There has been a lot of talk about what we should do if Russia uses chemical weapons or tactical nukes. I think there's an obvious answer, as long as you can get NATO agreement. After all, we've left ourselves a good amount of room for escalation by drawing our own lines. So make it clear that if he crosses lines, so will we.
One could leave it at that, although I think in this case, clarity would be best.
Simply put, if he uses chemical/nuclear weapons, NATO goes into Ukraine. And we end this.
As much as I love Tom Nichols and JVL, I just don't buy that the mere act of defending Ukraine risks global nuclear war. It is certainly reasonable to assert that even a small chance of nuclear war is worth avoiding. But we can't let that possibility completely disable us.
Right now this is a game of managing expectations. Our fear of provoking Putin seems mostly driven by uncertainty about how he would react to an unexpected escalation - would he lash out in desperation and do something crazy? The more time he has to consider ramifications of a response, the more likely it will be rational. So for example, Putin knows what will happen if he goes into a NATO country, so we can expect that he won't; if he does, he's (somehow) made a clear choice, and we don't have to worry about "provoking" him. Had he expected this in Ukraine, he almost certainly wouldn't have gone in.
So sending NATO military into Ukraine *now*, unprovoked, would be a clear violation of expectations, and would trigger the aforementioned worries. But not if we establish conditions. Go ahead and let him price that in to his calculations. There is almost no way he could do so and still cross that line. We can let him guess what happens if he escalates beyond that. But so far, he seems only emboldened by the knowledge that anything short of attacking NATO soil will have us sitting on the sidelines. I think narrowing his decision space a bit would be prudent.
There has been a lot of talk about what we should do if Russia uses chemical weapons or tactical nukes. I think there's an obvious answer, as long as you can get NATO agreement. After all, we've left ourselves a good amount of room for escalation by drawing our own lines. So make it clear that if he crosses lines, so will we.
One could leave it at that, although I think in this case, clarity would be best.
Simply put, if he uses chemical/nuclear weapons, NATO goes into Ukraine. And we end this.
As much as I love Tom Nichols and JVL, I just don't buy that the mere act of defending Ukraine risks global nuclear war. It is certainly reasonable to assert that even a small chance of nuclear war is worth avoiding. But we can't let that possibility completely disable us.
Right now this is a game of managing expectations. Our fear of provoking Putin seems mostly driven by uncertainty about how he would react to an unexpected escalation - would he lash out in desperation and do something crazy? The more time he has to consider ramifications of a response, the more likely it will be rational. So for example, Putin knows what will happen if he goes into a NATO country, so we can expect that he won't; if he does, he's (somehow) made a clear choice, and we don't have to worry about "provoking" him. Had he expected this in Ukraine, he almost certainly wouldn't have gone in.
So sending NATO military into Ukraine *now*, unprovoked, would be a clear violation of expectations, and would trigger the aforementioned worries. But not if we establish conditions. Go ahead and let him price that in to his calculations. There is almost no way he could do so and still cross that line. We can let him guess what happens if he escalates beyond that. But so far, he seems only emboldened by the knowledge that anything short of attacking NATO soil will have us sitting on the sidelines. I think narrowing his decision space a bit would be prudent.