What to do if a good hand you had doesn’t play out? You must bluff and bet everything you have. This is the story of Putin and Co. He had better cards than us, several times over, but they didn’t play out. Trump and Xi stacked the deck to give him plenty of trumps, but those don’t work either. What remains? Bluff and raise the stakes. And he’s doing it. But there are nuances.
First, he’s bluffed too often in this game, and his threats aren’t believed as sincerely as at the beginning. Now he’s threatening in three directions – an attack on the Baltic countries, an advance from Belarus, and the use of nuclear weapons. What if none of these bluffs work?
He will have problems. He’s cornered himself by raising the stakes. Now you either make a move or lose, in other words, at best you’ll be subdued or suffocated by your closest followers somewhere in a quiet bunker. You can still raise the stakes.
However, an attack on NATO could become an instant and irreversible disaster because despite the lack of specific experience, the Western army can hold its ground, and more importantly, once it’s over you can’t rewind, so you’ll have to pay the bill.
An attack from Belarus is possible. I work a lot in those places, so I can’t say much about what I see. What can they do? Well, capture some Kopische or Luchanka, well, bomb Pokaliv or Slovechno. And then what? Two nights, and the economy of Belarus will be erased for decades. A little potassium factory, two oil refineries, and a few factories like BelAZ — that’s practically all that sustains the economy of this republic.
And finally, nukes. When you’re threatened with mass genocide, nukes aren’t the scariest thing. Pragmatic calculation — tens of millions destroyed in mass shootings and concentration camps or a few hundred thousand destroyed by a nuclear blast. Well, you hit some conditional Bohun with a tactical charge, but what if it doesn’t change our resistance? Will you massively bomb everything in sight? Logically, I understand that both single and mass nuclear strikes are possible at any hour. But what if the world won’t surrender to the dictatorial fraternity? What other arguments can be presented after that? This will be the last bet. Russians may not understand this, but the Chinese understand it well. They live off the West buying their goods. If nuclear weapons as an argument don’t work, if Europe is near radioactive lands, who will buy Chinese consumer goods?
I think in the coming hours or in the next 2-3 years we will see to what level of bluff the Russians will lower themselves, and how this bluff will work.
Illustration: Nardi
