Gaming Non Nuclear Scenarios

 Gaming Non Nuclear Scenarios

Although my nuclear escalation gaming conclusion is to deploy Intermediate Range Nuclear Missiles IRs into Ukraine, it is not my intention to provoke a nuclear war but to prevent one.  Normally, when gaming is done, there are a lot of people in the room so in my view, this is turning into a good discussion.  This was my first gaming scenario but I’ll explain my thinking a little more.  Let us assume for now that no nuclear escalation occurs.

 

If the West continues on its course now, there are five possible outcomes.  They are:

1.       Best case for the West – Russia withdraws from Ukraine either because Ukraine beats them or because of regime collapse in Russia and the new regime decides to withdraw.

2.       Stalemate – The war bogs down into a stalemate most likely with Russia grinding out ground slowly.  This will result in high casualties both in the military of both sides, and in civilian casualties.

3.       European Afghanistan – Putin wins the war and sets up a government to his liking, but Ukraine turns into a European version of Afghanistan complete with grinding poverty, war, and casualties.

4.       Putin total victory – Putin achieves total victory in Ukraine.

5.       Dirty peace – Some sort of agreement is reached which results in Ukraine being carved up somehow.

 

From the point of view of the West, scenarios two through four are clearly bad, while scenario 5 is also bad, in my opinion.  Bottom line, if the West continues on its present course there is an 80% probability of a bad outcome.  The figure is actually not 80% because not all alternatives are equally likely but I believe I have established my point.

 

Let us now look at the long term ramifications of any bad outcome for the West.  Morale, which is high at the moment, will be dashed.  NATO will likely fracture in that individual countries will seek to come to an accommodation with Putin.  Western credibility will be shot to hell and I believe efforts to supplant the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency will accelerate.  It won’t just be Russia, China, and North Korea who look to break the economic stranglehold the US has as the holder of the world’s reserve currency.  Any of the bad outcomes mentioned above will strengthen ties between Russia and China with more nations joining in.  China might be emboldened to attack Taiwan leaving the US as the only real defender of that country. 

 

Meanwhile the resolve of OPEC will be strengthened leaving Europe and the West with high oil prices.  This will cause current leadership to lose power and the prospect of this happening will cause them to make an accommodation with Putin on the least favorable terms possible. 

 

On the war front, Ukraine will be resolved and even if we assume Putin needs some time to recover, the West will find itself with an aggressive Russia.  Putin would not have to attack Moldova to absorb it because in this scenario, if their leaders had any IQ at all, they would accommodate Putin knowing they could not count on the West to prevent them from suffering the same fate as Ukraine.

 

This leaves Putin with an option to attack a NATO nation.  The conventional wisdom is that Putin would not do this because of Article 5.  But is that wisdom accurate?  Remember, by now, the morale of NATO is fractured.  Germany is strangling under high oil prices and Putin still has nukes.  Putin could once again threaten nuclear escalation if NATO invokes Article 5.  The only option NATO has at this point is to risk nuclear escalation and invoke Article 5, or stand by and sacrifice more nations.  NATO must call Putin on his threat.  In either case, we now have World War III except that China may see enough weakness in the West to throw its lot in with Putin and attack Taiwan or other Asian countries forcing the US to fight a war on two fronts in very large theatres of war.  And, there is every threat of nuclear escalation which would certainly occur if NATO gains the upper hand.

 

Another piece of conventional wisdom is that the crippling sanctions will bring Russia to its knees either by causing the oligarchs to topple Putin, or cause the Russian people to revolt.  These are possibilities.  However, let us remember that the Russian people are tougher in this regard than Western people and particularly the people of America.  They don’t scream like a baby if someone tells them to wear a mask in a shopping mall.  There is more tangible evidence.  This is not the first time Russians faced crippling economic conditions.  They faced these in the 90’s after the fall of the soviet union.  The reasons they had to face such crippling conditions differ, but face them they did.  I have had many Russian friends of mine, and some Ukrainian ones too, tell me what life was like in the aftermath of the soviet union.

 

To give one example.  Imagine you are driving to work and you realize you need gas.  You see the price is $4.50 a gallon which is pretty high, but you decide traffic is bad and you risk being late to work if you stop to fill up so you decide to fill up on your way home.  On your way home, you discover that the price of gas has gone up to $27 / gallon.  This is exactly the sort of thing that happened to average Russians during this transition period.  Many Russians lost their jobs.  There was no unemployment insurance, no medical insurance and food was scarce in the shops.  Many Russians who did have jobs went for six months or more without being paid.  They kept working in the hope that if they kept their job, they would eventually get something.  When McDonald’s opened in Moscow in 1990, working there was one of the most coveted jobs because of all this.  Combine this with 4 times more deaths in World War II than the entire West combined, and then even more suffering under Stalin, and you have a very tough people.  If the Russian people feel they are unjustly crippled with sanctions, they are very tough indeed.  This means that sanctions may take a very long time to have their desired effect.

 

Before I sat back and started gaming, I wondered whether Putin was mad.  Was he suffering a neurological disorder as was reported?  Perhaps he is.  But after I gamed this out, I now believe Putin is anything but mad.  Up until the invasion, Putin has out-foxed us all.  He should not be underestimated.  If this were chess, Putin has white and the West’s queen is threatened.

 

The bottom line as I see it is that if the West continues on its current course, there is an 80% chance of a bad outcome for the West and only a slightly less chance of a nuclear escalation.  There is every chance Putin will force NATO to invoke article 5 and there is every chance NATO will not do so.

 

As I write this, morale in the West is as high as it will ever be.  Most of the world by a large margin believes Russia engages in an unprovoked war and that Putin is a war criminal.  In this case, perception is what counts.  NATO and the West is as united as it will ever be at this moment.  Since there is an 80% chance of a bad outcome if its current course is pursued, it’s only viable option is to do what I said when I gamed nuclear escalation.  Yes, there is every risk of a nuclear escalation, but my belief is that the West is at its strongest point now.  The longer it waits, the weaker it will become.  There is less risk of nuclear escalation now because NATO is at its strongest point.

 

If NATO goes in conventionally, without deploying the IRs, Putin has the option of keeping the war conventional.  But as NATO is at its strongest point, he is more likely to lose that war and be driven out of Ukraine.  He is therefore more likely to start nuclear escalation.  This is why we need the deterrent of IRs.  This is why I concluded this move must accompany any NATO involvement.  This was certainly not my view before I started this gaming exercise.

 

Note 1

Russia does not use gallons.  I used gallons to allow me to paint a scenario Americans can relate to. 

 

Note 2

I believe the US dollar as the reserve currency will be under threat regardless of what happens.  The UN  has been trying to come up with their own but so far without success.  Therefore, America may face a choice of a soft landing with a new reserve currency, or a hard landing.  If the US continues to endorse the current course of the West, it is most likely the US will experience a hard landing in this regard.