Ukraine Prediction – Tipping Point – 03-16-2022
What comes next? Negotiate or Escalate?
Ukraine Prediction – Tipping Point
03-16-2022
Today marks a tipping point for the war in Ukraine, but it is not obvious yet.
The combination of President Zelenskyy’s address to Congress and President Biden’s later announcement of additional aid for Ukraine provide the tip. Zelenskyy’s address will be viewed not only by Congress, but by many Americans as clips are replayed on the news. It is hard to hear the message and watch the video without being moved to help Ukraine. That support will merge with Biden’s announcement of sending more ammunition and enhanced weapons systems the Ukrainians have not had. This will bring America into the war at a higher level than we have previously been.
Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine, both sides have been poised on the edge of direct confrontation with Ukraine as the theater of war. As the Ukrainians have held their ground, Russia has increased its brutality on the civilian population. Witnessing all this, the West has continued to notch up its supply of weaponry to Ukraine. At some point, Putin has to decide if he wants to continue to escalate or to truly negotiate. So far he has escalated with the pretense of negotiation. His back is now against the wall.
Since the war began, both the U.S. and Russia have been drawing their own lines when it comes to what constitutes an escalation of the war. The U.S. has been trying to guess where Putin’s line is. He has redrawn it as the war progressed. Currently he has said that anyone supplying weapons to Ukraine will now be considered fair game and that weapons movements inside Ukraine will be targeted. If that is true, then Biden’s announcement has clearly crossed the Putin line. From the U.S. perspective, it seems like our government still believes anything short of a no-fly zone does not cross Putin’s line. The de facto U.S. position seems to be that as long as Americans and Russians are not in direct combat, the line has not been crossed. I doubt Putin thinks that way. I am inclined to take Putin at his word about where his line is and I think we have just stepped over his line. We are about to see what that brings in response. I think Putin is bluffing about nukes, but not about much else.
With Biden’s announcement of more military aid, and especially enhanced air defense and antitank weapons, Putin will consult with his military leaders. He will want to know what those weapons will do to thwart his invasion plans. If his military tells him the new weapons are a major increase in Ukraine’s capabilities, Putin will make his final choice in the war. Will he negotiate his way out of a potential loss or permanent stalemate, or will he engage in total annihilation?
If he negotiates, he will want to keep the new territory he has gained in the east and south of Ukraine plus the two provinces and Crimea that he got in the 2014 war. He will want Ukraine to denounce any future bond with NATO. The Ukrainians might buy most of that deal to end the bloodshed even if they thought they might eventually win the whole war. After all, many of the residents in the eastern provinces want to be in Russia anyway so it might actually be good riddance to a perennial pain. The southern coastal areas are another matter. Putin can save face by claiming to have driven out the Nazis and reclaimed historic Russian land and protected the ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s east. Given the propaganda bubble inside Russia, he may get away with that fiction. It’s not a great ending for Ukraine, but it is an end to their suffering.
If Putin escalates, things are going to go from terrible to absolutely insane. What would that look like? It helps to toss aside any Western concepts of morality or the rules of war to imagine this scenario. Here is a checklist of possibilities for Putin in order from bad to worse.
1. Attacks on emergency services like fire and ambulance and more hospitals.
2. More attacks on infrastructure like power and water including dams on the Dnieper River, especially above Kyiv.
3. Destruction of cultural and historic sites including religious ones.
4. Increased kidnapping and killing of political and other leaders in occupied areas.
5. Closing of all humanitarian corridors.
6. Destruction of westward train & road routes to trap refugees and stop weapons supply.
7. Attacks on fleeing refugees on highways and trains.
8. Attacks on supply convoys both humanitarian and military.
9. Use of chemical weapons to terrorize civilians.
10. A deep fake video of Zelenskyy announcing the surrender of the nation.
11. A fake video showing Russian troops storming Zelenskyys’s H.Q. and killing him.
12. A cyber war with the U.S. and NATO.
13. A missile sneak attack on NATO bases across the border in Poland.
14. Use of conventional radiological “dirty” bombs to make cities permanently uninhabitable.
15. Shutting down nuclear reactors or even sabotaging them.
It is difficult to say how long it will take for things to tip, but I would surmise that within less than a week Putin will make his moves clear. For one thing, his army is stalled and his logistics are weak. That is not a good position for prolonging a war. He is coming to a point of “Go big, or go home.” In addition, he knows he is already a war criminal, so more crimes won’t matter.
If Putin engages in atrocities on the list above, it may finally push the West into an all out war. It was one thing to read about WWII in the paper. It is quite another to watch the start of a potential WWIII on TV. Just how much the free world can watch Ukraine be destroyed before it either decisively turns a blind eye or steps up to save the country and its brave, freedom loving people remains to be seen.