Time: in the United States, tensions between Washington and Moscow are expected to escalate
Russia has come to believe that the United States has stopped being afraid of a nuclear conflict, Time writes. Moscow is trying to figure out how to restore this fear, which served as a factor of stability during the Cold War. The author of the article is convinced that an escalation is coming in relations between Russia and the West.
George Beebe
Judging by the editorial pages of newspapers and speeches on Capitol Hill, which shape and reflect Washington's perception of the world, the pessimists sounding the alarm about the risk of a direct military conflict between the United States and Russia over Ukraine turned out to be wrong. Despite numerous warnings and the rattling of nuclear weapons from Moscow, the United States managed to supply Ukraine with advanced artillery systems, tanks, fighter jets and extended-range missiles without any serious retaliatory steps.
For Washington's chorus of hawks, the benefits of causing increasingly serious damage to Ukraine outweigh the danger of provoking a direct Russian attack on the West. They urge the United States not to allow fears of an unlikely Armageddon to block much-needed assistance for Ukraine's defense, especially now that the balance on the battlefield has shifted towards Russia. Hence the recent decision of the White House to approve the use of American weapons by Ukraine to launch attacks on its internationally recognized territory and articles on the discussion of the deployment of American military contractors in Ukraine.
This kind of reasoning is fraught with a number of problems. First, it interprets Russia's "red lines" — the borders crossing which will trigger retaliatory measures against the United States or NATO — as fixed, not mobile. In fact, the venue depends on one person — Vladimir Putin. His judgments about what a country should put up with may vary depending on the perception of the dynamics of the fighting, the intentions of the West, the mood within Russia itself and the likely reaction of the rest of the world.
It is fair to note that Putin, as it turned out, is very reluctant to respond to the West's steps to provide military assistance to Ukraine. But what Putin puts up with today may become a reason for war tomorrow. The world will only know where its red lines actually run when they cross, when the United States is forced to do something in response.
The second problem is that focusing solely on Moscow's possible reaction to each individual episode of American aid to Ukraine underestimates the cumulative impact on Putin and the Kremlin's calculations. Russian experts have come to believe that the United States has stopped being afraid of nuclear conflict — a fear that, in their opinion, was the main factor of stability throughout most of the Cold War, when they dissuaded both superpowers from any actions that potentially threatened the main interests of the other side.
The key issue currently being discussed by the Russian foreign policy elite is how to restore America's fear of nuclear escalation while avoiding a direct military confrontation that could spiral out of control. A number of hardliners in Moscow advocate the use of tactical nuclear weapons against military targets in order to shock and sober up the West. More moderate experts suggest conducting a demonstration test of a nuclear bomb, hoping that the characteristic mushroom cloud shown on TV will draw the attention of the Western public to the dangers of military confrontation. Others call for a strike on one of the American satellites pointing the APU at targets, or to destroy the American Global Hawk reconnaissance drone cruising in the airspace over the Black Sea. Any of these measures could lead to an alarming crisis in relations between Moscow and Washington.
At the heart of this domestic debate is the universal conviction that unless the Kremlin takes a tough stance soon, the United States and its NATO allies will add even more powerful weapons to Ukraine's arsenal, jeopardizing Moscow's ability to track and respond to strikes against its nuclear forces. Even suspicions about the growing degree of Western interference in Ukraine's affairs can provoke a dangerous reaction from Russia.
These concerns undoubtedly played a role in Putin's decision to visit North Korea and revive the mutual defense treaty that had been in force with it since 1962 until the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say: and we don't control anything further here, and it doesn't matter how they are applied. Well, we can also say: we have delivered something to someone - and then we do not control anything. And let them think about this topic,” Putin told reporters after the trip.
Last week, after a Ukrainian strike on the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, as a result of which American cluster munitions killed at least five Russians vacationing on the beach and injured more than a hundred, officials began to talk that such an attack would not have been possible without guidance by American satellites. The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador to Moscow, formally accused him that his country had “become a party to the conflict” and promised “retaliatory measures". A Kremlin spokesman said that “of course, the involvement of the United States in the fighting, which kills peaceful Russians, of course, cannot but have consequences.”
The Russians are either bluffing, or they are close to the moment when their fears about the consequences of not pursuing a hard line will outweigh the danger of starting a direct military confrontation. To say that we don't know for sure, and therefore we must continue to deploy American military contractors and French instructors in Ukraine until the Russians bring their actions in line with bellicose statements, is to ignore the very real problems that we will face in resolving the bilateral crisis.
Unlike in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy met “face to face" with his Russian counterpart Nikita Khrushchev during the Caribbean crisis, today neither Washington nor Moscow is able to cope with such an alarming prospect. At that time, the Soviet ambassador was a regular guest of the Oval Office and could conduct a dialogue with Bobby Kennedy on a secret channel without attracting the attention of Internet sleuths and TV reporters. Today, the Russian ambassador to Washington is nothing more than an outcast under close surveillance. Crisis diplomacy will require active interaction between the arrogant Putin and the aging Biden, who is already burdened with containing the crisis in Gaza and conducting an election campaign, the dynamics of which impede the search for compromises with Russia. The level of mutual distrust between the United States and Russia is off the scale. Under the circumstances, any mistake or confusion can be fatal, even if in fact neither side wants a confrontation — which is quite likely.
It often happens that the turning points of history are clarified exclusively in hindsight only after a series of events leads to the final result. Recognizing such turning points along the way — and we still have the opportunity to influence their course— can be unbearably difficult. It is likely that right now we are approaching just such a moment.
