Filenews 8 March 2022
By Andreas Kluth
No one knows how Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine will end, but most scenarios range from bad to worse. To understand them, one can begin by looking at who is undoubtedly the most notorious "rat" in the world.
He is the one whom Russia's current president Vladimir Putin claims once - when he was a child in what was then Leningrad - chased inside a tunnel. When Putin cornered him in a corner without escape, the rat turned and attacked him.
Why did Putin make sure that this little story will continue to be recycled among those who observe Russia around the world? The logical thought in this regard is that this is yet another of his veiled threats. I'm this particular rat, only I also have nuclear claws, he implies. So don't corner me.
This advantage - let's call it "rat optics" - must be taken into account in all possible scenarios. If the analysis had been about what is good for Russia, the invasion would never have begun and could have ended at any time with a negotiated settlement. After all, the attack only affected Russian national interests, isolating the country internationally and impoverishing its population more. However, Russia is not the decisive factor here. This is the transport "rat" based in the Kremlin.
Apparently, Putin is currently isolated in his own mental and spiritual reality. Unlike its Soviet predecessors, it does not have a Politburo around it or other reliable balancing and control mechanisms. He decides for himself. And like other current or older tyrants - Saddam Hussein comes to mind - he has reason to worry that his own political failure is less likely to result in a long-winded but ultimately mild form of demobilization than in something much more violent and radical.
Therefore, from the rat's point of view, there are many galleries - dead ends around. With this in mind, the scenarios are as follows:
Ukrainians win
A heroic Ukrainian defence that would really repel Russian forces remains militarily rather unlikely, but it is of course the preferred result for most of the world. An injured but triumphant Ukraine would be directly linked to a recently remarkably cohesive and determined European Union and would speed up its integration into the democratic West. NATO would have a new sense of purpose. China, with its eyes on Taiwan, would think twice before causing problems.
But Putin would be in this very metaphorical "corner." He plays the defender of Russia against a supposedly aggressive West and the redeemer of the ethnic Ally Russians and the Slav brothers everywhere in the world. A Ukrainian victory would make all this propaganda hollow. He could not survive politically from a defeat and he knows it. Therefore, it will not allow this scenario to become a reality. Instead of retiring, he will follow one of the other three paths.
A Russian kingdom of terror
It could escalate the attack dramatically – but again, only with conventional weapons. Basically, this means bombing the levelling of Ukraine until its subjugation. Losing civilians and military lives would be horrible in numbers, but Putin would care little. It would incorporate a 'groaning' and indignant Ukraine - either as a nominally independent puppet state or as a province of Greater Russia - and perhaps add Belarus to the mix of the 'unitary' state as well.
To quell dissent at home and in Ukraine, Putin would have to complete Russia's transformation into a police state, eliminating and persecuting the last remnants of freedom of speech. His empire would become a permanent pariah within the international community. The world would be in front of a new Iron Curtain.
Another One Afghanistan
Or it could escalate less dramatically, sending several Russian military forces to Ukraine in order to avoid total defeat. The country could then become what Afghanistan was for Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev after 1979 or for the U.S. and its allies after 2001: a quagmire.
The cost in terms of human losses would still be shocking - above all for the Ukrainians, but also for the Russian soldiers and ordinary Russians who would suffer worse repression and difficulties than sanctions. Putin wouldn't mind that, provided he believed his position in the Kremlin remains secure. From the rat's point of view, however, a quagmire is very much like sticking to that corner of the aisle indefinitely.
Escalation before de-escalation
If it's really like the rat who attacked him, Putin will consider at least another – literally nuclear – option. It is what he has already alluded to. By claiming that NATO and the EU are cornering him by supporting Ukraine with weapons and other means, he could launch one or more "limited" nuclear strikes with so-called "tactical warheads".
He would bet that the West would not retaliate on behalf of Ukraine, because this would trigger a nuclear exchange with larger "strategic" weapons, which would result in a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), as such a scenario was known during the Cold War. But like the rat, it would take the risk.
Ukraine, like Japan in 1945, would have no choice but to surrender. That is why military analysts call this strategy 'escalation for de-escalation'. But the world would never be the same. The names Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have new partners on the list of destruction of humanity. And yet, Putin could say that he came out of the corner of a certain corridor.
A new Russian Revolution
There are also more optimistic scenarios. Despite Putin's wall of propaganda and disinformation, many Russians understand the circumstances of his unprovoked invasion and the cataclysmic dangers. They could rebel. This could take the form of a broad-based movement centred on an opposition leader like Alexei Navalny. Or it could be a broad or more "narrow" coup d'état through the elite of the Russian state.
No kind of uprising unfortunately seems likely at the moment. The Russians may have noticed that the Belarusians next door have been heroically resisting their dictator since August 2020, without success, but with much brutal repression. And any member of Putin's inner circle left thinking of a coup d'état will remember the fate of the conspirators around Claus von Stauffenberg in 1944 in Hitler's Germany.
However, a domestic Russian revolution would be by far the best case scenario. The new regime in Moscow could place the blame for the attack solely on Putin, which happens to be true. It could therefore withdraw from Ukraine without appearing weak. The international community could welcome Russia back with open arms. The world, including Russia, would get a better place.
China intervenes
A second better but somewhat more plausible scenario involves Beijing. Officially, China under President Xi Jinping is, if not an ally of Russia, at least its partner in "looking wrong" and disapproving of a US-led West. But China sees itself as a rising power and Russia a power in decline. From Xi's perspective, Putin is sometimes useful, but a very close connection with him can also carry risks with him.
In particular, China has a deep internal "conflict" over Putin's attack on Ukraine because it violates the sovereignty of another country, that is, the principle that Xi would invoke if he ever attempted to "swallow" Taiwan (which he considers a Chinese province) and demanded that the US stay out of the conflict. And China, which has a small but rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, would certainly not support the use of tactical nuclear weapons and the ensuing global chaos.
For now, Xi's ambivalence has condemned Beijing to a long-term unsustainable "dual language." At the United Nations this week, 141 countries voted to disapprove of Putin's aggression. China could have joined the four deconstructionists (Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria) who, together with Russia, voted against the resolution. On the contrary, along with 34 other countries, it was simply far from over.
If China decided to restrain Putin, it would have the power to do so. It could withdraw the economic and diplomatic means of salvation that Moscow needs. At the same time he could find discreetly secret traps for rats at the edges of the corridors.
After all, the best way to deal with a rat that is in the corner is usually to let it escape before it does more harm.
Source: BloombergOpinion
