What if Putin didn't miscalculate?

The general view is that Vladimir Putin made a catastrophic miscalculation.

He thought that Russian-speaking Ukrainians would welcome his troops. They didn't. He thought he would quickly depose Volodymyr Zelensky's government. He hasn't. He thought it would divide NATO. He's brought her together. He thought he had shielded his economy against sanctions. He's torn her apart. He thought the Chinese would help him. They're making their own bets. He thought that his modernized army would make mincemeat on Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainians are making mincemeat, at least on some fronts.

Putin's miscalculations raise questions about his strategic judgment and state of mind. Who, if anyone, is advising you? Have you lost touch with reality? Are you physically ill? Mentally? Condoleezza Rice warns: “He doesn't control his emotions. Something is wrong.” The Russian sieges of Mariupol and Kharkiv — two densely populated Russian cities that Putin claims to be “liberating” from Ukrainian oppression — resemble what the Nazis did to Warsaw, and what Putin himself did to Grozny.

Several analysts have compared Putin to a cornered rat, more dangerous now that it is no longer in control of events. They want to give him a safe way out of the predicament he's supposedly created for himself. Hence the almost universal contempt poured on Joe Biden for saying in Poland: “By God, this man cannot continue in power.”

Conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the advantage of claiming the West's strategy of supporting Ukraine on the defensive. And he tends to conclude that the best result is the one in which Putin finds some face-saving way out: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian promise of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions.

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing Putin's game once again?

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence of Carlotta Gall, from The Times, of her experience covering Russia's siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early stages of the war, motivated Chechen fighters annihilated a Russian armored brigade, leaving Moscow stunned. The Russians regrouped and razed Grozny from afar, using artillery and aviation.

Russia is operating on the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin cannot win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he cannot win cleanly. Since when does Putin play fair?

“There is a whole next stage in Putin's playbook, which is well known to Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any other dissent with arrests and filtration camps and converting and empowering local proteges and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real objectives were the energy riches of eastern Ukraine, which contain the second largest known reserves of natural gas in Europe (after those of Norway).

If we combine this with the previous territorial takeovers of Russia in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy deposits) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of a huge shale gas field), as well as Putin's commitment to control most of the the entire coast of Ukraine, it is clear the shape of Putin's ambitions. He is less interested in reunifying the Russian-speaking world than in securing Russia's energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing a huge heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what remains of a landlocked Ukraine, it is likely to become a welfare case for the West, which will help pay the bill to resettle refugees from Ukraine to new homes outside Russian control. Eventually, a figure similar to that of Viktor Orban could reach the presidency of Ukraine, imitating the strongman political style that Putin prefers in his neighbors.

If this analysis is correct, Putin does not seem like the ill-calculated loser his critics make appear.

It also gives meaning to its strategy of attacking civilians. Rather than a way to compensate for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass massacre of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to accept the same things that Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons.

Within Russia, the war has already served Putin's political purposes. Many members of the professional middle class - the people who are most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny - have gone into self-exile. The remains of the free press have been shut down, probably forever. To the extent that the Russian military has become evident, a well-directed purge from above is more likely than a broad revolution from below. Russia's new energy riches could help it free itself from sanctions.

This alternative analysis of Putin's performance could be wrong. On the other hand, in war, politics and life, it is always wiser to treat your opponent as a cunning fox, not like a madman.

(C) The New York Times.-

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