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To help members optimize opportunities and reduce risk, OODA hosts a monthly video call to discuss items of common interest to our membership. These highly collaborative sessions are always a great way for our members to meet and interact with each other while talking about topics like global risks, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, and current or future events impacting their organizations. We also use these sessions to help better focus our research and better understand member needs.
To encourage openness of discussion, these sessions take place with Chatham House rules, where participants are free to use the information in the meeting but are asked not to directly quote or identify other participants (we also keep privacy in mind when preparing summaries of these sessions, like the one that follows).
The March call was held on Friday, March 18th, and was organized around five scenarios for the end of the war in Ukraine based on a formative draft of the scenarios ( see Scenarios for War’s End WORKING DRAFT for March Member Meeting 031822).
The five scenarios presented for discussion were:
Following the monthly meeting, OODA CTO Bob Gourley provided this analysis:
https://oodaloop.com/archive/2022/03/29/for-corporate-strategic-planners-five-scenarios-for-wars-end/https://oodaloop.com/archive/2022/03/29/for-corporate-strategic-planners-five-scenarios-for-wars-end/
Topics of discussion on the March monthly call were:
Timeframe of the “End’ of the War? When we say the war ends, do we mean the conventional military maneuvers? Are we not counting on or discounting or not considering an insurgency? What is the endpoint of the war? NOTE: Push back and creative framing of the length and ‘endpoint’ of the war come up throughout the discussion in a variety of different context
A Win/Lose Dichotomy and a Win/Lose Strategic Calculus? What does it mean to win in this context? There may not be any winners here. Any scenario that lasts longer than six months – there is no true winner in that scenario. The longer this stretches on using the word win is probably not the best framing. in contrast: As military professionals, strategic professionals, intelligence professionals, we have to be able to call winners and lose, right? There are a lot of costs in winning and in losing and we have a long-standing understanding of these things.
When we talk about winning and losing there are difficult definitions that are kind of counterintuitive. If we think that Russia wins by getting a fractional amount of the geography of Ukraine I guess you could call that a victory. If the fighting doesn’t stop and they become bogged down in a really ugly urban counterinsurgency, winning is much more of a challenge. As for Ukraine, even if Ukraine prevails – given in the pain that they have endured already and the physical and the emotional strain, and the number of fatalities that they’ve already suffered. Does that feel like a win? Winning is pretty terrible for them too.
Do we frame winning or losing not so much in the context of if there is still ongoing conflict in Ukraine in the next six months, but does it escalate beyond that or not? What does it mean if the conflict escalates – or if we are able to constrain it to just the conflict in Ukraine?
Has Russia Already Lost? Regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, given the separation from the global economy and the long-term impact, has Russia already lost?
Conflict as an Infinite Game: Conflict never stops. It never has. War is generally bounded in that that there is a victor in the war, a winner or a loser, at least in the set period of time. In the scenarios we construct here, we can construct some that say there will be a declared winner and a declared loser – or it will be such a mode conflict that never stops. We need to be able to plan for the future. And that is the role the scenarios play in this discussion. Conversely, is this notion of conflict a western view? And is it at odds with the Chinese views on unrestricted warfare?
The Fifth Scenario Already Exists: As members noted: “Look at what labels are being peeled off weapons in Europe and being sent to Ukraine. The war has already expanded – even if they’re not doing so with attribution. We are talking about Ukraine wins versus Russia wins. I would say Europe wins versus Russia wins. Ukraine is just the place in which this is playing itself out. This war has already expanded. We are already dealing with questions at a level we haven’t in a very long time: about the legal boundaries under international law; the degree to which arms support versus arm sales are being conducted, particularly in the offensive cyber realm and with certain unique strategic capabilities. Questions of Intel provision are a daily matter. How far does it go? If you’re not picking targets then, as the argument goes, you are not a combatant if you are not involved in targeting? Perhaps that is crossing the line – but at what point is foreign fighter provisions that are not being adequately controlled by certain states, also cross the line?”
Does Putin Win or Lose? Is that the more interesting question? Russia, relations with Russia in an uninterrupted Putin regime or a post-Putin regime, and what does that look like? A network member offered the following: “From the perspective of the West if you play the long game, the best thing that can happen is for PUTIN to win because he gets bogged down in that fight. And it’s not a true victory because he has woken up a slumbering NATO, because he has exposed that his military isn’t even capable of defeating an enemy like Ukraine. And because he has made his country into an international pariah. He won’t be invited to any future international relations conferences. He will be crippled economically; businesses are bailing. There is a brain drain out of Russia – and nobody is going to come back. I know that’s not a yes or no answer on who wins, but I think it’s more complicated than that.”
Has Putin Already Won? “From one perspective, if Putin wanted to show that he is not afraid to take on the world and is able to pummel someone to the ground no matter what, then is that a win for him? Has he won because he has shown that he does care about the money but we care about the money? He has emboldened people around the world, he has emboldened Iran. It has emboldened North Korea. This is a global conflict. When Afghanistan fell, we said on this call as early as October that Afghanistan would embolden Russia and China and sure enough, it has – they took a swing on it,” observed a member on the call.
Putin’s Core Premise: Putin’s premise for this war was that Ukraine is an inseparable part of Russia. If he wins, what does he want? He has now won a place that he has turned into rubble and the people are gonna have a visceral hatred for him. In response to this point in the discussion, a member offered: “But I’m saying we care, we care about what people feel. He doesn’t care.”
Putin’s Long-Term Fate: Are we trying to apply a World War II lens to conflict? From the perspective of the West, this is not going to end until Putin is taken out. Europe has become unified in ways like never before, especially on this point. If things stop kinetically, or if Ukraine is now occupied and we’re talking about insurgency on a level never before imagined, then a gray zone conflict is here to stay.
Putin is a Gambler: Every time he plays a card if there’s weakness, he pushes, if it’s risky, he doubles down because he’s looking for greater levels of success. We have you have to take into account his propensity for risk and ask: What are his war aims? What does he actually seek to achieve? How much of Ukraine does he carve up from the first opening hours of the invasion? When he plays additional cards, the question then becomes: how are is he willing to go to fracture the NATO Alliance?
Putin is a Terrorist: From the narrow lens of counter-terrorism, Putin is doing what any terrorist does. He kills somebody publicly to re-establish himself. Now China is going to do it in Taiwan in front of all of us. In this context, we talk about sanctions – you can’t get Netflix anymore, and you can’t get Starbucks – and none of these considerations matter from a counterterrorism/brute force perspective.
The Great Leader Theory of History: A network member chimed in with the following interesting analysis” “I have my own feelings on the particular pathologies of Putin, so I see it more as a general critique of the great leader theory versus some of the structural incentives that we are now seeing. If we’re getting down into hardcore leadership analysis: I don’t know how well he is. It is a big unknown: mental health and physical health. On the other hand: there is the degree to which the adversary has assessed that our current POTUS is unfit – or incapable for medical reasons – becomes a huge question because, whether that is a real thing or not, their belief around it is driving some of their actions.”
Rebuilding the Soviet Empire or Imperial Russia: Is this mostly about him rebuilding the old Soviet empire? He has said often: “The greatest geopolitical blunder of our time was the disillusion of the Soviet Union.”
A network member introduced to the discussion how vital it is that we question our own assumptions – and how those assumptions fuel our foundational narratives:
“I think we are making an assumption about Europe coming together. That’s also very post-cold war thinking. I don’t think we have any idea what Europe looks like when it gets cold This winter natural gas is hard to find and oil is hard to find and people are mad that Germany turned off their nuclear power plants and that the green party literally broke some things inside the plants – making it harder to bring them online. There are a lot of factors that make the populations in these countries perhaps not as aligned as we feel they are at this moment. And our own population as well. We need to be really thoughtful about what this means for us – believing that governments run the world – and we know that is simply not true in the way it was during the Cold War.
Imposing Narratives: “This idea of us believing the narratives that we have constructed (of good and bad, and the choices that we’ve constructed that are on the table through our lens) and placing those narratives onto other people. I was actually in a conversation where some Americans were very high-level people in defense, we’re talking about American values. And I asked some of the interns in the room, what do you think American values are? And there was a shock between the generations that the values were fundamentally different from what was named by each generation. so we have this problem in our own country between generations. And we have this in spades with imposing our narratives on China and Russia.
This discussion of faulty, dated, or falsified narratives being imposed on other stakeholders transitioned to the longer-term impacts on the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency (with even longer-term strategic impact for the U.S. than just this current regional conflict):
“I think there’s nothing they would like more than to see us revoke our reserve currency status, which radically alters the playing field of free markets and our total ideological belief in capitalism working. And the point that was made about Putin not caring about the money or not caring about some of these things that we care about – and willing to take unimaginable pain to achieve something fundamentally different – suggests that we need to question our foundational narratives that we’re placing on other people in a lot more places in our strategy, the global reserve currency status of the dollar being a glaring one.”
Why Just One Reserve Currency? “There is a very strong belief about a single reserve currency, but a single reserve currency is pretty new in the history of the world. We have not always had a reserve currency. We are moving into a deeply multipolar world. And many people agree with that. If you believe we’re going into a messy multipolar future – why do you believe in a single reserve currency, rather than “alliance reserve currencies” as a solid clear future?” If we question these assumptions that they care about the money, or they care about the structure of the world that we care about or they care about things that we assume are important – if we question those assumptions, there just maybe another future they’re okay with that hurts us more than them, because we care more about this particular future. The certainty with which we determine a single reserve currency as a solid clear future is one that I question.”
If Not the Dollar, Then What? Countries say they want to consider something other than the dollar. If not the U.S. dollar, then what? We should recognize the dollar is threatened because people are looking for alternatives. At the same time, the dollar is currently okay because there is no viable alternative. We should not assume that it will always remain the case, but it’s sort of this interesting sort of push-pull moment that, that people want something other than the dollar, but they don’t know where to go yet. That doesn’t mean 12 months from now. Something more viable does not present itself.
The Metaverse in this Context: With the growth of the metaverse, the coin of the realm is going to be some form of digital currency. For further context on this issue, see:
A U.S. Centralized Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)? Will there be a USCBDC? For further contexts, see the following OODA Loop research and analysis:
What is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Digital Currency? What are the other things that you’d have to do where you’d be okay with a plurality of currencies, as opposed to one currency tied to a nation?
What is Money? Is it simply what enough people believe in?
The Current Flow: Network members offered some immediate impacts of the conflict in Ukraine on the flow and value of money and crypto globally: “Bitcoin is the only thing we’re seeing moving. It’s all going to Dubai. The cash-out percentage is someone’s making a tremendous amount of money on that arbitrage in Dubai. But it’s worth it for the players that are able to do that. The hardest currency in Russia right now are the ODA portfolios that a series of very high-end skilled actors have been sitting on – that are suddenly up for grabs in a way they’ve never been before as long as you can supply them with a Swiss bank account and a ticket out of the country. We are in a very fasting time with some folks with access to nukes again – and no ability to pay for their electricity or keep their electricity on or pay for bread. We are in a really bad place in Russia right now, and I don’t think they care as much about Ethereum as they care about how do I get my hands on something that gets me out. In Pakistani, there are massive investments in crypto that were made. Two possible theories may actually be linked. One: Apparently, the government is considering a possible ban on cryptocurrency. So, of course, right before the ban everyone is making investments. And two: they may be placing a ban because signs are their economy is doing really poorly. And so if the food shocks continue to play themselves out all over the world, watch for Pakistan possibly become an even more endangered failed state.”
Taiwan: Intelligence was discussed that reflects that China is not prepared to move on Taiwan, as it is a different kind of military operation that they would be unable to mount on short notice.
A Bit Surprised by Ukraine – and Adjusting Accordingly: The ultimate economic outcome here [based on the severity of the sanctions] has definitely been a surprise and that may be changing their thinking. A member added: “The ministry of state security failed absolutely to deliver intelligence on several of the key aspects Ukraine – including how it’s actually playing out.”
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About the Author
Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence