Climbing the Ladder with Vlad

The one thing that can be predicted for certain about Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine is that it will change the world forever, though in what way and to what degree that change will come is impossible to foresee. The best way to model this conflict is as a ladder. At each juncture the participants must decide whether to go to the next rung. The unfathomable question is how high we will all climb. Given the inherent risks of reaching the top, it is difficult to understand why Vladimir Putin has chosen to start climbing.

One motivation was clearly insecurity. He worries about democracy movements in neighboring countries like Belarus and Kazakhstan (themselves extensions of the successful democracy movement of 2014 in Ukraine), and is terrified by the prospect that those developments will give energy to Russian dissenters like Alexei Navalny. Invading Ukraine gives Putin an opportunity to exercise the powers of an autocrat in a cause that is popular with Russian nationalists, he thus may hope that this adventure will fortify his position and roll back the advancing tide of democracy.

Another proximal motivation was the opportunity provided by China. Beijing, under increasing pressure from the Biden administration over the situation in the Taiwan Strait, chose to push back by signing a joint communiqué with Russia, effectively stating that each nation would support the other in territorial disputes. The Chinese no doubt knew it was risky to link the issues of Taiwan and Ukraine together, but they did so out of their own profound sense of insecurity over the status of Taiwan. Offering their support to Putin in this way emboldened the Russian leader to provoke a crisis, making him feel that the member states of the EU and NATO would not have the political will to get on the wrong side of both Moscow and Beijing.

A final factor that played into Putin’s decision was most likely overconfidence. The active measures undertaken in support of Donald Trump’s presidential bid succeeded so spectacularly that Putin may well be inclined to overestimate his own strategic skill. Like Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR after the lightning defeat of France, Putin’s recent success may have made him lose perspective on just how much he has to lose from making the wrong move.

The distance we have traveled up the ladder of escalation displays Putin’s obvious sense of confidence. We have gone from threats, to mobilization, to incursion, to what is now the largest and most destructive military mobilization in Europe since WWII. Few could have predicted we would be here even one month ago.

But the measure of Putin’s overconfidence may be found in the distance up the ladder he has yet to travel to achieve what seem to be his goals. Four days into this campaign, Russia is not yet able to transition from “invasion” to “occupation.” Putin seems to have estimated that the commitment of almost 200,000 soldiers to this operation would make the Ukrainian government and military fold. By now he expected the Zelensky government would have fled and the Ukrainian army surrendered. Instead Zelensky remains in Kyiv (to all appearances ready to die at his post) and the Ukrainian army has kept the Russians from taking key objectives. While this goes on, NATO and the EU have shown unity and resolve, rallying to inflict economic pain on Russia that will intensify in the days and weeks ahead.

The next rungs on the ladder are very dark. The key advantage enjoyed by Russia’s military is in air power (roughly a 15 to 1 advantage in attack jet aircraft). If the Ukrainian army and people continue to resist, Putin is almost certain to begin using indiscriminate air attacks to destroy Ukrainian resistance, resulting in horrific loss of life.

Where will the US and its NATO allies go from there? The imposition of a “no fly zone” would be a very risky step, but is not inconceivable. The next step up the ladder from there for Mr. Putin would be attacks against NATO-protected refugee centers in Poland or NATO anti-aircraft installations in Romania. The top rungs of the ladder entail the use of nuclear weapons. Will we climb that high? One must dearly hope not. But it is difficult to understand exactly why Mr. Putin has taken us this high already, so predicting where he will stop is a fool’s game.

One thing is certain: the blame for this crisis lies entirely with Mr. Putin. There is hypocrisy on the part of the US and NATO, yes. The US did not have much more justification for invading Iraq than Mr. Putin has in Ukraine. Righteous concern for the fate of innocent lives in Ukraine was not matched when Mr. Putin was murdering innocents in Aleppo. But none of those wrongs make what Russia is doing now right. This invasion is a brutal and unconscionable crime; it is a violation of international law and of the rights and dignity of the people of Ukraine. The climb up the ladder we face is very frightening, but to my mind the free world does not have a choice but to match Mr. Putin rung for rung until he backs down.