Putin's Incentive to Escalate
On 18 May 2026, I was on Glenn Diesen’s podcast talking with him mainly about the prospects for escalation in the Ukraine war, but also the Iran war. Regarding Ukraine, it is clear that Ukraine, with help from Europe, is ramping up its drone attacks on Moscow and promising even bigger attacks in the future. The Russians, however, have made it clear that the present situation — not to mention the promised future — is untenable and they will escalate if necessary to create deterrence. Given there is virtually no bargaining space between the two sides and there are clear hints from the Russian side that attacking NATO states is a possibility, we should be deeply worried. Glenn and I also talked about the dangers of escalation in the Iran war, where there also appears to be no bargaining space between the rival sides and where a desperate President Trump is constantly threatening to start bombing Iran again. Should he do that, it will have disastrous consequences for the international economy. All of this is to say that the chances for truly dangerous escalation are real in both the Iran and Ukraine wars.
What stands out is not just the escalation itself, but the disappearance of bargaining space.
When both sides frame the conflict as existential, every drone strike, sanctions package, or retaliatory threat becomes part of a larger deterrence contest rather than a path toward settlement.
The deeper danger is psychological: once attacks on Moscow or Gulf infrastructure become normalized, restraint can start looking like weakness instead of stability. That’s how escalation ladders become self-reinforcing even when nobody genuinely wants a wider war.
Geography, energy flows, infrastructure vulnerability, and industrial endurance are increasingly shaping outcomes more than assumptions of unlimited coercive leverage.
Economic disaster is real, now can only mitigate.
Our suffering is justified so that Israel can safely go about its genocide unhindered by a nuclear Iran.