When I reduce this down to the possibility of a nuclear change, I don't think Putin is suicidal.

I don't think the United States or Russia wants to get into a nuclear exchange.

Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert. They've got these Def Con levels kind of like us

and he moved him up one.

There's nothing has moved.

They haven't seen anything move on the ground

in terms of weapons movements or anything like that

or mobilization.

So I think that this is basically his way of telling the rest of the world,

stay out.

I've got nuclear weapons and if you're smart,

you'll let me tend to Ukraine without getting involved directly, but you know it's a dangerous situation. What are concrete scenarios for where the Russia-Ukraine war could head. How does it escalate? How does it de-escalate?

Does Zellensky survive? Does Putin survive? Does China try to bail out Russia? And should we be thinking about the unthinkable?

Well in today's episode we explore five scenarios with Richard Fontaine who returns

to the podcast Richard is the CEO of the Center for New American Security which is a

bipartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington DC a number of the top officials

in the Biden administration today previously worked with Richard at CNAS.

Prior to joining CNAS, the Center for New American Security,

Richard was a foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, and he worked at the State Department, the National

Security Council and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Let's get into these concrete scenarios with Richard Fontaine. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the

podcast Richard Fontaine from the Center for New American Security. Richard

...