What is going on in the Ukraine Russia Conflict? As mentioned before, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a rational actor, and I am thrilled that he is. If Putin were not a rational actor and had access to his nuclear arsenal, our only option would be to target him immediately. The Biden Administration is acting as if he is rational and has access to the nuclear arsenal.
Why is our response different than Iraq?
An argument can be made comparing Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the 1990s, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and how NATO and the US respond to the Russian-Ukraine conflict. Back in 2003, the argument for going after Saddam Hussein was that he was not a rational actor and attempting to acquire a nuclear arsenal. We could argue that President George W Bush was trying to get even with Saddam targeting former President HW Bush and several other conspiracies. Still, the bottom line, Saddam Hussein desired to get nukes and being irrational, that was his demise.
What is in the Russian mindset?
However, that was just an example; the actual question is, why do we have restraint? Looking into the Russian mindset, we have made several strategic blunders. First, the expansion of NATO over the last 20 years has surrounded a nuclear-armed country by foreign armies. Second, the west has been funding Ukrainians to stage a war on Russia. Third, the west has set sanctions to destroy the Russian economy. These are just points from a Russian view, and I would add one from my own. Just two days ago, President Joe Biden called President Putin a war criminal, and the US officially made claims that Russian Soldiers are committing war crimes within Ukraine.
The Biden Administration is walking a tight line of not making the red button Putin’s only option. To quote Sun Tzu, we violate one principle ‘when you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard’.’ Why do I say we violate this? Our actions have removed an off-ramp for Putin. Let’s say he withdrawals right now. Then what? The world goes back to normal? Wait, even Biden said he was a war criminal. Does this get transferred to the Hague and start investigating? Putin will not want that.
Putin’s Endstate?
Here are Putin’s two endstates in the Ukraine Russia Conflict. 1.) Everything east of the Dnipro River becomes part of Russia 2.) Everything between Russia and Poland glows in the dark and becomes a buffer between NATO and Russia.
I can’t see the world excepting either of these two. As I posted in a Facebook post, I think we are around the 24th of September 1939. World War III has started, and we do not realize it yet.
What can the west do?
I think back to my studies about Giulio Douhet’s The Command of the Air regarding total war written in 1927. Though Douhet advocated bombing population centers to get a government to capitulate immediately, the US used this tactic in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The west needs to do something similar, not from a tactical use of force, but in the political realm toward the Russian oligarchs. Biden promised severe financial sanctions. We have done more than ever before, but far from severe. The west needed to ‘take it to the people of Russia’ and force regime change from within. This is not the time for symbolic gestures.
