Biden scheming to make Russia-v-Ukraine a chronic condition

Bold move, but I like it

We’ve seen throughout history how a failed superpower military intervention can wreak political harm across its homeland, mostly in the form of the US. But Russia has had its moments as well — like Afghanistan back in the day.

When you’re operating on the other side, your goal is not so much a win but a painful, costly stalemate. If your opponent is a democracy, then you wait on its people to tire of the effort and loss. If your opponent is a dictatorship, then you wait on the elite to turn on the strongman or the later to simply die on his own.

The problem here, of course, is that Putin is one clever, dastardly strongman who has gone to great lengths to prevent his political removal.

What does history tells us about such dictators? It all falls apart soon after they die. We should expect the same with Russia and/or further economic subjugation to China.

There’s no free lunch in this world, however. Putin is proving that by Russia’s progressive vassalization at the hands of China, so Biden and our European allies are stuck with the problem of maintaining a solid flow of money and arms to Ukraine. As we saw with this last lengthy pause of US support, any slippage plays into Putin’s hands big-time, reversing past battlefield gains or successful defenses.

In this sense, the two primary players (US, Russia) are both playing against the clock: Putin against his own mortality; Biden against his political system’s strong bent toward isolationism right now (remembering we are in year 16 of this US throughline).

So, Biden needs to be creative while adding just enough strategic risk to the equation to keep Putin off balance. Letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons is just such a poker-like dare, and it is certainly getting Putin’s attention in the form of unhinged nuclear threats that nonetheless carry little-to-no weight.

If Putin decides his only option is to blow off a nuke, then he’s lost the game — and he knows that. What permissive support he has in this world would evaporate, NATO would only hunker down that much harder, and the game would continue. At that point, Putin’s personal standing would falter considerably: Now he has us blowing off nukes and even they don’t change anything except bring us more woe!