Before going all in and betting the house on a poker hand, in the belief your opponent is bluffing, you’d better hope your judgment is sound. You should know that it’s not warped by self-delusion, by wishful thinking, or projection. You’d also better make sure the cost-benefit analysis justifies the risk, that you’re not betting your house against an illusion.
Of course, lose the hand and you still live to fight another day. This is not the case with our involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war and our assumption that Vladimir Putin is all talk, no action. And now as we inch closer to nuclear war, a foreign policy analyst becomes one of the latest to warn with regard to Moscow’s red-line threats, “Russia is not bluffing.”
Writing at The National Interest, international affairs expert Benjamin Giltner laments that as the Ukraine conflict grinds on into its third year, all parties involved seem hell-bent on escalation. “In his annual ‘State of the Nation’ address,” Giltner says, “President Vladimir Putin warned NATO nations that they ‘must, in the end, understand all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization,’ if they continue to arm Ukraine and consider sending troops.”
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