Ukraine

What’s more alarming than President Trump trying to frighten Kim Jong-un with “fire and fury”? President Biden trying to frighten Americans with Putin. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” the president riffed at a New York fundraiser, while fretting to supporters about his need to find that elusive off-ramp for the Russians. Biden’s loose talk about Putin’s formidability contrasted with US handwringing fits a pattern. Pervasive throughout Putin’s war has been far too much focus on what the United States should do to help Putin find these mythical off-ramps, and on how to restrain Ukraine to prevent it from getting nuked.

Vladimir Putin is mad: not in the cognitive but in the emotional sense of the word. He is an odd mixture of the cold, the plotting, the calculating, and the bloodless; the emotional, the impulsive, the hotblooded, and the sentimental. He is mad, in other words, in precisely the way that Adolf Hitler was mad. And like Hitler, Putin is disconnected from the world of fact but not of logic. This is a fundamental truth about the man that I think the West had never experienced before February. His condition became apparent in the diatribe against the West that he gave on Friday, which corresponded almost exactly to Hitler’s customary rants.

At a swanky fundraiser in Manhattan, President Joe Biden alluded to the prospect of “Armageddon.” The biblical reference was not intended to woo the Christian evangelicals who form part of the base of the Republican Party, but to alert bien-pensant liberal opinion that something a trifle more threatening than global warming looms large in world politics. For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going," Biden said. For anyone with lingering memories of the Cold War, his remarks about the prospect that Russian president Vladimir Putin might reach for the nuclear button was bound to stir alarm coupled with — dare I say it? — a smidgen of pleasure.

Here is one fact about the war in Ukraine you need to understand: the longer it goes on, the more advanced Western arms will flow to Kyiv. And that could mean that Russian president Vladimir Putin will feel he has no choice but to use tactical nuclear weapons to even the odds — no matter what happens as a result. You think that sounds crazy, right? Well, let me ask you this: did you ever imagine Putin would invade Ukraine? That action alone casts doubts on how rational an actor he really is. But let's take a step back for a moment. In order to understand why Putin may very well consider using tactical nukes, let's get a sense of where he thinks he stands in this war.

As the world wonders what happened to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, many suspect that Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind the sabotage. At first glance, it appears strange that Russia would damage pipelines that its own companies run. But Putin has several possible reasons for carrying out the attack. One reason could be that Gazprom (the Russian state-owned gas giant) wants to avoid paying penalties for failing to fulfill its contractual obligations. Since August 31, Russia has halted gas exports via both Nord Stream pipelines, which follows a similar move in July where the Kremlin cited erroneous maintenance issues as the cause of the short shutdown that month.

British prime minister Liz Truss’s speech at the United Nations this week was spot-on. It was clear, concise and left no question that the UK would do everything in its power to lead in the defense of the West and its values. President Biden’s address, by contrast, left you feeling overwhelmed and unsatisfied. That's not to say he failed to speak about Ukraine — he spent a reasonable amount of time on it — but the substance just was not there. Truss made a clear commitment to continue to “sustain or increase... military support to Ukraine, for as long as it takes,” a concrete and actionable statement. Though Biden issued a ringing condemnation of Putin’s war, he only made a vague pledge to “stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression.

If Vladimir Putin’s goal is to reestablish Russian influence, his ambitions are on track for another major setback. Far less high-profile than the war in Ukraine, a slow and quiet revolution has been brewing south of Russia’s borders in Central Asia and the Caucasus. These nations, members of the former Soviet Union, have traditionally been in Russia’s sphere of influence. That, however, is now changing. At the start of the year, it looked like Russia was ascendant. Putin had over 150,000 troops waiting to invade Ukraine, and was receiving a steady stream of Western visitors pleading with him to step back. When Kazakhstan was engulfed in popular protests, Putin stepped in and deployed about 2,500 Russian troops after an appeal by the Kazakh president to help quell the unrest.

With the stunning, rapid advance of its military against the Russians, Ukraine has shot back into the headlines. The focus is, understandably, on the battlefield, but the happenings behind the lines deserve attention too. Since the first weeks of the war, information has trickled in about Russia’s massive, criminal attempts to relocate Ukrainian civilians. While much of the situation in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine remains murky, what is known provides a rough outline. Russia’s attempt at social control in Ukraine consists of two key elements: filtration and forced relocation.

The Ukraine war’s first seven months have been a long slog, with high costs in both men and material. Then, over the last week of combat, that suddenly changed. While casualties undoubtedly remained high on both sides, the Ukrainian army’s surprise counteroffensive in the northeast shattered Russia’s defensive lines and culminated in the most humiliating Russian tactical defeat since its forces were pushed out of Kyiv in April. While Russian President Vladimir Putin was celebrating the opening of a new Ferris wheel in Moscow, his troops 534 miles to the south were dropping their weapons and retreating.

What is Joe Biden's foreign policy? It's a trick question, because he has no actual policy, no plan, no careful set of chess moves a step ahead of his adversary. America suffers for it. Biden's foreign policy initially began and ended in Afghanistan with the disastrous withdrawal that left refugees strewn across the globe. There were years, then months, then weeks, then days to plan the NEO — the noncombatant evacuation order — and plenty of planning books for one sitting on desks in places like Seoul.

Six months ago this week, the United States and its European allies enacted one of the most comprehensive, stringent sanctions regimes against a major economy in history. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24 not only shocked the West’s sensibilities, but pushed Washington and Brussels to take actions that would have been unthinkable only a few weeks prior. As far as the West is concerned, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is nothing less than a dangerous pariah state — and its aggression against a neighboring country meant it had to be treated as one.