Where does Vladimir Putin stop?

See updates through November 16, 2022, at end of post.



Fig. 1. Vladimir Putin in Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) uniform, photograph from Kremlin.ru, circa 1980, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Recall that Julia Ioffe, whose pessimism about Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine has so far proven, if anything, excessively optimistic, but who has been much closer to the mark than almost anyone else, has warned us “that you can’t rule anything out when Putin is involved and that the most pessimistic prediction is usually the right one.”[1] In the wake of a Russian attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which set off an alarming blaze that set off fears of a calamity even worse than Chernobyl, which Russia has also seized,[2] the North Atlantic Treaty Organization secretary-general has announced that the organization is refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.[3]

In her latest on what is now a fully-fledged if so far poorly executed invasion ordered by, by all accounts, a madman,[4] Ioffe has written that

Putin is determined to see this matter through—all the way through. There is no way he stops now, and the more the Ukrainian people stand up to him, the more they mock him, the more determined he will be to crush them. He will not be humiliated by “Little Russians,” by residents of a country he doesn’t believe is real. He will not be vanquished by a Ukraine he thinks is a puppet of his mortal enemy, the United States. And because he has more troops and more firepower, he can have his way, even if it won’t be as easy as he initially thought. It’s why absolutely no one should discount the possibility that Putin might make good on his threat to use a nuclear weapon. He is that angry, and he wants it badly enough. It is existential for him now. As Russian TV host Dmitry Kiselev threatened on his Sunday night show, Russia is fully willing to fire 500 nuclear warheads at NATO countries. He explained why Russia would do this. “The principle is: why do we need the world if Russia won’t be in it?”[5]

Fundamentally, imperialist logic exists on a slippery slope. There is always a necessity, indeed, an existential necessity, to expand; such is, in fact, intrinsic to our system of social organization and a fundamental reason it is unsustainable, for at some point, even after all the wars of expansion that can be fought have been fought, there is nothing on earth left to expand into.[6]

So if indeed Ukraine is existential for Russia and the dissolution of the Soviet Union is catastrophic,[7] then by what logic does Putin satisfy himself merely with Ukraine? Why not the entire former Soviet Union, including NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania[8] and non-members Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldava, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan?[9] Why not all of the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain, including Poland, East Germany (now united with the west), Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia and the Czech Republic), Hungary, Yugoslavia (now several countries), Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania?[10] Where does Putin stop? By what logic?

The secretary-general’s statement[11] assumes that Putin, the madman, will not, himself, expand the war to include all these other countries.[12] I do not know, and cannot see, a basis for such an assumption:

We are not part of this conflict. We have a responsibility as NATO allies to prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine because that would be even more dangerous, more devastating and would cause even more human suffering.[13]

It is all too easy to understand NATO’s hesitation to involve itself directly against a nuclear-armed madman, but if this assumption is indeed faulty, then the questions are first, how NATO will in fact prevent the war from expanding to other countries; and second, not whether NATO will enter the war, but when, and under what circumstances.


Update, March 6, 2022: Writing for the Times, Mark Galeotti thinks Ukraine is stuck with Russia, which is stuck both with Vladimir Putin, and an intractable war of resistance in Ukraine. Putin has a firm grip on the Russian security services, which have a sufficient grip on the military to prevent a coup, and no one else has the ability to remove him. We are all waiting, he writes, for the “grim reaper,” while a Europe frightened both by his upending of the “international order” and by his nuclear threats refuses a return to normal.[14] I think Galeotti’s analysis complements Julia Ioffe’s,[15] explaining bits that, as brilliant a writer as she is, she has not.

I remember talk of a new Cold War following Putin’s moves on Ukraine in 2014, his seizure of Crimea and territories in Ukraine’s east.[16] Whether we now agree with that assessment of that time or not, it is certainly apparent now that this is how Putin chose to view it, and we are surely in one now.[17] The question of how long it lasts and whether it becomes a wider, possibly nuclear hot war remains.[18] Putin himself threatened the latter prospect, saying that financial sanctions were[19] “akin to an act of war,”[20] which, given that the Russian military remains bogged down[21] and that the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions,[22] would seem to leave a nuclear attack, likely employing Russia’s heaviest weapons, as the only available avenue for widening his war.

In revisiting my post from 2014 on the return of the Cold War,[23] I found a need to restore some images and took new screenshots from the New York Times page[24] Among them is a map of the historic Russian empire (figure 1).[25] If, indeed, Putin sees himself as a “gatherer of Russian lands,”[26] then his ambitions might well include North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union territory.

Fig. 1. Historic Russian empire, from the New York Times, possibly March 6, 2014, fair use.[27]

Ioffe titles her newsletter at Puck News, “Tomorrow Will Be Worse.” It’s hard to imagine she had any idea how prescient that would prove to be, or how much worse it might yet still be tomorrow.


Update, March 7, 2022:


Benjamin Young’s analysis suggests that Vladmir Putin has a maximalist vision of Russia pretty much as including all Russians everywhere. Ukraine may be integral in Putin’s vision, but there’s nothing here that suggests any limits to his ambition.[28] Then there’s this:

Maj. Gen. [Igor] Konashenkov [a Russian military spokesperson] said Russia attacked Ukrainian military airfields in Starokostyantyniv and Vinnytsia and that Russia had destroyed nearly all of Ukraine’s military aircraft.

He claimed that Ukrainian jet fighters have flown to Romania and other neighboring countries during the conflict, an action which he said “can be regarded as the involvement of these states in armed conflict.”[29]

Romania is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.[30] Igor Konashenkov’s claim, certainly in combination with Putin’s characterization of sanctions against Russia as “akin to an act of war,”[31] lays rhetorical groundwork for a wider war, explicitly with NATO, more generally with anyone who participates in those sanctions.


The only hope would be in removing Putin from power. And this is, I am to understand, no hope at all.[32]


Update #2, March 7, 2022: If that light at the end of the tunnel isn’t just that radioactive flash that precedes the mushroom cloud, it might be that the Ukrainian military continues to wildly outperform expectations and that the Russian military continues to confound the experts by underperforming the same expectations. Russia has also apparently dropped its “denazification” demand and will settle for Ukrainian neutrality, that is, no European Union or North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership; recognition of Crimea as Russian territory; and recognition of separatist eastern regions as independent. It’s still an awfully big ask and Ukraine, buoyed by this continuing battlefield success, might well refuse.[33]

As implausible as it may seem,[34] I am convinced that Vladimir Putin must be utterly defeated and utterly humiliated, whether through some sort of coup or on the battlefield, and forced to abandon his imperial ambitions. If I am to embrace Julia Ioffe’s recommended pessimism,[35] this is the only hope for averting a wider war.[36]

The trick is in getting to that point: Doing so undermines the very assumptions that many experts rely on in assuming that Putin will not go nuclear.[37] Be careful what you wish for, because I sure as hell utterly fail to see a way through this conundrum.


Update, March 8, 2022 (repeatedly revised): Moldova, a small country, with a small military and a weak economy, which is not a member of either the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or he European Union, and which is located between Romania and Ukraine, may be next on Vladimir Putin’s hit list.[38]

Also, Paul Nuki, at the Telegraph, explains why oligarchs near Vladimir Putin are unlikely to push him out:[39]

[T]hose hoping that sanctions will quickly topple Putin are mistaken, say experts. Popular uprisings of the sort that saw the Iron Curtain torn down need years to foment and, for the moment at least, 70 per cent of Russians support the war in Ukraine according to official polls.

Perhaps more surprising, the idea that the business and security elites who surround Putin will suddenly turn on him is also flawed, say Kremlinologists. Indeed, the financial storm they face could drive many closer to Putin.[40]

It seems these oligarchs, such as they are, are under Putin’s thumb, mere “managers” of state assets, which are effectively Putin’s assets, while the “security elites” share Putin’s ideology. But the sanctions also bite ordinary Russians as Putin’s regime will no longer be able to pay them; many are already leaving the country and the military will lack economic support. So Putin, while insulated from any immediate threat, nonetheless faces a longer-term decay.[41]

Assuming sanctions do indeed have the impact Nuki suggests—he may be exaggerating as long as Europe keeps buying Russian oil and gas,[42] at least in present quantities[43]—it’s hard to see how Putin’s military adventure continues, which is why I think he will need to achieve results quickly, quite possibly by going nuclear.


Update #2, March 8, 2022: Julia Ioffe, it turns out, has her own rather different take on why deposing Vladimir Putin wouldn’t work.[44] Paul Nuki and Mark Galeotti, you might recall, each argued, in effect, that Putin is a puppet master and the oligarchs and security elites are his puppets. A coup, in their light, has the same likelihood of success as that of a marionette turning against the hand that pulls its strings.[45] Ioffe, on the other hand, observes all the people who are willingly carrying out Putin’s orders. The same, she argues, happened under Josef Stalin and she attributes a joke to Michael Idov who, she paraphrases, said something to the effect “that, in 100 years, Russia had reproduced essentially the same system three times: an authoritarian bureaucracy with a cult of personality at its center. Whatever its ideological trappings—monarchist, communist, neo-fascist—the core was the same.”[46]

It turns out to be unlikely that Mark Twain actually said, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”[47] But more than this, Ioffe’s view draws on an archetype I have seen before that characterizes the Russian psyche as somehow craving a cruel authoritarian. This said, regardless of how he views himself, Putin is not Stalin, nor is he Nicholas II; Putin does not live in Stalin’s time, nor Nicholas II’s.

That doesn’t make Ioffe wrong. Indeed, I very much fear she is right. There might, in fact, be something of Philip Zimbardo’s “power of the situation”[48] in the Kremlin that somehow survives all the upheavals of Russian history. But this is the very sort of view that must be treated with caution.

One of the things I tell the students who find themselves on an Uber ride with me driving is that social science theories should be treated like tools in a toolbox. When they seem to suit the task at hand, great, by all means, use them and cite them. When they don’t, put them back in the toolbox. Leave them aside for another day.

Along with this, what I’m really saying is that no social science theory is all that wonderful for prediction. It might help you to explain a point, in which case, you should absolutely use it. But don’t trust it to predict an outcome. It might be right. But I’d much rather apply it post hoc.

So go ahead, call me chicken shit. Call out my lack of courage. Scholarship isn’t about toxic masculinity. In the social sciences especially, we seek to understand. That macho approach that says I’ve got a theory and I’m gonna predict the future with it is simply silly.


Update, March 9, 2022 (citations added, March 10): Some might remember an allegation that invading Iraqi soldiers removed babies from hospital incubators in Kuwait and then took away the incubators. Human rights organizations failed to verify the story and, despite U.S. and Kuwaiti official insistence on the story’s veracity, at least one human rights organization declared it false.[49] Today’s story alleges that Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian maternity hospital.[50] I’m assuming today’s story is true. But tankies will surely cite the incubator story to assert that the maternity hospital story is false.

More to the point, the incubator story was part of the George H. W. Bush administration’s rationale for the war to liberate Kuwait, which Saddam Hussein had asserted was Iraq’s long lost 19th province.[51] So the question today, as alleged Russian atrocities and potential atrocities mount,[52] is, is anybody besides Ukraine assembling a case for the West to risk a possibly nuclear war?[53]


Update, March 11, 2022 (updated through April 12): To summarize in Ukraine:

  1. Ukraine fights alone[54] against a quantitatively, but clearly not qualitatively, vastly superior Russian force invading the country. It is now apparent that the losses the Ukrainians inflicted on the Russians are so great that an initial goal of taking Kyiv is beyond reach, at least for now,[55] and, after some delay, the Russians have withdrawn, apparently to focus on separatist regions in eastern Ukraine,[56] but possibly to lay a trap for Ukrainian forces.[57]
  2. Reports of Russian atrocities and potential atrocities continue to mount;[58] these crimes likely amount to genocide under international law.[59]
  3. Diplomatic and economic pressure against Russia are failing to diminish Vladimir Putin’s determination,[60] and if we’re to believe Joe Biden, they aren’t really meant to (see the update for March 25 below).[61] To the extent they work, economic sanctions increase the likelihood that Putin will resort to a nuclear attack,[62] but, in Russia’s case, state control means resilience,[63] making it unlikely that sanctions will dissuade Putin from his invasion anytime soon.
  4. Russia’s participation in negotiations to end its invasion is a farce, in part because Vladimir Putin has surrounded himself with sycophants who are very likely afraid to tell him the truth, and in part because this is part of how Russia wages war.[64] Necessarily, this will temper any sense of relief that Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed “that ‘no one is thinking about’ using nuclear weapons.”[65]
  5. There is no hope of a coup against Vladimir Putin.[66] If that assessment is wrong, then what little hope there is would be with the security services,[67] who, it seems, are quite unhappy as sanctions have begun to impact their lives and as Putin blames them for his own failure,[68] but they probably aren’t really smart enough to pull it off.[69]
  6. There is no hope of a popular uprising in Russia against Putin.[70] That said, there are serious methodological “threats to validity” to polling in Russia, particularly with regard to this war,[71] and while it is clear that there is some support for the war,[72] it is impossible to know how much.[73]
  7. Nobody knows how this ends beyond a devastated Ukraine.[74]

Somebody will have to capitulate, because everyone has staked positions they say they will not back down from,[75] sooner or later. And right now, it looks like an extremely devastating later, with no assurance whatsoever in the meantime that Putin will not expand the war, no assurance that Putin will not launch nuclear weapons, including against North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries.[76] In the meantime, it appears positions on each side are hardening, making compromise ever less likely.[77] Even if you’re immorally willing to sacrifice Ukraine, I’m having a hard time seeing how this status quo isn’t foolhardy and reckless.


Update, March 13, 2022: If Russia attacks a military base (the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security near Lviv, also near Poland) that Russia claims is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization base, whether or not it is in fact a NATO base,[78] is it in fact an attack on NATO?

The attack on the base is highly significant for a number of reasons. Long viewed with suspicion by Russia – whose media has claimed falsely in that the past the facility was a secret Nato base in Ukraine – the proximity, so close to the Polish border, marks a sharp escalation in the scope of Russian airstrikes.[79]

For now, I guess, but only for now, the answer has to be no, not quite. But it’s a nuanced ‘no,’ rather a warning shot, that signals Vladimir Putin’s willingness to expand the war beyond Ukraine and against NATO, even as it seems unlikely he can truly prevail in Ukraine.[80]

I get that Stephen Kotkin resists aspersions on Putin’s sanity—Kotkin does so for good reason, really I think much the same reason I resisted treating conservatives as mentally disordered in my dissertation[81]—but Putin’s apparent willingness to widen the war is inescapably madness.

That said, just as Putin is deluded, so increasingly it appears are NATO leaders refusing even the no-fly zone in what increasingly appears to be the vain hope of containing this war to Ukraine.[82] As I previously explained,

Fundamentally, imperialist logic exists on a slippery slope. There is always a necessity, indeed, an existential necessity, to expand; such is, in fact, intrinsic to our system of social organization and a fundamental reason it is unsustainable, for at some point, even after all the wars of expansion that can be fought have been fought, there is nothing on earth left to expand into.[83][84]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seems increasingly likely to have been right when he warned that this war might not be containable to Ukraine.[85] Putin will lose. One way or another, he will lose.[86] But just as surely as we all lose with the climate crisis that we seem incapable of addressing substantively, we will also lose with a nuclear war, which this wider war would surely become, that seems increasingly impossible to avoid.


Update, March 15, 2022: It appears China will support Russia, with military as well as economic aid.[87] China denies this,[88] perhaps because the U.S. is threatening to extend sanctions against China as well, if it does so.[89]


Update, March 16, 2022: Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “open door” is not open to Ukraine.[90]


My bullies got away with it and they were relentless. I spent nearly my entire primary and secondary school life on the run, trying to hide from them. I don’t know if they also beat other kids; I suppose it is likely they did.

Thanks especially to China, who entertains Russia’s claim to be the victim,[91] but also to NATO’s fear of World War III,[92] Russia is getting away with its invasion of Ukraine. Zelensky warns that Russia will attack other countries.[93] I cannot but feel the very same betrayal I felt throughout my childhood, as my father beat me, as schoolyard bullies beat me, really even today as employers refuse me, as they have for twenty-one infuriating years, a real job,[94] and no one in authority ever came to my aid.

The countries of eastern Europe, the countries around the South China Sea, and, from a lifetime, myself, we all know bullies. They never stop.


Update, March 20, 2022: Volodymyr Zelensky keeps warning about World War III,[95] we certainly see the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bending over backwards to avoid World War III,[96] and Vladimir Putin has already threatened nuclear war,[97] which obviously and certainly merits NATO caution, but I never see Zelensky’s logic, how he infers this possibility. The logic I do see here is my own, in short that I see no real limit or even a logic for a limit to Putin’s ambition short of utter defeat and abject humiliation.[98]

Barring Putin’s defeat and humiliation, I see the West being drawn into war much as it was in World War II, with appeasement (in the modern form, allowing Putin to grind Ukraine to dust, then to take Moldava) failing, a dawning realization that Putin must be confronted, just as Adolf Hitler had to be confronted. How such a conflict fails to go nuclear escapes me.

Locally, I am counting on Pittsburgh not actually being a target. The steel industry here is all but gone; high technology remains centered in Silicon Valley, much closer, I’m afraid, to my mother. But the chaos that follows a nuclear strike, perhaps on Washington, D.C., or New York City, all well within a day’s drive of here, should not be underestimated.

Throughout my life, so-called ‘preppers’ and survivalists, who prepare for armageddon, have always been considered wackos on the fringe. I no longer feel we have the luxury of complacency. The ham radios I ordered have all arrived but the Geiger counters are, annoyingly, taking a while. I am also ordering a sleeping bag and emergency water filter. Thanks to COVID-19, Uber passengers are still not permitted in my car’s front seat, so I can keep all this there.


Update, March 22, 2022: The huge question raised in Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Dmitry Peskov, reported by Luke McGee and Claire Calzonetti, is whether Vladimir Putin regards the setbacks his invasion forces have faced in Ukraine as an existential threat, in Peskov’s light, rationalizing the use of nuclear weapons.[99] I think the answer, given that all talk of nuclear weapons has originated on the Russian side and in the context of Ukraine,[100] has to be ‘yes:’

Dmitry Kiselyev, a longtime Kremlin propagandist who is known as one of the most sulfurous personalities on Russian television, opened his state television program on Sunday with a rundown of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. “In total our submarines are capable of launching over five hundred nuclear warheads, which are guaranteed to destroy the U.S. and all the countries of NATO to boot,” he said. “That’s according to the principle, ‘Why do we need a world if Russia’s not in it?’ ” He went on, “We’re not even going to talk about the strategic rocket forces. . . .Putin warned them. Don’t try to frighten Russia.”[101]

Isaac Chotiner’s interview with Andrei Soldatov[102] is the second I’ve seen in which the subject doubts that Vladimir Putin is indeed a madman.[103] But Soldatov also points to 1) Putin’s seemingly psychopathic reaction when questioned about deaths he is responsible for; 2) Putin’s increasingly small circle of people he trusts, suggesting paranoia; 3) a hierarchy of power in which underlings are afraid to report truthfully to their superiors; and 4) Putin’s apparent conviction that he knows better than anyone else,[104] something also observed by Stephen Kotkin in David Remnick’s interview.[105] I’m not a psychologist but neither are these otherwise extremely well-informed folks affirming Putin’s sanity, and I think there are definitely questions here to be asked of a psychologist.

Read the interviews anyway; both are extremely insightful. And yes, I think it’s quite obvious that Putin is stark raving mad; indeed, anyone who threatens nuclear war ought to be regarded as such.[106]

Speaking of interviews, Julia Ioffe interviews a Russian kid, now out of the country, battling Putin’s propaganda. His mother has blocked him, promised to report him for “fake news,” and refuses any communication.[107]


Update, March 24, 2022 (updated March 25, 2022): Amid fears that Russia may deploy chemical weapons against Ukraine,

Mr. [Joe] Biden and others have been careful not to telegraph exactly what the U.S. and allies would do if Mr. Putin used chemical weapons. “The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use,” he said Thursday.

“Strategic ambiguity and discretion are more effective” than red lines, said French President Emmanuel Macron, explaining why he wouldn’t specify what Russian action might trigger a NATO response.[108]

I tend to interpret vague threats as empty threats; however, I can certainly see an argument that Vladimir Putin might well, like any petulant, recalcitrant, unrepentant child, try to push the limits delineated in any clearly defined red lines.

Meanwhile, in a field ripe for rumor-mongering,[109] there’s more talk of a possible coup against Putin as Russian security services are unhappy at the loss of privileges under Western sanctions and as they also take the blame[110] for Putin’s failure in Ukraine.[111] The difficulty really remains that Putin has had well over two decades to purge anyone who might pose such a threat and to install the loyalist incompetent sycophants who now tell him what he wants to hear.[112] Indeed, apart from the reported resentment,[113] there’s simply not a lot of evidence of dissent—Julia Ioffe indeed has argued the contrary—that would produce a change of policy even if Putin were to die or be killed or overthrown.[114]

I can’t rule out a coup. No one can. But while I’m pretty confident I’m not the only one hoping to be wrong about this, what I’m seeing here in these analyses just isn’t promising.

I might also note that there is a single source for this report of dissent. So far, their information has been good.[115] But any good journalist knows to seek confirmation: To my knowledge, we simply ain’t got it.


Update, March 25, 2022: Those who suspect Joe Biden suffers dementia will surely see a boost here:

“Let’s get something straight … I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him [Vladimir Putin],” [Joe] Biden said at a press conference from Brussels, where he is meeting with NATO leaders.

“Sanctions never deter — you keep talking about that — sanctions never deter. The maintenance of sanctions, the maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain and the demonstration, why I asked for this NATO meeting today, is to be sure that after a month, we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year, that’s what will stop him,” the president said, raising his voice.

Asked if he believes NATO’s latest actions on Thursday will lead Russia to change course, Biden said, “That’s not what I said. You’re playing a game with me.”

“The answer’s no,” he added.[116]

So what, one might more than reasonably ask, is the point of the sanctions? Biden seems to think they’re meant to show solidarity among North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union countries.[117] As if that will dissuade Putin.

Show me a universe where this makes sense and I’ll show you a universe where cows fly.


Update, March 27, 2022: In the ongoing question of just how much territory Vladimir Putin seeks to restore his Russian empire,[118] Maria Butina, now a Russian minister of Parliament, previously prominent for her enthusiastic participation in the U.S. gun nuttery movement before the U.S. accused her of espionage,[119] is now talking about Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. Formerly known as Königsberg, it has historically been part of Prussia, Poland, and Germany and apparently “a Polish general said that Russian forces were only ‘occupying’ the Baltic Sea port.”[120] Both Poland and Lithuania are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization[121] and Belarus, a Russian ally, adjoins them to the east.

Ironically, Kaliningrad is not shown as part of the historic Russian empire in the New York Times map (figure 1), although such imperial claims would include both Lithuania and parts of Poland.[122] The Soviet Union occupied it near the end of World War II.[123]


Update, April 6, 2022: Suffice it to say, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone well.[124] I return to the theme of idiocy[125] in a new blog post entitled, “A self-defeating idiocy.” A portion of this new post was initially published as an update to two previous blog posts, including this one.[126] The text in the new post has been revised and extended from the earlier updates.


Update, April 11, 2022: I obviously disagree with Serhiy Leshchenko, whom Julia Ioffe interviews, about the possibility that Vladimir Putin will launch a nuclear war. Even if he is right that one man cannot do this alone,[127] Putin has plenty of sycophants at the Kremlin.[128] Surely, he can count on some of them being in the right place to help push that metaphorical red button.[129]

Leshchenko argues in favor of further U.S. support. Diminishing the risk of a nuclear World War III is part of that argument.[130]

But I would argue differently. I would argue that U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization dithering does not diminish the risk of World War III. You can argue that Putin needs a victory and that failure to achieve it in Ukraine will result in escalation.[131] You can argue that Putin’s ambitions extend far beyond Ukraine and onto NATO territory and that a Russian victory in Ukraine would merely whet Putin’s appetite for more. Neither argument diminishes the risk. And I still do not see a way that that risk is diminished short of Putin’s removal from power, which still seems wildly improbable.[132]

When war is inevitable, we might as well get on with it. And I think it’s inevitable.


Update, April 17, 2020: The fallacy should be immediately apparent:

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, the first European leader to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person since the invasion began, said he thinks the Russian president believes the war is necessary for his country’s security.

“I think he is now in his own war logic,” Nehammer said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, portions of which were released Saturday.

“I think he believes he is winning the war.”[133]

Let us stipulate that Vladimir Putin is indeed “winning the war.” Let us stipulate that he succeeds, against all odds and a determined resistance,[134] in pacifying Ukraine. If you conquer a country for your own security, then you have to defend that country in order to preserve that security; its security becomes your security. If you view countries surrounding that country as a threat, hello North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, then you must conquer them as well. And so it goes, in an ever widening circle, all to preserve the security that Putin perceives essential.

As I have previously said, repeatedly,

Fundamentally, imperialist logic exists on a slippery slope. There is always a necessity, indeed, an existential necessity, to expand; such is, in fact, intrinsic to our system of social organization and a fundamental reason it is unsustainable, for at some point, even after all the wars of expansion that can be fought have been fought, there is nothing on earth left to expand into.[135]

So if indeed Ukraine is existential for Russia and the dissolution of the Soviet Union is catastrophic,[136] then by what logic does Putin satisfy himself merely with Ukraine? Why not the entire former Soviet Union, including NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania[137] and non-members Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldava, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan?[138] Why not all of the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain, including Poland, East Germany (now united with the west), Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia and the Czech Republic), Hungary, Yugoslavia (now several countries), Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania?[139] Where does Putin stop? By what logic?[140]

We still have zero reason to accept that the war ends with Ukraine.[141] And if, more probably, Putin cannot fully subjugate Ukraine, then, particularly as more countries join NATO, worsening his security situation as he perceives it,[142] he still must have “something,” whatever that “something” may be in the context of his imperial ambition,[143] in the context of not only his but Kremlin ego.[144]

And because it is so manifestly apparent that Putin’s conventional forces are not up to the job,[145] that whatever he may tell Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer about “winning the war,”[146] he must know that the only way forward will be nuclear.[147]


Update, April 20, 2022: A coup[148] or popular uprising[149] remain wildly improbable.[150] The sense I have is that those expressing doubts, privately, for fear of repercussions,[151] are not among the hard-liners Vladimir Putin has surrounded himself with.[152] They are not in a position to seize power.

Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. . . .

So far, these people see no chance the Russian president will change course and no prospect of any challenge to him at home. More and more reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, Putin has dismissed attempts by other officials to warn him of the crippling economic and political cost, they said.

Some said they increasingly share the fear voiced by U.S. intelligence officials that Putin could turn to a limited use of nuclear weapons if faced with failure in a campaign he views as his historic mission. . . .

The president remains confident that the public is behind him, with Russians ready to endure years of sacrifice for his vision of national greatness, they said. With the help of tough capital controls, the ruble has recovered most of its initial losses and while inflation has spiked, economic disruption remains relatively limited so far.[153]

The Bloomberg article[154] seems to me a little inconsistent. If we speak of a “historic mission,” can this be limited to Ukraine, let alone the Donbas region? Yet, we speak of the Donbas now as if it alone is Putin’s goal. Count me very much among skeptics who doubt this is the case.[155]


Update, April 21, 2022: Vladimir Putin’s missile test[156] is a blatant effort to further[157] rattle the nuclear sabre.[158]

In fact, the [the nuclear-capable Sarmat] missile, if deployed, would add only marginally to Russia’s capabilities. But the launch was about timing and symbolism: It came amid the recent public warnings, including by Mr. Burns, that there was a small but growing chance that Mr. Putin might turn to chemical weapons attacks, or even a demonstration nuclear detonation.[159]

So, on the one hand, we have Putin threatening the use of nuclear weapons if Russia feels its existence is threatened,[160] which is also his rationale for invading Ukraine in the first place.[161] And we have that while he has invaded Ukraine, he has not yet used nuclear weapons.

We also have a history in which Ronald Reagan intentionally appeared to be crazy to gain negotiating leverage with the Soviet Union,[162] a history Putin is surely aware of. But even if, as seems reasonable to believe, Putin is applying that precedent here, we cannot infer, at least from this, one way or another whether Putin will, in the end, use nuclear weapons. We can only say what the Russians themselves say: They have not ruled this out.[163]

Speaking at the Georgia Institute of Technology last week, Mr. [William J.] Burns, [Central Intelligence Agency director and] a former American ambassador to Moscow, said Mr. [Vladimir] Putin was “an apostle of payback” who believes the West “took advantage of Russia’s moment of historical weakness in the 1990s.” He added that Mr. Putin’s small circle of advisers would hesitate to “question his judgment or his stubborn, almost mystical belief that his destiny is to restore Russia’s sphere of influence.”[164]

We can argue about what, precisely, that means. But if we’re going to call a belief “almost mystical,” surely it means more than this:

That means getting the West to back away from Russia’s borders. And it means stopping NATO’s expansion, which may soon spread to Finland and Sweden, where a senior American defense official was visiting this week to discuss possible accession to the Western alliance.[165]

Rather, it much more likely means this (figure 1):

Fig. 1 (repeated). Historic Russian empire, from the New York Times, possibly March 6, 2014, fair use.[166]

Certainly, such a “historic mission”[167] must entail more than the Donbas,[168] and, given the underwhelming performance of Russian conventional forces to date,[169] he must turn to unconventional means, including the nuclear.[170]


Update, April 22, 2022: If anyone really believed that Vladimir Putin would settle for the Donbas,[171] it seems Russia now wants all of southern Ukraine in order to reach Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldava that Moscow already controls but where Moscow nonetheless alleges that repression of Russian-speakers is occurring. And yes, you’ve heard this one before: It’s the same excuse Putin used to invade Ukraine.[172] It is evident that there is absolutely no requirement that Putin’s excuses make any fucking sense whatsoever.

Moldova last hit my radar as a possible target for Putin’s imperial ambition early in March.[173]


Update, April 26, 2022: The question that is now before us is, if you think you are already at war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,[174] and you are warning of World War III,[175] how long before you start acting accordingly?

“Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War III,” [Sergeĭ Lavrov] said in a Russian television interview.

Lavrov said he would not want to see risks of a nuclear confrontation “artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant.”

“The danger is serious,” he said. “It is real. It should not be underestimated.”[176]

Such talk is variously dismissed as ‘bravado’ or as a concession of weakness or defeat.[177]

Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he too regarded Russia’s scaremongering as a sign of weakness.

Russia has lost its “last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter after Mr [Sergeĭ] Lavrov’s interview, adding: “This only means Moscow senses defeat.”[178]

But we must not forget that the Kremlin has repeatedly said it views its invasion of Ukraine as responding to an existential threat.[179] If the Kremlin indeed feels it has nothing to lose, then it might well act accordingly.

So now the question really is, do the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin really believe the nonsense that they have peddled? Or is this really just imperial ambition? Or are the two somehow confounded, as Russian empire seen as existentially essential to Russia’s survival? So far as I know, no one knows the answer to these questions.


Update, May 10, 2022: I had associated Max Boot with neoconservatism, so it’s more than a little surprising to me that he wrote this:

[Vladimir] Putin is now in a strategic quandary that should be familiar to Americans after our misbegotten wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — only many times worse. Russia has launched a “war of choice” based on bad intelligence (such as the assumption that Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators). The war is going badly, but once troops are committed, emotions run high and national prestige is on the line. Both escalation and withdrawal are too painful to contemplate. The easiest thing to do is to continue doing what you’ve been doing, even if there is scant hope that the results will get any better.[180]

Afghanistan and Iraq were, or are, flatly, wars of neoconservative ambition, imperialism, if you will; neoconservatism arose as a reaction to, among other things, the antiwar movement that sought to get the U.S. out of southeast Asia.[181] Boot’s argument is that it required a change of U.S. leadership to get the country out of each of those wars (it took Richard Nixon more than one term to extract us from Vietnam, so I think I’m unlikely to be alone in doubting this example) and that the same is required, even if unlikely, in Russia.[182]

Boot doubts that Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons because “that would be the action of a madman who fears that the end is near. Putin’s troops are carrying out unspeakable war crimes, but he is far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory.” And Boot sees in a relatively subdued (read, less bellicose) Victory Day celebration, where Putin did not escalate the war on Ukraine, signs of recognition of reality rather than insanity, as Boot puts it, that “while Putin is isolated [but apparently not in Hitler-in-the-bunker territory] and prone to miscalculation, he is not insane.” Boot’s claim that Putin “far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory” must stand against evidence, evidence that Boot recognizes,[183] that the Kremlin sees or at least portrays the war in Ukraine hysterically in existential terms.[184] We can certainly hope that Boot is right at the same time we recognize that this chain of reasoning seems tenuous.

Boot’s assessment of Putin rests on Putin’s apparent recognition that a general “mobilization [with a declaration of war rather than a ‘special military operation’] would bring more problems than it would solve” and that “the war is not going his way.”[185] That’s two data points against a boatload (the Moskva, perhaps?) of delusional crap[186] that Putin continues to justify his war with,[187] even if we set aside Putin’s simultaneously ludicrous and terrifying hubris of a “historic mission.”[188] Again, we can certainly hope Boot is right, even if we think his evidence is selective.


Update, May 16, 2022 (revised May 17): More and more, the story of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has become what was, at its outset, dismissed as hopelessly delusional, about a Russian defeat and potential humiliation,[189] potentially leading Vladimir Putin to go nuclear.[190] The trouble isn’t just that a face-saving solution for Putin would, in effect, reward him, but that it will fail to convey the message that he and Russia must never do this again.[191] Humiliation will be the one and only thing that Putin understands.[192]

And this isn’t just about Putin, as serious as his case is. It is also about those toxically masculine right-wingers who celebrate Putin’s example, who elect the likes of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán to high offices, who embrace the notion that “might makes right.” Bullying must be defeated by abjectly and undeniably humiliating force; it is the only thing that works.

An example of this can be seen with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s objections[193] to Finland and Sweden seeking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in response to the invasion,[194] in which Sweden in particular has been insufficiently cooperative in Turkey’s efforts to repress separatist Kurds and both countries have restricted arms sales to Turkey in response to those efforts. Erdoğan likes his empire and wants to keep bullying Kurds to keep it. It follows that Erdoğan has also been much friendlier to Russia than much of the rest of NATO, resisting pressure, for example, and like his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Mihály Orbán, to join sanctions against Russia.[195] Bullies like bullies, which is also why India won’t even condemn the Russian invasion,[196] and they are intractable. There’s no way to persuade them to behave except through the one thing they respect: sheer, brute force.


Update, May 18, 2022: With her use of a “wood chipper” analogy, Julia Ioffe sets up a binary between two possibilities: The first is Ukrainian victory over dismally-performing Russian troops. The second is a slow grinding away of Ukraine, which apparently Russia can (in quantitative terms) sustain indefinitely, slowly feeding the country to “[Vladimir] Putin’s Wood Chipper.” My sense of this article[197] is that Ioffe, while brilliant and indispensable in understanding Kremlin psychology and in offering insight into the Russian people, is perhaps overreaching in military matters.

It remains the case that the Russian military has performed astonishingly abysmally, failing even at basic tasks of warcraft.[198] And it remains the case that Putin has declined any “off-ramp” and is now boxed in, unwilling to admit defeat, unable to claim victory, unwilling to declare war (as opposed to a “special military operation”), unable to make significant gains without doing so and potentially facing serious consequences if he does.[199] It’s important not to give an incompetent and delusional madman more credit than he deserves. His failure remains a failure. His calculation remains, to put it ludicrously mildly, a miscalculation. His persistence is nothing even remotely like victory. He is, in fact and as I have been saying since January, an idiot and he fucked the hell up.[200]

All that said, there are at least two fallacies in play here: First, binaries are often false dichotomies. And second, as this war has amply demonstrated, quantitative capability is not qualitative capability. I doubt as a practical and political matter that Russia can hold out as long as Ioffe’s experts imply. But it also remains the case that the West’s response has failed to dissuade Putin. There is some question, even if there is as yet no sign of the West relenting in its support for Ukraine, whether the West will in fact relent. There is also no sign that Ukraine will be able to dislodge Russia from Ukrainian territory.[201] Putin’s persistence could yet pay off. I think it is more likely, not necessarily probable, but more likely that Ukraine prevails after a long and horribly destructive war.

The difficulty here remains that where Russia’s conventional forces may be stymied, its unconventional—I continue to think nuclear—forces are untested. If the Kremlin really sees that this war, whether it chooses to call it one or not, as existential, whether really for Kremlin political survival or Russia’s survival, Putin may very well decide he has nothing to lose by pushing that big red button.[202] It might be difficult, again in quantitative terms, to see how going nuclear improves Russia’s military situation,[203] but it might, indeed, be a desperate Putin’s only hope, however slender and even at the cost of however many lives, for a face-saving way out.


Update, June 10, 2022:
Fig. 1. Historic Russian empire, from the New York Times, possibly March 6, 2014, fair use.[204]

There can no longer be any doubt that Vladimir Putin’s intentions will extend far beyond Ukraine as he “has compared the war in Ukraine to Peter the Great’s conquests in the Baltic, arguing that in both conflicts Russia was recovering its own territory.”[205] This historical analog Putin points to is a war Pyotr Alekséyevich waged against Sweden; this particular conquest includes Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg.[206] Though there are certainly other arguments, such as those Julia Ioffe correctly[207] offers,[208] the map (figure 1) alone[209] refutes those who are so desperate to appease Putin,[210] leaving little doubt that any intention to recover lost territory entails a vast claim.[211]

You may ridicule the Russian military’s underwhelming performance so far in Ukraine, as undermining any prospect of wider ambition, but Putin has nuclear weapons and a lot of them.[212]


Update, August 29, 2022: We might be seeing an answer to the question of “Where does Vladimir Putin stop?[213] And it might not be the answer Putin anticipated.[214] So ultimately the question becomes, just how ‘existential,’ really, is Russian success in Ukraine?[215]

Russia’s president keeps understandably schtum about his “special military operation”. But indefinite stalemate is not what he expected. He didn’t expect car bombs in Moscow and humiliating attacks on fortress Crimea, either.

Least of all did [Vladimir] Putin anticipate 80,000 Russian soldiers dead or wounded. Dying with them is his Peter the Great pipe dream of a “greater Russia”. Extinct already is his reputation as anything other than a killer and a crook.

An endless military quagmire is not a scenario Putin can afford as slow-burn western sanctions corrode his economy and his military’s manpower and materiel are steadily depleted.[216]

Probably the only way Putin can even save face is by undermining western support for Ukraine. Simon Tisdall points out a great many fissure points Putin can exploit and, in some cases, already is. Tisdall doesn’t actually use the old trope of a cornered, wounded animal as being the most dangerous in reference to Putin, but his analysis certainly follows it.[217] Which is why I still worry, albeit a little less urgently, about this escalating to nuclear war.[218]


Update, September 11, 2022: “Retreat is part of the art of war,” says Serhiy Kuzan, a military expert at the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center.[219] So, too, are maneuver, feint, and diversion, which the Ukrainians have recently done well, and which the Russians have recognized and reacted to poorly.[220] Incompetents remain in command of Russian forces:

“This is a significant event,” said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “It doesn’t mean Russia will be forced out of Ukraine anytime soon. But they keep not learning lessons right, keep not doing basic things right.”

“The overall situation now favors Ukraine, especially in the medium term,” Lee said.[221]

But at some point, you have to look further up the chain of command. A while ago, I wrote,

Isaac Chotiner’s interview with Andrei Soldatov[222] is the second I’ve seen in which the subject doubts that Vladimir Putin is indeed a madman.[223] But Soldatov also points to 1) Putin’s seemingly psychopathic reaction when questioned about deaths he is responsible for; 2) Putin’s increasingly small circle of people he trusts, suggesting paranoia; 3) a hierarchy of power in which underlings are afraid to report truthfully to their superiors; and 4) Putin’s apparent conviction that he knows better than anyone else,[224] something also observed by Stephen Kotkin in David Remnick’s interview.[225] I’m not a psychologist but neither are these otherwise extremely well-informed folks affirming Putin’s sanity, and I think there are definitely questions here to be asked of a psychologist.[226]

I don’t think we know precisely what information Vladimir Putin is getting. He must have some inkling that he is failing to achieve his objectives. He must have some inkling that his commanders are fools.[227] He must have some inkling that the general mobilization Russian right-wing bloggers call for[228] may be necessary[229] but will not be sufficient to solve these problems. He must have some inkling that he is losing.

And none of this can really be new to Putin. These failures have been apparent for months, indeed even from the failure to take Kyiv.[230] But whether because of delusion or because of inability, he has not solved the problem.


Update #2, September 11, 2022: Mike Martin writes in the Telegraph:

[The Ukrainians] have [retaken over 2,500 sq km of Russian-occupied Ukraine] by punching a hole through thinly-guarded Russian front lines east of Kharkiv, and severing the Russian lines of logistics, forcing the withdrawal of large contingents of Russian soldiers from multiple locations, but most importantly Izyum and Kupyansk.

Without these two cities, Russia cannot effectively supply its forces in the north-east or the east of the country, and so further collapses, withdrawals and surrenders of Russian forces are to be expected.[231]

If that seems hyperbolic, consider what Russian forces did as they withdrew: They dropped their rifles, stole civilian clothing, and ran.[232] This is simply not a true fighting force.

I don’t know that Martin is quite right to suggest a turning point has been reached.[233] On the other hand, while I’m not sure he has adequately reckoned for the fact that the Ukrainians, too, have suffered heavy losses, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you he’s wrong. We might soon have a proper answer.

Martin also speculates that this may mean Vladimir Putin’s downfall.[234] As local Russian officials call for his resignation,[235] I can’t tell you Martin is wrong here either. But then Martin wonders about the aftermath.[236] And that just might be something we ought to be thinking about more seriously.


Update, September 18, 2022: It’s starting to look a bit like overreach. Russia seems unable even to defend its own territory, raising more[237] questions about its leadership.[238] It’s quite a different picture, at least for the moment, from that when I originally asked where Vladimir Putin would stop.[239]

“As Ukraine succeeds on the battlefield, Vladimir Putin is becoming embarrassed and pushed into a corner,” [Scott] Pelley said to President [Joe] Biden. “And I wonder, Mr. President, what you would say to him if he is considering using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons.”

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” Mr. Biden said.

When Pelley asked what the consequences would be if Putin crossed that line, the president wouldn’t say.[240]


Update, September 19, 2022: Russia isn’t the U.S. but if it were the U.S., I would say that Vladimir Putin is losing his grip and I really don’t know how else to interpret this:

Alla Pugacheva has been a musical megastar here for decades. First, in the Soviet Union, where she began her career in the 1960s; then, after the fall of the USSR, in Russia.

She is a hugely popular and well-respected artist, which makes her public comments about Russia’s offensive in Ukraine big news.

Her assertion that “our lads are dying for illusory aims that make our country a pariah and the lives of our citizens extremely difficult” is likely to infuriate the Kremlin. . . .

[Her husband Maxim] Galkin condemned Russian troops’ alleged atrocities and said there could be no justification for the Ukraine invasion.[241]

This follows several local Russian politicians’ call for Putin to resign[242] and what looks to me like a very canny analysis that there may be a regime change by the spring.[243] Due to the limitations of survey non-methodology, which are exacerbated in Russia by orders of magnitude,[244] we cannot know how much this is the tip of the iceberg.

But in the U.S., I would suspect that these celebrities and politicians might have a finger on the pulse of the population. I would suspect, at the very least, that support for Putin’s policies is far softer than we will see reported. But this is Russia, not the U.S. And I’m left to wonder just how wrong my suspicions really are.


Update, October 4, 2022:

“The Ukrainian armed forces commanders in the south and east are throwing problems at the Russian chain of command faster than the Russians can effectively respond,” said a Western official who requested anonymity to brief reporters about sensitive security information. “And this is compounding the existing dysfunction within the Russian invasion force.”[245]

I get Telegraph newsletters. I have access because, yes, I subscribe. And despite their cringeworthy—somehow not nearly a strong enough word—early embrace of Liz Truss (the shine has come off now and, yeah, that was fast), they often have coverage I haven’t found elsewhere. I wish I could reproduce more of their newsletters for you; one of them includes “dispatches” from Ukraine, which tell something of what’s happening on the ground there.

It’s safe to say that Vladimir Putin has well and truly fucked himself. His conventional forces are largely helpless, lacking the leadership to respond effectively to Ukrainian strategy, tactics, and maneuver.[246] Even his nuclear threats are really rather hollow.[247] He makes decisions and gives orders from desperation and delusion.[248]

This is not by any means the picture of a winner. The only remaining question is how ugly a loser he is.


Update, October 7, 2022 (updated October 7): When last I checked in on Ukraine, I wrote,

It’s safe to say that Vladimir Putin has well and truly fucked himself. His conventional forces are largely helpless, lacking the leadership to respond effectively to Ukrainian strategy, tactics, and maneuver.[249] Even his nuclear threats are really rather hollow.[250] He makes decisions and gives orders from desperation and delusion.[251]

This is not by any means the picture of a winner. The only remaining question is how ugly a loser he is.[252]

That question is looming larger as Vladimir Putin only digs himself in deeper, committing himself to victory even as Ukraine defeats him on the battlefield:

We are trying to figure out, what is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?[253]

Putin is, by far, not the only political leader to confound his country’s survival with his own. And so, when we hear Russian talk of an ‘existential’ situation, one question that must be asked is whether we are really hearing about what is ‘existential’ for Russia or what is ‘existential’ for Putin. As we hear more talk of a possible removal of Putin,[254] it is more than reasonable to suspect the latter.

Delusion can, so the argument goes, only take Putin so far. At some point reality must catch up with him, even ensconced behind the Kremlin walls. And so it looks increasingly likely that Evgenia Markovna Albats is right and that her forecast of Putin’s fall, perhaps by springtime,[255] may be borne out sooner, rather than later.[256] Albats warned that a junta would lack legitimacy and be short term.[257] In a more orderly transition, it seems that much the same would be true of Putin’s immediate successor. What chaos then?[258]

The next few months will teach us something. But Ukrainians have already paid a staggering price for that lesson and ordinary Russians might as well. Then there’s the entire world:

[Joe] Biden said the prospect of defeat could make [Vladimir] Putin desperate enough to use nuclear weapons, the biggest risk since U.S. President John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev faced off over missiles in Cuba in 1962.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” Biden said in New York.

Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, is significantly underperforming,” Biden said.[259]

Joe Biden also expressed doubt that “there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”[260]

It’s a curious point that Lewis Page did not consider the classic understanding of nuclear war in his analysis of Putin’s nuclear options, observing that the West has responses that would devastate the Russian war effort in Ukraine short of using nuclear weapons.[261]

Just today, President [Vladimir] Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe, in a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the nonproliferation regime. A nuclear war cannot be won. And must never be fought.[262]

The classic understanding, of course, is all-out nuclear war, with everybody launching everything they’ve got at each other. The scenario includes the possibility of an accidental or otherwise limited nuclear attack, with escalating responses on each side until both nuclear arsenals are depleted. It is also, among other things, the preemptive strike the hardline anti-communists advocated early in the Cold War,[263] in the hope but with little assurance that enough Amerikkkans would survive to preserve the U.S. political and economic system.

Page is far from alone. I don’t think anyone in the present context has seriously contemplated the possibility of Armageddon, all-out nuclear war. In my discussion of the matter, this was the abandon-all-hope scenario,[264] and as such I don’t see how we can profitably consider it, other than, as I interpret Biden, as a terrifying risk.[265]

But because this Armageddon was the general Cold War understanding, it’s easy to understand the 79-year old Biden invoking it. Indeed, the fear of such underlies my entire post, as updated, on the topic.[266]

The question, as it has been from the beginning of Russian rhetoric about the Ukraine war as ‘existential,’ indeed as “part of a larger existential fight against [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization],”[267] is how ‘existential,’ really? Is it really so ‘existential’ that the Russians will launch nuclear weapons, even all-out nuclear war? Or is it, as I and I think most analysts have postulated, just a bad bluff?[268]

This is another lesson yet to be learned.


Update, November 15, 2022: It seems a missile probably made in Russia hit Polish territory. The assumption that Russia launched the missile is being investigated. That the missile was in fact made in Russia has not been confirmed. But, at least in theory, Vladimir Putin might now actually have himself a shooting war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.[269]

A lot will surely depend on the “findings” of an “investigation.” Perhaps Russia did indeed manufacture the missile. Perhaps Russia did indeed launch the missile. Perhaps Russia intentionally targeted Poland. But NATO’s investigation can, of course, conveniently fail to substantiate such claims. And it would help loads if such a report were in fact credible. Of course, that might require Putin to make some concessions.

A problem for anyone attempting to downplay the attack will be Putin’s own, his government’s own, and his propagandists’ own rhetoric suggesting that his war on Ukraine is in fact a war against NATO.[270] Another problem is that he and they have rattled his sword at Poland already.[271] That should raise the price Putin will have to pay.

That is, unless Putin actually wants a shooting war with NATO.

I’m wondering how this plays.


Update, November 16, 2022:

Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested the missile [which hit Przewodów, a village in Poland, killing two people] was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one amid the crushing salvo against Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.[272]

Assuming these “preliminary assessments” hold, and it appears this is the line the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is adopting,[273] Russia remains at fault. Ukraine was defending itself against a Russian attack on its infrastructure. The trouble here is that the blame on Russia[274] is indirect and therefore muted. An opportunity to wring some concessions from Vladimir Putin[275] at a time when Putin’s back is against the wall with his retreat from Kherson,[276] and at a time when it is even more apparent that Russia is in hopelessly over its head with its war on Ukraine,[277] is going to waste.

  1. [1]Julia Ioffe, “Putin on the Brink… of What, Exactly?” Puck News, February 15, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-on-the-brink/
  2. [2]Jim Heintz, Yuras Karmanau, and Mstyslav Chernov, “Fire out at key Ukraine nuclear plant, no radiation released,” Associated Press, March 4, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-joe-biden-kyiv-business-33b6c1709dee937750f95c6786832840; Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay, “Explainer: Why Russia and Ukraine are fighting for Chernobyl disaster site,” Reuters, February 24, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-russia-ukraine-are-fighting-chernobyl-disaster-site-2022-02-25/; Reuters, “Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces -Ukrainian official,” February 24, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chernobyl-power-plant-captured-by-russian-forces-ukrainian-official-2022-02-24/
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  4. 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