Vägen till kriget i Ukraina

Ett ramverk för strategisk analys

Abstract

The road to war in Ukraine: a framework for strategic analysis

Political scientists are often asked to make public assessments about strategic events. The tendency to rely on historical analogy is problematic as method, while academic method proper is to slow, and the problem addressed in this article is how to improve analytical assessments in strategic affairs. I use and develop an analytical framework introduced during the Cold War by Sovietologist Michael MccGwire in order to systematize expert assessments. In the empirical section I illustrate it with an inquiry into the prelude to the escalation in Ukraine 2022. The inquiry shows that the Russian actions to subordinate Belarus in the Spring of 2021 is key to the understanding of the ensuing military and diplomatic events that often was mistaken as Russian coercive diplomacy. The empirically grounded assessments show that the framework could have improved precision in assessments in the run-up to the approaching war.