I’d set about reconstituting the Soviet-era Russian empire as the crowning achievement of my political career. I’ve already grabbed parts of it, including Georgia and Chechnya, and the strategic Crimean peninsula (for control of the Black Sea), and Ukraine is the next plum I’d pick from the tree (with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia next on my list). To grab Ukraine, I’d surround it on three sides with a large land army, backed by air and naval forces (Ukraine still has a Black Sea coastline). Then …
- Instead of attacking when everyone expects me to, I’d string out the crisis for months, staging occasional feints, to keep them on constant alert, off balance, and wear them down;
- When the time to attack came, I’d start with massive cyberattacks to disable Ukrainian communications, transportation, and infrastructure;
- Then I’d use cruise missiles and air power to knock out Ukraine’s air defenses and gain unchallenged air superiority;
- Then I’d hit a couple of key Ukrainian military targets (e.g., military headquarters, massed troops, or important bases) with tactical nuclear weapons, just to show the West I’m willing to use nukes and dare them to do anything about it;
- I’d ruthlessly suppress any Ukrainian resistance, flattening cities and slaughtering civilians if I have to; the world is going to condemn me anyway, so I might as well be guilty of everything they’re going to say about me;
- After overrunning Ukraine, I wouldn’t stop, but would keep right on going into the former Warsaw Pact countries, using tactical nukes against NATO bases and troop concentrations to pave the way for my forces, and threaten to let fly my ICBMs at their home countries if they retaliate by using their nukes against my advancing armies;
- And then I’d be dead along with everybody else in Moscow and several hundred million other people.
In the Nuclear Age, it won’t take much — only one miscalculation — for things to get out of hand. Any game of “Nuclear Chicken” could quickly go off the rails. That’s why we’d better hope Putin has a cooler head than right now he appears to have.
Related: Is Putin a rational actor? That question is tackled in the video below (starting at the 23:15 min. mark).