Putin and Global Risk - Tactics for Constraining Catastrophe When a Superpower Goes Rogue
Putin's invasion of Ukraine is like the early stages of the eruption of a super volcano - but unlike a catastrophic geophysical jolt, this geopolitical one can be constrained, if everyone helps.
In this post, originally published February 24, 2002, I explored some tips and strategies that could cut chances Russia's invasion of Ukraine spirals into a megadisaster. They’re more relevant than ever.
In particular, explore the section on an initiative identifying the characteristics in societies that sustain peace - doing so by studying places in the world that are more peaceful than they *should* be.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, so far, is akin to the first violent spasms of a long-simmering super volcano.
Local impacts are already devastating, with worse coming as the Russian advance on Kyiv intensifies this weekend. The people of Ukraine need aid and protection right now. (Global Citizen explains how, and find more ways below.)
But it's not yet inevitable that this brutish move - a superpower gone rogue - will catastrophically disrupt world affairs.
As with volcanoes, time will tell. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia ended up triggering a "year without summer" half a world away the following year.
The potential for widespread harm from Russia's attack is boundless, including a widening ground war in Europe, volleys of destructive cyberattacks and counterattacks, even nuclear conflict. (I admit I glanced back at my 1985 reporting on "nuclear winter" briefly last weekend.)
2023 reflection: It’s notable that, unless they’ve happened but been suppressed, cyberattacks have not been a major weapon in this war outside of the battle zone.
The difference between this unfolding geopolitical extreme event and an unfolding geophysical one, of course, is that brains, and decisions, are involved in each step taken by Russia and those who might shape its actions. (Think of China, particularly).
But that difference, of course, isn't necessarily a good thing.
Putin, for two decades seen by many Russians as a strategic smooth operator, has now unnerved even many high-level foreign policy figures in upper echelons of Moscow society. As Anton Troianovski of The New York Times reported on Thursday, "'Everything that we believed turned out to be wrong,' said one such analyst, insisting on anonymity because he was at a loss over what to say. 'I don’t understand the motivations, the goals or the possible results,' said another. 'What is happening is very strange.'"
So what do we do?
I mean you and me, not just President Joe Biden and Congress, President Xi Jinping of China, European leaders, the United Nations.
To seek answers I just held a Sustain What brainstorm with two super-smart strategic analysts with careers centered in U.S. intelligence and defense and in environmental and societal resilience and sustainability. The question on the floor was, "What Does Sustainability Look Like in a World with Rogue Behavior at Superpower Scale?"
My guests were Sharon Burke, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense who is the founder and president of Ecospherics, a global consultancy in environmental and national security; and Rod Schoonover, a physicist who served in national intelligence agencies under both the Obama and (for a brief time) Trump administrations and now heads the Ecological Security Program of the Council on Strategic Risks.
We spoke of both practical steps and strategic ones that could limit odds this assault on peace goes global. You can listen to the full discussion below. Here are some highlights.
Cyber warfare - protect your systems
In the invasion, Russia already deployed a basket of tools and tactics aimed at limiting or confounding Ukrainian defenses and critical systems. U.S. intelligence and cyber warfare officials have laid out a layered set of options for cyber assaults on Russia as a step beyond sanctions, NBC reported Thursday. The NBC report and others noted the administration is denying anything is on the table. One reason, of course, is Russia has demonstrated capability to digitally attack the United States or European allies, as well.
With that in mind, one practical step everyone should take is to hit yes when you get any software update alerts, Burke said.
"If you're getting information from Microsoft or Apple that you need to put in a new patch, a new security update, do it right away because this is definitely in play," she said.
In the information war, "pre-bunking" works
Schoonover and Burke stressed the value of early efforts by the Biden administration to flood the decision zone with facts, declassifying and disseminating not only early data showing Putin's military maneuvers but also insights on Russian propaganda plans and tactics.
Click here to see the full document showing Russian deployments around Ukraine, leaked to various news outlets on December 3 by the Biden administration
The process is a geopolitical variant of "pre-bunking" methods aimed at undermining disinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination. Read this paper on "psychological herd immunity" in the journal Big Data & Society for more.
In war, this comes with some risks, Burke noted, because revealing intelligence can also potentially reveal, and imperil, its sources.
But all signs so far indicate this process helped sway global opinion away from any support of Putin.
"The information warfare that the Biden administration has conducted has been remarkably effective," Schoonover said. "Giant congratulations to my former colleagues in the intelligence community in the effective use of declassified information to let the entire world know what was going on ahead of time. That doesn't necessarily affect the ultimate outcome, but it helps the rest of the community really realize what's happening."
There are limits of course, as Edward Wong of The Times reported today in a piece showing enduring resistance in China to American intelligence pointing to Putin's rash plans.
From loose lips to careless tweets
In past wars, when carelessness with information could endanger troops, public campaigns stressed the importance of shutting your yap. "Loose lips sink ships" was a key phrase.
These days, the concern of many media and propaganda experts is more about taking care what you share.
Technology Review just published a story by Abby Ohlheiser offering a helpful array of tips for responsible information sharing in the social media age. The piece is an updated version of a primer the magazine has, sadly, had to update regularly, starting with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and then around the U.S. election later that year.
She notes that engagement aimed at challenging some social content you know is wrong can backfire because your interest signals to the platform (and search engines) that the content is drawing eyeballs, potentially raising its visibility.
"Instead of engaging with a post you know to be wrong, try flagging it for review by the platform where you saw it," she writes. Ohlheiser also references the work of Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington (which also is the home of the fantastic "Calling Bullshit" curriculum I've run webcasts on before).
Caulfield is the developer of a method he calls SIFT: “Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
Let's all try to do this more? I still have to catch myself once in a while. I describe some flubs, and offer my own tips, here, including a "backtrack journal" method that echoes Caulfield's "Trace" step: "Tools and Tactics for Seeking Reality Facing an #Infodemic."
Hit pause in the polarization wars
It's time for a pause in partisanship and political gaming. It's time for compromise and even sacrifice.
This will be particularly tough given profound cultural and political divisions in the United States and particularly the unwillingness of Republicans to support President Biden on anything ahead of the midterm and presidential elections. But a widened base of unity is essential.
The stakes in conveying weakness right now are simply too high. I was horrified when, on the night of the invasion, Pravda featured our former president's remarks about Putin's genius:
In our Sustain What discussion, Sharon Burke described her deep concerns and hopes related to disunity in the United States facing Russia's ruthless aggression. (I mentioned Fox figures like Tucker Carlson.)
"Having having worked for both Republicans and Democrats in my career, I never thought I would see the current circumstances," Burke said. "A lot of people in Ukraine are really paying the price for Putin's desire. So at the moment, I just want very public Republicans and Fox News to do the right thing. We can sort [the differences] all out later.... But right now, it's just good to hear them saying more responsible things about this really terrible, dangerous situation."
My conversation with Burke and Schoonover also went into how the Ukraine crisis is both shaped by, and shaping, energy policy in Europe, and we touched on what this war means for climate policy. You can explore a rough transcript here or watch and share the discussion on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube:
Help those in crisis now
Circling back to the point I started with, while it's vital to limit risks this war will widen, it's also vital to help those in harm's way right now in Ukraine - along with those helping to convey their stories to the world.
Jane Lytvynenko, a fantastic journalist on the disinformation beat with Ukrainian roots, pointed to a great Ukrainian-built online aid hub for ways we all can help at various levels.
"There are all reputable organizations doing good work," she tweeted, adding "Spread far and wide." I'm donating to several of the organizations.
From fighting wars to fostering peace
Ultimately, perhaps, we can all start to tip the balance not just toward stanching conflict and violence but toward fostering the conditions in society that sustain peace. At Columbia University, the Sustaining Peace Project is using science and field studies to clarify the dynamics that do just this.
We simply can't afford not to try. As the team explains:
"Violence costs the world over $14 trillion annually and affects millions of families. Peace research often emphasizes ending conflict, but to promote peace, we need to learn from communities that have sustained harmony over time. We should divest in war and invest in peace."
Steering language from conflict to civility
For moments when there is still dialogue, when language might still determine if a path is toward violence or accommodation, here's the Irish poet and conflict mediator Pádraig Ó Tuama from a recent Sustain What episode on "language as a conflict trap or peace pathway":
Identifying the “complexity of evil”
Other voices
My Bulletin colleague Ian Bremmer and his GZero Media team have been covering every geopolitical angle of the Ukraine invasion.
The English-language Kyiv Independent has been relentless under fire.
I'm building a Twitter list of conflict journalists with a focus on Ukraine. Please post your suggestions in the comments below!
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Thanks Andy, there is tons of great info and insight in this post! It's appropriate that you address this topic, as people like Putin pose a serious environmental threat.
You write, "Ultimately, perhaps, we can all start to tip the balance not just toward stanching conflict and violence but toward fostering the conditions in society that sustain peace."
One way to approach your ambitious stated goal is to think as simply, directly and boldly as we can. For example, there was peace in Europe until a year ago, when a single violent man destroyed that peace. A single violent man. This isn't complicated! There's no need for nuance and sophistication here. Putin is doing us a favor by providing a simple, clear, unambiguous, real world example of what the primary obstacle to global peace really is. Violent men.
The direct simplicity of this insight is very helpful, because it tells us what we need to do to "foster the conditions in society that sustain peace". We need to remove the primary source of violence at every level of society, violent men. We need to think boldly on behalf of peace, real peace, historic peace, and have more confidence that we can accomplish such a goal. Violent men are not invincible, as they are only a tiny fraction of the human population.
We need to realize that we don't actually have a choice in the matter, because if we allow violent men to walk among us and be further empowered by an accelerating knowledge explosion, they will inevitably crash the modern world sooner or later. Putin could do so this afternoon if he so chooses.
Yes, agreed, getting rid of violent men is a huge challenge. So are a lot of things.
Climate change is a huge challenge too, but we aren't throwing our hands up in the air and giving up, right? We're planning migrations to Mars, we're working day and night to cure cancer, we're unlocking the secrets of DNA, we invented computers, the Internet, and now AI. All this and so much more is also very challenging, but we're putting our heads together and figuring it out. So let us please stop saying there's nothing we can do about violent men.
We should support the people of Ukraine in any way we can. Absolutely. Whatever it takes. For as long as it takes. But Ukraine is just the tip of the iceberg. If we don't meet the challenge presented by violent men there will be many more such conflicts to come, and such horror shows will keep on coming, more and more, bigger and bigger.
Putin is teaching us what the problem is. Let's learn the lesson and act on it, while there is still time to do so.