congrats on bringing up this important point. This has been a main focus of the outstanding analyst Phillip O'Brien, famous for his analysis of WW2, and the best now on Ukraine -- see https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/ . He was perhaps the first to point out that a chief aim of Ukraine's strategy is to demonstrate that the West, and in particular Biden's folks and Germany, have been monumentally bluffed by Putin. They were afraid to let Ukrainians attack Crimea, afraid to give them tanks, afraid to give them F16s, etc. etc., but every time a supposed "red line" was crossed, Putin didn't blink--he closed his eyes. Now Ukraine has demonstrated once and for all that the war gamers have totally misunderstood the real world psychology of nuclear escalation and assured destruction. For example, it has always been just wrong to forbid Ukraine from using US weapons to attack the bases of weapons that are being launched against Ukrainian civilians. O'Brien points out that holding Ukraine back is actually prolonging the war -- and the longer a war continues, history shows, the more likely really serious escalation becomes. Hobbling Ukraine does not decrease, but increases, the nuclear risk. Get a subscription, he says it better than I can.
congrats on bringing up this important point. This has been a main focus of the outstanding analyst Phillip O'Brien, famous for his analysis of WW2, and the best now on Ukraine -- see https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/ . He was perhaps the first to point out that a chief aim of Ukraine's strategy is to demonstrate that the West, and in particular Biden's folks and Germany, have been monumentally bluffed by Putin. They were afraid to let Ukrainians attack Crimea, afraid to give them tanks, afraid to give them F16s, etc. etc., but every time a supposed "red line" was crossed, Putin didn't blink--he closed his eyes. Now Ukraine has demonstrated once and for all that the war gamers have totally misunderstood the real world psychology of nuclear escalation and assured destruction. For example, it has always been just wrong to forbid Ukraine from using US weapons to attack the bases of weapons that are being launched against Ukrainian civilians. O'Brien points out that holding Ukraine back is actually prolonging the war -- and the longer a war continues, history shows, the more likely really serious escalation becomes. Hobbling Ukraine does not decrease, but increases, the nuclear risk. Get a subscription, he says it better than I can.
Dear Spencer, thanks so much for this. I am new to his work and will add a link to the post and I’m now following him here.