The Deadline Paradigm

The first time I heard a man singing about playing chicken with a train I was about halfway to Georgia, sitting in a truck stop diner. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, count yourself fortunate. It’s a silly tune, but one that sticks with you for some reason, and though I’d only heard it once I’d find myself humming I played chicken with a train for a few days afterwards.

What we are doing at this juncture isn’t so much playing chicken with a train as it is playing chicken with a charging bear. The best one can hope for under these circumstances is that the bear just barrels into us, knocks us to the side, and continues on its merry way, but chances are better than good that after knocking us over he’ll take his time in mauling us for good measure.

Of all the things we could have done to assuage the escalating crisis with Russia, setting a deadline was by far the most uninspired and unintelligent thing.

From what our esteemed politicians have said, Russia has until Monday to reverse course as pertains to the Crimea region, or face repercussions and consequences.

Setting a deadline, especially with one such as the current Russian leader is a horrible idea because there are only three possible outcomes to the scenario.

The first possible outcome, and unfortunately one that is highly unlikely, is that fearing any further verbal tongue lashings from our Secretary of State, the Russians will blink, tuck their tails between their legs, and recall the troops they’ve already dispatched to the region.

The second possible outcome is that Monday comes and goes, the Russians call our bluff, we do absolutely nothing, and our impotence is on full display for the whole world to see. The danger in this is that like any apt predator Mr. Putin can sense weakness, he has an innate ability to detect fear, and he seizes the aforementioned moments of weakness and fear to capitalize and exploit his rivals.

We’ve been caught off-guard, but rather than admit it to ourselves and think things through, we think bluster and empty threats will save the day.

What we must realize is that we are not threatening some banana republic, we are not threatening some island off some coast that’s no bigger than a hamburger patty, we are threatening a nation with almost twice the landmass of our own, with at least equal if not superior military forces, and enough of a nuclear arsenal to make the entire planet an uninhabitable sandbox a thousand times over.

No, they might not be as surgical when it comes to the more finite details of delivering warheads and such, but whether by a chainsaw or a scalpel, dead is still dead. Think blunt object if that helps. Their philosophy is not so much being able to get a rocket through a keyhole, but making sure that if said rocket lands anywhere on your continent it’ll do the job.

The third possible outcome, and one I dread even contemplating is that in trying to save face we do something truly stupid like declare war, and if this occurs, come Tuesday morning we will be waking up to a new world, more readily likened to the stuff of nightmares than anything heretofore known as reality.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.