March 15, 2020

By David Jay Morris

Those of us of a certain age vividly remember the aptly named, “MAD Doctrine,” which governed Soviet military relations with the West throughout most of the Cold War era.

Standing for “Mutually Assured Destruction,” the theory held that any direct military confrontation between the two blocs would quickly escalate into an all-out exchange of strategic nuclear missiles.  This would essentially bomb both belligerents back into the stone age in a matter of minutes, with the rest of the world soon following along due to the massive release of radiation into the atmosphere.

When we spoke of World War III, that is what we meant.

Being basically rational men, however, the Cold War leaders on both sides never let things get quite to that point, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world really did seem to be on the brink.

In spite of all the power games, proxy wars and jockeying for position, no-one ever pushed the button.

But that was then.

This is now.

For his part, U.S. President Joe Biden has been walking a delicate tightrope in a way worthy of the best Cold War leaders – rallying the West to provide massive military aid to Ukraine and enact truly crippling sanctions on Russia, while making it perfectly clear that we will not get directly involved in the conflict unless a NATO country is attacked.

On the other side, however, Russian leader Vladamir Putin has been living in near isolation for two years now, due, it’s said, to his paranoia about the coronavirus. This is epitomised perfectly by the massive tables he uses to maintain a mad house version of social distancing in his meetings with both foreign leaders and his own staff.

In a recent essay in the New York Times, Russian journalist and Putin expert, Mikhail Zygar, author of “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin,” laid out a chilling account of his mental state nowadays…and his goals.

”What I have heard about the president’s behavior over the past two years is alarming. His seclusion and inaccessibility, his deep belief that Russian domination over Ukraine must be restored and his decision to surround himself with ideologues and sycophants have all helped to bring Europe to its most dangerous moment since World War II.

“Mr. Putin spent the spring and summer of 2020 quarantining at his residence in Valdai, approximately halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to sources in the administration, he was accompanied there by Yuri Kovalchuk. Mr. Kovalchuk, who is the largest shareholder in Rossiya Bank and controls several state-approved media outlets, has been Mr. Putin’s close friend and trusted adviser since the 1990s. But by 2020, according to my sources, he had established himself as the de facto second man in Russia, the most influential among the president’s entourage.

“Mr. Kovalchuk has a doctorate in physics and was once employed by an institute headed by the Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov. But he isn’t just a man of science. He is also an ideologue, subscribing to a worldview that combines Orthodox Christian mysticism, anti-American conspiracy theories and hedonism. This appears to be Mr. Putin’s worldview, too. Since the summer of 2020, Mr. Putin and Mr. Kovalchuk have been almost inseparable, and the two of them have been making plans together to restore Russia’s greatness.

“…It seems that there is no one around to tell him otherwise.”

Hmm…a malignant narcissist isolating himself with a sycophantic adviser or two, dreaming up his own version of reality and forcing others to act upon it.  Where have we seen something like that before?

And now we have the horrific attack on Ukraine.

And the big question, will the conflict be isolated to that unfortunate country, or is this the first stage of the Third World War?

In a recent interview with The Independent, former Ukrainian Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groysman, stated, “the Third World War has already started…by Putin and right now there is only Ukraine in his way.”

Speaking on MSNBC, former chess champion and long-time Putin foe, Gary Kasparov, said, “We are already at war with Vladimir Putin.”

Are they right?

Like Trump wandering the White House halls alone in the wake of his election defeat muttering to himself, “I won, I won,” until he convinced himself it must be true, has Putin become so wrapped up in his own warped – but unchallenged – view of himself and the heroic role in Russian history he sees himself playing, that the only two possible outcomes he can imagine are total victory…

or “glorious” death?

The first of these now seems impossible.  At huge cost in lives – both Russian and Ukrainian – and untold human suffering, his forces might be able to capture Kyiv and other major cities, but few now believe they will ever be able to hold them in the face of the massive (and well-supplied) guerrilla war that will surely follow.

And that’s pretty much Putin’s best-case scenario.

Given the relative performances of the Ukrainian and Russian forces to date, their completely mismatched levels of motivation, and the effectiveness of the weaponry being provided to the defenders, an outright Russian defeat, while unlikely, is by no means impossible.

One wishes that, as a “student” of Russian history, Putin would have spent a little more time examining the outcomes of Hitler’s World War II sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Faced with similarly long odds, after suffering horrific casualties, the heroic defenders of both cities prevailed

Will Kyiv do any worse?

The longer this nightmare continues, the more obvious it becomes that Putin appears to have made a massive blunder.

Actually, a set of massive blunders.

First, he seems to have thought that most ethnic Russians living in Ukraine would welcome his forces with open arms and he would be able to waltz into Kyiv with little opposition, establish a puppet regime, and that would be that.

Second, he greatly underestimated the capabilities of the Ukrainian military and its ability to mount an effective defense.

Third, he badly overestimated the competence and capability of his own armed forces. 

Fourth, he completely failed to recognize the Ukrainians’ (including most of those of Russian ethnicity…President Zelenskyy included) will to fight for their homeland.

Finally, perhaps believing the Trump world and Fox News talking points, he thought that U.S. President Biden was hopelessly weak and would never be able to unite NATO countries and much of the rest of the world against his assault on Ukraine.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again. 

If he was smart and had understood the world anywhere near as well as he thought he did, the better play for Putin would have been to bide his time on Ukraine while doing everything in his power to help weaken Biden - first the 2022 midterms and finally the 2024 presidential election. 

With Trump and his pro-Putin crowd back in power, it wouldn’t be long before NATO was completely undermined, if not disbanded, and Ukraine really would have stood entirely on its own.

Now, however, we are where we are.  Desperate for victory, Putin seems to be escalating the level of brutality of his attack by the hour.

As street-by street fighting intensifies and his loses continue to mount, how long will it be before he decides to throw chemical, biological or even tactical nuclear weapons into the mix.

At that point, we will be in the truly awful position where NATO (the US very much included) will need to either sit on the side lines in the face of unimaginable war crimes, or else jump in to stop him - virtually guarantying the start of direct hostilities.

In other words, World War III.

Get ready.

This is a decision we may soon need to make.

Let’s pray we get it right.

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