https://www.unz.com/bhua/is-it-time-for-russia-to-escalate/
Why Russia Should Reconsider its Restraint
From a purely Machiavellian perspective, the current Russian approach of “calibrated escalation” may be a strategic error in a world where Israel and the West have proven that no red lines exist.
Russia has frequently threatened “unpredictable consequences” for Western missile or jet deliveries, only for the West to cross those lines with impunity.
Though no one has given Putin the “TACO” moniker, Russian inaction towards open NATO provocations is certainly observed as a sign of weakness.
This ensures a vicious cycle of salami-slicing of its “red lines” by the West.
On the Ukraine battlefield, Russia’s slow pace has granted the West years to refine Ukraine’s defenses. The West has successfully sucked Russia into a war of attrition that depletes its resources and personnel.
On the other hand, Israel has shown that by simply ignoring international “red lines,” a state can achieve its objectives before the global community can organize a response.
If Russia adopted the Israeli “total war” model—targeting all high-level political, military, and critical civilian nodes with the same “abandon” seen in Gaza or Lebanon—it might achieve the “decisive break” that its current attrition model has failed to deliver.
As the world is turning out to be truly an “animalistic jungle,” as the Israeli precedent suggests, then Russia’s attempt to maintain the “veneer of legitimacy” is a handicap.
By refusing to engage in total “scorched earth,” Russia is fighting a 20th-century war of honor against an opponent backed by a West that is increasingly operating under a 21st-century “total erasure” framework.
The world of 2026 is a study in hypocrisy. Israel has demonstrated that with enough military “abandon” and Western enablement, one can rewrite the map through fire.
Russia, meanwhile, remains trapped in a grinding attrition that satisfies neither its political goals nor its military potential.
If the “rules-based order” is dead, Russia’s continued “restraint” may be the very thing that leads to its eventual exhaustion and defeat.
