NO PLAN SURVIVES FIRST CONTACT

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end.” - Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, 1871

"There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen." - V. I. Lenin, 1917

Even the clods of the Washington Press Corpse are seeing it - here’s the headline in the Punchbowl News morning e-mail: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is dominating global news and reshifting the international geopolitical landscape to an astonishing degree.”

How astonishing? Well, in the past 96 hours:

Belarus has become a nuclear state.

Germany has chosen to re-arm.

Finland and Sweden have signaled interest in joining NATO.

Ukraine has applied to join the E.U.

Switzerland has implemented financial sanctions against Russia, Putin, and Russian oligarchs, the first time the country has done such a thing, ever.

As Lenin said, “...there are weeks when decades happen.” The above is a decade’s worth of geopolitical change in four days.

When I first wrote on Friday that it appeared Putin was about to experience the reverse of what he had planned and expected, I came to than analysis pretty much on my own, just reading the news that was available. However, over the weekend a consensus seems to have come about that Ukraine could somehow “win.” Thank goodness for my undergraduate degree - one no longer offered anywhere - in “Interdisciplinary Social Science,” i.e., History, Political Science, Economics and Sociology; only a multidisciplinary approach lets one see the whole horizon.

Certainly, this outcome is now a greater possibility than it was last Tuesday.

But that comes with a Huge Caveat: Russia appears to be fighting in a restrained manner - certainly in comparison with their performance in Georgia and Syria. The fact that most Russians see Ukrainians as “Slavic brothers” is something even Putin has to pay attention to. But at some point, he could decide to take the gloves off.

If that happens, what then?

Russian soldiers could refuse his orders to flatten Kyiv or deploy thermobaric weapons against the population as they did in Aleppo. It’s also possible they follow orders and create a catastrophe. Nobody knows, and most particularly, Putin doesn’t know.

Here are some possible scenarios. Consider while you contemplate these that by Friday, something completely unforeseen may happen.

(1) Putin seeks a ceasefire. As he now faces a so-far failed invasion, international financial ruin, and possible creation of an organized domestic opposition to his rule, Putin offers compromise: Russia takes direct control of the breakaway “republics” in return for a Ukraine promise not to join NATO for ten years. Putin declares victory and concentrates on consolidating his position in Russia. While this is the easiest solution, it involves a lot of humiliation for Putin, that it comes so quickly. I think this is unlikely absent a further Russian military failure in Kyiv and further international isolation sufficient to really wreck the Russian economy and promote stronger domestic opposition.

(2) Putin is deposed through an Army revolt, with a viable figure from somewhere in the government or the wider oligarchy installed as president. The regime changes. This is a scenario Russia has quite a bit of experience with. This would undoubtedly involve the assassination of Putin. This only happens if further failure happens and Putin doesn’t take Option 1.

(3) Putin uses a nuclear weapon. I agree with Tom Nichols’ assessment in his Peacefield newsletter (put out by the Atlantic) that Putin’s escalation of nuclear readiness is a bluff with weak cards, an attempt to transform the failure in Ukraine into a US-Russia confrontation to unify support at home; the U.S. response - i.e., no response - has blunted this. But... I’ve been in a poker game where the guy bluffing with a pair of deuces pushed all-in. It may be crazy, it almost never works, but it does happen. Using nukes is really unlikely, given the likely international response. And even if Putin ordered it, the chances of the order being carried out are not 100 percent. This is “Dr. Strangelove” territory we thought we had left behind 30 years ago.

(4) NATO actively engages with Russian forces through something like declaration of a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine if Russia goes all-out in assaulting Kyiv; this would likely end up in a shooting incident that it’s likely the better-trained Western air forces would win, which would increase the possibility of Putin choosing Option 3. To me, this is the worst-case scenario.

I hope the above demonstrates that it is impossible for any of the actors in this event to know how this ends. There are too many actors; too many moving parts; too many dynamics and cross-currents; too many “unknown unknowns.”

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