Frank's Musings

Settlement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will require imaginative negotiations betwee three principal parties.  I wonder whether Putin prioritizes the welfare of Russians over his own place in Russian, if not world, history.  He may think it’s worth a foolhardy risk to challenge the West’s courage by rolling the nuclear dice and ending either with the respect of all humanity, as the creator of a new world order, or with the end of the world as we know it--Vladimir the great, or apocalypse.

Is Putin rational?  If not, maybe the West's proper counter strategy is to anticipate his escalation and remove the cancerous sore with extreme prejudice.

He is certainly very intelligent; however, he fails to understand that no man is an island.  An individual lleader and his country cannot achieve true happiness at the expense of the general welfare. Believing they can is not rational unless they believe the know, like Donald Trump, that the world and everyone in it are merely a figment of their imagination.  That isn’t rationality; that’s megalomania

The irony for Putin is that if he resorts to Armageddon, no one will be around to read of his triumph.  The same irony prevents his international adversaries from engaging in nuclear retaliation.  No one will win.

JFK reached a compromise with Khrushchev that settled the Cuban Missile Crisis Unfortunately, the West finds itself again in the same sort of stand-off.  Perhaps an Austria-like neutrality for Crimea with a connecting land-bridge would be an acceptable appeasement for the current Russian leadership (as long as it lasts in the face of popular Russian impatience). 

The third critical partner in this deal is Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians.  They might be happy if their country became a member of NATO. That would be the price Putin has to pay, in addition to pulling out of at least some of Donbas and the other occupied territories. 

Could this be regarded as rationality on all three sides?  Otherwise  we have almost forgotten that in the nuclear age only win-win outcomes work