By Lewis Page
(This article was recommended by Victor Toth, the top physicist on the top Q&A internet engine. It appeared first here. Michael believes it's worth the reading effort)Back during the Cold War there was always a question facing the nations of Nato, as they confronted enormous Soviet tank armies in Europe.
In the event of a conventional war going badly, at what point do we go nuclear?
The answer might have been: not until Soviet troops entered France. This kind of problem is why nukes didn't make conventional forces obsolete.
Today it is Vladimir Putin who has a conventional war which is going badly. He still holds large areas of Ukrainian territory, but his troops are falling back.
Putin may be able to mobilise at least some of the huge reserves of manpower which are theoretically available with a full Russian call-up, though this appears to be going extremely badly so far.
Even if a useful mobilisation can be conducted without overwhelming domestic opposition, Russia will struggle to equip its unwilling cannon-fodder and supply them for a long-term war.
The new conscripts will be facing determined Ukrainians who are fighting to save their people from murder, rape, torture and mass disappearance into the gulags. Ukrainian troops have already stopped Russia’s best, the “kontraktniki” professional soldiers who began the invasion, literally dead in their tracks.
Even Russians should be able to see that seizing territory and then going nuclear if it’s taken back is not something the rest of the world can possibly accept.
Worse still, as long as some Western nations remain resolute, the Ukrainians will be well armed and supplied from effectively inexhaustible resources of money and material.
The West in general does not maintain huge stockpiles of munitions and there may well be hiccups in the supply chains. Nonetheless the US in particular has shown during recent wars – for instance in Syria when shortages of surgical smart weapons occurred – that it can crank up new production very quickly when it wants to.
So Putin is under pressure. But he is not in the situation that Nato might have been in a hot 1980s war, reeling back towards France. Putin is not back from his start line, but still well forward of it.
Heads I win, tails I go nuclear
Even Russians should be able to see that seizing territory and then going nuclear if it’s taken back is not something the rest of the world can possibly accept. And bogus gunpoint referendums clearly don't make Ukrainians into Russians.
Russians know this too, as they didn't get a vote on whether they would like to be Russian, or on anything else.
