Joe Hildebrand: Why Putin has no fears of the west
The world has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it hasn’t bothered Vladimir Putin. There’s a simple reason he’s not scared.
In the 75 years since the Cold War began — and we now know never really ended — there have been only two real moments when the threat of nuclear war was open and possibly imminent.
The first was the Cuban missile crisis and the second is now.
So how is it that the first nuclear stand-off was resolved without a single shot being fired while today hundreds of Ukrainian civilians are dead and its cities have been shattered?
The reason is mad — literally MAD in capital letters: Mutually Assured Destruction. And the irony is that in the moment of the planet’s greatest existential threat it caused sanity to prevail.
The Cuban missile crisis began when the US discovered the Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles on the communist Caribbean island which were capable of striking American soil.
A shocked John F Kennedy initially wanted to launch air strikes on Cuba — which almost certainly would have actually started World War 3 — but in his finest moment as president he then decided to instead impose a naval blockade around the island.
Far from the hypothetical “red line” spoken of by Barack Obama in relation to Syria — and currently urged by Republicans in the response to Putin — the US deployed an actual physical military line and effectively dared the Reds to cross it.
Soon enough Soviet ships did indeed approach the blockade and the world came as close to a nuclear apocalypse as it has ever been. Then, after a planetary pause of bated breath, the Russians turned back.
It was then that Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously whispered to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
The flow on from that remarkable moment was that the Russians agreed to pull their missiles out of Cuba and the Americans promised not to invade. They also secretly promised to pull their own nukes out of Turkey.
It was an extraordinary victory for world peace yet it was only possible because of the threat of world war.
The problem for the current US president is that he has already taken that threat off the table, publicly declaring that he will not risk any direct confrontation with Russia.
“Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War 3, something we must strive to prevent,” Joe Biden said last week.
Of course that is absolutely true and that is exactly what he should be doing. But just because he is doing that doesn’t mean he should be saying it.
It is obvious in hindsight but also became quickly apparent at the time that the reason the US and USSR so quickly came to terms during the Cuba crisis was that both parties were absolutely shitting themselves. By contrast, Vladimir Putin has effectively been given a leave pass by the US to do whatever he wants knowing that the West will not directly militarily intervene in Ukraine.
As a result Russia was this week again openly threatening the use of nuclear weapons — as well as laying down false flag propaganda to pave the way for the potential use of biological or chemical weapons.
While the latter is more of a probability than the former, it is clear that Putin is a tyrant who feels he can act with impunity. Were he to be faced with an ultimatum or a sense that the US was prepared to literally go ballistic it’s a fair bet he would be more measured in his outrages. Certainly he never tried to pull any of this crap when Donald Trump was president.
This brings us to the second mad doctrine of foreign policy, so-called “Madman Diplomacy”. First envisioned by none other than Machiavelli himself, it was more famously deployed by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, who wanted the Soviets to believe the US president was capable of anything.
Tellingly, having just checked up on the latest developments in this particular school of diplomacy, only two other proponents have since been named in its Wikipedia entry: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Needless to say the Madman Theory didn’t work out particularly well for Nixon — he may, after all, have simply been mad — but it is probably what prevented Putin from invading Ukraine during Trump’s presidency. If not it is a hell of a coincidence that he invaded Ukraine both before and after it.
And this brings us to Biden’s insipid brand of folksy diplomacy. Even setting aside his own cognitive issues, it is not much of a disincentive to an increasingly desperate and hostile enemy to say that you will never confront them.
As a friend of mine with close links to foreign affairs types said: “Why the f*ck is Biden saying he’s not prepared to start World War 3? He should be saying he IS prepared to start it!”
To be fair, this guy just knows a lot of diplomats. I never said he was diplomatic.
But this is the crux of the global response to the biggest European crisis since the last world war. Do you throw down hard and maybe save all lives? Or do you pick your way slowly and gingerly through the rubble and let hundreds die rather than risk the minuscule chance a strong stand might make it millions?
I am still confident that the almost miraculous Ukrainian resistance combined with the massive economic pressure on Russia will eventually be enough to end this bloody war.
But just imagine if this war had been bloodless.
Watch Joe’s new show The Blame Game – 8.30pm Fridays on Sky News or stream on demand at flashnews.com.au.
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