Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
14d ago
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Transnational Thursday for November 7, 2024
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Notes -
I see a lot of discussion here about Ukraine and the future of the conflict, touching on the different parties' interests, positions, negotiating leverage, etc. I'll admit that I often just skim them and don't dive in, but from what I've seen, I don't think there's a lot of discussion of the Center for American Security1 plan. I only mention it because it came up in another recent William Spaniel video, post-election. For those who don't know, William Spaniel is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on the game theory of interstate conflict/bargaining, and he also has a relatively prolific youtube channel. I've been watching it for a while, well before the war stuff mostly took over, just interested in his game theory videos and how to apply that lens to thinking about war. In any event, he doesn't seem to be pro-Trump at all; I'd say he's somewhat anti-Trump, but definitely not rabidly so.
In the linked video, he talks about the developments in Ukraine over the last few months, saying that it is rather plausible to believe that both the Kursk offensive and the recent Russian acceleration could be chalked up to the possibility of an incoming Trump administration, which has stated that it wants to end the war posthaste. Of course, the typical response to the Trump administration's stated goal is that things don't happen just because
Prime MinstersPresidents are very keen on it. Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace (also). And then, depending on the valence of the speaker, they usually assume that this means that Trump will have to throw America's lot in with the Russians, stop supporting Ukraine, and force them to acquiesce to a peace deal. However, Spaniel points out that if this CFAS plan is the route Trump chooses to go, he does have other tools in the toolbox.My summary of his summary is that Trump can essentially pick any resolution that is at least plausibly in the middle and then use the stick on both sides. If Ukraine doesn't agree to whatever Trump has decreed, then Trump will drop military support for Ukraine. If Russia doesn't agree to whatever Trump has decreed, then Trump will flood Ukraine with even more and better weapons. It's like an attempt to make a reverse prisoners' dilemma. It's not immediately clear how to think through all the plausible negotiating developments, especially Russia's possible options for escalation, and one would have to be somewhat steeped in Spaniel's lines on maps lore to really feel how intuitively plausible it is, but suffice to say that Spaniel, himself, mostly treats it as though, from a mathematical standpoint, it's really plausible enough that he didn't even really go into any caveats (at least in this video) about the difficulties that might arise in the negotiation. He almost treated as though Trump really could simply declare what the resolution will be (so long as it's sufficiently in some range), and the dual threat of America's mighty power (or lack thereof) really could simply make it so (likely modulo a minor amount of horsetrading). It's in that context that he describes the theory of why such a plan, and the prior probability of Trump winning the election, could have played a role in the two sides' strategies over the last few months.
What says The Motte? Is he giving the idea too much credence? Has he missed something? Why hasn't this sort of plan already happened?2 If it does happen, what sort of video will Spaniel be making in a few months after it's done? Will he be talking about what types of commitments will need to be made to "keep it so"? What would those look like?
1 - Part of the "America First Policy Initiative" think tank, if such a term can be applied; not to be confused with the Center for New American Security
2 - I can think of a few theories... perhaps a divided Congress prevented the dual threats from being credible; perhaps only
NixonTrump can go toChinaRussia and credibly threaten to really turn up the heat; perhaps Russia does have plausible escalation strategies to defang the threat...This makes a lot of sense to me, particularly on the Ukraine side. On the Russian side, I'm not so sure, and in particularly I'm not so sure that both sides will share an understanding of what is a reasonable compromise.
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