Patrick Frey, the Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney who runs the blog Patterico’s Pontifications, the site which inspired me to get into blogging, is a very strong supporter of Ukraine and NATO assistance to Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion:

Garry Kasparov Speaks on Ukraine at UCLA

Filed under: General — Patterico | Thursday, March 9, 2023 | 8:21 AM PST

The other day I had the pleasure of attending the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. It was given by Garry Kasparov and addressed authoritarianism in general, and Putin and Ukraine specifically. Also in attendance were the lovely Mrs. P. and Dana — not this Dana, of course — and her husband, as well as my old friend David A. (David and Dana’s husband are somewhat less lovely on the outside but very lovely on the inside.) I also saw Eugene Volokh and my old neighbor from Marina del Rey. Everybody wanted to be there.

I wanted to highlight two things Kasparov said that I thought were important.

I responded to Patterico’s original, in a rather long comment, which I wish to use here as well to make my position clear. I have edited my comment slightly, but you can see the original here.

Our esteemed host used a line that he has previously used to criticize my position:

If you spend your days arguing that we should not help Ukraine resist Putin’s genocidal war, because you are wringing your hands about the remote possibility of Putin using a nuclear weapon, Kasparov and I have a message for you: it’s not about you. You are not in real danger. The people of Ukraine are the ones in real danger.

So drop the narcissism. The universe does not revolve around you. Stop making it all about you. It’s not.

Emphases in the original.

That the nuclear threshold might someday be crossed, and that no one could know what the consequences of that might be has been a worry among strategists long predating the invasion of Ukraine. It’s been an issue every time India and Pakistan have one of their frequent clashes. It’s been an issue which underlies all of the worry about Iran getting atomic bombs.

Is the possibility that Vladimir Putin will use tactical or battlefield nukes against Ukraine “remote”? If Russia is winning, yes, the probabilities are vanishingly small. If the war is essentially a stalemate, the probabilities remain remote. But if Ukraine has a surge that puts them close to actually winning, which is the entire point of Western assistance to Ukraine, the probabilities increase. The one outcome that Mr Putin absolutely cannot afford is a Russian loss. That gets him thrown out of power, and perhaps even sent to The Hague for a war crimes trial. More, he knows that he doesn’t have to actually lose, but a serious threat of losing increases the probability that he’ll be deposed even before a Russian loss.

And Mr Frey definitely wants Russia to lose:

First: the moderator, who is (I believe) a UCLA professor of international relations, asked a question I found to be dopey. The essence of it was: even if you don’t think so, Mr. Kasparov, this war will inevitably end in a negotiated settlement, and shouldn’t Ukraine be willing to trade away some minor territorial concessions? After all, there are a lot of ethnic Russians who speak Russian in Crimea! I felt my blood boiling as the question was asked and at the end I muttered under my breath: Let him have it!

I recognize that I am a rather lonely voice there, and one which will go into automatic moderation; — or so I thought, but it didn’t — I have not pleased Mr Frey very much. But he has advocated precisely the conditions which increase that “remote” chance that that nuclear threshold will be crossed. Once crossed, only the Lord can know what will happen.?

We have seen an ironic reversal of NATO strategic thinking here. For decades, it was thought that the American nuclear arsenal, including shorter range nuclear weapons, would be necessary to counter the huge conventional strategic advantage in tanks, artillery, and other military equipment the Red Army had, should the Soviets invade NATO Europe.

Now, Russia has proven that the Армия России are not the powerful juggernaut so long feared. But that reverses the equation: if NATO provide the equipment, supplies, and possibly soldiers, as Thomas Meaney said would be necessary in a New York Times OpEd piece, to defeat the Russian Army in a conventional war, it becomes the Russian nuclear weapons which could be counted on to reverse such a defeat.

Patterico has spoken about courage, specifically referencing Christo Grozev. But what does courage actually mean when we are talking about a possible nuclear war? The idea that brave men are fighting and holding the line against tyranny, to protect their wives and children back home, is the stuff of books and magazines and blogs, but the fact is that our potential opponent has the ability to fire over the heads of those brave soldiers and strike the cities and towns in which their wives and children back home live.