Irrational Putin
How psychology helps explain the current geopolitical situation around Ukraine.
Tensions are mounting in Ukraine and with it, around the world. Not only is the resolve of presidents of superpowers tested, but also global alliances hang in the balance. The whole situation seems irrational to many of us — how come we’re sliding into war in Europe, again? It seems so unnecessary and illogical. Not only will a war cost many dear lives, but the economic costs for many will also be exuberantly high. Haven’t we learned from history that war only knows losers, in the end? Perhaps some psychological insights might help to understand this situation a bit better.
In psychology, we find a few related concepts that explain at least some of the motivators that propel the seemingly worsening situation around Ukraine. With US troops on heightened alert and more than a hundred thousand Russian troops in place, the stakes are enormously high. However the actors in this geopolitical mess got themselves here, psychology tells us there’s more than just the political and military situation at play.
Prisoner’s Dilemma
In social psychology, a small hypothetical story is used to point out a situation that occurs quite often in our daily lives. The story goes as follows. Two bank robbers manage to steal a hefty sum of money from a bank and are able to hide the loot before the cops capture them both. The police don’t have that much to go on, since they have the bank robbers, but not the money. The robbers are held for questioning in separate cells. Then the police questioner plays a devious game on them. Both are proposed that if they tell on their mate, and their mate does not, they go free immediately and their co-robber will be imprisoned for 20 years. If both tell on each other, their prison sentence will be short but substantial, 5 years. And if neither one turns their back on the other, the evidence is mostly circumstantial and they will both have to serve 1 year in prison.
The prisoner’s dilemma is then, will I cooperate with my mate and keep my mouth shut, or will I defect and try and save my hide — with the risk attached that the other do the same? What if I cooperate, and the other one defects? That would be really terrible! What are the odds?
Biden vs Putin
If we plot that to the current geopolitical situation, you could think of Biden and Putin as the bank robbers, caught in a stalemate with few options. One of them could try and push the situation to their immediate advantage. Putin could invade Ukraine swiftly — the whole country — and catch Biden and the West off-guard. Or, Biden could quickly send so many weapons and perhaps ‘military advisors’ to Ukraine that it will catch the Russians off-guard and unable to invade the country. This would in both cases be their winner takes it all option.
But what if they both try to take it all at the same time? What if Biden sends in weaponry and US troops, and Putin starts an invasion at the same moment? Then we’ll have the first-ever direct confrontation between US and Russian troops on a battlefield — in the heart of Europe, no less; the consequences of which can not be overseen and not be understated. The risks of going for the winner takes it all option are simply too high to realistically contemplate.
They could also both do very little — Putin could not invade and slowly but surely pull back his thousands of troops, and Biden could not send any troops and very few weapons to Ukraine. This option will have the least of consequences for both. These would also be the least profitable and perhaps the least face-saving options. Both presidents might look weak to their homefronts — which neither will ever admit, but which will carry its own particular consequences down the road. For Biden, the consequences will come election time, and for Putin, the consequences of looking weak might come in the form of uproar in certain areas of his vast country, and its surrounding vassal states like Belarus and Kazakhstan.
It’s more likely they will try and stay friendly with both the cops and their fellow bank robber — giving up only a portion of their loot to make it look to the cops like they cooperated, and to their mate that they didn’t rat out on them.
Translated to real-life that would imply that Putin would invade the Donbas and its surrounding areas through grey-zone warfare, as he did with Crimea — perhaps creating a land bridge between the Donbas and Crimea. Biden could provide Ukraine with modern weaponry and moral support, but stop short of engaging in actual combat with the Russians. What’s left of Ukraine would then be allowed to swiftly join NATO. Both men could thus show their home crowds that they did expand their sphere of influence in the heart of Europe, while at the same time avoiding all-out warfare between the two superpowers.
Tit-for-tat
The thing is, the story doesn’t stop with a one-time dilemma — it keeps bringing up these dilemmas, over and over again. In psychology, that’s called an iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
What do you do in terms of cooperation or defection if you knew you would face the other parties involved in a couple of weeks’ time again? Ukrainian-American mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) came up with an elegant and simple solution to the iterated prisoner’s dilemma around 1980, taking part in the Axelrod Tournaments, which focused on cooperation and were highly influential on game theory. Rapoport’s strategy is called tit-for-tat and works like a small computer program:
1. In the first round, cooperate.
2. In every next round, do whatever the other party did the previous round.
So, let’s say, in the first round, you cooperate and the other party cooperates too, that means you will cooperate in the second round as well. If the other party then defects, you will defect the third round — otherwise, cooperate again. The solution is elegant because it starts from a point of good will, but is no sucker if the other party is of ill will.
If we again translate this to the current Ukrainian situation, both Biden and Putin would need to acknowledge that even if they pushed for their subsequent winner takes all options, it wouldn’t end there. If Biden would be able to have Ukraine enter NATO, the Russians would still feel threatened by NATO creeping up on them. If Putin invades Ukraine, most Ukrainians would not be happy — to say the least — and certainly western Europe would feel threatened by Russia creeping up on them. Both of these situations would result in an expanded period of heightened tension between the parties involved — another cold war if you like, with all the negative consequences attached, like enormous costs to keep up with each other's weaponry.
So, how would a tit-for-tat play out for Biden and Putin? One of them would have to have the guts to cooperate with the other. One of them would have to give in a little. Perhaps Biden could start with not having Ukraine enter NATO for at least the coming decade. Or perhaps Putin could pull back his thousands of troops from the border zone. Each subsequent round, both could give in a little, until all tension is gone, and perhaps even cooperation for good could arise. Realistically speaking, however, the chances of this happening seem very slim at the moment.
The Ultimatum Game
What is a frustrating factor in human interaction, is the fact that we are not as rational as we think we are. Consider the following narrative.
Someone offers you ten dollars on one condition — the ultimatum. You have to share the ten dollars with a total stranger and the stranger has to agree with how you split the ten dollars between the two of you. Now, if we humans were purely rational actors, you should offer the stranger one dollar and keep nine dollars yourself. A purely rational stranger would consider that one dollar is more than zero dollars, so a good catch! But we all know that we — as the stranger — would feel this division to be unfair, knowing that the proposer would keep nine times as much money than they offer us. A more acceptable split would be five-five or perhaps four-six, but other than that would already feel weird.
And here’s the real catch of this dilemma: researchers have even figured out that it actually pays off to be irrational in real life. If you, for instance, don’t even agree with a five-five split but demand six dollars — as the stranger — you will get a reputation of being difficult and hard-to-please, of being irrational. The next time someone wants to make a deal with you, they know they won’t even have to try a four-six deal or worse, because they know you’ll explode if you hear that. So, being a little irrational actually pays off in the long run, others will try and please you before you even know it.
Donald Trump has perfected this irrational behavior — everyone knows about his blunt irrationality and will take it into account beforehand. That’s one of the reasons it is now already clear Trump will be the front-runner for the GOP for the presidential elections come 2024 — few will dare compete against this erratic character.
Trump might have found a good master in Putin when it comes to irrational behavior, and Putin is no doubt more sly and cunning at it. A look at the headlines these days reveals that literally no one — not even his loyal Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — seems to know what Putin is up to. This gives Putin the upper hand in this high-tension conflict. Everyone seems to be waiting for him to make the first move.
The Endgame of this Stalemate
The annexing of Crimea in 2014 seemed an irrational and untenable deed at the time, but almost eight years later, it seems Putin will try his luck once more — or will he? With his irrationality as an asset, and very few options in this stalemate, the most likely outcome will be Putin taking the Donbas and a land bridge connecting Crimea to it. That will have the West sighing with relief that he didn’t take the whole of Ukraine. Then the rest of Ukraine will likely be allowed to join NATO swiftly. What’s left will be a new pressure cooker stalemate, with NATO soldiers being able to look Russian soldiers in the eye across a volatile border in the heart of Europe.
