Putin's MADness
Putin got MAD
When Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine he warned the international community of “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” over any attempted interference. What exactly those consequences would be he left to the imagination. What is clear is that he wanted Ukraine's potential allies to dread the thought of engaging Russia militarily.
President Putin is not mad. He is cold, calculating and fiercely ideological. In Putin's world the end justifies the means. However, President Putin has badly miscalculated this time and in the end that will cost him dearly.
Putin has Mastered MAD
The concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), put forth during the Cold War, is that in any war if both sides have nuclear weapons each side could destroy the other. This mutually assured destruction is in and of itself a deterrent. A nuclear war has no winners.
In a MAD world you have to think twice before firing a shot at your opponent. Even a shot fired in defense could trigger escalation leading to a cataclysmic chain of event ending in /nuclear war. And all because one person pulls a trigger in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the basis for the West's refusal to enter the conflict in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin is a master at playing the MAD card. In the late 1990s as head of Russia's National Security Council he designed a concept in the Russian Military Doctrine that allows for “de-escalation using a limited or tactical nuclear strike. Essentially it permits the use of a nuclear weapon to inflict limited, yet clearly painful damage on an adversary in order to force the adversary to de-escalate and swiftly bring a conflict to an end.
The Russian military playbook thus includes the use of of limited nuclear strikes and Vladimir Putin is willing ready and eager to draw attention to that. Russia's large-scale military exercises include simulation of a limited nuclear strike.
Whether he is equally ready willing and able to actually use a nuclear weapon is a different story entirely. I have difficulty imagining that a limited nuclear attack, unless launched against a non-nuclear power, would not be met with similar if not greater retaliation. For this reason I believe Putin's doctrine is fundamentally flawed and the fundamental underpinnings of arms control remain intact. But then again, I'm not expert in nuclear game theory.
The Bottom Line
The West has explicitly ruled out active military support for Ukraine. The West is willing to send arms including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but not the fighter jets Ukraine says it needs in order to defend itself. The US believes transferring fighter jets to Ukraine would have limited benefits in terms of Ukraine's ability to defend itself at the cost of increased risk Putin will view that as escalation and draw NATO into World Wat III.
The West's stated reluctance or refusal to commit military resources beyond a narrow list of arms encourages Putin. He will continue his aggression in other former Soviet Republics with impunity.
The West must do anything it can to push Russia out of Ukraine. Debating about whether or not to supply aircraft to Ukraine only make the West look weak and divided. The longer Putin continues this barbaric campaign the more of the country he will destroy and the greater will be the cost to rebuild Ukraine and the longer it will take for millions of Ukrainians and hosts in other European countries to return to a normal life.
Putin badly miscalculated by thinking that he could create regime change and loyalty to Russia from Ukraine. That simply is a non-starter.
He believes that his scorched earth policy of levelling whole towns and destroying critical infrastructure will bring Ukraine to its knees. He is wrong. This will only strengthen the resolve of the Ukrainian people and further turn world opinion against him. Moreover, after the war Ukraine must be rebuilt. This will provide the West as well as China, countless opportunities to expand their influence in Ukraine and other former Soviet countries. The sphere of influence Putin sought to expand will in fact have shrunk.
Despite the short comings of sanctions it is immediately obvious they are imposing a great toll on Russia. The more the West raises the cost of Putin's actions on Russia's political and economic elites, the more they will feel the lifestyle they enjoy and wealth they have created is threatened. Russia's military over time will grow to resent Putin for the damage he is inflicting on them as well. Finally, many of these people are shocked at what Putin is doing and they see the cost Putin's war can have on Russia. Sooner or later their support for him will not only crumble.
Once the war is over the most important thing the West can do is build a strong and functional peace with Russia, rather than maintain the dysfunctional and distrustful relationship the led us to where we are.
The West Buys Putin's Bluff
The U.S. and NATO emphasised repeatedly and publicly that they would avoid escalating the war in Ukraine and avoid direct confrontation with the Russian military. Putin takes this to mean that he has free reign to use military as he likes without active resistance from the West.
In Putin's mind, so long as he doesn't attack a NATO member he can do whatever he likes. He doesn't care about the human cost of his actions and the damage he does. The longer the war continues, the more damage Putin will do. Plain and simple.
Consider the recent fiasco about transferring planes to Ukraine. Poland said it was willing to send some 60 planes to Ukraine. The caveat was that those planes should not take off from Polish soil. Instead it proposed that the planes be transferred from a US base in Germany. The US and Germany quickly shot down (pun intended) that idea. The US believes Ukraine will gain little real benefit with 60 aircraft but at the cost of of escalating the conflict.
The argument doesn't hold water. Firstly, if Putin wanted an excuse to attack the West he could point to the plethora of arms Europe and the US and have sent and continue sending to Ukraine. If he couldn't point to arm shipments he would find some other excuse. That's Putin's playbook. International law does not factor into his considerations other than when the law can be used to justify Putin's actions.
Second, whether Ukrainian pilots pickup the planes in Poland or Germany makes no difference. Arms are shipped to Ukraine from Europe and the US already. There's really no difference between a plane transferred Ukraine from Germany and an anti-tank or anti-aircraft missile delivered from German. Nor can it be argued that a fighter jet is much different than a cache of anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles. Ukraine will use those planes on its sovereign territory and to defend itself.
Finally, Ukraine has every right to acquire weapons whenever and whenever wants, using whatever resources it wants. Whether Ukraine had purchased weapons and planes years, months, weeks before Russia's attack or while the attack is in progress is irrelevant. The only thing needed is a willing partner with whom Ukraine on can agree on terms and transact, just like nations do all the time.
How did we get here?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been called Vladimir Putin's war. But when historians look back, as many journalists and scholars have already done, the conclusion they will come to is that the tragic events of today are the product of 30 years of a fundamentally poor and dysfunctional relationship between NATO and Russia. NATO is a transnational organisation whose politics and policies reflect those of the EU and the US. So when I speak of NATO in this article, please understand this to encompass the EU and the US and their allies.
For 30 years the relationship between NATO and Russia became increasingly toxic, fueled by misunderstanding, miscommunication, fear and ideology. It's almost as if the Cuban Missile crisis never ended. It was merely mothballed during Detente, Glasnost and then during the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The Cuban missile crisis arose because NATO had placed missiles in Turkey and Italy that had the capability of reaching Russian targets. Placing missiles close to your adversary means essentially that you have the capability of launching the first strike in a nuclear war. Nikita Krushchev's decision to place missiles in Cuba was a direct result of the placement of missiles in Turkey and Italy. Decades later instead of Nikita Krushchev the key actor is Vladimir Putin. But the fundamental issue remains the same.
If you go back far enough in time Allies from World War I, even sometimes joined by the former Central Powers fought alongside the Russian White Army against the Bolshevik Red Army. The emerging Russia that followed after the Bolshevik Revolution was suspicious of the West from day 1. Go back in time and Tsarist Russia faced the Napoleanic invasion in the War of 1812. Go back a little further and the Swedes were an invading force. Go back still further and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the invader. Before that invasion came the south and the Russian prince domes were subjugated under the Tartar-Mongul Yoke. Go a bit further forward and in World War II the threat to Russia came from Hitler. Finally, on various occasions in the 19th and 20th century there were border disputes between Russia and China. For a short period in 1969 Chinese and Russian had border clashes in what is known today as the Sino-Soviet conflict.
We like to think that over time nations put the past behind. What happened in World War I and World War II in Europe seems unimaginable today. But in fact, historical memory lingers. This is why for more than one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War the Confederate Flag was commonly seen. America lost more than 50,000 in Vietnam during the 1960s. Trade and diplomatic relations were not restored for a quarter of a century, until 1994-1995.
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A distrust of the West and the desire for buffer states is embedded in Russia's political DNA. Likewise the Europe and the US never fully abandoned their collective distrust of Russia. Nor did NATO abandon a cornerstone principle that members must uphold the principles of democracy and human rights. Make no mistake. I am not advocating we abandon principles we hold dearly. My point here is simply that the world changed, the USSR collapsed, the Warsaw Pact collapsed.
No matter how much you might love and trust your next door neighbor, you would have serious concerns if your neighbor setup a tripod on the window with a semi-automatic rifle atop aimed squarely at your bedroom. If you dislike and fear your neighbor your concnerns would be amplified.
For 30 years Russia expressed concern that the West militarised its backyard. For many years the West treated Russia as a has-been. What would the last 30 years have been like if the West had agreed with Russia to take collective responsibility for global stability and security. Would the world have been in a better place than it is today?
Where Do We Go From Here?
How we got here and why we are here needs to be seriously thought through. The events of today are the product of nearly 30 years of misguided policies and misunderstandings. Russia and the West must ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated if they would like to achieve a long lasting peace.
The value of sanctions is limited. Russians will certainly feel the impact. It will be harder, but not impossible for Putin to finance his war. Russia and its Oligarchs can circumvent sanctions through barter trade. Secondly, they can have 3rd countries transact for them bank their cash and pay their bills. Thirdly, they can use bitcoin. That all sounds far fetched, but it is in fact not at all far fetched. This doesn't mean sanctions will be ineffective or that sanctions should not be used.
The West has expanded its actions to include travel bans and asset freezes. This directly impacts the people that support or otherwise enable the Putin regime. However, a prerequisite for freezing assets is finding the assets. The assets the West would like to seize are held through a complex web of holding companies and nominees that make determining ownership difficult. Still targeted individuals and the companies they control are likely to cause them to re-think their tolerance of and support for Putin.
Unfortunately the only thing that will stop Vladimir Putin immediately is when his forces are met with force. The conventional thinking that firing on Russian aircraft is automatically the beginning of World War III is exactly the fear Russia feeds on. Russia does not want a nuclear or world war any more than does the U.S. If anything the closer Putin brings Russia to the brink of triggering a global disaster and its own demise the more likely it is that the political and military elite will remove Putin from office.
Whereas Putin is ideologically driven, the political and economic elite are concerned with preserving and growing the wealth they have built and the lifestyles they have become accustomed to. The more military opposition Russia faces in Ukraine the more Putin's position becomes untenable. Putin would have little choice but to pull out and negotiate a resolution. In other words, if Putin's supporters come to believe that the costs of Putin's war and sanctions resulting from that war will drag them down and they will surely bring Putin's career to an end.
Make no mistake. Vladimir Putin has no excuse what he has done in Ukraine, nor for any of what he done since rising to power in Russia. Vladimir Putin over the years has shown enormous dis-respect for the sanctity of human life. He has no compunction about creating human suffering. He has a scorched earth policy that is barbaric and unpardonable.
It is clear, however, that if the West wants to de-escalate this conflict and prevent more loss of life it must escalate rather than de-escalate. It must demonstrate to Putin that he has limits and it must push the military, business and political elite to turn against him rather than go down with him.
I fear that before we see the end of this crisis, and we will see an end to this crisis, there will be darker days to come. The West cannot afford to play into Putin's hands any longer. The world can no longer overlook Russian aggression as it has in the past. There are many ways to do that without using military weapons, but I am afraid that in this case, only a strong and concerted effort that pushes Russia out of Ukraine will see this crisis resolved.
As President Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We cannot shirk from using military assets against Putin and certainly we cannot allow Putin to believe that that this war and other wars he starts will end only on his terms.
The political, military and business elite that support Vladimir Putin have no interest in seeing a nuclear war. They have no interest in financing a conventional war that will cost them without bringing any real benefit. Faced with a choice of supporting Vladimir Putin or ensuring their own survival they will make the obvious choice. Vladimir Putin may think he is invincible. But no autocrat has absolute power. One need only look at Russian history and Soviet history and count the number of Tsars and Soviet leaders that were deposed practically overnight and with no civil war.
The most important rule Ukraine and any military partner supporting Ukraine must adhere to is that under no circumstances do they cross the border into Russia. There must be one and only one objective and that is to push Russia out and restore status quo.
I hope this war will end quickly. I fear it will not. As resilient, defiant and determined as the Ukrainians, the fact is that they are outgunned and outmanned. I believe the West can end this war faster by driving Putin's troops out of Ukraine and I want this war over quickly. But I also believe that the longer Putin's war goes on, the greater the costs will be for him and for political and economic elite that support him. His position will be increasingly untenable. It will become very likely that Russia's political, economic and military elite will solve the problem of Vladimir Putin on their own.
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