Next Thursday and probably Friday and possibly the weekend – will be one of the most important dates in world history. NATO and EU leaders meeting in Brussels will decide – or not to decide – what to do in Ukraine.
Ukraine will then decide whether to continue fighting and how. Ditto Vladimir Putin.
Australia, Japan and South Korea’s foreign and defence policies will be dramatically affected. China may come off its rickety fence. India and the OPEC countries will have to make big decisions under heavy pressure from both sides of the warring coin.
International markets – stock markets, commodity markets, oil and gas markets—will either plunge or soar at the news from Brussels.
The world will wait to hear whether we have moved a giant step closer to nuclear Armageddon or inched away from it.
The variations are endless and each has known and unknown consequences. With the threat of nuclear war hanging over every decision, the room for error is nil.
If Vladimir Putin did not possess the world’s largest nuclear arsenal then the answer would be relatively easy: Attack and drive the Russians out. But he does, and he has threatened to use them. The question then arises: Is Putin Bluffing?
More to the point, can the Western Alliance afford to risk the possibility that he is not bluffing?
If he is not bluffing then there is an accepted three-stage nuclear escalation with a pause after the first two to give either side an opportunity to back off: battlefield nuclear weapons which would probably be confined to Ukraine; Intermediate-range nuclear weapons which would be confined to European targets and, then of course, strategic systems which would involve hitting the US.
Putin, however, refuses to play by the rules. He may go straight for American targets, which is why Joe Biden will block anything that could lead to a nuclear exchange.
So the option of committing NATO troops to Ukraine is off the table because Putin has threatened to respond with the nuclear option. That is, it is off the table for now.
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