General Discussion

Neither is deployment of nukes, in whatever version it might take place. But as we have seen in the case of North Korea, Iran and Russia itself, a mere prospect of possessing nukes is a tremendous diplomatic lever. It has demonstrably been the case for all of the above, as well as Israel, India and Pakistan, without a single nuclear weapon ever deployed.

In Russia's case, nukes have been repeatedly hinted at as a deterrent to the military assistance to Ukraine from the West. And it worked. It slowed the NATO military help to Ukraine, which largely accounts for the three years of armed conflict that exhausted Ukraine's manpower, as well as NATO consistently declining acceptance into the alliance to Ukraine, which would have immediately ended the war. Were Ukraine to possess nukes in 2014, there would have been no annexation of Ukraine's territories by Russia, only the smoldering inter-ethnic clashes in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions at best.

Russia's slow decline as an empire has been evident for over a century. It continues to disintegrate, entirely due to its internal decay. It took 20 million Russian dead and decades of repression of its subjects to temporarily (less than 50 years) reverse this decline and maintain Russia (in its incarnation as Soviet Union) as a superpower. But maintaining its superpower status proved to be unsustainable, primarily due to economic and administrative, not geopolitical factors, despite Russia's seemingly endless wealth in natural resources, which continues to be squandered. In the past three decades, Russia lost the allegiance of its Warsaw Pact allies, arguably all of its former Republics, its status as a superpower and its standing among the countries which we now call the Global South. It also failed to contain the expansion of NATO. Much of it happened on Putin's watch.

While Putin's ambitions towards Ukraine are rooted in the populist sentiment of restoring the once mighty Empire (Russians have their own version of the "manifest destiny" myth), his timing for invading it was dictated by the necessity to maintain his regime in the light of the Empire's accelerating disintegration. To make long story short, he miscalculated badly. What should have, by his estimations, taken months with minimal casualties, is taking longer than three years. Russia is bleeding its resources, prestige, and prospects for the future, and its decline and disintegration has only been accelerated due to the war.

Putin left himself no way out. He must continue his conquest of Ukraine, or his regime runs a high risk of falling. While he can outlast Ukraine in continuing the war, he cannot sustain the occupation, even if he occupies the entire country. Putin's attempts to restore the Empire are simply unsustainable. What Russia ever conquered, it was not able to administer from Moscow. The Empire is crumbling from within, and occupation of Ukraine will only contribute to it.

Ukraine is the young Mohammad Ali to Russia's Sonny Liston in 1964. Ukraine is on the rise and Russia is on a long decline. Not even a military defeat of Ukraine can stop this.