András Rácz THE GOOD, THE BAD AND CLAUSEWITZ - WHY A WAR BETWEEN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA IS UNLIKELY 05/14/2014 05/26/2014 The Good, the Bad and Clausewitz András Rácz HIIA PAPERS NO. 12. Series of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs Publisher: Hungarian Institute of International Affairs Editor and typesetting: Andrea Tevelyné Kulcsár Editorial office: H-1016 Budapest, Bérc utca 13-15. Tel.: +36 1 279-5700 Fax: +36 1 279-5701 E-mail:
[email protected] www.kulugyiintezet.hu www.hiia.hu © András Rácz, 2014 © Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, 2014 ISSN 2060-5013 05/26/2014 The Good, the Bad and Clausewitz András Rácz INTRODUCTION he present paper intends to prove that despite the current high tensions, an open war between Russia and Ukraine is very unlikely. The main reason lays in the political objectives of TRussia, which Moscow is seemingly able to achieve even without launching a full-scale war against Ukraine. Following the violent events both in Eastern Ukraine and Odessa on the long weekend of 1–4 May, many argue that the tensions between Russia and Ukraine have reached a new peak, and the danger of a real war is very high. Hence, the main research question of the paper is whether the present tense situation between the two countries may escalate into a full-scale, real war. The paper is built on the concept of the well-known Prussian political thinker and soldier, Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), who stated in his famous work On War that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means”,1 where the original German term Politik means both politics and policy together.