I don't think it's as much 'sanctions aren't working' as it takes time for sanctions to have most of their impacts. There's even grace periods on a lot of it. Long term, it's going to hurt, but also we didn't 'fully' sanction especially the gas, and the gas is rather central.
The other problem is if China/India/etc are willing to circumvent them and to what extent. Long term, I don't think Russia can reasonably replace what it is losing under the sanctions regime without direct Chinese aid at best. It's worth noting how much of what's being used is Soviet era.
Democratically elected governments always tax/restrict supply and subsidize demand. This has the predictable effect of creating shortages.
Housing, healthcare, fuel, food, education, etc etc.
Voters want carrots for consumers and sticks for producers. If this policy approach makes the problem worse, the voters respond with "do it harder". Education is expensive? Are we gonna encourage more new colleges or for colleges to take in new students, nope, student loan forgiveness. Healthcare costs a lot? Are we gonna loosen the restrictions on building new hospitals or training new doctors, nope, free universal healthcare.
Once you notice the pattern you see it everywhere, and it is maddening.
I mean it is often the practice, but not always, so one could ask what causes it to happen in some places and not others. And also how to stop it, or turn it around - if it keeps happening then we need a better way to do something about it.
It is what democratic voters often want, so the issue is their attention spans. Where they stop paying attention governments don't always engage in this pro-shortages policy.
Over at Slow Boring there was the idea to first empty the strategic reserve now. This would increase the immediate supply but was not the primary benefit.
What's really important is that the reserve could come up with public formulas for buying up oil to refill it, so sudden supply shocks (like Russia or OPEC does, purposefully, to mess up American producers by making the future impossible to predict) don't happen any more.
You section on victory conditions lacks tie as a possible outcome, which feels like a significant omission. Many wars ended in ties. E.g. War of 1812, or the war between Iraq and Iran in the 80s.
I thought about this and decided it basically can't tie because a tie goes to Ukraine. What you're thinking of is a White Peace where they restore the status quo ante, but that's clearly a Major Ukrainian Victory.
Oh, I agree that return to prewar status quo would count as an Ukrainian victory. In that case Russia would suffer huge hit for nothing, while Ukrainian standing on international stage would be massively improved. But what you characterize as minor Ukrainian victory should count as a tie. Imho most Ukrainians would not feel victorious if they would not get any territory back and surrendered their NATO aspirations.
And there are other scenarios which imho should count as a tie - e.g. Ukraine cedes substantial territory, under which it had de facto control pre-war, to Russia, but gets Russian assent to pursue EU and NATO membership. Or on the contrary, Ukraine gets back Donbass, but agrees to non-aligment status as defined in your conditions for minor Russian victory.
I can see the argument for that being a tie, and I agree victory often doesn't seem like victory. Still think that 'Ukraine survives essentially intact' should count as a win in the grand scheme.
I feel like the closest you can get to a true tie which isn't a white peace is something like a mix between post-1954 Korean conflict and the global war on terror, with a largely static front, behind-lines partisans on one or both sides, and nothing in particular happening militarily for a very long time. No official ceasefire, both countries still officially at war, and there being an area comparable to the DMZ where the presence of anyone there is taken by one or both sides as a cause for summary execution with the risk of re-ignition of a hot war if anyone complains.
The bit about a settlement being at-best months away is a bit alarming. The duration (and death tolls) for wars are approximately power-law distributed. For each passing day the prior we should have for the total duration of the war should increase by more than a day. For each death, our prior on the total number of deaths should rise by more than 1. If ordinary bureaucratic muckery means that we can't expect the war to be over in less than ~3-6 months from now in a best-case scenario, that makes it much more likely that the war will drag on for years.
And, of course, that in turn raises the number of chances for something stupid to happen which causes the war to go nuclear and/or NATO to get involved. If there's no way for the war to end in the next few weeks, the odds of it lasting for years and, accordingly, for it to become WWIII, go way up.
Of course, that's just the prior and "the negotiations are going very well and the fighting is settling down" could overcome our prior expectation for the war's duration, but still, that was very disheartening to learn.
That is the general default as I understand it, but one could think of the war as having several phases. Phase one, the attempted fast war, is now over, and we're going to get a more static situation where Russia focuses on the east. This could turn into a larger version of the 2014-22 semi-hot war in Donbas if neither side has much ability to make more progress.
"This raises the central question about China. To what extent is Xi’s and/or the Party’s and/or China’s view that the world is essentially zero sum? I don’t know."
I don't see this as obviously saying what you think it says? As in, there can be an Ideological zero-sum component, where there is a struggle of autocracy vs. democracy, but that is insufficient for what we are worried about here if it is only one component and general prosperity is positive sum - it doesn't imply that China+co would happily take an X% hit to give America+co a (X+Y)% hit.
Oh yes, you're right about that and I misunderstood the question. I believe that the CCP would, in the abstract, take a X% hit to give a (X+Y%) hit, but it's subject to too many constraints in the real world. And this view can't be directly supported by sourced evidence since they are not really going to put that on the record.
You've elegantly compiled outcomes into a single victory track.
Gentle nudge to decompile back into a small number of independent tracks, maybe one for leadership, one for territory, one for money. Once you've written off "total victory" then the outcomes on these tracks are only loosely correlated.
Territory
- Donbas control
- Odesa
- Kyiv
...
- Consolidate by making a list of the most important cities and asking what percentage controlled by either side by [date].
- Military operations expand to other territories [Baltics, Suwalki Gap; Belarus, Russia] [I worried about this a few weeks ago, now rate it as very low that Putin believes adding a new front would solve any of his problems.]
Money
- Russia under "significant" sanctions from the US in 2024. [US sanctions are a ratchet, the prior should be very high here.]
- EU eases sanctions before 2024. [Much more likely, though still contingent on resolution within 2 years. What's the average length of a Russian war?]
Leadership outcomes (most complicated set of independent outcomes):
- Putin President of Russia January 2024
- Putin President of Russia July 2024
- Zelenskyy President of Ukraine Jan 2024
- Zelenskyy President of Russia July 2024 (ok ok just having fun)
- Ukrainian nationalist government in exile
- Zelenskyy alive + free
- Putin a+f
- Navalny a+f (proxy for how much Moscow changed, even if Putin leaves office, though I expect p(ouster) already quite low)
Separate and maybe most important from the above, war resolved by [date]. We might not have final answers to the above for a long time.
I considered trying to do a points system of various war terms but decided that it wasn't worth the complexity cost. Zelenskyy being named is an issue because of the risk he might die - Putin is different but if he's gone then that should be reflected in other terms.
But basically, if Ukraine gives over its government, Russia wins, and anything short of that on the government track is cheap talk, so it seems to me like it lined up.
On the sanctions I do think distinct questions on this make sense, and there aren't enough long-dated questions being asked yet, but long-dated such questions are very hard to ask in prediction markets.
Risk of death and long term questions, both important restrictions, great points.
Ukraine giving up its government, a bunch of things shake out from that. Doesn't strike me as the tipping point question, but it is probably the most salient one, maybe that's most important.
I'd put "territorial concessions" as the centerline, but open to radical updates.
Duration is the most tricky for me. A sudden agreement next week or a 10 year war both seem kind of plausible. Or Moscow leaving for a couple years then coming back. I'm trying to work backwards from a distribution for duration, then maybe I can get outcomes from that? Quick resolution favors Kyiv... but even on that I'm only like 60% sure. (I don't endorse this line of reasoning it hasn't been very effective.)
I think 'coming back' only happens if Russia gets real disarmament. Otherwise, Ukraine is going to be in Wu-Tang Clan territory of things not to **** with.
How to interpret the exact borders is the central question now I think.
Given how destitute individual soldiers are we should be offering lots more money for Russians to turn over equipment.
And you share my despair at how unserious people seem to be about getting off Russian gas. "Well, that would be hard," as if that's all the explanation needed for not trying.
I don't think it's as much 'sanctions aren't working' as it takes time for sanctions to have most of their impacts. There's even grace periods on a lot of it. Long term, it's going to hurt, but also we didn't 'fully' sanction especially the gas, and the gas is rather central.
The other problem is if China/India/etc are willing to circumvent them and to what extent. Long term, I don't think Russia can reasonably replace what it is losing under the sanctions regime without direct Chinese aid at best. It's worth noting how much of what's being used is Soviet era.
Democratically elected governments always tax/restrict supply and subsidize demand. This has the predictable effect of creating shortages.
Housing, healthcare, fuel, food, education, etc etc.
Voters want carrots for consumers and sticks for producers. If this policy approach makes the problem worse, the voters respond with "do it harder". Education is expensive? Are we gonna encourage more new colleges or for colleges to take in new students, nope, student loan forgiveness. Healthcare costs a lot? Are we gonna loosen the restrictions on building new hospitals or training new doctors, nope, free universal healthcare.
Once you notice the pattern you see it everywhere, and it is maddening.
I mean it is often the practice, but not always, so one could ask what causes it to happen in some places and not others. And also how to stop it, or turn it around - if it keeps happening then we need a better way to do something about it.
It is what democratic voters often want, so the issue is their attention spans. Where they stop paying attention governments don't always engage in this pro-shortages policy.
Private equity in oil and gas got absolutely massacred. I wouldn't expect any new york finance guys flying to midland anytime soon.
Over at Slow Boring there was the idea to first empty the strategic reserve now. This would increase the immediate supply but was not the primary benefit.
What's really important is that the reserve could come up with public formulas for buying up oil to refill it, so sudden supply shocks (like Russia or OPEC does, purposefully, to mess up American producers by making the future impossible to predict) don't happen any more.
You section on victory conditions lacks tie as a possible outcome, which feels like a significant omission. Many wars ended in ties. E.g. War of 1812, or the war between Iraq and Iran in the 80s.
I thought about this and decided it basically can't tie because a tie goes to Ukraine. What you're thinking of is a White Peace where they restore the status quo ante, but that's clearly a Major Ukrainian Victory.
Oh, I agree that return to prewar status quo would count as an Ukrainian victory. In that case Russia would suffer huge hit for nothing, while Ukrainian standing on international stage would be massively improved. But what you characterize as minor Ukrainian victory should count as a tie. Imho most Ukrainians would not feel victorious if they would not get any territory back and surrendered their NATO aspirations.
And there are other scenarios which imho should count as a tie - e.g. Ukraine cedes substantial territory, under which it had de facto control pre-war, to Russia, but gets Russian assent to pursue EU and NATO membership. Or on the contrary, Ukraine gets back Donbass, but agrees to non-aligment status as defined in your conditions for minor Russian victory.
I can see the argument for that being a tie, and I agree victory often doesn't seem like victory. Still think that 'Ukraine survives essentially intact' should count as a win in the grand scheme.
I feel like the closest you can get to a true tie which isn't a white peace is something like a mix between post-1954 Korean conflict and the global war on terror, with a largely static front, behind-lines partisans on one or both sides, and nothing in particular happening militarily for a very long time. No official ceasefire, both countries still officially at war, and there being an area comparable to the DMZ where the presence of anyone there is taken by one or both sides as a cause for summary execution with the risk of re-ignition of a hot war if anyone complains.
The bit about a settlement being at-best months away is a bit alarming. The duration (and death tolls) for wars are approximately power-law distributed. For each passing day the prior we should have for the total duration of the war should increase by more than a day. For each death, our prior on the total number of deaths should rise by more than 1. If ordinary bureaucratic muckery means that we can't expect the war to be over in less than ~3-6 months from now in a best-case scenario, that makes it much more likely that the war will drag on for years.
And, of course, that in turn raises the number of chances for something stupid to happen which causes the war to go nuclear and/or NATO to get involved. If there's no way for the war to end in the next few weeks, the odds of it lasting for years and, accordingly, for it to become WWIII, go way up.
Of course, that's just the prior and "the negotiations are going very well and the fighting is settling down" could overcome our prior expectation for the war's duration, but still, that was very disheartening to learn.
That is the general default as I understand it, but one could think of the war as having several phases. Phase one, the attempted fast war, is now over, and we're going to get a more static situation where Russia focuses on the east. This could turn into a larger version of the 2014-22 semi-hot war in Donbas if neither side has much ability to make more progress.
"This raises the central question about China. To what extent is Xi’s and/or the Party’s and/or China’s view that the world is essentially zero sum? I don’t know."
I know this one! The answer is "yep, all of this"
Here's an article from a decade ago *before* the hardline turn: https://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation
I don't see this as obviously saying what you think it says? As in, there can be an Ideological zero-sum component, where there is a struggle of autocracy vs. democracy, but that is insufficient for what we are worried about here if it is only one component and general prosperity is positive sum - it doesn't imply that China+co would happily take an X% hit to give America+co a (X+Y)% hit.
Oh yes, you're right about that and I misunderstood the question. I believe that the CCP would, in the abstract, take a X% hit to give a (X+Y%) hit, but it's subject to too many constraints in the real world. And this view can't be directly supported by sourced evidence since they are not really going to put that on the record.
You've elegantly compiled outcomes into a single victory track.
Gentle nudge to decompile back into a small number of independent tracks, maybe one for leadership, one for territory, one for money. Once you've written off "total victory" then the outcomes on these tracks are only loosely correlated.
Territory
- Donbas control
- Odesa
- Kyiv
...
- Consolidate by making a list of the most important cities and asking what percentage controlled by either side by [date].
- Military operations expand to other territories [Baltics, Suwalki Gap; Belarus, Russia] [I worried about this a few weeks ago, now rate it as very low that Putin believes adding a new front would solve any of his problems.]
Money
- Russia under "significant" sanctions from the US in 2024. [US sanctions are a ratchet, the prior should be very high here.]
- EU eases sanctions before 2024. [Much more likely, though still contingent on resolution within 2 years. What's the average length of a Russian war?]
Leadership outcomes (most complicated set of independent outcomes):
- Putin President of Russia January 2024
- Putin President of Russia July 2024
- Zelenskyy President of Ukraine Jan 2024
- Zelenskyy President of Russia July 2024 (ok ok just having fun)
- Ukrainian nationalist government in exile
- Zelenskyy alive + free
- Putin a+f
- Navalny a+f (proxy for how much Moscow changed, even if Putin leaves office, though I expect p(ouster) already quite low)
Separate and maybe most important from the above, war resolved by [date]. We might not have final answers to the above for a long time.
I considered trying to do a points system of various war terms but decided that it wasn't worth the complexity cost. Zelenskyy being named is an issue because of the risk he might die - Putin is different but if he's gone then that should be reflected in other terms.
But basically, if Ukraine gives over its government, Russia wins, and anything short of that on the government track is cheap talk, so it seems to me like it lined up.
On the sanctions I do think distinct questions on this make sense, and there aren't enough long-dated questions being asked yet, but long-dated such questions are very hard to ask in prediction markets.
Risk of death and long term questions, both important restrictions, great points.
Ukraine giving up its government, a bunch of things shake out from that. Doesn't strike me as the tipping point question, but it is probably the most salient one, maybe that's most important.
I'd put "territorial concessions" as the centerline, but open to radical updates.
Duration is the most tricky for me. A sudden agreement next week or a 10 year war both seem kind of plausible. Or Moscow leaving for a couple years then coming back. I'm trying to work backwards from a distribution for duration, then maybe I can get outcomes from that? Quick resolution favors Kyiv... but even on that I'm only like 60% sure. (I don't endorse this line of reasoning it hasn't been very effective.)
I think 'coming back' only happens if Russia gets real disarmament. Otherwise, Ukraine is going to be in Wu-Tang Clan territory of things not to **** with.
How to interpret the exact borders is the central question now I think.
> Wu-Tang Clan territory
Ha. Fair, I'm maybe overindexing on Chechnya.
Any predictive model probably needs a coefficient of rationality for Putin.
At ~0.0, Putin plans to nuke Poland.
At ~1.0, sending in inexperienced troops with weak air support was part of a 5d chess master plan.
I think we're at 0.85 or so, with some chance of Moscow groupthink or bureaucratic fog of war driving bad decisions.
But we're certainly not at 0.1. Irrational moves are possible, but should be considered prima facie less likely, you're right.
Given how destitute individual soldiers are we should be offering lots more money for Russians to turn over equipment.
And you share my despair at how unserious people seem to be about getting off Russian gas. "Well, that would be hard," as if that's all the explanation needed for not trying.
Yep, definitely.