Putin's Double Dare

Every new day brings fresh news of horror from Ukraine. Cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons, attacks on refugee corridors, the bombing of hospitals, the cold-blooded shooting of children, vague but menacing mentions of chemical weapons and nuclear arsenals... Putin appears to be escalating even as his armies deplete and demoralize.

People all over the world are scratching their heads at his monstrousness, sociopathy, and the seeming illogic of it all. Yesterday I wrote that Putin appears to now be pursuing a destroy it if I can't have it strategy, akin to what he did to Grozny in Chechnya two decades ago.

Today, I speculate that Putin is actually trying to provoke the West into putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, to coercively validate his risible "NATO Aggression" canard. Such an escalation might serve to bolster his domestic position, to appeal to Russians' nationalism and pride and say "see, I was right!"

Many in America are beating the drums of war, and even die-hard libertarians such as Judge Andrew Napolitano[2 admits the horror stoking his emotions to response.

The red-blooded American side of me says, 'we should blow these people away. We absolutely should blow these people away.' This is the most monstrous, unconstitutional, illegal, immoral war crime in the ... modern era.

But, he then tempers the emotion.

The libertarian in me, the constitutionalist in me, the person thinking about the future in me, and about mothers of soldiers in me is saying we do not have a dog in this fight, and the most we can do is supply him with humanitarian help, and that's the best we can do without risking World War [Three].

I dread giving Putin an excuse to expand his war westward. Given the crappiness of his military's performance in Ukraine, I don't see him figuring on "traditional" warfare, and utterly dread his potential use of WMDs, including chemical and nuclear weapons, in some sort of Mother Russia blaze of glory. This whole thing has been irrational from the get-go, and it'd be a mistake to believe that even Putin wouldn't be nuts enough to use nukes.

This "double-dare" speaks of some sort of desperation on his part, a means of salvaging about the only thing that seems to matter: his domestic reputation. We are only two weeks into this mess, and already he's switching to a scorched earth strategy and provocations that seem deliberate. He may simply be escalating as leverage for a negotiated peace that gets him some of what he wants, or he may be looking to establish a "dead" buffer zone by leaving Ukraine a burnt out hulk of a nation, in effect taking the security assurance that the West won't give.

Either way, I'd resist the provocation were I a Western leader. No matter how much China props Russia up, the sanctions and shunning hurt, and will continue to hurt. Putin may continue to escalate provocations, or he may run out of steam in that regard, and end up settling for an off-ramp that saves him some face.

That's today's opinion. As I noted at the open, every day brings new information, a changed landscape, and changing perspectives.

No matter what, though, emotions should not overrule rationality, and we should work to avoid letting manipulators goad us into ill-considered reactions. The death and destruction in Ukraine are beyond horrible, and while I hope that, at some future date, Putin ends up in a six-by-eight concrete box, whatever we do has to weigh the possibility of orders-of-magnitude greater destruction. Yes, he's holding the world hostage with his nukes, but that's a fact that cannot be wished away.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.