How does Russia's war against Ukraine end? An optimistic scenario.

Nearly every day, I read an article in which someone asks: “What’s the endgame in Ukraine?” or “How does this war end?” I don’t know how it will end, but I know how I would like it to end. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, as I did here, “Ukraine wins, Russia loses.” And Putin is toppled.

When the war began, I never imagined it would end that way. At best, I thought, Ukraine would prevent Russia from overrunning the country. It would produce a stalemate followed by a negotiated peace that left Ukraine with most of its territory.

But now, it seems quite possible that Ukraine will win and Russia will lose.

Russian forces are retreating on both the eastern and southern fronts. In the east, moreover, it’s been reported that Russian forces abandoned Lyman despite being ordered to remain and defend it. Said one Western official of the withdrawal from Lyman, “all Russian forces withdrew in poor order, suffering high casualties from artillery fire.”

There’s a word for this: rout.

How will Putin respond to the rout of his forces in Ukraine? We already know one response. He has ordered the mobilization of 300,000 Russian forces. He has also discussed another option — the use of nuclear weapons.

Let’s consider these in turn.

So far, according to reports, Putin has come up with 200,000 more men for his armed forces. Approximately the same number of Russians are said to have fled the country.

It seems unlikely that Putin will be able to make good use of his new recruits right away. This may be why his ally, China, is calling for a ceasefire. China did this after President Xi met with Putin. A ceasefire would buy Putin time to complete his mobilization and throw his new forces into battle.

Ukraine should reject any cessation of hostilities and press forward. The U.S. and other Western European countries should make sure the Ukrainians have the weapons they need to strike decisively while the iron is hot.

But what about the threat of Russia using nukes? The key here is deterrence, of course.

The U.S. is trying to deter Putin by declaring that a resort to nuclear weapons would trigger “catastrophic consequences.” Jake Sullivan claims to have “spelled out” these consequences to Russia. I assume they include a military response, most likely the use of U.S. air power against Russian forces.

Is Putin taking this threat seriously? He knows that the Obama administration, in which Biden served, did not enforce its “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria, opting instead to farm out our response to. . .Putin. He also knows that Biden presided over the debacle in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, Biden is not Obama. He’s from a different generation of Democrats, one that was willing at times to use force against aggressors.

Bill Clinton did so against Milosevic’s Serbia. Putin isn’t Milosevic, but he’s beginning to bear him some resemblance.

Even so, Ukraine is fortunate that Biden isn’t the only important leader who doesn’t want Putin to use nukes against Ukraine. It seems that China also opposes such an act.

None of this guarantees that Putin won’t use nukes. He has made blunder after blunder, and now that he’s desperate, he might ignore U.S. threats and Chinese advice.

But if the U.S. does respond by raining down “catastrophic consequences,” using nukes will make Russian defeat more likely, not less. And a defeat under these circumstances will make Putin’s ouster more likely.

Russian power brokers will accept a violation of international norms this massive, and the ostracism that would follow, only if it works militarily. If it’s counterproductive, I don’t see how Putin stays in power.

If the war continues on its present trajectory there are valuable lessons in it for the Russian people and for the Chinese government. Russians will learn that their country is too corrupt, too rotten at the top, to fight a war effectively. China will learn that it’s not so easy successfully to invade a resourceful and determined neighbor if that neighbor receives support from the U.S. and its allies.

The rational response to this lesson in Russia would be to purge the elements that visited disastrous defeat on Russia, address the domestic dysfunction, and try to make amends with the West. The rational response in China would be to shelve plans to wage war against Taiwan.