Thread by @ClintEhrlich

THREAD: Today, a time for choosing arrived for America.

A truck bomb has been detonated on the bridge that connects Crimea to Russia.

We're running out of time to reconsider our support for Ukraine attempting to retake the peninsula by force.

Disabling the bridge serves dual purposes for Ukraine.

From a kinetic perspective, it reduces Russia's options for supplying its forces in the South of Ukraine.

More importantly, from a symbolic perspective, it embodies Ukraine's ambition to seize Crimea from Russia.

The White House has backed that ambition with slogans like "Crimea is Ukraine."

It has signaled that Ukraine has U.S. approval to use American weapons systems against Crimea.

But cutting off the bridge that connects Crimea to Russia is a massive escalation.

Ukraine has not yet achieved enough on the battlefield to threaten an imminent invasion of Crimea.

But U.S. officials are already predicting that it will.

Now is the time to decide whether we're willing to back Ukraine that far.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Crimea rightfully belongs to Ukraine under international law.

Should America be willing to support a bloody Ukrainian invasion of the peninsula to vindicate that abstract principle?

Are we filling to fight a nuclear war over it?

Supporting Ukraine in an invasion of Crimea is categorically different than supporting Ukraine in the Donbas.

It would no longer be a state attempting to push back a belligerent to pre-invasion borders.

Ukraine would be a state attempting to reverse the prior status-quo.

Before the Russian invasion, most in the West were not ready to back a Ukrainian invasion of Crimea.

Why? Because the potential for WW3 was obvious.

Russia had pledged it would use nuclear weapons to defend the peninsula.

It was understood that, in the abstract, there might be moral or legal arguments for why Crimea should belong to Ukraine.

The status of the referendum on joining Russia was hotly disputed.

But very few thought control of the peninsula was worth risking nuclear war over.

Yet now that the war has gone poorly for Russia, those same people are drunk on the euphoria of victory.

They are excited to support the very operation they used to think could cause nuclear war with Russia.

It's become fashionable to pretend Putin must be bluffing.

It might be argued that Russia would not use nuclear weapons to defend its newly acquired territories.

Technically, they are part of the Russian Federation, per the Constitution.

But that is a new development, not something deeply rooted in Russians' universal psyche.

Most Russians saw Crimea as part of Russian even *before* it was added to the Constitution.

Its return to Russia was Vladimir Putin's crowning achievement.

His freedom to maneuver is constrained: Crimea must be defended like Moscow or St. Petersburg.

This is a critical point. It is not "Russia" in the abstract that decides whether to use nuclear weapons.

It is Putin, who can give the order at any moment.

And a successful invasion of Crimea is the scenario where it's most *personally* rational for him to resort to nukes.

Those who argue that Putin would never use nukes focus too much on the abstract consequences.

They claim those would be too severe for Putin to ever tolerate them:

Russia becoming an international pariah.

The risk of NATO conventional reprisals on e.g. the Black Sea Fleet.

Not enough weight is given to the consequences for President Putin from *declining* to use nuclear weapons.

If conventional weapons fail to prevent Ukraine from invading Crimea, Putin's choices would be to surrender the peninsula or to escalate to nuclear weapons.

The first option is not on the table. Putin has no power to turn the peninsula over to Ukraine.

He would be branded a traitor. The stability of his government would be threatened.

Controlling Crimea is a matter of life and death for him, if seen realistically through his eyes.

It's actually a mistake to think about a Crimean invasion as a Ukrainian operation.

The U.S. has recently admitted that DoD and CIA forces are on the ground in Ukraine in the war against Russia.

A Crimean invasion would be viewed as American-led.

Would Putin have any options below the nuclear threshold?

Yes, and we're already seeing him play some, like mobilizing conscripts and increasing attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure.

The question is what happens if those fail. Putin is running out of non-nuclear options.

Russia's use-of-force doctrine would not permit the use of chemical or biological agents.

Even if Russia possessed sufficient quantities of those agents (which it denies), they are simply not effective enough to repel a determined invader.

If used, they would not end the war.

That leaves only the nuclear option available for Putin.

We cannot know for *certain* that he would choose to use nuclear weapons over Crimea.

But it's foolish to ignore the plausible risk. Even if it's a coinflip for him, that's still a 50% chance of nuclear attack.

To be clear, refusal to support a Ukrainian invasion of Crimea is not *sufficient* to guarantee nuclear war is avoided.

Putin might still choose to use nuclear weapons to defend Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, or Zaporizhzhia.

But we should contain the war as much as possible.

The risks of crossing the nuclear threshold dwarfs the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We are talking about real *war inside Russia* (from Putin's perspective), not potential war in a third-party state.

The pressure to resort to nukes would be incomparably higher.

This isn't a matter of providing "offramps" for Putin.

It's about whether we keep driving on the "onramp" that leads directly towards nuclear.

It's time to ease off the accelerator and pull over to the side of the road. Before we slam into a wall.