One big PR issue is that Ukraine and the West collectively forgot how deterrence works. Russia arguably never really learned.*
Preemptive formulation and announcement: "If you X, we will escalate in Y way. If you do not X, then we will not."
Instead, there's a hodgepodge of reactive escalation, which is far less effective.
The point is to bargain your willingness to escalate into a self-limitation on your opponent's part.
F.ex. this war might never have happened if NATO had said, before the post-Crimea invasion, that if Russia further invades territorial Ukraine then it would supply massive amounts of arms to Ukraine.
* Russia, on the other hand, apparently never figured out that announcing everything as a red line and constantly making nuclear threats makes such announcements useless. But it seems like authoritarian regimes often have trouble interacting with freer information spaces.
They didn't forget. They remembered extremely well that both sides can do that. They know that it leads to a feedback loop where the threats escalate.
And in a nuclear world, those threats can escalate to annihilation. The result is Mutually Assured Destruction, and choices are made based on whether you believe the other side is in fact crazy enough to commit suicide.
Russia knew that the US would supply arms. They also expected that they would be able to conquer the country before that could help. They were wrong, but that came as a surprise to everybody (except perhaps the Ukrainians).
The US keeps weighing how much they're going to escalate the threats. They've prevented Ukraine from using their weapons to attack Moscow, precisely because Putin has used Mutually Assured Destruction. Get anywhere near him, and he will use nuclear weapons to destroy the world.
Do you believe him? That is literally the most important question in the world right now, because if you guess wrong, the consequences go way, way beyond Ukraine.
> And in a nuclear world, those threats can escalate to annihilation.
They haven't thus far. And the US was a lot more pointed about deterrence (including nuclear escalation threats) in the 60s/70s.
The status quo is that Russia frequently threatens nuclear escalation to all sorts of Ukrainian actions, and the West... doesn't threaten anything preemptively.
Can you think of one instance thus far where the West preemptively said "If Russia does X, then we will Y" for clear Xs and Ys? And then did it?
The US has said that it stood with Ukraine, and would give money and weapons. It hasn't been specific, but I don't think that increased specificity would have deterred Russia.
It's more meaningful to actually do the thing than to talk about it. As you note, Russia's red lines are meaningless. We don't even really take his nuclear threats seriously.
The strategy has been to avoid escalation, but just to outlast Russia on its own terms. Russia is running its war badly. They seem willing to spend blood and treasure on it, and no amount of threat is going to stop that. Ukraine just needs to outlast it.
What's really going to succeed for them is not that the West failed to make enough threats, but that the US is about to capitulate. Under those circumstances, Ukraine likely cannot outlast it.
Some have said all along that the US should have enabled Ukraine to fight to win, rather than outlast. Not a threat, but just going ahead and fighting. Under that theory, Russia would see that it would take more damage than it could afford, and give up.
It's possible that this is correct. We'll never really know. The siege strategy seemed viable because the US did not expect to surrender so easily. Giving up in Ukraine wasn't really a major point in this election. But that is how war goes; you do your best with the information you have, and sometimes you fail anyway.
> The [Western] strategy has been to avoid escalation
This is the part that feels like it's failed. Because the West has escalated, but only reactively to battlefield conditions and without preemptively announcing the steps that will be taken.
That ceded the bargaining power that, f.ex., a preemptive "We will give Ukraine surplus F-16s if _____" could have produced.
it certainly will lead to proliferation . somewhere in some Pakistan mansion there is most awkward reunion of russias neighbours bidding for nukes. latvia 5million, khazakstan 10 milliin, who raises the bid. One way or another donbas is russias last conquest ..
That's not how escalation and escalation management works, and "Mutually Assured Destruction" is mostly a lie.
Putin is a paranoid coward and fears for his life like few people you know. No he's not going to "destroy the world", it would endanger his own life and the palaces he built for himself.
No it's not binary, there's a vast, vast gulf between limited nuclear use and a full-on attack on CONUS. In fact, any nuclear use by Russia would likely bring its rapid defeat, since their main allies (India and China) are nuclear armed countries with a border dispute and are very interested in the nuclear taboo staying intact.
No it's not "Mutually Assured Destruction", the mainstream of nuclear targeting is counter-force disarming strikes, and the US is perfectly capable of winning a nuclear war. "Winning" here means ending up in a situation where cities are mostly intact on both sides, but only one side is capable of threatening them. Moreover, being credibly capable of winning a nuclear exchange was (during the Cold War) and is necessary to keep European and Asian allies safe. No, militaries are not deliberately glassing cities if push comes to shove, it doesn't make any military or political sense. You don't kill a hostage to win a negotiation.
No, a nuclear war is not a "suicide". It's very bad news for everyone (although chances are we will see battlefield nuclear use in our lifetime), but there's an incredible amount of nuance and complexity. "Putin presses the red button and everyone's dead" is a take that is not even wrong.
But Minsk was dead for several years already even before the FSO.
Nonetheless it seems clear now that the West could have come up with a greatly more coherent escalation strategy that it seems to have sleepwalked into.
> But if it was retaliation I’m sure it would be ok.
I certainly wouldn't cry over some Russians in Moscow feeling the impact of their own war. But unfortunately, Russia's trolls would instantly spin even an immediate reaction to the bombing of an UA power plant in a negative way.
