So here we are.
The two largest armies in Europe are at war with each other. Germany is rearming. Russia, while apparently cornered, is brutalising civilians and smashing cities to rubble, as it makes the most dire threats against NATO and the entire world. Hidden acts of war, long ignored or rationalised or swept under the carpet, have now all broken out into the open. Suddenly, all stand on one side or the other. It is as if the battle lines are being drawn up as we watch. The entire planet teeters, pauses at the brink.
Let’s talk about how the unthinkable became the plausible. Is it yet the inevitable?
1: Putin’s War.
This has been a long time coming.
We can pretend this is an act of incomprehensible madness, a force majeure bolt-from-the-blue from a dictator previously believed to be a known quantity. We can speculate whether Putin’s health is failing, whether this conflict was spawned by a dying man whose faculties are in decline, and perhaps there is some merit to such speculation.
[1] We can tell ourselves that Russian society and people are utterly shocked and outraged by this war, and that a popular uprising or revolution is imminent. But in truth, these are not realistic hopes. The reality is that this invasion is the culmination of years, decades even, of creeping fascism, now finally and thoroughly at boiling point. Putin’s assault on Ukraine is absolutely consistent with what he has said, threatened, and followed through on throughout his rule.
[2] The fact that he was emboldened to do this here, now, wasn’t down to sheer delusion. It was based on Putin’s previous, personal experiences dealing with the global community and the West as it responded to incremental escalations in his aggression.
[3]
In 1999, Putin invaded Chechnya and levelled Grozny. The world’s response was two UN resolutions in the Human Rights Council condemning the invasion.
[4]
In 2008, Putin invaded Georgia. There were no tangible consequences for Russia from the international community.
[5]
In 2014, Putin seized Crimea and initiated hybrid warfare in Donbass. The world responded with sanctions but nothing more.
[6]
Since then, Putin has made efforts to make the Russian economy more self-reliant and less-dependent on the West.
[7]
And that’s to say nothing of the quietly building tally of assassinations, acts of sabotage and war and espionage and atrocity that have taken place across the world, from Central Africa
[8] to Syria
[9] to the streets of Salisbury
[10] and London.
[11] This tide has been rising beneath our noses for a very long time.
The world stood by while Putin worked to isolate his intended victim, Ukraine, from external help from NATO or the EU
[12] , and steadily attempted to weaken it through hybrid warfare in Donbass, through cyberattacks,
[13] and through other methods,
[14] both direct and clandestine.
[15] The world watched as Putin escalated and executed his attack sequence over nearly a decade.
It seems he thought that the world would react with similar passivity to this final act of full invasion and worked to cushion his economy from the expected impact of future sanctions like he faced after seizing Crimea. Such economic fallout, which he determined to be acceptable, was planned for and anticipated.
[16] He may be making a big leap now, but he’s steadily been creeping up to the line for a long long time.
What is his goal? We already know; he’s told us many times already.
[17] he wants the breakup of NATO,
[18] the reconfiguration of the security architecture of all of Europe, and the re-establishment of the former Soviet sphere of influence.
[19] That is his endgame. That is what he wants for a legacy.
But he miscalculated.
The Western response came swift
[20] and hard, releasing a package of sanctions far more comprehensive, devastating and severe than any previously handed out in human history.
[21] They far exceeded Putin’s worst expectations. The Ukrainians, under the leadership of former comedian Volodomyr Zelenskyy, now destined to be remembered as one of the greatest statesmen of the 21st Century, have mounted a ferocious and highly effective defence of their country,
[22] stopping the Russian invasion in its tracks. The Russian military has shown itself to be far less effective than formerly believed,
[23] with glaring weaknesses in quality of recruit, maintenance of equipment, logistics, command and control, communications and morale. In any sphere in which a modern military must perform, the Russian forces have proven to be lacking.
[24]
The Russian army, navy, airforce are utterly riddled with corruption. Worse, and stranger still, it’s likely that the military was deliberately kept weak and corrupted, as an explicit strategy by Putin. Otherwise it might be a threat to him, a dictator whose power base emerges not from the military, but from the State Security apparatus.
[25] It was all a gigantic bluff, a con, a military-themed Potemkin village. The Ukrainians revealed that when they stood their ground and refused to fold. This is a disastrous development for Russia, whose strategy for attacking NATO and the West relies so heavily on veiled threats and sabre-rattling. To have his military revealed as a paper tiger is a major blow to the base of fear and menacing reputation that he has carefully cultivated over the years.
This is a big problem for Putin, because he has already crossed his Rubicon. He must win or die.
So what is he likely to do next?
2: Europe at war.
The first step of his escalation has already taken place:
Terror tactics.
When his expectations changed from a lightning annexation and the rapid surrender of the Ukrainian armed forces to a protracted struggle with time working against him, Putin began a campaign of terror across all the fronts of this war.
[26] Artillery barrages on cities, air strikes delivered by jet and cruise missile onto apartment blocks and hospitals,
[27] a brutal siege against Mariupol
[28] and a threatened massacre,
[29] firing on nuclear power plants,
[30] and now the likely use of chemical weapons.
[31] These tactics are supposed to terrify Ukrainians into submission.
They also have the effect of undermining NATO and making it appear weak and cowardly if it does not respond. What is this NATO, people will ask, that will rain hellfire missiles down on Afghan shepherds and their families in the name of its collective security, but that won’t respond to a nation being brutally dismembered and children being massacred on its very doorstep? And won’t such questioners have a point?
In reality, this strategy is unlikely to help Putin much though. Shelling babies and gassing children will not bring Ukraine to heel, but will instead make resistance even more fierce and determined. It will make the world hate him more. Putin is unlikely to achieve his objectives or be able to do much beyond throw Russian prestige and reputation even further into the toilet this way. So he will have to think of other pathways to victory. What will he attempt to do next? There are a couple of possibilities:
1: Dig in and dismember:
Perhaps Putin might decide that a victory could be achieved by shifting objectives to the maintenance of a stalemate. He could redefine his ‘win conditions’ to merely holding onto the territory that he has already seized. He could sell this as a victory because this would mean that Russia had gained territory, which he could sell to his people as a win for Russian Imperialism. If he managed to negotiate such a ‘peace’, he might take a breather, find a way to rearm and mobilise a far larger army, most likely financed and supported by China, and attempt to resume his assault at a later date.
After all, it’s one thing to stop the Russian advance, but quite another to drive them out of the territory they have already taken.
[32]
But the eventuality of a negotiated settlement like this is still very unlikely; with every passing day of continued Ukrainian resistance, the chance that Ukraine would agree to anything like this grows ever more remote. Russia’s assault has stalled and Ukraine feels the initiative on her side.
[33] The Ukrainians aren’t gonna cede territory while they sense the Russians are faltering. However, that won’t stop Russia from digging in, and consolidating their grip on the territory they have already seized while turning the war into a bloody stalemate, as in the trenches of the Western Front during WW1.
There’s already lots of evidence that this has started to happen; in the last few days we have seen Ukrainian military reports from multiple different locations suggesting that the Russians are now digging in and are consolidating their positions in preparation for a prolonged stalemate and probably trench warfare.
[34]
How long can this situation last?
The limiting factor here, assuming that Russia doesn’t get help from China or Putin doesn’t get deposed or keel over, is how long the Russian economy can support their war effort and endure the sanctions before it grinds to a halt. And that brings us to the second ‘escape route’ Putin will be considering right now. In my opinion this scenario is more in keeping with Putin’s revealed behaviour:
2: Direct military confrontation with NATO.
Before saying anything more, it needs to be understood that the West is already waging total economic war against Russia.
[35] Sanctions are usually intended to pressure and guide a country away from actions the sanctioner considers unacceptable. These are different; they are designed to destroy Russia’s capacity to wage war in the long run, and hopefully lead to the collapse of the regime. That is a war objective, and therefore the sanctions amount to economic warfare on a massive scale. This fact needs to be fully appreciated. In reality, full-scale great-power conflict is already under way, and is currently just a hairs-breadth away from breaking out into the open.
What’s more, Putin sees his invasion of Ukraine as a mere stepping-stone to achieving his real goal: the strategic humiliation of the West and the restoration of the former Soviet (or Imperial Russian) sphere of influence. The invasion is not going well, which means that he will be casting around to look for a new pathway to reaching his objectives.
[36] Preferably one that plays to his strengths. That is the only way to readily convert this defeat into a victory for him.
But what ‘strengths’ does Putin have at this point?
Russia’s economy is comparable in size to that of Spain, and shrinking by the day.
[37]
Europe is weaning itself off Russian hydrocarbons as quickly as it can, meaning this form of leverage is about to evaporate.
They have thoroughly lost the information war; the Russian message has zero credibility in the eyes of the world.
Far from being divided and riven with internal struggles, the West is currently more unified and filled with terrible purpose than it has been for decades.
[38]
Russia’s military has been exposed as a paper tiger.
So what does he have left?
Ruthlessness. Or at least the perception of it. Remember, he’s the spooky scary KGB ice-man chess master. Or so he would like you to believe.
[39]
He can be expected to exploit what he perceives as the psychological weakness of the West as extensively as possible in the hopes of securing a victory for himself. But the West’s response on the face of it seems extremely strong and unified. The economic sanctions are a devastating blow. Unfortunately, Putin is still likely to see the Western response as betraying feebleness and lack of resolve.
Why?
Because NATO and especially the USA have publicly signalled their extreme reluctance to go to war with him.
Statements like this will live on in infamy:
Psaki: US has no desire to send troops into Ukraine
Vladimir Putin very likely took this as a green light to initiate his invasion.
And here:
Wallace warns War in Europe 'would be upon us' if UK bowed to Ukraine no-fly zone pressure
Publicly signalling strategic predictability and an aversion to war only works when both sides in a dispute have peaceful intentions. Against an uncivilised enemy, against a conquest-bent fascist warlord, such talk communicates only weakness.
[40] We learnt this bitter lesson in the 1930s.
[41]
Not everything is about money; the West is making a grave psychological and strategic error if they imagine that all power defaults to financial considerations, or that money is the sole motivator in human and national affairs. The fascist does not see the world that way, and the dictator knows that in the final analysis, all national power, whether political or financial or otherwise, is ultimately underpinned by physical force. By the capacity to wage war. It’s an error and a dangerous psychological crutch to imagine otherwise, to believe that economic warfare can be a substituted for the real thing. That’s the kind of mistake that could prove catastrophic.
But how could Russia threaten the West with such a tiny economy and a humiliated and underpowered military? In every metric, and I mean every single one, they are massively overmatched by the capacities of NATO and the wider world generally.
Well, they could maybe try an attack on Poland or the Baltics out of Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad is a highly militarised Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea.
[42] Sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, it is the home port of Russia’s Baltic fleet and bristles with artillery, fortifications, air power and missile stockpiles, both conventional and nuclear.
[43] Recent estimates suggest as many as 200,000 Russian troops might be garrisoned there.
[44] More concerningly, war-games a few years back concluded that Russia could quickly swamp the Baltic states out of Kaliningrad and close the Suwalki corridor if they wanted to, before NATO could mount a response.
[45]
It’s true that Russia’s performance in the invasion suggests that we substantially overestimated their actual capabilities, especially in logistics, and NATO’s Eastern Flank is now being massively reinforced.
[46] By itself, right now, such an attack would probably not succeed.
[47] That’s still a massive force for NATO troops to deal with, however, and in this scenario Putin wouldn’t attack with conventional weapons alone. He would at least threaten something far, far worse.
Now we come to the elephant in the room.
3: Nuclear warfare.
On the first day of the invasion, Putin made a barely veiled threat against Europe and the World that he would unleash his nuclear weapons against anyone who tried to help Ukraine.
[48] This was an extension of his earlier strategy of using nuclear intimidation to keep Ukraine isolated and cut off from help. Four days later, on the 28th of February, Putin put his nuclear forces on ‘special alert’.
[49] Over the past few days, Western analysts have noticed a steady increase in activity around Russian nuclear infrastructure, but this has been sparsely reported on in the press.
Russia is believed to have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world by some measures.
[50] They claim to have over 6,000, although this may be an exaggeration.
What’s more, the world’s nuclear weapons are believed to have been significantly upgraded in their delivery capabilities, with many, especially in Russia and China allegedly now mountable in hypersonic scramjets,
[51] massive-yield drone-submarine warheads,
[52] and other exotic delivery systems.
However, the extent to which these claims are braggadocio by dictatorships eager to project strength, or whether they are legitimate, is unclear.
[53]
What is clear, what is vividly, universally known to everyone in the world, is that nuclear war is a monstrous horror that is utterly beyond anything that is more commonly seen as a ‘global threat’.
Global warming? Small potatoes.
COVID? Ha! Excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my face.
In a real, fully-fledged nuclear war, a hundred million people die in the first hour of the conflict. More than a billion perish horribly in the first week. Civilisation effectively ceases to exist. The living envy the dead.
A ‘minor’ nuclear exchange merely devastates a continent and renders much of it uninhabitable for years.
That is the reality.
I actually believe it’s impossible to overstate how horrible nuclear war is. Literally impossible. Before a prospect like that, all words fail. All must fall silent.
This is why anybody with an ounce of decency, civility or humanity would do just about anything to avoid or avert such a disaster.
[54]
Vladimir Putin, because he has none of these qualities, has weaponised this fundamental motivation of civilised people, and is trying to use it as psychological leverage to secure his goals and intimidate others into submission.
He has taken the most fundamental concern for the future of the planet as a mark of psychological weakness, and is making a mockery of it as a tool to further his conquests.
Nothing like this ever happened during the Cold War, when the nuclear threat was more like that of two armed camps using sabre-rattling under MAD to avoid war and secure control over their respective ‘spheres of influence’. Here we have a different dynamic, more like that in Europe during the late ‘30s.
We have a fascist dictator with a sense of historical grievance attempting to ‘re-conquer’ and secure for himself an empire that he believes he is rightfully entitled to. I worry that Joe Biden, who is very old, and whose brain was built in the Cold War, doesn’t appreciate the difference between this nuclear threat and the nuclear threat he grew up with and is familiar with.
[55]
These are not the same circumstances as before. So the strategy for dealing with this threat cannot be the same.
The thing about fascist warlords and gangsters is that they are not suicidal. They love themselves, but they respect only force.
[56]
They will back down to a superior display of force, but if they are not confronted when they are weak, they will seize the opportunity to get strong, and then must be confronted when they are strong. That is the reality of dealing with fascists. The rules don’t change in dealing with them just because they are equipped with bigger and more terrible weapons.
In Putin’s case, he is deliberately projecting an impression of craziness to maximise the ‘credibility’ of his nuclear threat. He does this to scare us. But he doesn’t actually want to die. He wants to win and to conquer. If his bluff isn’t called now, it will have to be called later, perhaps after he has secured support from China and gained strength and prestige from conquered territories, as he surely will if the West blinks in the face of his threats in the short term. Then next time we confront him, he won’t be commanding a paper tiger of a military, but one with a real capacity to threaten all of Europe directly and to back up his nuclear threats with well-consolidated force.
[57]
Either way, he will need to be confronted.
And that is the bottom line.
4: Take Heart!
I paint a dark picture here. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We are probably closer to a World War than I have ever been in my lifetime. We stand on the brink. It’s been building for a while now, this showdown between autocracies and democracies, but it’s erupting here, now. And before things get better, I believe they will get much scarier.
But don’t be disheartened! Reading my answer up to here, you might have the impression that WW3 is almost inevitable, but look again.
I’ve talked great deal about the dark, paranoid, twisted, hounded worldview of Vladimir Putin, the man who started this war, but have said very little about the agency of the rest of the world, especially the West and NATO. While poor little Vladimir may feel trapped (as indeed he is), and therefore inclined to try and escalate, the rest of the world is vastly more powerful than him. Putin’s Russia is gigantically, hilariously overmatched by the nations he has picked a fight with, and only a tawdry and flimsy game of bluff, and the love of peace of those who he has threatened, has kept this insanity going up to now. The moment his bluff is called, it’s over for him.
A tyrant of Russia can be many things, but to be exposed as weak? That never goes unpunished. The wolves are always circling. And the truth is that his bluff has largely already been called. Putin stands virtually exposed.
The threat of World War here and now can end the moment the West wakes up to the game Putin is playing, and neuters and humiliates him.
Because make no mistake, Imperial Russia’s warmaking capabilities must be utterly destroyed. Putin’s regime has to be toppled. This cannot be allowed to continue, or to happen again. And the best way to ensure that it doesn't is a colossal, immediate, public humiliation of Putin, Putinism and all that that wretched worldview stands for. The alternatives are far more terrible. But the West has massive agency over outcomes right now, far more than perhaps either they or Putin realises. China, too has massive agency and hence responsibility in the situation. Right this moment, China has a genuine chance to do the right thing and help safeguard global peace alongside the rest of the world.
[58] One way or another, this agency needs to be exercised now internationally.
This is a golden opportunity to bring Putin down before he does some real harm.
So above all, now is the time to be brave. To meet the future with a kind of courage and good cheer. There is no sense in cowering or in fatalistic cringing from whatever is coming. That way only brings us closer to the worst possible outcomes. The thing to fear truly is fear itself.
It doesn’t help that the past two years have seen governments, the media and many others around the world do their level best to scare the pants out of people everywhere, but we must put that behind us. We have no time for that now. Really there was never time for it. Fear is the mind-killer.
Yes, it is now time to prepare for war. But let’s do it with smiles on our faces. Doing so might actually avert that war
Life is for living to the full, so don’t forget the privilege and the fascination of truly living in interesting times. If we must stand at the precipice, let’s at least try to revel in the view a little, and meet whatever the future brings with a certain lightness.
To finally and directly respond to the question asked, whether this is the start of WW3, here is my answer:
It depends on whether we shrink away from this moment, here, now, or whether we lean into it.
If Zelenskyy and the good people of Ukraine can do it, then so can you.
Note: Comments from trolls of any kind on this answer will be summarily deleted and their accounts reported. I’m done dealing with them.
Footnotes
[1] Is Vladimir Putin ill? | The Week UK
[2] Institute for the Study of War
[3] Garry Kasparov: How the free world gave Putin the green light
[4] International response to the Second Chechen War - Wikipedia
[5] International reaction to the Russo-Georgian War - Wikipedia
[6] War in Donbas - Wikipedia
[7] Putin, Facing Sanction Threats, Has Been Saving for This Day
[8] Subscribe to read | Financial Times
[9] Russia committed war crimes in Syria, finds UN report
[10] Timeline of movements by Russian ‘spies’ accused of Salisbury attack
[11] Russia responsible for Alexander Litvinenko death, European court rules
[12] NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why.
[13] Russian–Ukrainian cyberwarfare - Wikipedia
[14] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/CT400/CT468/RAND_CT468.pdf.
[15] Aquarium Leaks. Inside the GRU’s Psychological Warfare Program
[16] Putin gambles Russia’s economy over Ukraine
[17] https://www.rusemb.org.uk/article/708
[18] Putin is unpicking the frayed bonds of Nato and the EU | The Spectator
[19] Vladimir Putin: The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia
[20] What it means for Russia to be kicked out of SWIFT
[21] Pausing at the Precipice
[22] Zelensky refuses US offer to evacuate, saying 'I need ammunition, not a ride'
[23] Russian military’s corruption quagmire
[24] Analysing the Performance of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine
[25] Kamil Galeev on Twitter
[26] ‘Very credible reports’ show Russian attacks on civilians ‘deliberate’, says US
[27] Woman who survived Mariupol maternity hospital airstrike recounts ordeal – video
[28] 20 days in Mariupol: The team that documented city’s agony
[29] Ukraine rejects ultimatums as conflict intensifies
[30] What happened at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and what are the implications? - The Nuclear Threat Initiative
[31] ‘Clear sign’ Putin is weighing up use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, says Biden
[32] Institute for the Study of War
[33] Ukraine war latest: Ukraine forces fighting to retake ground from Russia - US - BBC News
[34] Institute for the Study of War
[35] What sanctions are being imposed on Russia over Ukraine invasion?
[36] The case for direct military intervention in Ukraine | The Strategist
[37] Country comparison Russia vs Spain GDP per capita (Euros) 2022
[38] How the West Marshaled a Stunning Show of Unity Against Russia
[39] Putin’s ambitions do not stop at Ukraine
[40] Subscribe to read | Financial Times
[41] How Britain Hoped To Avoid War With Germany In The 1930s
[42] Russia adds firepower to Kaliningrad exclave citing NATO threat
[43] Kalingrad Revisited: Where Putin's Nuclear Threat Is Most Chilling
[44] Kaliningrad Special Defence District (KOR)
[45] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1253/RAND_RR1253.pdf
[46] Russia may not stop with Ukraine – NATO looks to its weakest link
[47] Subscribe to read | Financial Times
[48] Russia attacks Ukraine as Putin warns countries who interfere will face 'consequences you have never seen'
[49] Ukraine invasion: Putin puts Russia's nuclear forces on 'special alert'
[50] Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles and nuclear tests by country - Wikipedia
[51] Why Russia's Hypersonic Missiles Can't Be Seen on Radar
[52] Russia's New 'Poseidon' Super-Weapon: What You Need To Know - Naval News
[53] https://thebulletin.org/premium/202...any-nuclear-weapons-does-russia-have-in-2022/
[54] Decrypting the unthinkable: Inside the new nuclear war games
[55] Kamil Galeev on Twitter
[56] Kamil Galeev on Twitter
[57] The case for direct military intervention in Ukraine | The Strategist
[58] China can help end the war in Ukraine
