Resting on a Knife Edge of Disaster

There is lots of Ukraine love right now. I have some myself. The Russian Army seems bogged down, but it has a generous inventory of missiles, and is determined to use them to turn the Ukrainian infrastructure into rubble. This missile campaign has minimal strategic or tactical utility, but the one bit of value it has is that there is little defense against it, and it satisfies the Russian rage at being kicked around like a rag doll by those stupid Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians may continue to resist, and even break the siege of their of their country thanks to western support, but if they do, a particular shadow will loom over them. Putin is furious with the United States for its support of that pesky non—country he is fighting to absorb, but he dares not strike back at us. As much as he may rail against the evil of the US, he know war with the US means the end. The end of his sitting in the antique chairs in the glorious Kremlin halls. The end of those hockey games where all the other players are afraid to defend against him, and he scores at will. The end of those billions he's extorted from the western companies that foolishly tried to do business in Russia. War between Russia and the US means the real end, so he can only make noise about that.

But Ukraine is something else. He has put every ounce of his prestige on the line over that, and made it a religious crusade, even if the Metropolitan of Moscow could only be persuaded to give it a luke—warm endorsement. Driven far enough into a corner, he may feel unconstrained about using nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil to finally put the issue to bed before the West enters the conflict, making it impossible to resolve it in Russia's favor. He may consider that the world will not lose much sleep over nukes in Ukraine, as long as they stay in Ukraine, and their use may be a convenient threat to keep superior western military forces out.

There's no predicting the course of action of a desperate tyrant, but one ought to take care when considering the risks.