The Kipling reference is the key to understanding everything. Tabaqui does what Shere Khan tells him, and there is no point in negotiating with the jackal when the tiger holds the leash.
To Moscow, Ukraine is not the problem. Washington is. The endless expansions of NATO, the broken promises, the military exercises on Russia’s border, the installation of hostile governments in Kiev, the arming and training of Ukrainian forces—all of it flows from Washington. The Europeans are Tabaquis. The Ukrainians are Tabaquis. Even NATO, as an institution, is Tabaquis. They do what they’re told. They have no independent agency. So why waste time negotiating with them?
That’s what Putin has been trying to do with his treaty proposals. Go straight to the tiger. Lay out the demands. Make clear what is unacceptable. Wait for an answer.
The answer so far has been more of the same. Cheap threats. Bragging op-eds. More troops to Eastern Europe. More weapons to Ukraine. The Blinkens and Sullivans and Nulands, people whose résumés include social work and political fundraising but nothing that would give them insight into Russia or modern warfare, continue to drive policy based on the delusion that America is a mighty power and Russia is feeble and fading.
Everything in the past twenty years contradicts this view. The Russians have modernized their military. They’ve developed air defense systems that make our best look like toys. They’ve built hypersonic missiles we can’t stop. They’ve shown in Syria that they can project power effectively and achieve their objectives without getting bogged down in endless quagmires. But the Washington consensus remains unchanged: Russia is weak, Putin is shaky, sanctions are biting, the economy is collapsing. None of it is true, but none of it matters because believing it is necessary for the narrative.
Patrick Armstrong lays out the reality that the Washington establishment refuses to see. Ukraine is a decaying, impoverished, de-industrialized, divided, corrupt mess. Moscow does not want to absorb it. They already have enough problems. What they want is a buffer, a guarantee that NATO will not creep closer, a recognition that their security concerns are legitimate.
The second delusion is that any Russian invasion would be a replay of Fulda Gap, tanks rolling down highways, easy pickings for Javelins. Scott Ritter has explained why this is nonsense. The Russians would use standoff weapons to obliterate Ukrainian command and control, air defenses, ammunition depots, logistics nodes. It would be over quickly. The Javelins would never leave their boxes. But the people running Washington don’t understand modern warfare. They don’t want to understand. Understanding would require admitting that their assumptions are wrong.
Armstrong invokes the Thucydides Trap, the condition when an established power fears a rising one and starts a war because it fears its position can only weaken. The brutal truth is that the point has already passed. Russia plus China are more powerful than the United States and its allies in every measurable category. More steel. More food. More guns. More STEM graduates. More infrastructure. More financial reserves. American military wargamers know that NATO would lose a conventional war. They just can’t say it out loud.
So how do you compel a delusional power to see reality? How do you shatter the complacency before it leads to catastrophe?
Armstrong offers three possibilities. A demonstration of Russia’s Poseidon drone capability, nuclear-powered torpedoes that can destroy coastal cities, deployed near American shores. A military demonstration in Ukraine so overwhelming that even the most deluded cannot pretend it away. A formal military alliance with China, the Heartland united, making clear that an attack on one is an attack on both.
These are not threats. These are descriptions of what may become necessary if Washington refuses to see. The Russians have been patient. They have made proposals. They have waited for answers. But patience has limits.
We await Washington’s final answer. The prospects are not encouraging. The cheap threats continue. The bragging op-eds pour out. The people who think they understand Russia because they read a briefing book continue to drive policy based on fantasy.
The stakes could not be higher. Miscalculation at this level does not lead to another forever war in the Middle East. It leads to something none of us want to imagine.
We can hope for something better. But hope is not a strategy. And the people running Washington have given us no reason to believe they will choose wisely.
