Calling Mr. Putin’s Bluff

Like all of you, I have no wish to die in a nuclear holocaust.

But I also don’t wish to live under Vladimir Putin’s threat of nuclear war over Ukraine. 

Last week Putin threatened exactly that if the West interfered with his war against Ukraine. The West has been supplying billions of dollars’ worth of arms and assistance and have imposed severe sanctions which are having a toll on Russian war effort and domestic economy. 

My question is, if Putin gets his way, what comes next?

Poland? Lithuania? Estonia? Latvia?

There are likely no limits to Putin’s desire to resurrect the former Soviet Empire or that of Peter the Great.

Winston Churchill once said that those who did not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 

Churchill faced the ultimate expansionist – Adolf Hitler.

Throughout the 1930’s Churchill was a lonely voice calling out the dangers of the Nazi regime and advocating standing up to Hitler who remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 against the conditions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first world war. The British and French did nothing to stop him.

In 1938, he annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria. Once again, the British and French did nothing. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain accepted Hitler’s maneuvers at the Munich conference, when he famously (or infamously) returned to London claiming that he had brought “peace in our time”.

Once again, Churchill was a lone voice in the wilderness.

When war finally came, it caught the British and the French unprepared and, surely, the Allies would have lost the war had the Americans and Russians, Hitler’s former allies in partitioning Poland, not joined the fight in 1941.

The rest is history.

Today, Putin, like Hitler, is counting on the West’s desire to avoid engaging in a war. Given the West’s response to date, he is correct in the sense that the West has been unwilling to send troops to battle. Instead, the weapons and funding sent to Ukraine, along with the tenacity of Ukrainian fighters has worked to severely effect the Russian invasion and morale. 

In a speech on September 21st, Putin announced that he has called up 300,000 Russians with previous military experience to fight in Ukraine. In the context of this move, his threat to use nuclear weapons is the only card he has left to deter further Western involvement. 

Meanwhile, almost immediately after the announcement, airline tickets out of Russia were sold out, and thousands of young people demonstrated in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg against the war. Domestic support is diminishing, with protests taking place daily in and with several thousand arrests and several dozen deaths perpetrated by security forces.

At the same time, there are reports that the security services and the military are losing patience with Putin’s war as the death count, costs and loss of prestige and morale mount. Indeed, intelligence agencies report that there are deep divisions among military and security leaders and forces. 

International support for Russia is also waning. At a recent summit in central Asia Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Erdogan, and Indian Prime Minister Modi decried the war with Mr. Modi calling for peace during his public encounter with Putin and Erdogan publicly stating that all occupied territory, including Crimea, must be returned to Ukraine. 

But Putin has a card up his sleeve. The referenda in the occupied Ukrainian territories this week will probably result in the annexation of these territories into Russia proper. This will give Putin a base upon which to declare that any attack by Ukrainian forces to recapture these territories would be an attack on Russia, justifying, in his eyes, any steps Russia may take to retaliate. 

Unlike the West’s complacency in the 1930’s, the United States called Putin’s bluff on September 25th when Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the media that Russia deploying nuclear weapons would have “catastrophic effects.” 

Putin is not a man with whom one can reason, nor will he end the war voluntarily. He has his goals well set out and the irrationality to strike first. 

I would argue that this hard red line drawn by Western allies can produce a reality check aimed at anti-Putin forces in Russia who may well deter him from action, especially if the military can be prevailed upon to ignore any nuclear attack order from the Kremlin.

Western leaders are learning from President Zelensky to not equivocate or hesitate to continue to show the resolve he has shown to date.

This is the only language that a bully understands, and may be the only language that those around Putin will listen to in order to remove him before it is too late.

Edition: Emilio Gómez