FROM THE PUBLISHER | Russia conflict at a crossroads

But Ukraine’s resistance has turned back the Russians, and now the war there is at a crossroads. It could go either way.

Thing is, while the United States and the rest of the west has supported Ukraine, the fact that Putin is now cornered has created a very dangerous situation.

Putin last week said in a major speech that he’s going to force “elections” in certain regions of Ukraine — fake, mind you — to determine that the population there wants to join Russia. He pulled the same trick in Crimea a few years back.

So once those fake elections create a premise to call those regions part of Russia, Putin will be able to claim that any resistance there amounts to an attack on Russia itself. And, as he made explicit in his speech, he’ll use nuclear weapons to counter an attack on Russia itself. (Side note: We’ll have far less standing to criticize a bogus election given that our last president and his supporters have gone on falsely claiming that our own elections were illegitimate. I’ll bet you a dollar Putin says something about that in response to whatever criticism we try to make of his gambit.)

Back to the main point: Russia remains a giant nuclear power, capable of destroying the Earth. If Putin fires a nuke at Ukraine, that will force President Biden and other Western leaders to make impossible choices. The President has said a nuclear war simply cannot happen.

Putin also instituted a draft, calling up another 300,000 men into military service. That has set off protests in Russia itself. The easiest way out of this would be for the Russian people to get rid of Putin, but that’s highly unlikely to happen in the short run.

I asked you to give this situation some thought, not to scare the bejesus out of you, but because it’s very important. We can go on screaming at each other about transgender kids or abortion, or whatever. But as elections approach, we need to ask our leaders and our would-be leaders what they think of this situation, and how we should respond. Just screaming about the other side of the domestic political divide doesn’t count as a legitimate answer.

What is the answer? Well, that’s not clear. What is clear is that we need to give it serious thought.