Here’s an alternative view of the current standoff over Ukraine between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the West. [With Russia’s military forces amassed on its border with Ukraine, the West fears that Moscow may be prepared to invade Ukraine to assert its authority over the country’s foreign policy, particularly to keep it from getting any closer to the West’s Nato alliance.] Perhaps Putin deliberately created a crisis in which everything is possible at once, and remains that way. Right now, he can attack and cannot attack (with a full poker face, he denies that is his intention). He can rise and de-escalate; Present as both attacker and victim.
Let’s call these mutually exclusive but simultaneously possible scenarios strategic ‘superpositions’ (you’ll see why in a moment). Putin, with his KGB-trained mind, probably realizes that hacking notions like this give him power. As long as everything remains possible and no scenario can be ruled out, he takes care of the world.
which he clearly has. The superpowers and their diplomats are doing little more than closing in between meetings with or about him. Based on his latest statement or gesture, the stock market and energy prices are seeing a rise. Entire countries – most obviously Ukraine – are holding their breath as everything from the life plans of individuals to investment projects of companies is suspended.
But how long can this superposition of possibilities last? At some point, Putin has to make a move. And then another. Ukraine and the West, provided the latter can remain united, will respond. Things may or may not go well for Putin. This should worry him. His power may already be at its peak, with the only trajectory thereafter being down.
The situation brings to mind a famous thought experiment in physics called Schrödinger’s cat. It was named after Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger, who in conversation with Albert Einstein tried to disprove an argument in quantum mechanics. The assumption was that subatomic particles could exist in a superposition of different states at the same time—not simultaneously invading and invading like an army.
So Schrödinger imagined a cat in a box that also contained a particle of something radioactive. As that substance decomposes, it triggers an explosion that kills the cat. But the radioactive particle is in superposition, which means it holds together and does not decay. So the cat is simultaneously dead and alive.
It’s absurd, of course which is the point. And so is Putin’s permanent superposition of attacking and not attacking, infiltrating (in cyberspace and elsewhere) and claiming not to infiltrate, sabotaging the international system and merely redesigning it. For starters, you can’t park an invasion force of more than 100,000 soldiers near a border forever; You will eventually have to use it, or withdraw.
In contrast, the West has so far made little use of strategic obscurity. In a separate potential conflict, between China and Taiwan, the US has been deliberately vague about whether it will defend the islands from mainland attack since the 1970s. In a standoff with Putin, however, NATO and its members have already ruled out a military response to the invasion of Ukraine.
This leaves only a series of soft measures for them to threaten Moscow. These ranged from imposing sanctions on oligarchs to weaning Russian banks away from international payment systems and burying a new gas pipeline between Russia and Germany in untapped seas. These are relatively obvious tools and therefore, for Putin, quantitative. He could have guessed the cost, and still decided that detaining Ukraine was worth it.
Meanwhile, Putin is doing everything he can to further heighten the ambiguity. In anticipation of Western sanctions, they have thought of taking additional “military-technical” steps. It’s anyone’s guess what they could be. He has also been in contact with the leaders of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and his allies have indicated that he may deploy Russian nuclear weapons in Latin America, reducing the threat of a Cuban missile crisis.
KGB man Putin likes the concern being created in much of the world. Perhaps the leader of Russia believes that fear always serves to increase its strength. But his Ukraine game is extremely cynical and dangerous. Basically, he’s put a cat in a box, then stuffs it with a Geiger counter, a radioactive particle, and a detonator. He has left everyone to guess.
The world is wondering whether this set-up will explode. Putin may be pleased, but he must not forget that the cat can become neither Ukraine nor NATO, but that.
Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion
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