Escalation Management
What would Ukraine have to attack to prove that Russia cannot escalate any further?
George: [with trembling lips] Wimp, am I? Agent Johnson, Agent Heintz, you men stand down. [the gate opens and Homer walks in] All right, Mister: you want trouble? You're going to get trouble.
Homer: Oh, I want trouble, all right.
George: Then you're going to get trouble.
Homer: No, you're going to get trouble.
George: Oh, that's good, that's good, 'cause I want trouble.
Homer: Then we're agreed there'll be trouble.
George: Oh, yeah, lots of trouble.
Homer: Trouble it is.
George: For you. [walks inside, slams door]
Homer: For -- d'oh!
Since the beginning of Russia’s renewed imperial conquest of Ukraine, the Biden administration has adopted a policy of escalation management. The idea being that we have to strike the right balance between aiding Ukraine and preventing escalation in the war. Several weapons systems and capabilities were withheld because they were deemed too escalatory: tanks, F-16s, Patriot batteries, and ATACMS, most notably. We also initially directed Ukraine not to strike Crimea, fearing that it would spark WWIII.
Of course, Ukraine consistently crossed each red line, and none of the transgressions were met with any escalation from Russia.
Now, we are hearing that Ukraine is beginning to strike Russian early warning radars with Ukrainian drones. For some people who are operating under reflexive control, this opens up a terrifying heightened probability of a nuclear accident. Lacking these sophisticated systems, Russia might accidentally perceive a nuclear strike and fire nukes in retaliation.1
But, of course, Ukraine has been crossing various “red lines” by using domestically produced drones to strike military targets throughout Russia for quite some time now. It also later emerged that these early warning radars might also detect ATACMs strikes, so there was a military purpose behind Ukraine striking these systems.
So my question is: what would Ukraine have to attack that would prove Russia has no interest or ability to escalate the war?
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse…A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
Of course, no one stops to think which country might be attacked with a nuke, but I digress.