Thread by @OlyaOliker

You may not like where @scharap ends up in yesterday's @politico piece, but instead of getting mad at Sam Charap, ask yourself what it would take to craft a more viable policy. politico.com/news/magazine/… 🧵1/11

He's arguing that since Western states aren't going to fight for Ukraine, and Russia clearly, evidently, will, the current path leads to another serious escalation, in which more Ukrainians (& Russians) die, followed by an even worse status quo than today's. 2/11

Western states have to date relied on strategic ambiguity, hoping symbolic assistance of various sorts (at this point, Ukrainians are pretty good at fighting, & they've long been good at building weapons), sanctions, & strong words of support will make Russia think twice 3/11

not just about escalation, but about staying its course. But what's happened is that Russia has grown more frustrated, and, it seems, more willing to act, not less. 4/11

Strategic ambiguity works when the threat is credible, and/or when what's threatened is so terrible that it doesn't need to be all that credible. It's a bit of a sliding scale, and of course an imprecise one. 5/11

So, for both Ukraine and its friends, the questions are: what are you threatening, and what are you willing to do? I have no doubt that Ukraine would put up a nasty fight, and that occupying any of it would be painful and costly. 6/11

But Russia has the (much) bigger, better armed forces. And Moscow seems willing to risk the pain (though perhaps it's misjudging how bad it would be). 7/11

It is not clear what Ukraine's friends will do. @scharap thinks not much. Is that true? For all of them? And if they are willing to escalate, how far? A big part of Russia's deterrent is the threat of escalation. But that threat works both ways, if both sides are credible. 8/11

I would recommend some stock-taking and some decisions about who is willing to do what under various circumstances--and then communicating the results to Moscow. Maybe those results look like what @scharap recommends. Maybe not. 9/11

Maybe resulting, clearer, more credible threats will deter. Maybe they won't, and we'll all face the ensuing escalation risks. But nice as it would be to export all the risk to the (prospective) adversary, that's not going to happen in this case. 10/11

Thanks to @scharap for putting this out there. Here's hoping it forces some hard thinking 11/11