As of today, and barring any Black Swan events in future, I'd put the likelihood of JPM's options like this:
'South Korea' option - 0%
'Israel option' - 0%
'Georgia option' - 0%
'Belarus option' - ~100% (Here I include possibilities such as Russia simply annexing most of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.)
The remarkable thing about Western analyses on the Ukraine war is their complete disregard of Russian agency. They toss out various options where Russia is treated - if it's considered at all - as an afterthought. The ignorance involved is breathtaking.
Russia did everything it could to avoid going to war over Ukraine. But having taken that step, they will not settle for any unfavourable terms.
the Georgian option is not necessarily unfavorable if it results in sanctions' relief and other security measures the Russians want in Europe. I would not cavalierly dismiss it.
JPM doesn't spell out exactly what it means by the 'Georgia option.' But if one examines how the Georgia situation has played out vis-a-vis Russia, there's nothing to recommend it to the Kremlin.
Georgia is constantly under pressure from Europe and the USA to move away from Russia, and sometimes the government leans that way. The president of Georgia is actually a French national for god's sake. Western NGO's in Georgia constantly try to make trouble, and western politicians love to meddle there as well.
Georgia is a tiny country and could quickly be overrun by Russia if it wished. So it's a manageable threat for Russia despite the West's machinations there. Ukraine is completely different. It's huge and the government is overtly hostile and will remain so. A future Ukraine in any form that could mount a security threat will be unacceptable to Russia. The Russians may well negotiate security measures and sanctions relief over Ukraine, but at the end of the day it won't resemble Georgia.
Just a minor quibble with your comment. It was the last President of what we call Georgia that was a French citizen. She very much wanted Georgia absorbed into the E.U. on whatever terms worked for the E.U.
When she was defeated in the last election she refused to accept the results of the election. With E.U. support (especially France) she tried to pretend she was still the President and toured the the E.U. where she was accepted as such. But the Georgian parliament and the actual President simply worked around her. Finally, after some months, the E.U. had to accept the obvious and she had to vacate the Presidential residence and depart for Europe.
The E.U. has responded to the failure of their candidate to win by implementing a number of hostile economic and political moves. Some are even suggesting applying Russian model sanctions.
People who have spent a lot of time in Georgia tell me they are basically a very pleasant laid back society who want to be a part of Europe but want to get along with their immediate neighbor .....Russia.
The social dynamic there has been altered by the presence of very large numbers of Russian youth who fled Russia at the outset of the war. They are well educated with the skills to make money from external sources are thus upscale in lifestyle. As a result the urban environment of Georgia has undergone a dramatic change with a massive cost of living increase and regular street demonstrations for all kinds of progressive causes and pro European issues.
Thanks for sharing the interesting, if not fully realistic, analysis by JPM's analysts.
I find it interesting (and barely realistic) that the South Korea Option is likely enough to get a 15% chance.
It makes me think that the other end of the continuum, the end that could be THE END, is not mentioned, at all. That would be Escalation to Hot War overtly between the US and/or NATO and Russia and its allies.
I suppose the Bank doesn't want to freak out any of its clients to admit the possibility, just as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have refrained from advancing the Doomsday Clock at all lately. It stands at 89 seconds to Midnight despite the 'Super Duper' Bunker-Buster+ attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, not to mention the US escalating by sending B61-12 tactical nukes to RAF Lakenheath in the UK, late last month to keep the ones in Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany company.
Given the chance of a cease-fire before the Conflict's root causes have been dealt with to Russia's satisfaction, the After-Settlement condition of Ukraine will likely depend on how much longer the Ukrainians refuse to get real and settle.
The longer the Ukrainians wait to offer what Russia requires, the more territory Russia will take... and retain. If Ukraine delays until after Russia takes the remaining Black Sea coast, Ukraine will have purposely hurt itself quite badly.
Even if JPM ignores the escalation outcome, what has happened in the war so far, justifies considering assigning a probability to an outcome where Ukraine no longer includes the Odessa area.
What is the probability of that? I suppose this is JPM's Worst Case scenario.
I viewed the JPM piece as Client Marketing designed to encourage them to invest in securities rather than to hide their money under the mattress in a newly constructed bunker, switching to gold bullion, Getaway property in Fiji or Chile, and/or diversifying out of US$ and equities.
JPM communications with the Clients, rather than some Client Group communicating with each other.
On the other hand, I can imagine a quasi Korean solution, but one that is adapted to satisfy Russia's goals rather than NATO's. And that leaves out the American/NATO influence that includes weaponry/troops in the remnant that remains Ukrainian west of a buffer zone.
I think the escalation option is the most likely to occur. I think we're standing on the edge of an abyss because I don't think we can fight and win in eastern Europe. We simply can't supply the numbers of troops necessary against a peer enemy in high intensity combat. We would probably resort to a few small nuclear weapons to even the odds.
It seems difficult to estimate any of the outcomes with actual percentages, because actual numbers imply accuracy. Honesty requires a set of estimates similar to yours, perhaps ranging from least to most likely, or from unlikely to likely on a 5 or 7 point scale, and then adjusting the options' probabilities as reality unfolds.
For example, as NATO messes with Russian shipping in the Baltic, or Russia bombs US bases in Syria more extreme outcomes in Ukraine (from an Ukrainian viewpoint) gets more likely. The US deployment of tactical nukes in the UK makes the expansion of the war much more likely, and the nuclear threats, including the Trump "deployment" of Ohio-class sub nukes closer to Russia raises the estimate that an escalation leads to an all-out nuclear exchange.
Recent events clearly (to me) move the probabilities to favor just two likely outcomes.
a. the outcome will be increasingly favorable to Russian requirements the longer the SMO continues without escalation to nuclear weapons (or attack on nuclear installations).
b. the outcome becomes a disaster for both sides (and most of the world) because any use of nukes is quite likely to escalate, quickly, to all-out nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere, with huge delayed catastrophe in the South.
It really gets my dander up to see these US-centric reports seriously suggesting that Russia should succeed in its illegal invasion by Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
Firstly, these sideline Ukraine and suggest that peace will be achieved through negotiations between the USA and Russia. Talk about American exceptionalism!
Secondly, Putin will never abandon his ambition to make the whole of Ukraine a Russian vassal.
This is a proxy war BY Nato ON Russia, not between.
It is the ever weakening Nato continuing to bully the ever stronger Russia that is the bizarre part of all this. Essentially the Karate Kid of a dozen othe Hollywood films where the fat bullies keep drinking beer while the little guy works out at the gym.
I too used to think Nato was the USA, and Europe had been bullied with US wanting to put a huge chasm between Asia and rich Europe not least to block future trading.
But it now appears that Europe entered all this far more willingly that it first seemed.
nato is effectively dead now. Not sure it deserves any capital letters.
Ukrainians that remained have been sidelined with a US/AZOV government acting against their wishes. Recall in 2019 that 75% voted for the Dovish Zelensky who promised not to antagonise Russia and only 25% for Poroshenko the Hawk. All oblasts but Lvov voted strongly for Zelensky. By 2021 he had reveresed course and was re-writing the constitution to commit Ukraine to taking back Donbas and Crimea by force and loudly threatening both.
So about 25% of the pop had voted with their feet and left Ukraine by 2021 and another 25% since.
We all feel sorry for Ukrainians. But lets blame the real people responsible: The Nazis, their intelligence creators, US/ Euro Nato, Zelensky's fake campaign.
Secondly "Ukraine a Russian vassal". One of those quotes that make it clear you have no intention of thinking logically.
Oh yes. His course was reversed perhaps by others.
Nevertheless he did fail his voters, break his promises and it is quite quite deliberately wrong when the western media pretend that he stands for the common voter. Just the opposite.
To be honest I suspect he was always like Biden - politics was a money making business and principles existed to be sold for cash.
Assassinating the negotiation team seems to be all the rage nowadays. I think it demonstrates how CIA, MI6 and Mossad are so very close together now.
They forgot to include ‘no outcome’ among their outcomes.
The kinetic phase of the conflict opened in 2014, not 2022, and Budanov recently suggested it could extend well into the next decade.
The lack of any formal resolution in Georgia or Moldova suits Russia well enough, and while Ukraine might cool down after the fall of Kupiansk, Lyman, Siversk, Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk - and I don’t see Russia taking the oblast capitals of Donetsk (Kramatorsk), Zaporozhye or Kherson - a more static but essentially unresolved standoff like the pre-2022 situation seems to have way more than 0% likelihood.
It gives Russia a lot of continued leverage in ‘West Ukraine’ and along the whole interface with ‘The West’ - NATO and its declining client polities - more generally. Mutually beneficial new economic and other arrangements may be formally and informally agreed before any distant treaty.
Remember that unresolved conflicts in Palestine and Kashmir opened in 1947...
As of today, and barring any Black Swan events in future, I'd put the likelihood of JPM's options like this:
'South Korea' option - 0%
'Israel option' - 0%
'Georgia option' - 0%
'Belarus option' - ~100% (Here I include possibilities such as Russia simply annexing most of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.)
The remarkable thing about Western analyses on the Ukraine war is their complete disregard of Russian agency. They toss out various options where Russia is treated - if it's considered at all - as an afterthought. The ignorance involved is breathtaking.
Russia did everything it could to avoid going to war over Ukraine. But having taken that step, they will not settle for any unfavourable terms.
the Georgian option is not necessarily unfavorable if it results in sanctions' relief and other security measures the Russians want in Europe. I would not cavalierly dismiss it.
JPM doesn't spell out exactly what it means by the 'Georgia option.' But if one examines how the Georgia situation has played out vis-a-vis Russia, there's nothing to recommend it to the Kremlin.
Georgia is constantly under pressure from Europe and the USA to move away from Russia, and sometimes the government leans that way. The president of Georgia is actually a French national for god's sake. Western NGO's in Georgia constantly try to make trouble, and western politicians love to meddle there as well.
Georgia is a tiny country and could quickly be overrun by Russia if it wished. So it's a manageable threat for Russia despite the West's machinations there. Ukraine is completely different. It's huge and the government is overtly hostile and will remain so. A future Ukraine in any form that could mount a security threat will be unacceptable to Russia. The Russians may well negotiate security measures and sanctions relief over Ukraine, but at the end of the day it won't resemble Georgia.
Just a minor quibble with your comment. It was the last President of what we call Georgia that was a French citizen. She very much wanted Georgia absorbed into the E.U. on whatever terms worked for the E.U.
When she was defeated in the last election she refused to accept the results of the election. With E.U. support (especially France) she tried to pretend she was still the President and toured the the E.U. where she was accepted as such. But the Georgian parliament and the actual President simply worked around her. Finally, after some months, the E.U. had to accept the obvious and she had to vacate the Presidential residence and depart for Europe.
The E.U. has responded to the failure of their candidate to win by implementing a number of hostile economic and political moves. Some are even suggesting applying Russian model sanctions.
People who have spent a lot of time in Georgia tell me they are basically a very pleasant laid back society who want to be a part of Europe but want to get along with their immediate neighbor .....Russia.
The social dynamic there has been altered by the presence of very large numbers of Russian youth who fled Russia at the outset of the war. They are well educated with the skills to make money from external sources are thus upscale in lifestyle. As a result the urban environment of Georgia has undergone a dramatic change with a massive cost of living increase and regular street demonstrations for all kinds of progressive causes and pro European issues.
Thanks for that update. A fitting end to the imposter.
In fact the Georgia option is the official Russian position from the beginning of the conflict and even today.
Of course this might be only the official position, while the Belarus option is the real aim, but this not a certainty.
Also one can imagine a Georgian brew with some spoons of Misky sauce and many other developments.
It is a very fluid situation.
"... and barring any Black Swan events in future,"
A wise caveat.
> hard to swallow for the ideologically committed Europeans.
Please remember this is only the viewpoint of the US-trained elites in Europe. It’s not the viewpoint of ordinary European people.
as Europe s run by the elites in power, no further comment is needed
Sad but true.
Thanks for sharing the interesting, if not fully realistic, analysis by JPM's analysts.
I find it interesting (and barely realistic) that the South Korea Option is likely enough to get a 15% chance.
It makes me think that the other end of the continuum, the end that could be THE END, is not mentioned, at all. That would be Escalation to Hot War overtly between the US and/or NATO and Russia and its allies.
I suppose the Bank doesn't want to freak out any of its clients to admit the possibility, just as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have refrained from advancing the Doomsday Clock at all lately. It stands at 89 seconds to Midnight despite the 'Super Duper' Bunker-Buster+ attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, not to mention the US escalating by sending B61-12 tactical nukes to RAF Lakenheath in the UK, late last month to keep the ones in Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany company.
Given the chance of a cease-fire before the Conflict's root causes have been dealt with to Russia's satisfaction, the After-Settlement condition of Ukraine will likely depend on how much longer the Ukrainians refuse to get real and settle.
The longer the Ukrainians wait to offer what Russia requires, the more territory Russia will take... and retain. If Ukraine delays until after Russia takes the remaining Black Sea coast, Ukraine will have purposely hurt itself quite badly.
Even if JPM ignores the escalation outcome, what has happened in the war so far, justifies considering assigning a probability to an outcome where Ukraine no longer includes the Odessa area.
What is the probability of that? I suppose this is JPM's Worst Case scenario.
As a tool to get people talking, the SK 15% is very smart.
And as soon as anyone asks what does Europe need to do to achieve SK then the real world suddenly opens up.
But side stepping the denialism with a vague 15% number is clever.
I viewed the JPM piece as Client Marketing designed to encourage them to invest in securities rather than to hide their money under the mattress in a newly constructed bunker, switching to gold bullion, Getaway property in Fiji or Chile, and/or diversifying out of US$ and equities.
JPM communications with the Clients, rather than some Client Group communicating with each other.
On the other hand, I can imagine a quasi Korean solution, but one that is adapted to satisfy Russia's goals rather than NATO's. And that leaves out the American/NATO influence that includes weaponry/troops in the remnant that remains Ukrainian west of a buffer zone.
I think the escalation option is the most likely to occur. I think we're standing on the edge of an abyss because I don't think we can fight and win in eastern Europe. We simply can't supply the numbers of troops necessary against a peer enemy in high intensity combat. We would probably resort to a few small nuclear weapons to even the odds.
I generally agree with you.
It seems difficult to estimate any of the outcomes with actual percentages, because actual numbers imply accuracy. Honesty requires a set of estimates similar to yours, perhaps ranging from least to most likely, or from unlikely to likely on a 5 or 7 point scale, and then adjusting the options' probabilities as reality unfolds.
For example, as NATO messes with Russian shipping in the Baltic, or Russia bombs US bases in Syria more extreme outcomes in Ukraine (from an Ukrainian viewpoint) gets more likely. The US deployment of tactical nukes in the UK makes the expansion of the war much more likely, and the nuclear threats, including the Trump "deployment" of Ohio-class sub nukes closer to Russia raises the estimate that an escalation leads to an all-out nuclear exchange.
Recent events clearly (to me) move the probabilities to favor just two likely outcomes.
a. the outcome will be increasingly favorable to Russian requirements the longer the SMO continues without escalation to nuclear weapons (or attack on nuclear installations).
b. the outcome becomes a disaster for both sides (and most of the world) because any use of nukes is quite likely to escalate, quickly, to all-out nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere, with huge delayed catastrophe in the South.
Very interesting. This report is slightly over optimistic but maybe the most realistic perspective we’ve yet seen from any establishment source.
I have a similar opinion
It really gets my dander up to see these US-centric reports seriously suggesting that Russia should succeed in its illegal invasion by Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
Firstly, these sideline Ukraine and suggest that peace will be achieved through negotiations between the USA and Russia. Talk about American exceptionalism!
Secondly, Putin will never abandon his ambition to make the whole of Ukraine a Russian vassal.
It's less a matter of "should succeed" and more a matter of "will succeed".
This is a proxy war between NATO and Russia. And NATO is basically The USA.
The Ukrainians' opinions don't matter, if the big boys agree.
Sad, but true. They have been used.
Used certainly.
This is a proxy war BY Nato ON Russia, not between.
It is the ever weakening Nato continuing to bully the ever stronger Russia that is the bizarre part of all this. Essentially the Karate Kid of a dozen othe Hollywood films where the fat bullies keep drinking beer while the little guy works out at the gym.
I too used to think Nato was the USA, and Europe had been bullied with US wanting to put a huge chasm between Asia and rich Europe not least to block future trading.
But it now appears that Europe entered all this far more willingly that it first seemed.
nato is effectively dead now. Not sure it deserves any capital letters.
Ukrainians that remained have been sidelined with a US/AZOV government acting against their wishes. Recall in 2019 that 75% voted for the Dovish Zelensky who promised not to antagonise Russia and only 25% for Poroshenko the Hawk. All oblasts but Lvov voted strongly for Zelensky. By 2021 he had reveresed course and was re-writing the constitution to commit Ukraine to taking back Donbas and Crimea by force and loudly threatening both.
So about 25% of the pop had voted with their feet and left Ukraine by 2021 and another 25% since.
We all feel sorry for Ukrainians. But lets blame the real people responsible: The Nazis, their intelligence creators, US/ Euro Nato, Zelensky's fake campaign.
Secondly "Ukraine a Russian vassal". One of those quotes that make it clear you have no intention of thinking logically.
I don't not think that Zelensky faked his real aims in the electoral campaign.
He was subsequently threatened and though his only option was to do as ordered by the USA.
I also do not believe that Boris Johnson "convinced" him with elaborate arguments after Russia and Ukraine has reached a compromise in Istanbul.
He was "convinced" by the assassination in Kiev of a close friend, a member of the Ukrainian negotiation team.
Oh yes. His course was reversed perhaps by others.
Nevertheless he did fail his voters, break his promises and it is quite quite deliberately wrong when the western media pretend that he stands for the common voter. Just the opposite.
To be honest I suspect he was always like Biden - politics was a money making business and principles existed to be sold for cash.
Assassinating the negotiation team seems to be all the rage nowadays. I think it demonstrates how CIA, MI6 and Mossad are so very close together now.
Of course, there are only two possibilities. One is a total Russian victory. The other is a negotiated solution between the USA and Russia.
They forgot to include ‘no outcome’ among their outcomes.
The kinetic phase of the conflict opened in 2014, not 2022, and Budanov recently suggested it could extend well into the next decade.
The lack of any formal resolution in Georgia or Moldova suits Russia well enough, and while Ukraine might cool down after the fall of Kupiansk, Lyman, Siversk, Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk - and I don’t see Russia taking the oblast capitals of Donetsk (Kramatorsk), Zaporozhye or Kherson - a more static but essentially unresolved standoff like the pre-2022 situation seems to have way more than 0% likelihood.
It gives Russia a lot of continued leverage in ‘West Ukraine’ and along the whole interface with ‘The West’ - NATO and its declining client polities - more generally. Mutually beneficial new economic and other arrangements may be formally and informally agreed before any distant treaty.
Remember that unresolved conflicts in Palestine and Kashmir opened in 1947...
Thanks for your great work Stephen!
We've shared the link on our daily report.
A Skeptic War Reports
https://askeptic.substack.com/
Very illuminating :-)
That explains everything!