We are fast approaching the point of no return. Putin wanted to show Russia and the world that he was a top dog, and someone whose personal proclivities and international pretensions could never be neglected. But by going to war against a determined and brave people, and by President Biden’s effective marshaling of a range of unexpectedly comprehensive sanctions and boycotts, Putin is increasingly stuck.
Yes, he can continue to bombard apartment blocks, hospitals, and civil infrastructures, pulverizing much of Ukraine and driving the civilians of Kharkiv and Mariupol to scavenge for food, water, and fuel. Bombings from the air and missiles launched from the sea have made life in Ukraine short, nasty, and brutish. And his Armageddon has forced four million or more Ukrainians to flee their homes, their cities, and their country. But Putin has been unable to obliterate the spirit and deep soul of Ukraine. If anything, he has strengthened the togetherness of Ukraine as well as a collective sense of meaningful resilience. Hardly any Quislings have appeared, and Putin’s original plan to install a compliant puppet administration in Kyiv is now almost impossible.
If American and British commentators who write wisely that Putin has already lost the war are correct, then we must confront the worst of all worlds. Backed by himself into a desperate corner, with his stature as a great man, an invincible leader, a consummate strategist, and a wily manipulator all on the line, he will very soon become desperate. Moreover, his very position as the Czar or Stalin of the new Russia is now at risk. Just as the Soviet inner sanctum turned against Stalin’s ruthless security chief and Deputy Premier Lavrentiy Beria in 1953, so Putin’s presidency is more and more at risk with each day that Ukraine fails to sue for peace. Hence the incessant and accelerated attacks on civilians, as in the ten-year struggle to beat back the Chechens in Grozny and the bombing and strafing of Aleppo.
Everything looked easy. No one really opposed Russia when it attacked Georgia and took two of its provinces in 2008. Putin’s troops slipped effortlessly into Crimea and eastern Ukraine despite sanctions that deterred little. No one truly challenged him, except the Ukrainians in the east. A year later, emboldened, Putin and Russia saved
Syria’s despotic regime and have occupied strategic terrain there ever since.
More recently, no one is blocking the so-called mercenaries Putin dispatched to Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali.
With the U. S. looking divided, thanks to the Jan. 6, 2021 criminal episode in the Capitol, and thanks as well to four pseudo-autocratic years under Trump, Putin must truly have thought that his moment of revenge and narcissistic rebirth had really arrived. A bungled U. S. pull out from Afghanistan hardly reduced Putin’s readiness to invade, and to lie about it right up to the moment when the tanks rolled.
Now Putin’s options are seriously constrained. President Vlodymyr Zelensky keeps asking Putin to man-up and meet face-to-face to conclude peace. But to do so would show Russia and Putin’s weaknesses. The low-level negotiators who have been meeting in a desultory way with Ukrainian counterparts are empowered to do little and to give away nothing. In fact, they are there to stall, and for appearances.
Everyone’s great and reasonable fear now is that Putin, to save face, will unleash a tactical nuclear weapon. Doing so will kill and maim broadly, and radioactive fallout could be serious depending on the nature and size of the weapons. Since Putin is highly unlikely ever to do the sensible thing and declare victory now that Zelensky has over and over said that there is no chance of joining NATO, we can only anticipate the war criminal that he surely is to double-down, employ nuclear devices, and expect (or hope) that the U. S. and Europe will give him control over Ukraine.
The West must ready itself now for nuclear exchanges. What Putin may not expect is that his use of nuclear weapons will be met by American and European counter measures. Horrible as such an outcome is to contemplate, Washington may finally decide that only way to stop Putin and to prevent a full World War III is to respond early with our own tactical nuclear weapons and, if Putin’s army is not halted or destroyed, to move to full-scale combat. Or should the Pentagon prepare a preemptive strike?
Very little else is going to curtail Putin. And if a nuclear thrust by Russia is not met by overwhelming retaliation, the future of the free world is forfeited. President Zelensky was right to warn Congress on March 16 that if the U. S. wants to remain the leader of the free world it must be “the leader of peace” and end Putin’s annihilation of innocent Ukrainians. Putin must not be allowed to initiate an atomic war that could terminate civilization.
A small point. You write, “ radioactive fallout could be serious depending on the nature and size of the weapons. ” In addition, the kind and amount of fallout will depend on the extent to which the fireball interacts with the ground below, churning it up and lifting it into the mushroom cloud (‘dirtiest’ explosion).
From a purely blast damage point of view, an air burst causes greatest damage, so Russia might set its proximity fuzes for air bursts. That would also reduce the intensity and extent of radioactivity.