(Dobbs) Will Putin Pull The Tripwire?

Putin and Biden are both walking a tightrope.

As we might soon be reminded, every war is different. And although the United States has the most powerful military on earth, we also might soon be reminded that our military can’t work magic if the numbers needed to repel a Russian invasion of Ukraine don’t add up. Right now, they don’t. If President Putin is intent on invading Ukraine and soon, we will hurt him, but we won’t have the luxury of time to stop him.

It’s a contrast to when I reported from Saudi Arabia on the methodical massing of American and allied forces to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in what came to be known as the first Gulf War. I remember being amazed that it took almost six months for our forces to get in place. But we had the luxury of time. All that Saddam’s outmatched army could do was wait.

If Ukraine becomes a war, that’s one big difference. Russia’s army isn’t waiting. It is on the move. According to Ukraine’s own assessments, Russia has positioned more than a hundred thousand troops along the 1,200-mile border the adversaries share, and now evidently also is stationing troops along its ally Belarus’s 700-mile border with Ukraine. That would have Ukraine surrounded on all but its western flank.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have talked tough about the consequences of an invasion— Secretary of State Blinken said Sunday that if a single Russian soldier crossed into Ukraine, “it would trigger a swift, a severe, and a united response.” But maybe not swift enough. To Russia’s hundred-thousand-plus troops— with tens of thousands more Russia-allied rebels in the east of Ukraine— we have fewer than 10,000 on “heightened alert” to move to Eastern Europe. They’d supplement another 40,000 allied troops already in the region. But Russia’s forces keep growing even more because reportedly it’s now also activating reservists.

That’s where the numbers, for now, don’t match.

So if Putin means to stage the biggest invasion in Europe since WWII and grab Ukraine— his troops on the Belarus border aren’t 95 miles from Ukraine’s capital— he has to be calculating about the timing. The sooner he strikes, the greater his chance of successfully cutting off another chunk of Ukraine, the way he did eight years ago with its Crimean Peninsula. The longer he waits, the stronger we become. 

He also has to be calculating risk versus reward. There are two risks he has to weigh if he moves on Ukraine. One is financial sanctions that would virtually sever Russia from the economies of the western world. The other is a fight. For now the numbers are in his favor but with Russia’s economy still shaky, he might not have the staying power to go up against a sustained allied attack. We don’t have as many soldiers on the ground, at least not yet, but we have warplanes within reach.

However, there are more risks he has to weigh if he doesn’t. One is about face. Putin wants a place on the world stage. From that perspective, he can ill-afford to show weakness and not to finish what he has started. The other is about security at Russia’s borders. A Ukraine in his orbit would be a buffer zone. Without it, he could end up with Western armies at his back door. For an old Cold Warrior, that will never be bearable.

President Putin is walking a tightrope. One misstep could cost him everything.

But President Biden is walking a tightrope too, and has to do some precarious calculations himself. 

Like Putin, one is about timing. If the U.S. moves in too big and too soon— with soldiers or with sanctions— it runs the risk of playing too many chips and diminishing the deterrence that might prevent an invasion in the first place. And, it runs the risk of anything from stalemate to defeat. Neither is tolerable. Then again, neither is a Russian invasion of our ally.

Another is about strength. If Putin does decide to invade and isn’t stopped, it gives the world— already wary from Afghanistan— a picture of an American superpower sapped of its strength. And potentially it gives ideas to other countries that they can do whatever they like to whomever they like to buffer their borders and inflate their influence, international norms be damned.

A third is about backfire. The more aggressive we get, the more credibly Putin can claim that the U.S. is out to subjugate his nation. But if we don’t act aggressively, it’s Putin who’s subjugating Ukraine in a world where a weakened American ally means a weakened America.

Yet another of Biden’s calculations has to be about public support, something Putin doesn’t have to worry about. As disastrous as the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan became, they began with broad backing from both sides of the aisle, because we had been hurt by Islamic extremism and these wars were meant to stop it. In this case though, the argument that we have to stop Russia might not resonate. Although older generations of Americans remember the nuclear standoff called the Cold War, that war stayed cold. Younger Americans don’t even have the Cold War in their DNA.

The last calculation, like Putin’s, is about face. It’s not enough to talk tough to Putin, Biden has to act tough. From the Russian president’s years with the KGB to his unrelenting erosion of rights in the nation he now rules, tough is the only language Putin understands. I heard a Ukraine analyst say today on the radio that the United States already has an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and that it ought to light it up in neon, not just as a warning about American power but because “it’ll drive Putin crazy.”

But here’s the thing about Putin: risk is part of his playbook, which means, he has goals for which almost any risk is worth taking. As I’ve written before from my reporting in the Soviet Union, then in Russia, the unflagging foundation of Putin’s appeal to the proud Russian people is his abiding theme, “We were a superpower once, we will be a superpower again.”

Of course, this is all based on the premise that President Putin does want to invade Ukraine although even if so, there’s still the chance that after weighing risks against rewards, he won’t pull the tripwire. But maybe he will, and take his chances. Then the question is, who falls off the tightrope first?

For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.