1. What about the negative effects on the Ukrainian military? It seems like Ukrainian soldiers are making $40k or less. Some might rationally support the plan in order to bring an end to the war, but many would be bitter if their government paid 2.5xtheir annual salary to the enemy. The impact could outweigh the benefit.
1A. Paying bounties to Ukrainians might help the problem above, but could also create a discipline problem on the battlefield with capturing being incentivized over other activities.
2. What about war criminals? Can they defect? If defectors are arrested instead of rewarded that can’t get out or the program won’t work. If war criminals can defect, it might double down on the problem above.
2A. What about mercenaries and the Ukrainian citizens of the occupied territories fighting for Russia? For the former, they might be militarily useless, but Russia would have an awesome recruiting tool to drain money from the EU/Ukraine. For the latter, Ukraine might balk at paying collaborators.
2B. What about the regular criminals fighting for Wagner? Will the EU want to offer cash and citizenship to some rapists and murderers?
And an alternative formulation: what about EU/US temporary work visas with a path to citizenship for military age Russian men (plus immediate family) who can make it out of Russia to present themselves. This drains the manpower pool for the military and economy, forces Russia to overtly prevent citizens from leaving, and sidesteps problem 1, and maybe problem 2.
Using per capita PPP GDP doesn't make too much sense. Better would be median income at PPP.
It is another question whether the resettled Russians could make it to the median income level, and surely that is not independent of destination country, but that is a harder fix. Still, I might attempt to add a parameter accounting for that and then estimate a value.
I'd also wager that there's a breaking point where a certain number of surrendering troops causes cascade failure even before the 50% casualty number. Runaway effects like that are pretty common in military history, perhaps especially Russian and Soviet history, of tens of thousands of soldiers surrendering.
Does the author even realize the implications of his assumption that Ukrainian soldiers are the ones violating the Geneva conventions? So who are the bad guys again?
How about this: Instead of paying Russian soldiers to defect to the EU, or paying the Russian military to arrest Putin and turn him over to the International Criminal Court to face his indictment for war crimes, perhaps there should just be a payment to Russian soldiers to surrender and be held as a POW until after hostilities cease?
Part of the payment could be an agreement to never fight against Ukraine again, verified by taking fingerprints, DNA samples, extensive facial/body photographs, and iris scans. Then if the Russian soldier ever was found to be fighting in Ukraine again, they would be punished in some manner.
The payments could be: one year's pay for anyone at lieutenant or below, and two years pay for anyone above the grade of lieutenant. A POW camp could be set up in Ukraine as far as possible from Russia. The POW camp would have decent facilities and food, but not spectacular.
You may want to add “gullibility coefficients” around some of the parameters, such as the 50,000 Russian casualties. Secondly, given that the living standards are much higher in Russia than in Ukraine (even before the war), if the goal of your project is to end the war, wouldn’t it be cheaper to pay Ukrainians to surrender?
I have a better solution. Develop a payment scheme for the Russian military to arrest Vladimir Putin for the war crimes with which he's been charged, and work with the countries making the payments to set up a democracy in Russia.
This is just total spitballing, but the payments might look like:
Some unaddressed problems:
1. What about the negative effects on the Ukrainian military? It seems like Ukrainian soldiers are making $40k or less. Some might rationally support the plan in order to bring an end to the war, but many would be bitter if their government paid 2.5xtheir annual salary to the enemy. The impact could outweigh the benefit.
1A. Paying bounties to Ukrainians might help the problem above, but could also create a discipline problem on the battlefield with capturing being incentivized over other activities.
2. What about war criminals? Can they defect? If defectors are arrested instead of rewarded that can’t get out or the program won’t work. If war criminals can defect, it might double down on the problem above.
2A. What about mercenaries and the Ukrainian citizens of the occupied territories fighting for Russia? For the former, they might be militarily useless, but Russia would have an awesome recruiting tool to drain money from the EU/Ukraine. For the latter, Ukraine might balk at paying collaborators.
2B. What about the regular criminals fighting for Wagner? Will the EU want to offer cash and citizenship to some rapists and murderers?
And an alternative formulation: what about EU/US temporary work visas with a path to citizenship for military age Russian men (plus immediate family) who can make it out of Russia to present themselves. This drains the manpower pool for the military and economy, forces Russia to overtly prevent citizens from leaving, and sidesteps problem 1, and maybe problem 2.
Has this sort of thing been done before successfully?
Using per capita PPP GDP doesn't make too much sense. Better would be median income at PPP.
It is another question whether the resettled Russians could make it to the median income level, and surely that is not independent of destination country, but that is a harder fix. Still, I might attempt to add a parameter accounting for that and then estimate a value.
I'd also wager that there's a breaking point where a certain number of surrendering troops causes cascade failure even before the 50% casualty number. Runaway effects like that are pretty common in military history, perhaps especially Russian and Soviet history, of tens of thousands of soldiers surrendering.
Does the author even realize the implications of his assumption that Ukrainian soldiers are the ones violating the Geneva conventions? So who are the bad guys again?
How about this: Instead of paying Russian soldiers to defect to the EU, or paying the Russian military to arrest Putin and turn him over to the International Criminal Court to face his indictment for war crimes, perhaps there should just be a payment to Russian soldiers to surrender and be held as a POW until after hostilities cease?
Part of the payment could be an agreement to never fight against Ukraine again, verified by taking fingerprints, DNA samples, extensive facial/body photographs, and iris scans. Then if the Russian soldier ever was found to be fighting in Ukraine again, they would be punished in some manner.
The payments could be: one year's pay for anyone at lieutenant or below, and two years pay for anyone above the grade of lieutenant. A POW camp could be set up in Ukraine as far as possible from Russia. The POW camp would have decent facilities and food, but not spectacular.
You may want to add “gullibility coefficients” around some of the parameters, such as the 50,000 Russian casualties. Secondly, given that the living standards are much higher in Russia than in Ukraine (even before the war), if the goal of your project is to end the war, wouldn’t it be cheaper to pay Ukrainians to surrender?
You title the post, "Paying for Peace." But we should *not* be "paying for peace". We should be paying for *justice.*
*Justice* would involve Vladimir Putin being arrested and tried for the crimes for which he has been indicted.
I have a better solution. Develop a payment scheme for the Russian military to arrest Vladimir Putin for the war crimes with which he's been charged, and work with the countries making the payments to set up a democracy in Russia.
This is just total spitballing, but the payments might look like:
1) $2 million for generals,
2) $1 million each for colonels,
3) $500,000 for lieutenant colonels,
4) $200,000 for captains
5) $50,000 for officers down to sergeants
6) $10,000 for anything below sergeants.
If you offered this deal to Ukrainian conscripts they would probably take it too.
I don't think anyone wants to learn under what circumstances their slave armies would stop fighting.
"The evidence cited in the post suggests people value their children’s utility as 9% of their own"
There are no autistics in the foxholes I guess.
If I were russia I'd just kill the families of people who defect. Easy-peasy. how do you model that?