I’m increasingly hearing and reading the following comments from Russians in regards to the war in Ukraine:
“The war is wrong, but we cannot allow to lose now. Everything what has been invested in this war would have been lost and it all would have been in vain.”
You know how this is called?
Sunk-cost fallacy
A significant part of Russians have now subscribed to a nation-wide experiment, in (false) hopes that the continuation of the war will yield something to a point which would be better than before, despite seeing evidence for the exact opposite. The Russian high-water mark in this war was early March 2022. Ever since this point Russia lost literally according all possible metrics. Let’s just go through some of them:
- less net-controlled territory
- humiliating defeats in Kherson and Kharkiv
- much more destruction
- 150.000 more Russian casualties
- the modern Russian army gear almost entirely destroyed
- cities in ruins, even in Russia
- emboldened and unified Ukraine and West
- Russia’s stance in the world considerably diminished
- open rebellion by Wagner and incursions by Russian rebels
- large economic projects such as Nordstream destroyed
Etc. I could go on and on. You will not find a single aspect which was in better shape for Russia after March 2022. Every further “investment” in this lost cause just increased problems and it will increase the bill Russia has to pay after the war, which is certain.
The sunk-cost fallacy is the death trap for every dictatorship, cult or doomed company. Instead admitting to have drawn the wrong conclusions, change directions and write off the mistakes, failed leader such as Putin double down on stupid and hope that perceived strength is just as good as real strength. But even children learn sooner rather than later that closing your own eyes does not make the inconvenient aspects of life disappear. Facts have the inconvenient behavior to ignore your wishful thinking and come back, twice as strong than before. Seeing some ordinary Russians falling for this is not surprising, but when the whole Russian ship goes down like the Moskva then many Russians will have only one question left:
“How we couldn’t have seen that?”
Well, because you chose to.