If this is an authentic religious war, that is the values of Church (the Russian Orthodox Church) + State, it is a different moral calculus altogether since religious violence is of a peculiar kind.

That means an existential threat to Russia is also a threat to the Church. The very heart and soul of what it means to be Russian and human.

Given the fact that Putin’s #1 geo-strategist, Alexander Dugin – a Russian Orthodox Christian – believes that global Liberal Democracy (the New World Order) has values that are humanly unacceptable – i.e. gay marriage, transhumanism even Satanism – apparently, at least to him, there are fates worse than death in a nuclear war.

That should give leaders pause. It was argued that the USSR would never launch a nuclear war because that was an irrational means to an irrational end. That moral equation ended with suicide bombings and the attacks on 911. Indeed there were those that would pursue irrational ends by irrational means. That indeed those ends justified the means. At least in some radical Muslim circles. What’s more rational to a true believer than eternal salvation via suicide?

Is Christian martyrdom the same as suicide or is it laying down your life for God, family, country and your friend? It certainly has more of a moral ring to it than dying in a war for “democracy” (i.e. a war of national liberation) to establish gay marriage, abortion on demand, transgender rights, Drag Queen Story Hour for kids and a central banking system to free the oppressed with unending national debt. Actually, both are not very appealing.

Putin frames the war in secular terms with a Ukraine part of NATO as an insurmountable and impending military threat. While Dugin presents the encroachment of Liberal Western ideals (really anti-Western, or Post Christian values embedded in the West) as a spiritual threat no less dangerous to Russia’s existence than a military one. But Dugin is an educated academic and Putin, a calculating but pragmatic ex KGB director. Both are of the Elite class. Will the general Russian public buy into the religious motives for war? Would they be willing to “martyr” themselves in a nuclear one?

In this light, even a major pull-back in the war – with a declared limited victory (land bridge to Crimea from Mariupol and proclaimed “de-Nazification” of the region) – might be sufficient recompense for Russian losses, at least enough for Putin to declare “mission accomplished.”

Would Ukraine – backed by the Western, Globalist powers and led by Zelensky the mad comedian (any guy that does a skit where he plays the piano with his ding-dong isn’t playing with a full deck) – permit such a victory, even to prevent a nuclear war, though in all probability a limited tactical one?

Probably not, with the equally mad Biden Regime sociopaths and psychopaths now in charge who have unreasonably declared defeating Russia as the main objective, forsaking detente and a realistic modus vivendi…

Where’s Carroll Quigley and “The Operational Continuum” military doctrine when you need them?