Rats, bluffs and Vladimir Putin – The Hill

In considering U.S. strategy for Ukraine, fully understanding what drives Russian President Vladimir Putin is vital.Putin has often mentioned that as a young manin Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), he once cornered a rat.The point of the story is that theratturned on Putin, causing him to beat a quick retreat.

The takeaway is whether the 70-year-old Putin is the young man today who realized that discretion was the better part of valorin confronting the rodent and withdrew.Or is Putin the cornered rat, in this case over Ukraine, that responds aggressively and attacks his enemy?

The second issue isbluff.While Putin did not directly assert that he would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, he did promise that Russia would not hesitate to employ all available means in defense of the motherland. Hisproxies,from academics to a former president and prime minister,Dimitry Medvedev, have been more direct in issuing that threat.And the Western press has been flashing warnings that a desperatePutin could resort to the nuclear option as his only way of winning in Ukraine. But would he?

Too often, foreign personalities areregardedas if they were American, behaving as we would and notas they will.Thislack of knowledge of other cultures has often been fatal.Vietnam, the second Iraq War and Afghanistan are monuments to these flaws.

Thepolitical realityis that any effort to understand an adversarys thinking often can be taken as capitulation or appeasement. Thats because recognizing actions on our part that provoked or causedevents that were detrimental to our interests in essenceassigns blame to us, something few administrations are happy to do. But seeking deeper understanding of others should never be taken as excusing adversarial responses merely toexplain them.

From the time Putin becameacting presidenton New Years Day 2000, he felt that the U.S. and the West ignored anddemeaned himand Russia.The U.S.s lack of respect and disregard for Russia explains why, in Putins view, the U.S. took a series of decisions (including NATO expansion; the second invasion of Iraq; and the arbitrary abrogation of theABM[anti-ballistic missile] andINF[Intermediate-RangeNuclear Forces] treaties) that Putin deemed intolerable.

That unease began in 2001, when President George W. Bush began Americas militarytransformation,making space and anti-missile defense top priorities and undoing, in Putins view, the strategic bargain that had been struck between the U.S., USSR and, after 1991,Russia.

But it was Bushs decision to launchIraqi Freedomin March 2003 and then the inexcusable blundermade in offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine atNATOs 2008 summitin Bucharest,Romania, that hardened Putins distrust of the U.S.Putin probably knew or assumed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and correctly reasoned that the war would throw the world into chaos.The NATO summitconvincedPutin that the West and especially the U.S. no longer took Russia as a serious player and would act without any consideration of Moscows interests.

Theintervention into Georgialater in 2008 and thenUkraine in 2014were unmistakable signs of Putins angst and anger over the Wests foreign policy.Further, Putins assessment of political disorder in the West, manifested by the Trump presidency and since, convinced him that weakness in the U.S. and NATO could be challenged with minimal risk.

Russiasmilitary exerciseson Ukraines borders in 2020 and 2021 and his demands not to expand NATO further east, not to offer membership to Ukraine and for a new strategic framework for Europe were rejected in late 2021.Whether his 2022 invasionwas deterrable or not remains unknown.

AsSun Tzucounseled, know your enemy.Clearly, in this case, we did not. So, is Putin the young man or the rat?Is his bluff real or hollow?The Biden White House is wrestling with these questions. Given no clear answer, the solution should be to hedge.

That means providing Ukraine sufficient equipment and support for conducting full combined operations. It means making certain China knows that if Putin were to go nuclear, almost certainly so would Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.A line of diplomacy with Moscow must be opened now. Otherwise, Putin could be the rat. And, worse, we could be the young Putin.

HarlanUllmanis senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of shock and awe.His latestbook isThe Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

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Rats, bluffs and Vladimir Putin - The Hill