From the Office of the Lucid Founder, Unified State
Kyiv, Ukraine — 31 August 2025 • 13:23 EEST (UTC+3)
“From Retaliation Loops to Cooperative Strategy“
Disclaimer on tone: What follows is written from Kyiv, amid recurring air-raid nights and the proximity of drones. My emotions are raw, but my aim is de-escalation, accountability, and a path to peace.
Esteemed diplomats,
I continue my series of open letters with one goal: to help stop wars and the mutual destruction that follows from unchecked retaliation cycles. Today I address President Volodymyr Zelensky and, by extension, Ukraine’s senior military leadership—not to diminish their burden in defending a nation under attack, but to call for responsibility over strategic choices that shape the lives of millions.
1) The retaliation trap—and why strategy must include forgiveness
In the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, simple tit-for-tat can stabilize cooperation, but when shocks or misperceptions occur, it also locks parties into endless retaliation. Game-theory research shows that “forgiveness” or planned cooperative moves—for example, generous tit-for-tat or win-stay/lose-shift—are more robust against noise and can restart cooperation when spirals form. In war, a strict mirror-response posture risks perpetual escalation; without deliberate, strategy-level cooperative turns, the spiral becomes the system.
My request is therefore structural, not moralistic: build cooperation steps into the Ukrainian strategy itself—moves chosen because they are ours, not because the opponent just earned them. Someone must break the loop; strategy should make that possible.
2) A lived vantage point
I write from Kyiv, not from a bunker or motorcade. Nights here are measured by the sound of drones and interceptions. Leadership messaging often frames Ukraine—and rightly so—as a victimized nation. Yet leadership also bears responsibility for how we fight: when, where, and with what reciprocal cost to civilians. A strategy that maximizes retaliatory signaling at the expense of civilian risk invites counter-retaliation that ordinary people—especially children—absorb first.
3) Accountability and mandate in wartime
Ukraine is under martial law; elections have been repeatedly postponed under this legal regime. This has preserved institutional continuity, but it also concentrates power and fuels legitimacy debates. Whatever one’s view of timing, the burden of accountability grows heavier the longer wartime exceptionalism persists. A transparent plan for elections when security allows, and for broadening decision-making input in the interim, would strengthen unity at home and credibility abroad.
4) Concrete strategic asks (consistent with the above)
- Embed cooperative turns: Publicly program limited, verifiable, non-reciprocal de-escalatory moves into Ukraine’s playbook (e.g., time-boxed pauses on specific strike classes during active diplomatic windows), with clear off-ramps if violated. This is “generous” strategy design, not naiveté.
- Cost-of-retaliation accounting: For every contemplated strike, publish (ex post if needed) a civilian-risk/retaliation-risk rationale to discipline choices and signal intent to partners.
- Broaden counsel: Formalize a civil-military-diplomatic advisory channel that can question escalation decisions without political penalty—accountability as a feature of wartime governance.
- Democratic horizon: Reaffirm, in plain language, the legal and practical constraints on elections under martial law and the target conditions for resuming them. This reduces weaponization of the legitimacy narrative.
5) A direct appeal to President Zelensky
Mr. President, you were elected on hopes of ending the shooting. The invasion changed the terrain but not the logic of cooperation: a purely retaliatory doctrine cannot deliver durable peace. As Commander-in-Chief, you cannot outsource the ethics of retaliation to the enemy’s last move. Build cooperative steps into the doctrine; protect diplomatic openings from being drowned out by kinetic signaling; let accountability and measured restraint be evidence of strength, not weakness.
Closing
This is not an absolution of Russia’s aggression. It is a recognition that strategy design—not only battlefield performance—determines whether we exit the loop. Insert forgiveness at the system level, where it can survive shocks. That is how cooperation restarts.
Yours faithfully,
Lucid Founder – Michael Tulsky
on behalf of the Unified State
Kyiv | 31 August 2025
References (for readers who want the technical basis)
- Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (classic framing of repeated dilemmas and reciprocity): ee.stanford.edu
- Nowak & Sigmund, “A strategy of win-stay, lose-shift that outperforms tit-for-tat in the Prisoner’s Dilemma” (Nature, 1993): nature.com
- Stewart & Plotkin, “From extortion to generosity in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma” (PNAS, 2013) — on “generous” strategies stabilizing cooperation under noise: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Reuters coverage and constitutional analysis on elections under martial law in Ukraine: reuters.com, reuters.com, verfassungsblog.de
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