Could Putin De-Escalate Even If He Wanted To?
Russia’s leader may have gone too far down the war path in Ukraine to back off now and still save face.
Perhaps not so farsighted.
Photographer: Sergei Savostyanov/TASS via Getty Images
As I write these lines, talks between Moscow and the West appear to have stalled, and the world waits with bated breath whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will order the 100,000 troops he’s massed near Ukraine to attack that country. In this moment of peril, it’s worth dusting off three old concepts in international-relations theory to take stock of the strategic situation.
One concept is called “escalation dominance.” It was coined during the Cold War by a think-tanker named Herman Kahn, who inspired the title character in the black comedy “Dr. Strangelove.” The idea is that in any conflict, the side that’s in a better position to raise the stakes — because it knows it would win, could bear the costs more easily, or wants something more intensely — has a strategic advantage. Its adversary will come under ever greater pressure to pull out and settle.