be enough people to field a strong military force, and they’re already experiencing serious brain drain from the past few decades, so technologically, they will be outmatched too.
So Putin is pursing Ukraine, which contains 2 of the 9 entrances to Russia. This might not seem necessary now, but as the world de-globalizes, there’s no guarantee that other countries won’t invade, and if that happens, Russia wouldn’t have the demographics to mount a winnable defense, let alone a counterattack.
So the geography explains the why, and the demography explains the why now.
That makes for a dangerous mix. Because if Putin is backed into a corner, he doesn’t really have any way out. Domestically this move is (rightfully) contested, and that doesn’t even begin to cover the external pressures the West has put on Russia.
Of all things, this reminds me of the last scene in the season 1 finale of Billions:
“You know the only enemy more dangerous than a man with unlimited resources — is one with nothing to lose. And that is what you are looking at, right here.”
Chuck Rhoades, Billions (Season 1, The Conversation)
Sun Tzu said, “when you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” In other words, give your enemies an off ramp, a way to retreat with some semblance of honor. I don’t know what the best course of action would be to do that in this circumstance, but it’s obvious that we need to have one, if it were to come to that. Otherwise, you put someone with control of a full nuclear arsenal in a precarious position. After all, in their mind, they have nothing to lose.
Consider what WWII would have looked like if Hitler had the Atomic Bomb, and he knew he was going to lose? A quote from Man’s Search For Meaning comes to mind:
So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
A Two Front War
What we haven’t talked about though, is what’s happening in Russia financially. It’s a totally new type of warfare, and it’s a useful lens to see where things are actually heading. The crazy thing is that we don’t know how things will shake out yet, and as I’ll discuss, the same is true for the other aspects of modern warfare. Because while war is certainly raging in Ukraine, this is not what true 21st Century warfare will look like.
To be continued…
Looking in the Dark
As I write this against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, I want to stress that there’s a reason why all this matters.
Sometimes, you have to do the hard thing and look in the dark; you won’t like what you find, but it’s one of those situations where once you know it’s there, you can figure out a way to solve it.2 Ben Thompson, a prolific tech analyst, shared this same sentiment in a strong piece of his.
That’s why I spent time thinking about war, not because it’s a desirable outcome — few would argue that — but because by looking around the corner, we can figure out what challenges we will have to face in the future, and do something about it. This is about Controlling the Controllables. I’ve been thinking about this broadly for the past ~year, and in the past two weeks alone, we’ve seen how different warfare is already. It’s only going to continue to change.
I’ll conclude this piece with a photo from the morning of June 6th, 1944.
What an image. I’ve tried to hear what this would sound like: the bullets, bombs, mortars, screams, and waves. The disorienting, sloshing swim, and then a frenzied run, to the shore.
This is one of those things you can’t really comprehend, until you’ve experienced it.3
These men didn’t know what each passing second would bring, but they faced evil and uncertainty anyways. It’s a profound example of bravery, and regardless of what happens in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I find solace in the fact that when the world needed it, ordinary people answered the call of duty, and brought us the world we live in today.
Now it’s our turn.
Again, I want to emphasize I’m not condoning any of these actions. These are the realities of the world we live in, and unfortunately, some bad people are in power, waging war on those that are struggling to survive.
Trying to change human nature is a Sisyphean task. I view that in a positive light overall, because instead of trying to change people’s behavior, we can focus on making tangible things that will help us overcome future challenges.
There’s a meme about how kids today relive their grandparents’ most terrifying day in their lives; they do it for fun, via video games.