Reprinted from John’s Substack:
On 30 January 2026, Glenn Diesen and I discussed how the Ukraine war is likely to end, paying special attention to the pressure on Putin to escalate to end the war in the near future. In that regard, we talked about the possibility of nuclear use, which some prominent Russian strategists like Sergey Karaganov are advocating. I argued that I think Ukraine will collapse on the battlefield in the near future, given the balance of forces, the casualty-exchange ratio, and the dwindling material support for Ukraine from the West. But, if that does not happen, I would expect the Russia to escalate in a major way to end the war, although I find it difficult to see Putin using nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, one does not want to underestimate what a great power might do if it is truly desperate. Doubters should consider the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Japanese leaders were not crazy. They fully recognized that there was only a tiny chance Japan would win, but they were desperate — US oil, scrap iron, and steel embargoes were strangling their economy — and struck anyway.
