How Do We Make Putin Fail?

That's the challenge, while avoiding a U.S.-Russia war

The challenge for the world is two-fold. First, how do we avoid escalating the war in Ukraine? Second, how do we make Vladimir Putin fail?

Let’s take these in turn. The war in Ukraine is a catastrophe, but don’t think it couldn’t get worse. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown war in Europe, even a nuclear war. Putin publicly raised that possibility on Thursday when he noted that Russia “remains one of the most powerful nuclear states.”

Translation from the original Russian: We could leave you glowing.

On social media, I see people wanting the U.S. to adopt a tougher posture and, for example, to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. I think President Biden is right to resist that suggestion or any other that would risk contact between U.S. and Russian military forces. We mustn’t risk a Russian-American war.

Biden has also been sensibly restrained about cyber attacks on Russia. If we get into open cyber warfare between the U.S. and Russia, Russia has the advantage of many more targets — American banks, dams, electrical grids, traffic lights, hospitals and other institutions have far more presence online than equivalent Russian institutions.

So while I was not a fan of the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan, I think the president has done a good job with Ukraine — releasing intelligence to limit Putin’s room to maneuver, cultivating allies to impose sanctions and reinforcing NATO, all while careful to avoid the risk of escalation into a direct U.S.-Russian war.

That said, Putin may intend to escalate on his own. Piece by piece, he has been reassembling elements of the former Soviet Union, from Belarus to Kazakhstan, and now adding Ukraine. Next may be Moldova, where Russia already holds an enclave (and which the West did not do enough to support in recent decades). With Belarus, Putin is also in a better position to menace NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

One reason to worry is that Putin has been shown to be surprisingly reckless in Ukraine, more so than he was in the past. That maybe because he has surrounded himself with yes-men, or because he has grown over-confident. He also doesn’t seem to realize that he overreaches in his rhetoric in ways that make him a laughingstock: He claims he is “denazifying” Ukraine — when its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish?

If Putin succeeds in defeating and controlling Ukraine and Moldova, his next step might be to meddle with Estonia in an effort to undermine NATO. The essence of NATO is Article 5, in which all members agree to go to war to protect any member that is attacked, but it has never been entirely clear that members would do this.

I’ve long warned that Putin might engage in a very limited intervention in the Baltics simply to try to show that Article 5 is an empty bluff. For example, Putin could engineer conflicts between ethnic Estonians and ethnic Russians and then announce he is sending peacekeepers into one small part of Estonia for just a week and then withdraw. Would NATO countries really be prepared to go to war with Russia over that? And yet if they didn’t, NATO might be left a paper tiger.

So that leads us to our second challenge — making sure that Putin fails in Ukraine. That’s the best way to stop him in his tracks and ensure that he doesn’t try anything more ambitious with Estonia or Poland or even Moldova. And Putin should fail so publicly and humiliatingly that other dictators are deterred, including Xi Jinping as he licks his chops over Taiwan. Ideally, Putin would be left so discredited that he loses power back in Moscow, as the Argentine generals did after their failure in the Falklands War.

We’re already seeing protests in Russia against the war, with police harshly cracking down — even arresting this peaceful woman with a baby:

Belarus Free Theatre @BFreeTheatre

Meanwhile in Saint Petersburg riot police has arrested a woman with a newborn baby for holding a peace sign at the demonstration against the war in #Ukraine. She since was taken in the police car to the police station, more information to follow. #Russia

It’s encouraging that the Russian advance into Ukraine seems to have slowed down, with the Russians suffering setbacks. But let’s be careful not to read too much into that; this is early.

The broader problem for Putin is that it’s not quite clear what his strategy is to avoid a messy and bloody occupation. As I noted in my last Substack, he may be able to seize Kiev and install a puppet ruler, but Ukrainian snipers could bleed Russian occupying forces over the ensuing months and years.

I wonder if Putin has been fooled by some of his own rhetoric and simply doesn’t recognize how much hostility there now is in Ukraine toward Russia. At times in the past, Ukrainians have chosen pro-Russian rulers, like President Viktor Yanukovych — but Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 by a popular uprising, and Putin’s war in Eastern Ukraine has antagonized many ordinary Ukrainians.

This exchange between a Ukrainian woman and Russian invading troops was posted on Twitter:

credit: @_khaaan and @leahmcelrath

Putin’s invasion will only add to the anti-Russian feeling. Reports are that people are signing up to fight the Russians with household rifles or with Molotov cocktails.

So what can the West do to increase the risk of Putin failing? Here are five suggestions:

First, the West can try to help that resistance by sending in more lethal weaponry, probably via Poland. If Ukrainians are willing to die for their freedom, we should be willing to supply more guns, ammunition, RPGs and night vision goggles — but we’d better hurry.

Second, the West can do more to counter Putin’s information warfare, although we’ve done well on that front so far. We should amplify the voices of people like that woman confronting the soldiers and do what we can so that ordinary Russians understand the situation.

Third, we should continue to push for tougher international sanctions, especially the ouster of Russia from the SWIFT banking system. That would badly damage Russia’s economy.

Fourth, we should push European countries, especially Britain, to seize assets of oligarchs who support Putin. They have billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth invested in London, and they will squeal if those fine homes are seized and they are left with rubles in Moscow.

Fifth, to the extent feasible, the intelligence community should deploy forensic accountants and try to uncover information about Putin’s own family wealth and luxurious lifestyle — and leak information about it. That undermines him at home.

So much is at stake, and we must do everything possible to make Putin fail in Ukraine, without crossing a line and triggering a broader war. Otherwise, if we let Putin crush Ukraine, he will continue his reckless trajectory and we may get a larger war anyway.