Catastrophe: The Global Cost of the Ukraine War

Carl Conetta, 02 May 2023

 

The Russia-Ukraine war has been a disaster for Ukraine, obviously – but also a calamity for the entire world. Ukraine has already suffered levels of death and destruction reminiscent of the height of the Yugoslav wars (1992-1995, 1998-1999) and the worst months of the Iraq War (2003-2011, 2014-2018); It even calls to mind the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.[1] The wealth, tenacity, and exceptional military power of the contestants – Russia, Ukraine, and USA-NATO – have made for a high-intensity war. Although physical destruction has been largely limited to Ukraine, the other effects of the war have not been limited.  The impact on life and livelihood outside the combatant countries has been profound. In fact, many more people have died outside Ukraine due to the conflict than inside.

The war’s acute global effect is due partly to the importance of Russia and Ukraine to global agricultural and energy production. Amplifying this, however, is the intentional global economic warfare – sanctions, blockades, embargoes – that has accompanied the fighting. And that is only part of the war’s broader impact.

The conflict and the economic warfare it involves, have driven up food and energy prices worldwide, disrupted world trade, helped stall and reverse post-pandemic economic recovery, and drawn scarce resources away from other humanitarian crises and economic development efforts. The collateral effects of the war mean not only years of additional acute hardship for a billion global citizens and lowered living standards for billions more, but also reduced action on other global threats including climate change and health crises.

As outlined below, the financial expenditures associated with the war for Russia, Ukraine, and nations supporting Ukraine has been $25 billion a month. Longer term costs include reconstruction – presently estimated at $413 billion – and a sudden jump in the base-level of annual global military spending exceeding $300 billion. Already, this is a trillion dollar war.

The combatants’ cost in human lives

An evidence based estimate of Russian military fatalities is 35,000 (as of March 2023). Ukrainian combatant fatalities probably exceed 20,000.[2] A very rough initial estimate of Ukrainian civilian fatalities is 20,000 dead due to the war’s direct effects (such as bombardment) and another 20,000 due to indirect effects (such as lack of access to essential health care).[3] Outside Ukraine, we estimate that the war’s broader effects have caused the death of more than 250,000 people (as explained below).

So far, the average level of monthly fatalities due to this war has been 27,000 people. Twenty-five thousand dead – every month: 4,000 combatants, ~3,000 Ukrainian civilians, and ~20,000 non-Ukrainian civilians. Recent disclosures of US intelligence estimates reveal an expectation that the war will not end in 2023.[4] Excluding the possibility of nuclear use – which is low but non-zero probability – the war may nevertheless claim a total of 600,000 lives before being brought to a close.

A global economic tsunami

Due to the war and how it has been fought the volume of global trade has declined 3.4%, energy prices have doubled worldwide, food prices grew by 14% in 2022 – more than that for poor countries (25%) – and a pervasive global economic slowdown has set in: The IMF forecasts a 2.8 trillion loss in global output for 2023. This reflects a sharp contraction in global growth from 6% 2021 to 2.6% in 2023.[5] Such contraction obviously undermines wage growth everywhere and either causes job loss or stymies job growth. Unemployment is not only a matter of personal economic stress, it also is a factor increasing crime rates, especially among youth.[6] And it is a correlate of increased death rates among those cast out of work.[7]

The impact of energy cost inflation

Due to the energy cost increases attending the war, the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide increased in 2022 by between 75- and 141-million (according to different estimates) – mostly in the Global South.[8] These are households already living on the edge who cannot accommodate sharp price hikes. Energy price inflation has also affected Europe, however. The Economist research unit calculated that, given the rise in energy costs, even a mild winter such as 2022-2023 would produce at least 32,000 excess deaths in Europe.[9] The example of Germany bears this out: It suffered 8,000 excess deaths in December 2022, compared with Dec 2021.[10] Inflation affecting fuel and food consumption is not a marginal inconvenience for those living on the edge. It is a matter of life and death.

The impact of food price inflation and other limits on food supply

The rise in food prices had an incomparable negative impact on the Global South. There the rise was 25% [11]. Also affecting access to food and fertilizer was reduced supply and disrupted international transport. The UN estimates that as a result the number of people suffering acute food insecurity jumped from 282 million at the end of 2021 to a record 345 million in 2022 – an increase of 63 million (which is about 18% of the total).[12] How many collateral deaths might this imply? A low-end estimate of the number of people who died due to hunger in 2022 is 3 million.[13] (Many more died due to hunger related disease, notably high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes.) The 2022 increase in severe malnutrition is probably not entirely due to the war’s effects, but even if only half the increase in acute hunger is due to the conflict, the associated number of excess deaths would be more than 250,000 people – due to hunger and hunger-related health problems alone.

The “Aid Void”

International support for humanitarian assistance increased from $20 billion in 2021 to $30 billion in 2022, largely to address the global impact of the Ukraine war. But it wasn’t enough. Total funding fell short of assessed need by more than $20 billion.[14] This shortfall in aid was worse than the previous year. And it was not felt uniformly. Half the 2023 increase was allocated directly to Ukraine. This met 82% of Ukraine’s assessed need. For the rest world, 54.5% of assessed need was met.[15] This difference is not due to fatality rates being higher in Ukraine than anywhere else. They were not; Ethiopia and Somalia faced comparable humanitarian disasters in terms of lives lost.[16]

There was also a substantial redirection of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in accord with war policy. Formally, the standing rationale for ODA is to assist the market development of less developed economies. In Europe and the United States about $35 billion in development assistance is now being diverted to support in-country refugees, mostly displaced Ukrainians.[17] This is about 20% of available global ODA. (The previous high-point of in-country donor use of ODA came in 2015 due to the surge in Syrian refugees.)

Ukraine War Support vs Other Global Assistance

In addition to humanitarian aid, direct support to Kyiv’s economy and war effort – about $200 billion in a single year – has far outpaced other recent international initiatives. It is equal to the total of global ODA and humanitarian aid combined.[18] (For comparison, US and other annual support to the Afghan Mujahideen during their fight against Russian occupation between 1979 and 1990 was barely one percent the sum granted Ukraine in its first year of war, corrected for inflation).[19]

Western support for the Ukrainian war may continue at a rate of $17 billion or more per month until the conflict ends. Postwar reconstruction will require additional funds. Kyiv and the World Bank currently estimate the cost of reconstruction and recovery to be $411 billion.[20] One measure of the extent of material destruction suffered by Ukraine is the number of residential buildings damaged or destroyed: 150,000+ as of August 2022.[21]

Financial Cost to Moscow

The war cost Moscow more than $107 billion in excess spending in 2022 with as much as $60 billion of this excess being allocated to the military and security services.[22] These figures do not account for the depletion of Russian war stocks, including the expenditure of thousands of missiles and millions of artillery rounds as well as the confirmed loss of 1900 tanks, 4000 other armored vehicles, 750 artillery pieces, 78 combat aircraft, and 80 helicopters.[23] These and other material expenditures and losses add tens-of-billions of dollars to Moscow’s war bill. Russia’s GDP is estimated by the World Bank and IMF to have declined by only 2.1% in 2022 compared with 2021, despite sanctions.

Financial Cost to Kyiv

Ukraine’s immediate financial costs include a 29% reduction in its GDP (down from about $200 billion in 2021)[24] and a year-end deficit of more than $24.5 billion.[25] Government expenditure on defense in 2022 was approximately $42 billion – equivalent to 30% of the nation’s 2022 GDP. That level of defense expenditure was $33.7 billion more than had been planned prewar.[26] Notably, Ukraine’s total government expenditure in 2022 was about $75 billion with $32 billion of this sum either borrowed or granted by allied governments.[27]

Impact on Global Defense Spending

A final financial burden that the world will carry for years to come is a 2022-2024 surge in baseline annual global defense spending exceeding $300 billion – a boost surpassing all current development and humanitarian assistance. In 2021, global defense expenditure exceeded $2.1 trillion.[28] Between 2021 and 2024, the US defense budget will increase by approximately $170 billion.[29] European NATO is also expected to significantly increase military spending.[30] Russia has already done so. And we should expect the spending boost to cascade throughout Asia as well. By 2025, global military spending may exceed $2.6 trillion.

Notes

   1. Although more combatants and civilians have been killed in the Yugoslav wars and the interlinked Iraq and Syria wars, the Russia-Ukraine war has proven more intensive, claiming more or equivalent lives per month on average than the aforementioned conflicts. Over a combined period of 48 months, the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts may have claimed the lives of ~58,000 combatants and ~50,000 civilians (direct combat deaths). This entails an average monthly toll that is just a fraction of that suffered in the Russia-Ukraine war to date: 28% as great for combatant fatalities, 70% as great for civilian direct fatalities.

Looking at the interlinked Iraq and Syria wars (2003-2023): These have claimed more than 500,000 civilian dead (direct) and 450,000 combatant fatalities. In this case, the average monthly rate of civilians killed by direct means is roughly comparable. However, the average monthly rate of combatant fatalities seems substantially higher in the Ukraine conflict, with one caveat: Many of those counted as civilian dead in the Iraq and Syria cases may actually have been insurgent combatants.

An important qualification is that, while the Russia-Ukraine war involves high-intensity combat, the earlier wars had predominant phases of low-intensity conflict. Such conflicts include civil wars, insurgencies, and occasional conventional force clashes. These conflicts may evince a higher ratio of civilian-to-combatant casualties because they tend to have no discernible “front” and may flare or persist throughout a country’s expanse. The Iraq war, especially, waxed and waned over a period of 12 years. During this time there were periods of fighting that were briefly as intense as the Russia-Ukraine war.

A final relevant data point is the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq conflict. Although a war fought for limited aims, it was characterized by numerous high-intensity battles. Revised estimates for the number of combatants killed are 250,000 Iraqis and 155,000 Iranians. Averaged over eight years this would produce monthly totals comparable to those in the Russia-Ukraine war to date. However, combat in the Iran-Iraq war did not spread evenly. Some periods saw many thousands killed in a week. Such was the 1986 Iranian offensive that took the al-Faw peninsula. More than 40,000 Iraqis and Iranians were reported killed over a six week period. Nothing so intense has occurred in the Russia-Ukraine war – to date.

▪   Kosovo Memory Book Database Presentation and Expert Evaluation, Humanitarian Law Center, 04 Feb 2015: https://comw.org/pda/fulltext/Expert_Evaluation_of_Kosovo_Memory_Book_Database_
Prishtina_04_02_2015-6.pdf

▪   Charles Ingrao and Thomas Emmert, Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative (Second Edition) (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press 15 Dec 2012): https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks/28/

Also see the book’s casualty count here: https://web.archive.org/web/20230123234224/https://books.google.com/books?id=IDMhDgCJCe0C&pg=PA140#v=onepage&q&f=false

▪   Iraq Body Count, accessed 10 Apr 2023: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

▪   Neta C. Crawford, “Blood and Treasure: US Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023,” Costs of War project, Watson Institute, Brown University, 15 Mar 2023: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/blood-and-treasure-united-states-budgetary-costs-and-human-costs-20-years-war-iraq-and

▪   “Over 606,000 people killed across Syria since the beginning of the ‘Syrian Revolution’,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 01 Jun 2021: https://www.syriahr.com/en/217360/

▪   Charles Kurzman, “Death Tolls of the Iran-Iraq War,” blog, 31 Oct 2013: https://kurzman.unc.edu/death-tolls-of-the-iran-iraq-war/

2. Ukraine consistently claimed 13,000 military dead before its Sep 2022 offensives. Fatalities at the same rate since then would put the mid-April 2023 total at 20,000 or so, which is somewhat more than estimated by the US military at the beginning of March. Thirty-five thousand (35,000) Russian dead is the lower end of the US estimate but it is a good extrapolation from several sources: The Mediazona open intelligence website which tracks death notices on Russian media, additional reports of military deaths by the Ombudsman of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” US, Ukrainian, and Russian intelligence leaks reporting the number of Russian army units rendered “combat ineffective,” and visually-verified Russian equipment losses reported by Oryx, an open intelligence collective.

▪   “Russian Casualties in Ukraine,” Mediazona, accessed 19 Apr 2023: https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng

▪   “Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine,” Oryx, accessed 19 Apr 2023: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

▪   William M. Arkin, “Read the Leaked Secret Intelligence Documents on Ukraine and Vladimir Putin,” Newsweek, 16 Apr 2023: https://www.newsweek.com/2023/05/05/read-leaked-secret-intelligence-documents-ukraine-vladimir-putin-1794656.html

▪   Rob Lee, “Ukraine published documents reportedly from Russia’s 1st Tank Army showing its losses through   March 15,” Twitter, 16 May 2022: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1526164608238624769

▪   “Ukrainian Intelligence Reveals Massive Losses of Russian 1st Tank Army,” SOFREP (Special Operations Forces Report), 18 May 2022: https://sofrep.com/news/ukrainian-intelligence-reveals-massive-losses-of-russian-1st-tank-army/

3. As of 18 April 2023, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights records 8,534 confirmed civilian deaths in Ukraine. This number does not include those who are presently judged to be missing, nor does it cover most Russian controlled areas or areas of active combat. The true number is assumed to be much higher and will not be known with confidence until after the end of fighting. With these limits in mind, we adopt a mid-April 2023 estimate of 20,000 – which is lower than estimates made by Ukrainian government officials. To this number we should add indirect civilian fatalities, which often exceed the number of those deaths due to direct military action. Destruction of energy, water, transportation, and medical facilities rob civilian populations of essential services and supplies, leading to additional collateral deaths. A comprehensive study of wars from 1990 to 2017 shows that high-intensity warfare, such as that in Ukraine, can yield indirect civilian deaths in ratios as high as 1.8-to-1 direct combat deaths. On this basis we modestly assume an additional 20,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths for the war through mid-April 2023, yielding an estimate of 40,000 total civilian fatalities. This would include at least 10,000 fatalities in the areas of the Ukrainian pro-Russia rebel republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Notably, these estimates do not include those killed in the 2014-2022 Donbas civil war before the large-scale Feb 2022 Russian invasion. For this earlier phase of conflict the United Nations reports 3,400 direct civilian fatalities, 4,400 Ukrainian military and pro-Kyiv forces, and 6,500 Donbas rebel forces.

▪   “Ukraine: Civilian casualties as of 24:00, 17 Apr 2023,” Relief Web, accessed 18 Apr 2023: https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/ukraine-civilian-casualties-2400-17-april-2023-enruuk

▪   “Conflict-related civilian casualties in Ukraine,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 27 Jan 2022: https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf

▪   Mohammed Jawad, et al, “Estimating indirect mortality impacts of armed conflict in civilian populations: panel regression analyses of 193 countries, 1990–2017,” BMC Medicine, Volume 18 (2020): https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01708-5

4. “No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, US leak shows,” Washington Post, 12 Apr 2023: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/leaked-documents-ukraine-war/

5. Economic Contraction and Inflation

▪   “1 year on – The Global Impact of the War in Ukraine,” World Economic Forum, 02 Mar 2023: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/ukraine-crisis-food-energy-poverty/

▪   “Interim Economic Outlook warns of pervasive global economic slowdown,“ OECD, 26 Sep 2022: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/oecd-interim-economic-outlook-warns-of-pervasive-global-economic-slowdown.htm

▪   “Countering the Cost-of-living Crisis,” IMF, 02 Oct 2022: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2022/10/11/world-economic-outlook-october-2022

▪   “Global food prices in 2022 hit a record high amid drought and war” Associated Press, 07 Jan 0223: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/07/1147660525/global-food-prices-2022-record-high

6. Unemployment and Crime

▪   Adenuga Fabian Adekoya, “Youth Unemployment and Violent Crime: Evidence from Africa,” Journal of Academic Research in Economics, Vol 12 No 3 (Nov 2020): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347973524_Youth_unemployment_and_violent_crime_evidence_from_developing_countries_in_africa

▪   Duha T. Altindag, “Crime and Unemployment: Evidence from Europe,” Auburn University Department of Economics Working Paper Series, Oct 2011: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0144818811000652

▪   Steven Raphael and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, “Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime,”The Journal of Law and Economics Vol 44, No 1 (April 2001): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/320275

▪   Denis Fougère, Julien Pouget, and Francis Kramarz, “Youth Unemployment and Crime in France,” Journal of the European Economic Association Vol. 7, No. 5 (Sep., 2009): https://www.jstor.org/stable/40282795

7. Unemployment and Mortality

▪   Eric Hovee, “More Deaths from Unemployment than Covid?, EDH Blog, 09 May 2020: http://www.edhovee.com/edhblog/2020/5/6/more-deaths-from-unemployment-than-covid

▪   Magnus Johannesson and Ulf-G Gerdtham, “A note on the effect of unemployment on mortality,” Journal of Health Economics Vol 22, Issue 3 (May 2003): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629603000043

▪   M. Harvey Brenner and Anne Mooney, “Unemployment and health in the context of economic change,” Social Science & Medicine Volume 17, Issue 16 (1983): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0277953683900059

▪   Sebastian Doerr and Boris Hofmann, “Recessions and mortality: a global perspective,” Bank for International Settlements, Dec 2020: https://www.bis.org/publ/work910.pdf

8. Yuru Guan, et al, Burden of the global energy price crisis on households, Nature Energy, Vol 8 (16 Feb 2023) pages 304–316: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01209-8

9. “Russia is using energy as a weapon,” The Economist, 26 Nov 2022: https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2022/11/26/high-fuel-prices-could-kill-more-europeans-than-fighting-in-ukraine-has

10. “Mortality figures in December 2022 19% above the median of previous years,” Federal Statistics Office Germany, Press Release No. 012, 10 Jan 2023: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/01/PE22_012_126.html

11. “1 year on – The Global Impact of the War in Ukraine,” World Economic Forum, 02 Mar 2023: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/ukraine-crisis-food-energy-poverty/

12. “Global hunger is now more a problem of price than availability,” The Economist, 18 Nov 2022: https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2022/11/18/global-hunger-is-now-more-a-problem-of-price-than-availability

13. Hunger and Mortality

▪   “Humanitarian organizations estimate one person dying of hunger every four seconds,” Oxfam International, 20 Sep 2022: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/humanitarian-organizations-estimate-one-person-dying-hunger-every-four-seconds

▪   “Food Insecurity Is Associated with Chronic Disease among Low-Income Participants,” The Journal of Nutrition, 140(2) (Feb 2010): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2806885/

▪   “People who died from hunger in the world, this year,” The World Counts, accessed 08 Feb 2023: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year

14. “Response plans: Results from 2022,” Humanitarian Action, 30 Nov 2022: https://humanitarianaction.info/article/response-plans-results-2022

15. The “Aid Void”

▪   “Ukraine’s Shadow: Deadly Crises like Somalia Starved of Aid,” Associated Press, 06 July 2022: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-health-africa-droughts-middle-east-10788f0ff6a5d21bbe3a4ad7486bc4e9

▪   Tazreena Sajjad, “Generous Aid to Ukraine is Diverting Resources Away from Other Refugee Crises Around the World,” American University School of International Service, 04 Nov 2022:https://www.american.edu/sis/20221104-generous-aid-to-ukraine-is-diverting-resources-away-from-other-refugee-crises-around-the-world.cfm

▪   “Operations Inter-Agency Plans 2022,” Humanitarian Action, accessed 07 Apr 2023: https://humanitarianaction.info/overview/2022 (scroll down half-screen to view 2022 data)

▪   “Is Ukraine’s aid bonanza coming at the expense of other crises?” The New Humanitarian, 24 Mar 2022: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2022/03/24/ukraine-aid-funding-media-other-crises

16. Humanitarian Emergencies in Ethiopia and Somalia

▪   “Ethiopia Fact Sheet,” European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 28 Mar 2023: https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/where/africa/ethiopia_en

▪   “Somalia drought may have killed 43,000 in 2022, half under 5: UN,” Al Jazeera, 20 Mar 2023: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/20/somalia-drought-may-have-killed-43000-in-2022-half-under-5-un

17.  Impact on Foreign Aid

▪   “Foreign aid surges due to spending on refugees and aid for Ukraine.” OECD, 12 Apr 2023: https://www.oecd.org/dac/foreign-aid-surges-due-to-spending-on-refugees-and-aid-for-ukraine.htm

▪   “Why foreign aid isn’t as generous as the latest figures might suggest,” The New Humanitarian, 13 Apr 2023: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/maps-and-graphics/2023/04/13/foreign-aid-OECD-figures

▪   “ODA in 2022: Leaving the Most Marginalised Behind,” Bond, 13 Dec 2022: https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2022/12/oda-in-2022-leaving-the-most-marginalised-behind/

▪   “Response plans: Results from 2022,” Humanitarian Action, 30 Nov 2022: https://humanitarianaction.info/article/response-plans-results-2022

18. Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2022 equaled $204 billion with approximately $31.5 billion either going to Ukraine or spent internally by donor countries to support for Ukrainian refugees. Minus this amount, ODA declined. In 2022, humanitarian aid increased over the previous year, but solely due to ~$10 billion in aid to Ukraine. Non-Ukraine Official Development Assistance and humanitarian aid worldwide equaled just under $200 billion, which is somewhat less than all forms of aid (including military) lent Ukraine.

19. Estimates of combined US, Saudi, and Chinese aid to the Mujahideen range between $6–12 billion over a 13-year period. This might equate to $25 billion in 2021 USD – or less than $2 billion per year. The Kiel Institute “Ukraine Support Tracker” records about $175 billion in aid as of 1 March 2023. See:

▪   “Ukraine Support Tracker, A Database of Military, Financial and Humanitarian Aid to Ukraine,” Kiel Institute for the World Economy, accessed 20 Apr 2023: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

▪   Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. (New York: Penguin Group, 2005.)

▪   C.J. Dick, Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War, Conflict Studies Research Center (Camberley, Surrey UK: Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Jan 2002).

20. Cost of Ukrainian Reconstruction and Recovery

▪   “Updated Ukraine Recovery and Reconstruction Needs Assessment,” World Bank, 23 Mar 2023: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/03/23/updated-ukraine-recovery-and-reconstruction-needs-assessment

▪   “Ukraine – Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment – February 2022-2023,” World Bank, Mar 2023: https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099184503212328877/p1801740d1177f03c0ab180057556615497

21. “In Irpin, Ukrainians slowly rebuild their burned-out homes,” Politico.eu, 20 Aug 2022: https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-irpin-slowly-rebuild-their-burned-out-homes/

22. Pavel Luzin, “The Skyrocketing Costs for Russia’s War Effort,” Eurasia Daily Monitor Vol 20, Issue 8 (Jan 2023): https://jamestown.org/program/russias-skyrocketing-costs-for-war-effort/

23. “Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine,” Oryx, accessed 10 April 2023: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

24. Ukraine Wartime Economy

▪   “Ukraine’s GDP crashed by 29.1 percent in year of Russian invasion,” Politico.eu, 13 Apr 2023: https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-gdp-crashed-29-percent-2022-economy-russia-invasion/

▪   “Ukraine suffers biggest economic fall in independent era due to war,” Reuters, 05 Jan 2023: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/ukraines-economy-falls-304-2022-minister-2023-01-05/

▪   “Ukraine’s 2022 defence expenditure accounted for 32.5% of GDP,” Business Standard, 10 Jan 2023: https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/ukraine-s-2022-defence-expenditure-accounted-for-32-5-of-gdp-123011000521_1.html

25. “Ukraine Government Budget,” Trading Economics, accessed 8 April 2023: https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/government-budget

26. “Ukraine’s 2022 defence expenditure accounted for 32.5% of GDP,” Business Standard, 10 Jan 2023: https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/ukraine-s-2022-defence-expenditure-accounted-for-32-5-of-gdp-123011000521_1.html

27. State Budget 2022, Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, 03 Jan 2023: https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/derzhbiudzhet-2022-do-zahalnoho-fondu-nadiishlo-1491-trln-hryven

28. “World military expenditure passes $2 trillion for first time,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 25 Apr 2022: https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time

29. “The President’s Budget 2024 Historical Tables,” The White House, 09 Mar 2023, Table 5.2 – Budget Authority by Agency, 1976 – 2028: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/

30. “European defense spending no longer a laughing matter: 2023 Preview,” Breaking Defense, 29 Dec 2022: https://breakingdefense.com/2022/12/european-defense-spending-no-longer-a-laughing-matter-2023-preview/

© Copyright 2023 by the Project on Defense Alternatives. All rights reserved. Any material herein may be quoted without permission, with credit to PDA.

Project on Defense Alternatives – Cambridge MA & Washington, DC 20036 – Email: pda@comw.org

Principles for Building Confidence and Stability into National Defenses and International Security

…toward sufficient, affordable, robust, and reliable defense postures

by Charles Knight and Carl Conetta, 01 February 2021 (revised 15 March 2022.)

 

armed forces with stability and balance

 

Nations invest vast sums in armed forces,

But will these assets deliver on their promise to defend the nation against aggression reliably?

Will armed forces provide national defense without contributing to international tension, domestic instability, or economic distress?

These questions remind us that there is more than one way a defense posture can fail – and also that success has multiple dimensions and objectives.

 

Military Stabilization

Military stabilization requires an appropriate and affordable defense establishment and a sufficient, steadfast, and non-provocative defense posture.

Military structures must also avoid aggravating an existing or potential civil conflict. For countries that have experienced severe ethnic and political strife, the national security apparatus itself must not contribute to centrifugal forces.

Military functions and police functions must avoid politicization.  Police functions must not be militarized. The composition of forces should reflect the ethnic composition of the nation as closely as possible.

Full-time, part-time, national, and local forces should be thoroughly integrated and interdependent to ensure control by national civilian authorities even in times of great stress to political consent. Full-time troops should generally serve nationally, while more part-time troops may serve locally.

 

Appropriate Defense

An appropriate defense establishment is suitable for the particular society it serves. Accordingly, nations should be circumspect about the imitation of foreign military structures, preferring instead to build them according to national character and the skills of their people.

 

Affordable Defense

An affordable defense will achieve security within their existing resource and demographic constraints. To meet affordability criteria, nations that are confident of their own defensive intent can exploit the structural and operational efficiencies of a defensive orientation. These home-court advantages include the high morale of troops defending home territory, intimate knowledge of the terrain, shorter lines of supply and communication, and the opportunity to prepare the likely combat zones intensively.

The inherent efficiencies of a defensive orientation also make it easier to reconcile the confidence building defense criteria of sufficiency, steadfastness, and non-provocation.

 

Sufficiency

Sufficiency refers to how well a defense posture matches a threat matrix. The degree of “match” involves both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the threat(s).

A broad review of national objectives is crucial in providing a context for the measure of sufficiency. This process will help specify what is to be protected and set the level of defense or deterrence certainty that a nation wishes to attain. Once objectives are clear, it is possible (although by no means easy) to determine military sufficiency. Without such a process, it is impossible to assess sufficiency:  The resulting size and composition of defense forces will remain subject to political whim.

In some cases, states will discover that they cannot hope to afford the highest degree of deterrence with a transparent and assured capability to quickly and efficiently defeat any aggression. This is a common dilemma for many smaller states with larger and more powerful neighbors. However, lesser objectives may be within reach and desirable, for instance, the capacity to substantially raise the cost of any aggression and buy time for diplomatic pressure and supportive intervention from allies.

 

Steadfastness

steadfast posture combines the qualities of robustness and reliability. Although, in some sense, encompassed by the notion of sufficiency, “steadfastness” refers to intrinsic (that is, non-relational) aspects of a defense posture. “Integrity” and “cohesion” are approximate synonyms for steadfastness.

 Robustness refers to a defense array’s capacity to absorb shock and suffer losses without catastrophic collapse. Instead, the defense maintains a cohesive combat capability. Even when facing an overwhelming threat level, a robust defense force will degrade gracefully, buying time for re-grouping, mobilization of reserves, diplomatic intervention, or outside assistance.

As a general rule, a steadfast and robust military posture will not exhibit an over-reliance on concentrated forces and base areas which provide lucrative targets for an enemy. Nor will it depend on a narrow set of technologies that an enemy can counter through a dedicated innovation and acquisition program.

Reliability is the second aspect of steadfastness. It refers to the military’s capacity to perform as planned with high confidence across a wide variety of environmental circumstances. A reliable defense will avoid the security gamble of high-risk operational plans or dependence on immature or poorly integrated technologies.

Reliability is also a function of social relations in society at large, in the nation’s armed forces, and in its personnel’s motivation and training. A reliable military is motivated and ready to conscientiously serve the state in a role that is understood to be both important and limited.

 

Non-Provocation and Confidence Building

A defense posture is non-provocative if it:

  • embodies little or no capacity for large-scale or surprise cross-border attacks and
  • provides few, if any, high-value and vulnerable targets inviting an aggressor’s attack.

These guidelines pertain most strongly to the problem of crisis instability, those periods of rising political tension during which the fear of (and opportunity for) a preemptive attack may precipitate an otherwise avoidable military clash.  Beyond crises, a non-provocative posture will affect other nations’ perceptions of threat and, consequently, their defense preparations.

The non-provocation standard also addresses the security dilemma by reducing reliance on offensively-oriented military structures. In so doing, it aims to minimize the threat of aggression inherent in any organized armed force. Such threats often stimulate arms races and countervailing offensive doctrines. Moreover, by bringing military structures into line with defensive political goals, the non-provocation standard facilitates the emergence of trusting, cooperative, and ultimately peaceful political relations among nations.

In contrast, any doctrine and force posture oriented to project power into other countries is provocative unless reliably restrained by political and organizational structures.

The institutionalization of confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) can normalize the exchange between states of doctrinal and defense planning information and provide forums for assessing the regional impact of various national defense planning options. Confidence building defenses (CBD) include most types of CSBMs. While CSBMs emphasize communication and procedural matters, confidence building defense pays particular attention to military structures and doctrines and their effect on international confidence and national stability.

 

Implementation

Implementation of an effective confidence building defense must consider context, international relations, and a process of optimization.

Defense options that minimize interstate tension and distrust should be preferred. Planning must be sensitive to the provocative nature of many military options.

Even forces optimized for defense will retain considerable offensive capability on the tactical level. This offensive capability often represents a security threat for neighboring states and may have strategic significance, especially when extensive power asymmetries exist.

 

Optimization

The planning problems inherent in the simultaneous objectives of affordability, robustness, reliability, and non-provocation require thoughtful attention to optimization.

Optimization of the application of resources toward achieving objectives should be a goal of any institution. Accordingly, military development policies must consider their effect on the matrix of intra- and international social, political, and economic relations. Only then can military-technical considerations, such as the tactical performance of particular weapons platforms, be understood for what they are: a necessary but insufficient basis for policy optimization.

Weaponry, platform complexes, communications systems, and equipment for transport and field engineering are the principal instruments of military operations. In conditions of limited resources, choosing what combination of military instruments to acquire is critical. However, these decisions are complicated because there is no such thing as a defensive weapon, per se.  Every weapon can be used offensively or defensively.

The most effective indicator of military confidence-building is in a nation’s overall military posture, unit compositions, and the accompanying doctrine for employment. Consequently, civilian leadership must be familiar with and be able to articulate both aspects of a confidence-building defense.

~~

Adapted from Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Lutz Unterseher, Building Confidence into the Security of Southern Africa, PDA Briefing Report #7. Commonwealth Institute, 1996. https://www.comw.org/pda/sa-fin5.htm (accessed 17 January 2021)

 ~~

PDF version

Transactional diplomacy isn’t working with North Korea – relational diplomacy might

by Charles Knight, 19 February 2019.  A version of this article appeared in The National Interest on 19 February 2019.  This revised version was published on the PDA website on 3 February 2022.

During meetings in late 2017 with nearly two dozen regional security specialists in Northeast Asia, I asked whether North Korea was a de facto nuclear-weapon state. Their answer almost always was, “Of course!” Then, these interlocutors sometimes volunteered the advice that it would be wise for the United States to adapt its regional policy according to the new reality.

dprksoldiers Those conversations came to mind as I read Robert E. Kelly’s recent op-ed that argues maintaining the status quo with North Korea is “better than a bad deal.” Kelly claims that “the world can learn to adjust to a nuclearized North Korea.” I agree while noting that many countries in Northeast Asia have been making that adjustment for years now. It is no longer in the U.S. national interest to pursue policies premised on denying North Korea’s status as a de facto nuclear power.

Kelly writes: “North Korea will almost certainly insist on keeping most of its warheads.” Indeed, the notion is still prevalent in Washington that North Korea will agree to disarm unilaterally. However, North Korea has paid a dear price to obtain nuclear weaponry. Therefore, there is almost no chance it will agree to unilateral disarmament.

U.S. nuclear capability is already enormously superior to North Korea’s minimum deterrent. North Korea surely understands that. Therefore, there is reasonable assurance that the deterrence of North Korea will hold firm for decades to come.

Nevertheless, the United States, citing the threat of North Korean nukes, intends to enhance its northeast Asian nuclear and anti-missile posture. In turn, the North will likely build more bombs and missiles. As a result, the chance to limit their nuclear program in negotiations will eventually be lost.

Kelly concludes the article, saying, “Slow-but-steady, reciprocal, and verifiable concessions is still the best way forward.” I concur, but I propose an edit to his diplomatic guidance, thus: “Slow-but-steady, reciprocal, and verifiable steps toward a mutually-acceptable political future for Korea —  including relevant disarmament.”

What is the essential and significant difference in my re-write? The insertion of the phrase “steps toward a mutually-acceptable political future” is the key. I was introduced to this construction by the paper A Theory of Engagement with North Korea authored by Christopher C. Lawrence when he was a post-doc fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

In his paper, Lawrence seeks to move the discourse from one of transactional diplomacy with its talk of carrots and sticks and concessions to one of relational diplomacy wherein the first task is to discover and establish a mutually-acceptable and shared political goal. From there, the parties negotiate particular steps (especially ones that involve costly physical commitments) by which the parties move slowly and steadily toward the goal. The mutuality of the goal provides the incentive to cooperate. This is a more productive approach to diplomacy, especially in cases where parties must overcome low levels of trust and a long history of conflict.

Robert Kelly’s preferred alternative to war or a bad deal is the status quo which he describes as “containing and deterring, sanctioning and isolating North Korea.” Yes, this might be a better option than starting a counter-proliferation war in which millions are likely to die. However, the status quo is a failed approach to Korean conflict and tension; a failed policy that is at least partially responsible for North Korea becoming a small but real nuclear power.

Rather than continue to isolate North Korea, the new realities require America to bring nuclear North Korea into as close a relationship as possible—so that there are opportunities to influence the North in regards to responsibly and safely managing its nuclear weaponry. It is hard to imagine such trust between North Korea and the United States at this time, but the United States can encourage China to play a role in persuading North Korea.  Chinese and American interests align very closely regarding nuclear safety and restraint.

This is not the place to explore the fifty ways to build a constructive relationship with the North.  I will, instead, mention that one open way that sits in plain view. Our ally, the Republic of Korea, has actively built a better relationship with the North during the last year. The Panmunjeom Declaration of 2018 set out in general terms the aspirations of a shared North-South Korean mutually acceptable political future.

Reverting to the status quo of isolating the North is a remarkably uncreative response to the security dilemmas of the moment. Instead, the United States will strengthen its Korean alliance while opening many paths to an acceptable political future for Korea by fully supporting its ally in building out the aspirations for Korean peace found in the Panmunjom declaration.

~~

For a detailed description of how relational diplomacy can be employed to achieve a safe and effective conventional forces drawdown on the Korean Peninsula as part of a Korean peace process see Charles Knight, A Path to Reductions of Conventional Forces on the Korean Peninsula.  ➪ PDF.