Many historians will tell you that WWI occurred after a series of seemingly rational decisions by most of the powers involved, but lead to an irrational war and wholesale bloodshed. Of course, famously, the casus belli was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, but the momentum for war in Europe had slowly been inching closer and closer for a number of years, until they reached a critical mass.

Recently, we see that the United States has authorized the military of Ukraine to use its weapons to strike targets inside of Russia. France is also pushing for the deployment of NATO troops inside of Ukraine. Will there be a point where Russia says enough is enough and decide to take the fight to NATO directly?

(Ukrainian President Zelensky and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Image credit: LA Times.)

In the greater world, we see mounting tensions between Iran and the US. China and the US. North Korea and South Korea. The Philippines and China. Venezuela and Guyana. All being backed by other players with vested interests to see a conflict turn out in their favor and upset the balance of power in their respective regions.

(Russia has returned to the Caribbean to conduct drills with the militaries of Cuba and Venezuela. Image credit: World Politics Review.)

Furthermore, the regions of the former USSR and China are becoming more desperate with their populations in a demographic tailspin. China is no longer the largest country on earth by population and Russia’s demographics appear terrible by any metric. Add to that the fact that these nations inherently feel insecure in their own neighborhoods and know that they must wage war soon or they may no longer have the ability to do so. They are essentially painted into a corner and will do anything to ensure their survival.

(Population pyramid of China. China’s population is slated to age and decline rapidly by the latter half of the 21st century. Image credit: Wikipedia).

Lastly, the leaders of the world’s great powers don’t instill confidence. Putin, Biden, and Xi are all well past their prime, yet we’re counting on them, collectively, to keep us from killing each other at an industrial scale. The world holds its breath.

Below we have Putin main objectives!

A. To return Russia to its former glory of being a feared world power and respected geopolitical player. Putin is stuck in the past. He views the fall of the Soviet empire as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

The former so called “glory days” of the Soviet Union

B. To deconstruct, redesign and rearrange the new order of political and military balance of power in Europe. Said differently, undo the effect of the implosion of 1991 of the Soviet Union. The illusion of Supremacy of the Motherland is paramount for Putin. In his eyes, geographical expansion is an integral part of such illusion.

Putin’s Great Grievance: The former’s Soviet Union “lost” territories

C. To carve a place for himself in world history. He intends to accomplish this by placing himself in the leagues of Joseph Stalin. He has copied Stalin’s style of ruling through the imposition of fear, patriotic displays, control of media, brazen lies, all designed to assert a firm grip of the Russian population.

D. To destroy Ukraine and enslave its people. He sees this as a necessary defensive maneuver to preclude young aspiring Russians from dreaming of becoming citizens of the modern world. He fears they will see their former Soviet neighbor gravitating toward Western values and becoming an example of a successful free democracy. He fears a successful Ukraine would destroy the Kleptographic society he has created which has at its core a systemic lack of transparency and usurpation of national wealth.

Putin with Russian youth. Look at his eyes. Not too thrilled by what he sees.

Putin’s version of liberating Ukraine

Putin’s number one “go-to” strategy of his playbook when he does not get his way in geopolitical hostile conflicts is to level threats of nuclear war. But one thing is to make threats of starting a nuclear war and another thing is to actually start a nuclear war.

Threats immediately cause fear in great numbers of people. And they come at a low cost. Fear of nuclear war is designed to achieve specific military and political objectives. It is a very different thing to actually cross the nuclear threshold and detonate a nuclear weapon on your enemy. That event would inevitably cause an immediate asymmetrical counter reaction from your enemies.

In the past, asserting the threat has been a very effective tool for Putin to achieve his objective of expanding the geographical borders of Russia. Here are some recent examples:

A. In 1999 Putin invaded Chechnya resulting in a Russian victory and regaining control over Chechnya.

Russian troops in Chechnya

B. In 2008 Putin invaded Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia resulting in a Russian victory and occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian troops in Georgia

C. In 2014 Russia invaded Crimea and annexed it gaining that territory.

Russian troops in Crimea

D. In 2015 Russia started a proxy war in Donbas but has not yet achieved its objective of winning that war and annexing Donbas as it did in Crimea in 2014.

And, through all this, what did NATO and the rest of the free world do? Practically nothing. They caved in to Putin’s innuendos or express threats of nuclear war as nobody wanted that. In the end, Putin borrowed a page from Hitler’s handbook, got his way and looked like a powerful leader to the world and especially his followers. He had won! Just like Hitler had won the Sudetenland in exchange for mere threats of war in 1938.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 buying into Hitler’s charade of peace

And then, on Thursday, February 2, 2022 Putin made the colossal miscalculation of invading Ukraine. Surprising the world, Ukrainians under the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky mounted a historical defense, pushed back the Russian armies and saved their capital city, Kyiv, and most of the temporarily occupied zones.

Seeing the heroism of the Ukrainian army and its people, NATO and many other countries moved quickly to supply some of the most modern technological weapons to the Ukrainian army. In the process, Putin ran into unchartered territory as this time around his threats of nuclear war failed to paralyze NATO and its allies as in the past.

In fact, each time Putin flashed the nuclear play card, shipments of weapons into Ukraine only increased in volume, quality and sophistication. The Ukrainian people and its leader, Zelensky, convinced the United States, UK and rest of NATO countries – including some NATO aspiring countries – they were fighting not only for themselves, but for the freedom of the rest of the world.

They believed it. And it was true.

Russian tank littering Ukraine

To start World War III, it would need to involve nuclear weapons used by both sides. There cannot be a nuclear strike into a NATO country without a counterstrike. Any attempt by Russia to use conventional weapons to expand the current war would be met with an asymmetric conventional military response by NATO. The aggression would end quickly and not well for Russia. Putin knows that well.

To risk World War III, Putin has the option of launching a tactical nuclear device of limited destruction, or an all-out nuclear attack on Ukraine and NATO. Neither event is likely. Here is why.

All Out Nuclear Attack.

An all-out nuclear attack would not achieve any of Putin’s objectives. Russia is believed to have 6,267 nuclear warheads but only a fraction of them operational. Just 3 NATO countries alone, the US, UK and France have 4,178 nuclear warheads, with the US alone having 3,708 nuclear warheads.

Most of these are operational and equipped with more advanced technology than Russian warheads. Many of these are carried by nuclear submarines silently loitering the coasts of Russia or in mobile units roaming countries neighboring Russia.

Given the dismal performance of the Russian armies against the Ukrainian army due to a myriad of reasons, many of which are not quickly resolvable, namely corruption, mismanagement, lack of advanced computer chips, military and strategic obsolescence, an all-out nuclear attack by Russia would elicit an immediate nuclear counterattack which would effectively destroy all of Russia as a working society, as well as the rest of the civilized world.

Now, how would that achieve any of the objectives Putin has in mind?

US Nuclear Submarine

Limited Nuclear Attack.

A limited nuclear attack would not cause Putin to achieve any of its objectives either. A nuclear attack hitting Kyiv or another strategic target in Ukraine would immediately elicit a significant asymmetric response from NATO and its allies.

NATO and its allies would immediately seek to bring this war to an end and avoid further proliferation and a more comprehensive nuclear war by asserting full control of the skies over Ukraine – it would take 48 hours or less – and conventionally destroying all military assets of Russia in Ukraine. NATO military has had plenty of time to ready for this and plans and military assets are already in place for such eventuality.

How would that accomplish any of Putin’s objectives of this war?

NATO troops near the Russian border

A possible scenario is that Putin may want to double down and unleash another nuclear weapon to halt the advance of NATO and its allies over his forces in Ukraine and into Russia, if necessary. That would lead Russia into a full blown nuclear conflict with NATO and its allies morphing the war to All Out Nuclear Attack and the end of civilization – including Russia.

Again, how would that achieve Putin’s objectives?

The China Enigma

China’s Xi Jinping’s priorities are to modernize their nation and effectively compete in the world open markets while adhering to socialist values; to increase and maintain the standard of living of their people after decades of stagnation; and to feed its population of 1.4 billion.

Why would Xi Jinping frustrate those lofty objectives for little capricious Caucasian bully Putin? Maybe Xi Jinping would on a lucky day support Putin by providing limited military equipment and technology, but with the condition there will be no nuclear war. Full scale nuclear war would mark the end of the China dream. Most unlikely to happen.

A logical argument can also be made that Putin’s and Xi Jinping cozy relationship is limited and that all that Putin really expected was to relax tensions along the Russia – China long border so that Putin could deploy more military divisions to Ukraine.

But the relationship of the two only goes so far. That would be consistent with what we have seen thus far from China which is not much. Not much is good.

Some may argue that this nuclear avoidance logic does not apply to Putin as he is a frenzied heartless lunatic capable of destroying civilization if he does not get his way. I do not think so. As oversized as his ego might be – and clearly is – he has a family and loved ones too. He has two daughters and at least two grandchildren. And he is very fond of them.

In a series of interviews from 2015 to 2017 with US filmmaker Oliver Stone, he stated “I have grandchildren. They live normal lives”. He further said one grandchild was “already in preschool” and that “my second grandson was born recently”, which garnered applause in the studio.

Putin and Oliver Stone

Does this sound like a man who would want to cause the horrific instant incineration of these human beings and everyone he has met? I think not.

Putin is not about to go nuclear. He is just trying to once again play the nuclear fear card. He has not realized yet, but it does not work anymore.

He will eventually need to settle for accepting he lost the war and facing the consequences. The sooner the better. For Ukraine. For Russia. And for the rest of the world.