The Bloodlust of Putin

One scene already etched in my mind - a mother and her children draped half off a curb, still, lines of blood drawing a macabre death veil across their faces, luggage tipped next to them as if still waiting for them to pick it up and continue their desperate flight from war. 

That scene has already been supplanted with scenes from a maternity ward, bombed for no other reason than pure malevolence. And in the days ahead, a new parade of horrors will greet us with our morning coffee. The war in Ukraine will get *far* uglier than it has. And with those grim scenes flooding into our homes, the din of voices will rise for us to do something more to stop the carnage. It is the natural response of anyone with even modest humanity. 

Alongside those images, the pleas of Ukraine’s courageous leader, desperately inspiring his country and almost begging the international community to impose a “no fly zone”. If I were him, I would ask the same of us. 

It seems sensible, even tactical. And it has caught the attention of many pundits and politicians alike. But at its core, a no fly zone is direct war between the US and Russia. No such initiative can be conducted without us shooting at each other. The two largest nuclear arsenals in the world. And, even if neither side wanted nuclear war, it could simply happen by accident or error, as it nearly did in the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

In the age of the Marvell Comic Universe, we all want our country to be the super hero that comes at the last desperate hour and vanquishes the evil Thanos. So the no fly zone seems a natural fit. But there are no superpowers or magic to be called forth here. Just some grim hard realities and a bill come due that is decades in the making. 

I don’t envy Biden, or any other world leader at this moment. It is quite literal to say the fate of humanity rests on all their shoulders now. In a way, Churchill had it easier. Hitler did not have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal at his disposal. 

But Putin does. 

It seems odd to say this, but in the *enlightened* days of the MAD doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction) that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis, we all knew what the bright lines were. The underpinning of that doctrine was a belief that only a mad person would commit to the mutually suicidal act of a nuclear holocaust. And surely, no rational nation would place such a person in charge of such an arsenal, would they? Perhaps it was Kennedy and Khrushchev’s lack of imagination that they never foresaw leaders like Putin, or Trump. 

Shout out to president Reagan, the president who ostensibly won the Cold War. I often remark that the loser in a game of “chicken” is the sane person. So you can see where I would place Reagan, and as it turns out, so did Gorbachov. It is rather funny that the person who really was responsible for ending the Cold War, never got the credit. American hubris led us to take multiple victory laps, rather than join with our allies to do what we’d done for Europe at the end of WWII. 

And while we were distracted, Russia drifted. Perhaps it was startling coincidence that Putin got a weakened Yeltsin to install him as the new leader of Russia. Hitler ascended in much the same way when Hindenburg signed over Germany’s government to him. 

Still drunk from our victory, the US frittered away its “peace dividend” over two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. All the while, Putin was forging a new fascism in Russia. 

Today, the MAD doctrine is all but in ruins. The lapsing of several arms control treaties and major advancements in both defensive and offensive weaponry have virtually crumbled the game theory that held our finger far away from the nuclear button. And it seems Putin is determined not to make the same “mistake” as Gorbachov. 

Biden is smart if he sticks to his current path. Unifying Europe, methodically increasing economic pressure, and running steady supplies of advanced weaponry to Ukrainians. The only way to deal with such an adversary as Putin, is through a steady, and determined grinding down of his economy and conventional forces. You cannot win a game of chicken with a man like Putin if you aim your car directly at him. Instead, you make him chase you till he runs out of gas. None of this is of any comfort to Ukraine, which will be ravaged, and pay a terrible cost for keeping the world from the horrors of a nuclear nightmare come to life. Five presidents since Reagan, each failed in some discrete way that has led us here. 

But we cannot let the bloodlust of Putin or the bravado of pundits rule our actions. May heaven help us all.