Thread by @PalmerReport

A lot of people are asking why Europe doesn't just go blow up that Russian convoy in Ukraine, before it can do any more damage in Ukraine. The short answer is escalation.

Much of the European Union has sent advanced weaponry and even fighter jets to Ukraine, and it's so easily rationalized as a defensive border move, Putin hasn't even bothered to try to retaliate. Even his addled brain knows he has bigger problems right now.

But let's say EU nations go over and bomb the Russian convoy themselves. Putin would view EU nations killing Russian troops on third party soil as an act of war. And then he might try to retaliate against them.

If Putin decides to try to bomb EU nations, he'd obviously be giving up any hope of winning or even surviving. But if he decides to go out with a bang, he could indiscriminately kill a ton of people on his way down – including in Ukraine.

So the smarter move MAY be to simply arm Ukraine to the hilt, and try to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine. As opposed to risking spreading the conflict to a dozen nations, where the results would a lot more messy overall.

Is this fair to Ukraine, to force all the fighting to remain on its soil? Absolutely not. It is still the smartest play, in terms of taking down Putin without requiring a continent-wide war? Maybe.

These are the kinds of moral and strategic questions that world leaders are surely discussing with each other, and certainly lying in bed at night wondering about. The problem is there are no "right" answers in war, just best guesses and least bad options.

"But Palmer, you just said we can't cower to Putin!" You're right. And we can't. But cowering is not the same thing as strategically trying to figure out how to win without uncontrollable escalation.

If a rabid wild animal gets into your house, you have to figure out how to take down that animal in a way that doesn't escalate things in the process and destroy the entire house. Even rabid animals have their own weird logic in terms of what will / won't cause them to escalate.

The most "aggressive" move you can make against an enemy is often not the smartest or most successful move you can make. It's all about what's most likely to actually work, not about what's the biggest punch you can throw. A lot of punches don't land.

If the Russian army comes closer to taking Kyiv, does Europe have to go over and bomb the Russian army at that point? Maybe. But that could go wrong in so many ways – including for Ukraine – it may be better to first se if Ukraine can repel them with EU supplied weapons.

One of the most dangerous logical fallacies is "If we're going to have to do X later, let's just do it now." It always presumes a 100% chance that you'll have to do X later. But that's usually not the case, if a large number of variables are still playing out.

If I had the "right" answers on this, I'd be giving them to you, instead of pontificating. If I were a world leader (any world leader), I would not be sleeping well right now, that's for sure.

But let's keep in mind that any question that starts off with "Why don't you just..." is prone to logical fallacy. Such questions usually present a simplistic, magical solution that somehow comes with no consequences. Which is why most pundits love "Why don't you just" questions.

My best guess is that if the EU (subsidized by the U.S.) keeps flooding Ukraine with the proper military equipment, the Ukrainians will be able to use it to repel the Russian army. Then we have to hope military failure and economic collapse prompts Putin's ouster from within.

I would also guess that if I'm wrong about this and Russia starts to gain the upper hand in Kyiv, then the West will start taking bigger risks to make sure Russia loses in Ukraine.

But with this many variables shifting this quickly, any wise person would want to be able to constantly revise their position as new information arrives. That's surely what the smarter world leaders are doing with regard to Russia and Ukraine on an hourly basis.

Also keep in mind that we probably don't know half of what the U.S. and EU are doing for / with / in Ukraine right now. One way to avoid the risk of escalation is to make sure your enemy doesn't know what all you're doing.

Can EU nations really afford to give away this much military equipment? Fighter jets aren't cheap for small nations. Is the U.S. secretly reimbursing the EU nations? Again, we probably don't know the half of what all is going on.

And for all the intel that the U.S. has intercepted and instantly made public in order to fluster Putin, there's surely plenty of other intel the U.S. has intercepted and secretly provided it to Ukraine so it could use it to win battles.

By the way, it's not just about nuclear war. That's many, many steps up the escalation chain from where we are. If the EU bombed the Russian convoy, Putin's next escalation step could be to send jets to bomb the closest EU city, and so on.

A good rule of thumb is to leave the possibility of nuclear war out of this entirely. It's unlikely to happen, and if it does we're all dead anyway, so it won't matter. Focus on realistic escalation scenarios, which tend to be incremental.

For instance, there are claims out there that Putin is privately talking about invading Finland and Sweden next. That would be a dumb idea and he would fail badly. But that would be the kind of attempted escalation you might except from him. Not "oh let's just nuke everyone."

Putin is coming closer to a cartoon villain, but this is still real life, not the movies. In the movies, the thing that happens next is always whatever would be most dramatic. In real life, it's whatever the most logical result would be, whether it's dramatic or not.

Also, if Putin is crazy enough to think he's winning, or that he can win this, why would he instead decide to die by starting a nuclear war? Wouldn't he want to stay alive and enjoy his upcoming victory?