the power of sunk costs

a fallacy living on in most conflicts

Annapolis began a second day of 2023 with another spectacular sunrise which is such a privilege to see. It is hard to overstate the beauty of this place where Spa Creek flows into the Severn River.

Things are far from pretty in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin’s war wears on. The attacks the Russian military is waging are classic attempts to undermine popular will. Nothing new about that nor Russia using it. The Ukraine assault is now in its eleventh month with no serious indication either side will acquiesce to the enemy’s demands.

Evidence is strong that Putin believed, regardless of advice to the contrary, that his forces would reach their ultimate objectives to eradicate the nation of Ukraine in fairly short order, probably less than a month. Instead, Vlodomir Zelenskyy’s patriotic fervour and gutsball decision to remain in Kyiv, his public appeals abroad and spread among his population, and the military’s applying years’ capacity-building following Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea proved a mightier foe than the underprepared Russians expected. We would be foolish to assume Russia could not ultimately triumph but things certainly look more like a bloody, disastrous stalemate for the Russian authoritarian and his Ukrainian adversaries, possibly an extended one.

Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people fight an existential struggle every hour since Putin made clear in several statements that he rejects the nation’s premise as a sovereign entity. Russia’s—and Putin’s—decision is a war of choice, albeit one apparently built on will alone.

I came across a quote today that made me think of Putin’s apparent motivation. “The wealthier Slavs maintained the ‘illusion of keeping their blood pure’, held the Khanty and their culture in contempt…’ (James Belich, The World the Plague Made [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022: 363). No doubt Putin holds Ukraine, its democracy, its elected officials and those he is bombarding relentlessly in contempt. Belich was describing Russian views in the 1460s, however. Something have not changed.

How much of Putin’s determination at this point is based on carrying on because he has sunk so much into this conflict? Sunk costs so often become a rationale for a leader or a nation continuing its efforts. The United States, in two painful experiences over the past half century, certainly invoked the idea that we could not walk away from the blood and treasure expended in Southeast Asia between roughly 1960 and 1975 or Afghanistan over the years following the invasion in 2001 in retribution for the 9/11 attacks. In both cases, as the conflicts continued to take lives and public opinion waned in supporting the objectives, many voices argued forcefully that we had already expended so much that we could not stop without the ultimate victories we knew were possible. The argument of how much we had spent in dollars or lives continued to become a reason to say, an end in and of itself.

Those same arguments likely surfaced inside the Kremlin and the Soviet military as their Afghanistan war dragged on in the 1980s. That nasty conflict certainly was a contributing factor to the end of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 after what paltry support for any sense of a nation united in its objectives crashed into the reality of a drug-bedeviled and broken military which undermined its very utility, even as sunk costs had accumulated over that decade long fight.

Authoritarian regimes are less sensitive to public discussion of sunk costs or anything else since they use force to stiffle criticisms but they often don’t answer the question of whether the costs are worth expending even more national treasure. Ultimately, regimes must confront the question that they often least want to hear: does achieving the end justify the ways and means necessary?

The answer, particularly for a weak regime fearful of showing chinks in its armour, is frequently absolutely yes even if the regime ultimately does not meet success. Occasionally, as happened in the United States in the two cases cited, the decision evolves to say no, the expenditures do not merit the methods or costs involved. Democracies do tend to air these questions out ultimately but it may take years.

Putin does not strike me as near that stage to confront this question yet even if others are growing dubious within Russia. The reason it matters so particularly here is that Putin could decide the sun costs justify using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This would not only break a taboo in place for almost 80 years (since we last used two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945) but it would also be an utterly horrible step for everyone around the world. The decisions this would set off and the heinous effects of the weapons themselves would be just the start of an escalation we have never faced.

This all should make us watch and worry. Nothing about this is a given except that the conflict is a daily fight for survival for many people and norms. Some days Putin’s war is a catastrophe we cannot ignore while others it is an inspiring contemporary commitment to national pride, guts, and the ultimate will. It all bears witnessing. FIN