Biden’s delicate calibrations about Putin

A momentous milestone will soon be reached. Probably. The second use of atomic weapons occurred Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the first. On April 7, 28,000 days will have passed without a third. Maybe.

This enormous achievement of postwar statecraft is difficult to celebrate because it is an absence of something. Besides, suddenly the most sophisticated of weapons might be used by a moral primitive because of Russia’s 10-thumbed mishandling of its conventional forces in Ukraine.

Writing for the Atlantic, Eliot Cohen, former State Department counselor, says the “abundant” evidence that “Ukraine is winning” includes: “Most modern militaries rely on a strong cadre of noncommissioned officers. Sergeants make sure that vehicles are maintained and exercise leadership in squad tactics. The Russian NCO corps is today, as it has always been, both weak and corrupt.”

And: “Vehicles bunched up on roads, no infantry covering the flanks, no closely coordinated artillery fire, no overhead support from helicopters, and panicky reactions to ambushes. The 1-to-1 ratio of vehicles destroyed to those captured or abandoned bespeaks an army that is unwilling to fight.” Furthermore, assume characteristic Russian military crudity — the use of artillery to compensate for myriad failures: “If the Russians level a town and slaughter its civilians, they are unlikely to have killed off its defenders, who will do extraordinary and effective things from the rubble to avenge themselves on the invaders.” Witness “the annihilation of a Russian battalion tactical group in Voznesensk.”

Putin has thrown 75% of Russia’s combat-ready ground forces onto Ukraine in an attempt to reestablish Russia’s great power status. He did not reckon on (notes former deputy undersecretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey) Ukraine’s “900,000-man pool of veterans from eight years of war” fighting Russian-backed insurgents in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The Ukrainians’ effective resistance is forcing President Joe Biden to make a delicate calibration that he is fortunate to be in a position to make: How much embarrassment can Putin suffer without taking a catastrophic step — use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

The rhetoric of imagined but rarely attained precision is common in modern governance. Military planners contemplate “surgical strikes” as “signaling devices” as conflicts ascend the “escalation ladder.” In 1965, war theorist Herman Kahn postulated 44 rungs on that ladder. The 22nd: “Declaration of Limited Nuclear War.” The 44th: “Spasm or Insensate War.” Rung 21 was “Local Nuclear War — Exemplary.” As Biden calibrates, we might be rising from Rung 20: “‘Peaceful’ World-Wide Embargo or Blockade.”

After 1945, it was understood that nuclear weapons might, by deterring military interventions to counter aggressions, enable wars of considerable conventional violence. Biden, however, has orchestrated a symphony of sanctions and weapons deliveries that has — so far — nullified Putin’s attempt to use nuclear threats to deter effective conventional responses to his aggression.

Ukraine’s president illustrates Churchill’s axiom that courage is the most important virtue because it enables the others. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stiffened the West’s spine, made something like victory seem possible and made it impossible to blur the conflict’s moral clarity.