It is clear now that President Putin is not bluffing. It is unclear why. Therefore, there is a real chance that he means what he says: “Our response will be immediate and lead to consequences that you have never experienced in history." These are the “Military technical” responses he keeps referring to. The word technical is the key. Civilians are the key. The implications are that he means civilians beyond Ukraine. Secretary of State Blinken was asked last night, Is it a possibility that Putin goes beyond Ukraine?” He replied, “Sure, it's a possibility”. Given that Russia now has troops and nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and Belarus and the neighboring NATO country, Lithuania has declared “a state of emergency”. Latvia has invoked Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which requires NATO to defend them. The US has forward deployed the F-35s to Estonia, Romania, and Poland. Estonia’s Prime Minister said, “everything we were afraid of, that we knew from the intelligence reports, actually has come true” and he "intends to go far" but it "depends on how far we let him go".
So, what circuit breakers do we have to prevent further escalation?
1. Go to the end game. The last European wars ended in these ways:
a. WWI: Allies win and impose painful reparations on Germany. Germany decides to challenge the settlement for a better outcome.
b. WWII: Allies win and don’t impose painful reparations on Germany. Instead, The Marshall Plan allows reintegration of Germany into the European family.
c. The Cold War: The US “wins”, The Soviet Union ends. Instead of reparations or retribution, the Allies invite Russia to be part of the family. It doesn’t work. By the late 1950’s Russia asks for a renegotiation of the Post War Settlement which culminates in the The Helsinki Process/Accords in the mid 1970s. President Putin is now challenging that Cold War Settlement.
Today we could jump to the new Helsinki process. The Helsinki of this era is most probably not a European nation because each is a participant in or threatened by President Putin’s unknown intentions. The speculation is that he has always wanted to restore Russia’s Imperial borders. Finland and Sweden fall inside that scope. I would bet that the UAE, particularly Dubai may emerge as the neutral broker that provides a place for the superpowers to meet comfortably and talk quietly. The Emiratis have the means to facilitate the conversation – the excellent airlines, warm weather, nice hotels, open deserts for the really off-the-record conversations, and it’s not dry. Was vodka an integral part of the warming up needed for the Helsinki Accords to progress and conclude? Yes.
We already know that the Post Cold War Settlement is unacceptable to Russia and China, which has clearly declared they are fully allied with Russia. We already see they are willing to go to war over it. We already see that the borders of Europe have already moved and NATO is not willing to fight to prevent or reverse this. So, why not leap away from the battlefield to the negotiating table to begin the modern equivalent of The Helsinki process? What is needed is not the outcome but a circuit breaker that allows war to cease and for dialogue to occur.
For those who forgot and or cannot remember, The Russians began to ask for exactly what President Putin is asking for in 1954. The Soviet Union wanted a comprehensive agreement on the rules of the game (arms control/how to behave diplomatically/The Gentlemen’s agreements) and recognition of their borders. No progress was made until 1972. Recall that Nixon opened the dialogue with the Communists in 1971. He sent Kissinger to Beijing. He sent my father to Moscow. Both began a conversation that allowed the Cold War to thaw. My father spent a good deal of time in Moscow in the early 1970s. I got postcards pictures of that beautiful fountain on Lake Geneva postmarked from “Geneva”. I now know that he had been chosen because he was part of the inner circle that had defused the Turkish-Cuban Missile Crisis. We forget that the US threatened to put nukes into Turkey which is what prompted Russia to threaten to put nukes in Cuba in 1962.
President Putin wants the same thing today but they have China and all of China’s allies by their side. What does he want? Putin has said it over and over again: He will use “military-technical reciprocal” measures that will affect civilians unless he gets a comprehensive renegotiation of the Post War Order. He thinks the Post WWII settlement was wrong and wants to restore Russia to its Imperial borders. He wants a new arms control agreement not only for nuclear but for all technologies including bioweapons and innovations that did not exist when Helsinki was agreed in 1975 (which has to be the bulk of weapons systems now).
The attitude in the West is increasingly unified. One hears, “We will win”. “We are vindicated that we knew when he would act and he did. Our intelligence is excellent and reliable.” “Putin would not dare attack us in the West”, even though it is widely known that Russia and China too have an array of weapons in space, hypersonic missiles and weapons on the ground that can create unimaginable damage with a high degree of plausible deniability.
But, what if President Putin is not well and feels this is his last shot to mark his place in history as the leader who at least tried to restore the Imperial borders. What if Russia is being China’s bully and China has already agreed to quietly help protect Russia from the pain of Western sanctions? What if the Russian public opposes their President but has lost all capacity to protect or demonstrate because it has already been taken from them?
This is not about appeasement. This is about buying time and slowing down the escalation.
Herman Kahn outlined the escalation ladder in his famous treatise on the subject: On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios which was published in 1965 (absolutely worth buying). It has 44 rungs:
But, note that he said the jumps between the rungs can vary dramatically. Escalation can happen vastly faster than you can imagine which he tried to sho win this graph:
Ask, why did Putin’s troops target Chernobyl? It is not an active nuclear power plant. But, it does contain radioactive material that shelling could release. Would that release make it harder for the many P-8’s hovering above Belarus and Kaliningrad and the Eastern Mediterranean to detect the movement of nuclear weapons on the ground or in submarines? Has there been confirmation that Kaliningrad and Belarus have Russian nuclear weapons, especially the new hypersonic class of weapons? Yes. Are American or NATO nuclear weapons threatening Russia with proximity? Yes. Only a few days ago an American B-52 Bomber made “An Unusual Stop” in the Czech Republic. More arrived in the UK a few weeks ago. Their call signs were apparently “with call signs HATE 11, HATE 12, HATE 13 AND HATE 14”. We are witnessing a quickening escalation.
1. Bring in religious leaders:
President Putin seems to have become a religious man as he has aged. The speculation now is that there is a religious element to his thought process. Esquire asks whether he is undertaking a “religious crusade”. The historian Diana Butler Bass points out that Kiev is Jerusalem for the Greek Orthodox Church. Giles Fraser explains why Putin is on a spiritual quest. John Schindler writes “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine is a Religious War”. He attacks the WEIRD Western establishment (Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic) for failing to have the imagination to consider that this might be a religious war.
If this interpretation is right, why not invite a meeting of religious authorities to confer with President Putin. Invite The Head of the Greek Orthodox Church, The Vatican, and the religious leaders of both the Suni and Shia communities to discuss what can be done to save the public and the planet from the catastrophe of war? It would buy time. It would give President Putin the respect he is obviously feeling denied. It would be no loss for the West.
2. Perhaps President Putin is ill? Maybe he’s just angry and tired but his face is puffy and he seems to be keeping a massive distance from everybody he meets. Witness jokes about Ikea’s new “Putin” table which is very very long” except the leader of Belarus, a country he just managed to wrangle military control of without firing a shot. That leader gets a tiny table. There is speculation that he has an autoimmune disease. If he is living on borrowed time, perhaps his behavior makes more sense. Perhaps the view held by government officials and diplomats that “he won’t dare” is incorrect. Bertrand Russel and George Orwell were both fond of reminding that “war does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
1. Harness public opinion. Our leaders have been bringing us repeated catastrophic outcomes over the last few decades. My co-author Chris Lewis and I reviewed them in The Leadership Lab and The Infinite Leader, both of which won many prizes for being rather blunt about how consistently and painfully leadership is failing us. Credit Suisse, far from being a bank with the highest of standards, appears to have been facilitating crooks for an easy buck, this causing the West to lose confidence in the entire Swiss Banking system. The Prime Minister to decided others had to mourn their COVID losses alone (including The Queen) but he and his staff were above the rules and partied throughout the crisis, which will probably cause him to lose his position fairly soon in spite of his efforts to blame the problem on his staff (who he has now fired). The last two US President’s public approval ratings collapsed due to a litany of leadership failures, this re-emergence of conflict being one of them. The list goes on and on and on.
The leadership failure of this moment is occurring amongst the diplomatic class who seem committed to enforcing the Post-War Settlement without regard to the fact that both Russia and China, now best friends and “no limits” allies, have lined up against it. The Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations gave a beautiful speech about the integrity of borders. But, that does not mean that the emerging markets are content with the Post-War rules of the game either. We forget that it was only recently that President Macron called NATO nearly “brain dead”. Today we see why NATO is a critical organization. But what is it defending against? The integrity of borders? Yes. The Post War rules of the game? Maybe that is in need of some innovation and accommodation to a world that has changed. It is not just a question of “we can win” because that is to return to the WWI post-war settlement. We won. You lose. You pay (even if not with pennies but with prestige). We know how that story ends. It ends in conflict, which is what is happening now.
If we want the conflict to stop escalating and possibly to end, we need to consider the end game and the circuit breakers that might allow us to jump past the terrifying 44 rungs of escalation outlined by Herman Kahn. Our diplomats clearly believe this conflict will be contained in Ukraine. They believe President Putin will not dare escalate this to the West. Is that correct? Will the world leave it to the diplomats and politicians to sort this out? Do we trust it when they say it will be fine?
Remember the financial crisis? Remember the Queen asked, “How did everybody miss it”. The answer came back as printed in the Financial Times, “a collective failure of imagination”. What is President Putin threatening? Unimaginable outcomes: “face consequences greater than any you have faced in history”. Is it true? Or, has Putin been surprised that the White House has not backed down? Or does he see a world where the US never stood up? There are arguments on both sides. Either way, it may be that he is cornered now and doesn’t know how to deescalate and survive in power.
What will cause this conflict to persist? A collective failure of imagination. What will stop this conflict? Acts of imagination. Let’s all think about circuit breakers. Please send your thoughts on further circuit breakers that might work.
America is deeply in debt, divided. RU has EU by the energy strings. And Communist China has the SP500 piled into their economy chasing cost arb and end market growth. Commercial kompromat. What if they told Apple to go home?
My fear is America is itself deeply vulnerable, not militarily, but economically. And itself politically unstable. Has their been a better time and set-up for Putin, and China, to run their agendas?
Clever pen. Enjoy this piece.
A great read Pippa, love your work.
There seems to be a lot of heat atm on who can access the Hellespont/Dardanelle Straits, and under what conditions. Longstanding agreements are at risk.
If the Straits matter escalates, then Constantinople/Istanbul comes into play. In which case with over 1,500 years of history, a religious element is added, drawing on deeply-held national identities. In other words, a wider conflagration could easily occur.
Not to mention the significant geopolitical motive (access to East Med, Suez, etc).
In which case we need a Circuit Breaker sooner rather than later....