Alumni Impact Fund 2022: Winning Project

Thanks to all who supported the 2022 Alumni Impact Fund campaign. The following project has received Alumni Impact Fund support.

Reforming and Rebuilding Ukraine

Volunteers remove debris from the House of Culture in the village of Ivanivka, which was damaged in a Russian attack, in Chernihiv region, Ukraine, September 3, 2022

Photo by Vladislav Musienko/Reuters

Post-war reconstruction in Ukraine may be the largest rebuilding effort in modern history. U.S., European, and Ukrainian officials are making decisions now as to how reform, reconstruct, and secure Ukraine. Recent U.S. reconstruction efforts were in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Ukraine is fundamentally different: When the fighting slows, there will be no insurgency or civil war. Better models are the successful record of European rebuilding after WWII, the fall of the Wall, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. To aid decisionmakers, RAND has distilled lessons for Ukraine from relevant post-war and natural disaster reconstruction efforts. The research emphasizes the importance of post-conflict security—largely neglected in current discussion. With AIF funding, Howard Shatz, Gabrielle Tarini, Charles Ries, James Dobbins, and Daniel Egel will robustly disseminate this analysis to help officials prepare and plan for long-term, consistent, and coordinated policy toward post-war Ukraine.

The team will develop a briefing for U.S. and European policymakers, as well as the private sector, to orient decisionmakers to the practical dimensions of Ukraine's reconstruction, its geopolitical salience, and its place in broader U.S. national security interests. They will develop and disseminate a RAND Ukraine Reconstruction Calculator to help policymakers and the public gain a rapid understanding of key reconstruction insights and explore dimensions of the reconstruction challenge, including the trade-offs in focus areas (such as housing, industry, and private sector support) at different levels of funding and investment. With other research organizations, RAND will host a Ukraine reconstruction conference and the researchers will also author a commentary and a longer-form publication to help inform the broader debate on Ukraine's reconstruction.