The Russian Grand Master apparently has forsaken the dramatic one-move checkmate to take two pawns, Donetsk and Luhansk, both of which loudly called upon him to recognize their "independence" from Ukraine. Death by a thousand cuts.
A full-scale invasion is a baad look for Putin and perception is part, anyway, of reality. A full invasion is also a bright-line tripwire for the proposed Western financial nuclear strike. Now? That's a very good question! A brilliant chess gambit moves you closer to checkmate and at the same time limits your opponent's counters. If we cut Russia out of the global financial system for the effective annexation of two predominantly Russian-speaking provinces, what do we do when he moves on Kyiv? Putin's move opens the board up the board for him. Would not a financial nuclear counter boomerang on the West, also? If we dropped that bomb what now deters Putin from full-on invasion? My guess is that the predominant perception of a financial nuke would be "not proportional." That's not a good look for the West. Putin really stuck it to us. What do? Nothing? Something but something ineffectual? Do we effectively ignore what we know to be the case, that this is a shrewd tactic as part of an unchanged strategic goal, the rollback of NATO in Europe? Neither of those--none of those--sounds right.
Putin's gambit forces the West to think strategically: What is our strategic goal? NATO unchanged? NATO militarily enhanced? We could do that. We could dramatically increase NATO's troop levels and its military hardware. Force us to negotiate a NATO rollback at the end of a gun barrel, will you? Take that! That is what some analysts see as the downside to Putin's tactics so far to achieve his strategic goal, the rollback of NATO. They are correct: All of Putin's moves until today have backfired--they have united NATO. That's called a boomerang, you take your opponent's hardest throw and it gets sent back at him even harder. As corollary, we could expand NATO? Where? Ukraine in NATO? Ah, would that not be bold! "Okay fine, you've taken Crimea and now Donetsk and Luhansk. Fine, the remainder of Ukraine is now a member of NATO." Move "one inch west" and nuclear Armageddon. Article 51. Back to you, Vladimir. Bold but Biden has already said no boots on the ground in Ukraine. Presumably, that also means no nuclear missiles in the air. And NATO's European countries would not like a nuclear war in Europe. Pussies. Then there's the genesis of these troubles: James Baker's lie to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand "one inch east." Fiona Hill, among others, admits that Russia has "legitimate security concerns".
What is our strategic goal here? Saving Ukraine? Fuhgeddaboutit. Limiting the loss of innocent life in the conquest of Ukraine? Then let 'em come. Crimea was taken virtually without a shot. Move out, Ukrainians, just move out. That's what the Russians did with Napoleon. Ukrainians wouldn't like that. Since Ukraine is not a member of NATO and the U.S. is, wisely, not going to commit American troops (How stupid would that be?) why doesn't Ukraine handle this itself? Why can't Ukraine act against Donetsk and Luhansk? Does Kyiv not have the military wherewithal even to retake two of its own provinces? They do. They're too scared to. They want NATO to have their back. Their front too.
The West has to put our mutual security thinking cap on and decide what our strategy is and then work back from there to tactics.
