Dealing with Putin

Dealing with Putin is like dealing with a hostage taker.The hostages are all the people in the world including all the Russians. It’s likely that Putin is prepared to nuke Ukraine and its supporters if they humiliate him to a degree that threatens his grip on power. “He would never use nukes,” some experts say. “It would be suicidal.” The trouble with that argument is that it assumes that Putin wouldn’t prefer suicide to being humiliated. There’s no reason to believe that. “Well, maybe so,” some experts say, “but if he wanted to commit suicide, he could just hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger.” The trouble with that argument is that if Putin wants to commit suicide, he may be like many mass shooters who, when they die, want to take as many people with them as they can. We’ve seen that there’s no limit to the number of people, including Russian soldiers, Putin minds killing.