Considering the Option, and Questioning Why It Hasn’t Been
Russia claimed that Ukraine sent drones to bomb Putin’s private house. This was taken as shocking by all sides. Ukraine strongly denied it. Putin presented it as something obviously terrible. Trump took it as a horrible thing for Ukraine to have done (evidence is they didn’t and Trump has since said they have not) and that it might cause him to reevaluate his stance on negotiations (which seems exactly what Putin wanted). Trump later came to agree with the CIA assessment that no such bombing of Putin’s house had occurred.
My question is, why not? Why not bomb Putin’s house? I’ve wondered about this for years, not only about the war on Ukraine but about other attack/conflicts in the past. Since Mr. Putin himself has brought up the topic it seems an appropriate time to ask the question openly. Why not?
This war seems to be driven entirely by Putin. I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that if he retired, was voted out of office, grew into the ill-health of age, or lost interest that any of the other leadership in Russia would be determined to pursue this. It is almost entirely a Putin obsession which he will pursue until he can’t. Either he gets what he wants, or Ukraine, with help from allies, overwhelms the attack, or the people of Russia, or other high leadership in Russia, rebel against what it is doing to them, to their young people, and to their economy.
Or maybe he would stop if it hurt too much to bear personally. What if, when his troops were at the border ready to invade, a coalition of the U.S., Ukraine, and some European countries made it clear that if he attacked there would be immediate attacks on everything to do with Putin. On his homes, his yacht, his equivalent of Air Force One. The heck with the international banking laws, go ahead and threaten to steal all the money he and his closest cronies have in western banks and block them from withdrawing it in the meantime. And if he did attack, then carry out all those threats. If it hurt Putin too much, that might be one way he’d decide it wasn’t worth it. Or if he went ahead anyway, at least he’d be paying all the personal price we could inflict.
I’m not talking about killing anyone. It’s not unusual when attacks on property happen that first anyone present is warned to get out. There are reasons we don’t typically casually assassinate leaders we are in conflict with, in part to discourage them trying the same against our leaders.
I’m not a general. Maybe the Joint Chiefs of Staff would say this is crazy and would just start a nuclear war. Or maybe they’d say there is little of that we could actually accomplish because the defenses are too good. I don’t know, but I do wonder. Imagine if we had done that and it had prevented or quickly stopped the war. It would be a terrible escalation but if it had prevented tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths, and all of that destruction, that would be such a huge plus side that it would balance out some very big downsides. Keep in mind it’s not just about Ukraine. Many knowledgeable sources, the Council on Foreign Relations for one, think Putin may want to go beyond Ukraine if he can. The nations affected then would be allies and members of NATO. So it is security of the U.S./European world that is being threatened.
Putin is a bully and at some point it’s going to take something similar anyway. It seems to me there are two ways a bully gets stopped. One is you give such a strong response immediately that it makes it clear they’re not going to get anything out of pursuing this. The other is you have a long, drawn-out process of gradually trying to discourage them. You eventually have to escalate anyway to where they see they’d better stop, but in the meantime they’ve gotten some of what they want, and you have suffered a long terrible price in the process. So is escalating up front really such a bad cost/benefit trade-off?
Best case at this point is: all of those deaths and all of that destruction has already occurred, and if a big enough commitment is made by the U.S. and European countries to arm Ukraine so well they could clearly stop the war where it is, and some truce is found, with Russia occupying what it has, in other words having gotten some reward for attacking. That’s if best case is achieved. If that’s how it goes would attacking Putin more directly back at the beginning seem like such a bad idea?
As I’m writing this, news about Trump kidnapping Maduro has just come out. Just to be clear, I would not have been suggesting that. Such a different situation. Maduro was not actively bombing civilians in neighboring countries or threatening war across territories of our allies or friends.
As far as bombing Putin’s house I really don’t know what I’m talking about, and among readers of this, every other one who ever read history books about wars and who fancies themselves knowledgeable about such things will, no doubt, be swift to raise a chorus of how ignorant I am. Regardless of all that, I still wonder. I can’t help but wonder.
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