Playing Russian Roulette
The moment of truth has come
It’s here. Putin’s hastily concocted referendums are done and they’ve just been voted into law. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army is advancing rapidly over territory that supposedly now belongs to Russia. Russian men are fleeing to the borders to avoid conscription.
Putin’s plan is about to crumble. Everything the U.S. wanted seems to have come true. All that remains is the news that Putin blew his brains out in his villa in the woods. Or the news that he has acted on his threats and launched a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine. Such a weapon could range from less than one-tenth to more than ten times the yield of the atom bomb that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.
As of today, Ukraine is retaking what Putin has just officially claimed to be Russian territory. There was no other reason for him to make such a hollow claim, other than to give more legitimacy to his threat of nuclear weapons use against an “invader”.
Of course, with the rapid progress that Ukraine’s army is making since the counteroffensive began, there’s no reason for it to stop now. It has the momentum and is going to use it until it is stopped. And the Russian army seems unable to stop it.
President Zelenskyy issued a decree yesterday making any negotiations with President Putin impossible. He will accept dialogue with Russia, but only with a new president.
Therefore, the only way for Putin to realistically halt the Ukrainian advance is to push the proverbial button, to resign, or be forced to concede defeat. Which is essentially just two options.
Nuke or Lose.
The first is unthinkable to the world; the second one is unthinkable to Putin.
Is he “insane” or desperate enough to play his ultimate card? Will his subordinates accept such an order? Is he going to admit that he lost the war to an inferior enemy?
No one can say. But the fact alone that a nuclear strike is even on the table is the result of criminal (and criminally dangerous) decisions for which Putin is not the only one responsible.
As I recently wrote, if Putin is truly insane then obviously putting him in a corner where he’s likely to go nuclear is not a sane strategy. Betting the fate of our entire species on whether any leader is or isn’t crazy or desperate enough to launch WMDs is not a sane strategy.
It never was. People tried to warn us about this path for decades. It’s the very reason why the nuclear deterrent strategy was applied. Not because it was a particularly good strategy, but because it was a way to keep the two superpowers from plunging the world into a third, possibly final, great war.
And now, less than 80 years after the end of WW2, the most destructive in the history of humanity, after living for half a century in the shadow of nuclear annihilation, we have decided that we’re fine with betting it all on the sanity of an autocrat. Whom the media call insane practically non-stop.
He’s mad! He’s crazy! He bombed his own gas pipelines just to prove how crazy he is! But, hey, he can’t be crazy enough to launch a nuclear strike, right? Right?
I hope with all my heart that we win the bet. I hope that nuclear weapons are never, ever used again. I hope that we stop using any conventional ones either (a fool’s hope).
But don’t pretend for a minute that anything about our current predicament was unavoidable or sane.
