The Nutcracker from the Kremlin
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GLOBAL GAME OF THRONES

The Nutcracker from the Kremlin

How Putin, the war in Ukraine, and the ICC’s warrants against Bibi and Gallant are connected

There are many treats that the winter season brings to those of us who do not celebrate Christmas — the smell of Christmas trees when you walk by the stands where they’re sold, the lights, the glitter, some of the music.

And the “Nutcracker”! The ballet, with its gorgeous, earworm music, its prototypical costumes, the real dancing children dancing, and the always thrilling drama as the gigantic tree grows and grows and keeps on growing. It’s a seasonal delight.

According to Alexander Smukler of Montclair, our analyst of the war Russia started when it invaded Ukraine, and of the tectonic shifts in the world that the war both revealed and forwarded, there’s a backstory to the ballet, and a potent metaphor as well.

The story the ballet tells is based on the retelling by Alexandre Dumas — yes, the same writer who gave us “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo” — but it’s not the original.

That story, an 1816 novella by E.T.A. Hoffman called “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” was a much darker tale, far more the ballet’s first act than the second. Hoffman, who was Prussian, “was very famous in Russia,” Mr. Smukler, who grew up in Moscow, said. “We all grew up reading his books.

In Hoffman’s book, “The Nutcracker once was a good guy,” Mr. Smukler said. “A nice, perfect guy, whom the Mouse Queen,” through a series of fairy-tale connivances and unfortunate accidents, came to hate, and “turned him into a toy.” And not any toy, but an ugly, unlovable one.

“The story of the original Nutcracker” — this is in the ballet too — “is the fight between the children and the dark power of the seven-headed Mouse King,” egged on by his queen.

In the Nutcracker, both the novella and the ballet, eventually the Mouse King and his consort lose, the children win, and the Nutcracker becomes himself again. Of course, that self is a handsome prince.

So how does all of this relate to the war in Ukraine?

“Putin” — as in Vladimir Putin, the autocrat who rules Russia, and whose misunderstanding of how easy it would be to return Ukraine to Russian rule caused him to invade, almost three years ago — “thinks that he’s the Nutcracker. He thinks he’s a very good guy, turned into an ugly wooden toy by the Mouse Queen.” And who is the Mouse Queen? Who is the Mouse King, with the seven heads? The West. “One day, when he defeats the West, he will be able to break out of the toy body and become a nice, perfect prince again,” Mr. Smukler said.

Okay. How does this connect to real life?

“Just a few days ago, in his appeal to the nation on major Russian TV stations, Putin announced that Russia had used medium-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine,” Mr. Smukler said. It landed in Dnipro, hitting “a major Ukrainian plant called Uzhmash.

Alexander Smukler

“Putin’s message to the world is that this is the last step. ‘We are warning you. The next time, we simply will replace the warhead we used this time with a nuclear warhead,’ and that will be the beginning of the global nuclear conflict.”

So far, so grim — but there’s an odd, Nutcrackerian touch to this.

The missile is called the Oreshnik. In Russian, that word means “nut tree” or more specifically “hazel tree.”

“Nobody knows why it’s called that,” Mr. Smukler said. “I have no idea why this new hypersonic ballistic missile, with divided warheads, according to Putin, is called Oreshnik. I haven’t found any expert who could explain it.”

But the point of the missile, beyond its name, is clear. “It opens a new era, not only in the military conflict in Ukraine — when this paper comes out, it will be the 1009th day of the conflict — but in the global arms race, which basically was stopped during the disarmament efforts President Nixon started in 1972, when he visited China.

“The use of this middle-range ballistic missile is opening a new arms race.”

Middle-range ballistic missiles were developed during the Cold War — “they were the centerpiece of the Cold War” — although they’ve never been used for other than experimental or training purposes, Mr. Smukler said.

In his televised address, Putin said that “this is a brand-new hypersonic missile, impossible for any existing system to intercept.” Ironically, however, “most experts say that the missile the Russians fired is not brand new, or very special, but just a modernized Soviet missile called the RS26, which was designed and produced in the 1970s. They think that the Oreshnik is just a modernized version, with more capacity and increased speed.

“We will know in the nearest future, because all the major military experts in the West are studying the missile that landed in Dnipro.

“As far as we know, the missile did not have a major impact.” The Russians already have severely damaged the city. “As far as I know, approximately 30 people were injured this time, but I did not find any information saying that anyone was killed.”

Mr. Smukler explained why ballistic missiles are so dangerous. “It is hard to intercept because it goes into space,” he said. Instead of following the curve of the earth, it arcs up high and then comes straight down. “When the missile leaves the atmosphere, modern radars lose it. They can’t monitor it. That’s why they’re so dangerous. And that’s why they were designed to carry strategic nuclear warheads.

“It is a weapon of defense — and of attack, if Armageddon has started.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin is welcomed on a recent trip to Mongolia.

Because it is not possible to track a ballistic missile, “and nobody knows what it’s carrying, it can ignite a nuclear conflict immediately,” Mr. Smukler said. That’s because no one can know what it’s carrying or where it will land, and everyone knows the risks it can pose, no one is willing to just let it fall wherever and hope for the best. “That’s why Putin’s government informed the United States, through a special channel for the prevention of global nuclear war, that they were going to use a ballistic missile, without a nuclear warhead, 30 minutes before the launch.

“The world does not understand what danger it was in. If Russia hadn’t informed the United States that the missile didn’t have a nuclear warhead, it theoretically potentially could have ignited a global nuclear conflict.”

And to acknowledge the elephant in the room, “this level of escalation is a message to Trump.

“In two months, Trump becomes an active player again in the global game of thrones. Every player is sending him messages, preparing the stage and the game for his debut. Putin’s message to Trump was ‘The next time, I can use a nuclear weapon, and it will ignite Armageddon.’”

Meanwhile, President Biden is sending Putin a message.

“Biden is escalating the war dramatically. He’s finally allowed the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles that can hit objects on Russian territory. The British and French are joining Biden in this.

“We know that for three years, the Ukrainians have been begging the United States permission for this. Now, two months before Biden leaves office, suddenly they get that permission. They’ve already used it twice, hitting Russian military objects deep in Russian territory.

“So basically Biden is sending a message to Trump. Now, when Trump comes to the White House, there will be a completely different level of conflict. It will be far more dangerous.”

Meanwhile, on the front lines now, Ukrainian fighters are “very slowly weakening,” Mr. Smukler said. “They’re slowly leaving the territories that they’ve been holding for almost three years, and the Russians are advancing. They are paying a huge number of men’s lives for that advance.

“According to different sources, the Russians are losing between 1,400 and 2,200 soldiers a day.” (Some are dead, others are incapacitated to the point where they cannot return to the fight.) “We don’t know what the casualties on the Ukrainian side are, but we can assume that they’re less, because military experts say that when an army is in offensive mode, the casualties are four to five times higher than when they are on the defensive. And we have to admit that the Russians are slowly winning.

“In the first 1,000 days of the war, according to several American intelligence sources, Russians have lost 600,000 soldiers — either dead or severely injured. Putin is extremely reluctant to announce mobilization — first he waited until he was reelected in March” — even authoritarian strongmen have to worry about enraging too many of their subjects by killing off too many of their children — “and then he had no other choice but to mobilize.

“And then Putin, who is a brilliant chess player, found another way out.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and then Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on August 21, 2023. (Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

“He is buying North Korean soldiers.”

A few months ago, after Putin went to North Korea to meet with fellow dictator Kim Jong Un, Mr. Smukler knew from his sources that North Korea was sending people to Russia. He said that those men would be sent to the under-resourced military plants that were pumping out munitions for the Russian army. As it turns out, Mr. Smukler was right about the North Koreans but wrong about where they were going.

They are going not to work in factories but to fight in Russia’s army.

“My source probably gave me a clue about what was really happening, and I probably misinterpreted it because I fully excluded the possibility that North Korea would send soldiers to the front lines because it is absolutely the most disgusting violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, which prevent any military cooperation with North Korea. That passed unanimously, and both Russia and China supported it.

“So, months ago, when Putin came back from North Korea with the idea that 240,000 North Koreans would come to work in the military industry, I totally excluded the idea that Putin would violate such an important U.N. resolution and allow North Korean soldiers to participate directly in the war.

“But it seems to me now that Putin made a very important choice, again demonstrating that he is a very good chess player. He had two options — either mobilizing his own people, risking major political turmoil inside Russia, or defying the international system of coexistence and violating the rules and law of the international system by taking North Korea’s soldiers and throwing them on the front lines as cannon fodder.

“He chose the second option, completely destroying the reputation of the United Nations.

“And it is very important to understand that this step was not random. It was prepared. It is one of the strongest violations of a U.N. resolution. All military cooperation with North Korea is ruled out in that resolution — not only using its army but also getting weaponry from it. North Korea continues to massively supply weaponry to Russia.

“Putin found an unusual, unpredictable solution to his problem. By doing it he sent a very strong message to the West that the rules about cooperation and peaceful coexistence that world leaders wrote right after World War II do not exist anymore.”

Putin has big dreams now, Mr. Smukler said. Taking Ukraine is just one of them. “His whole idea is to rewrite the rules. His goal — his Nutcracker goal — is to sit with Trump, Xi Jinping, and other leaders at a new Yalta summit, and to rewrite the new rules of coexistence.

“In his mind, those new rules will dictate to the West how they will coexist with him, now and for at least the next 80 years.

“I think that we will see this by the end of 2025.”

Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, on April 22, 2024. (Pedro Rances Mattey/Anadolu via Getty Images)

For example, and as the first step in Putin’s longed-for new world order, Mr. Smukler points to the International Criminal Court’s issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Specifically, the warrants are in response to allegations that Netanyahu and Gallant allowed noncombatants in Gaza to starve.

In March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They were specifically accused of kidnapping thousands of children from Ukraine and resettling them with families in Russia, hiding them so their parents can never find them.

“Just a few weeks ago, Antonio Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General, went to Russia and shook Putin’s hand. Why was the U.N. head shaking hands with someone wanted by the ICC? Most of the countries in the world proclaimed Russia as an aggressor.

“That demonstrates to us that in the global game of thrones there are no rules. There are no regulations. Everyone fights against everybody.”

Mr. Smukler thinks the arrest warrants against the Israelis and one likely dead Hamas leader are the result of Putin’s careful, long-term planning. (Originally the court intended to issue warrants for three Hamas leaders, Yahyah Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif, but only went after Deif. Sinwar and Haniyeh are known to be dead; Deif is believed to have died too, but his death hasn’t been acknowledged as the other two terrorists’ have been.)

“The ICC, which already was politically bankrupt, stepped into the absurd, because Karim Khan, the ICC’s prosecutor, issued those warrants against the prime minister and former defense minister of one of the most democratic countries in the world,” Mr. Smukler said. “A country that is trying to defend itself. Most of the countries in the world recognize that Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel did not start the war. It was started on October 7, 2023, and now Israel is defending itself on several fronts.

“To have its leaders denounced as war criminals, and the equal of Hamas leaders, who are dead already, and the leaders of a group the world recognizes as a terrorist organization — that is absurd. That is an example of the absurd and completely bankrupt international institutions that are supposed to defend the world from military conflicts.

“Months before October 7, I predicted that there was only one way for Putin to get out of the corner that he stuck himself in,” Mr. Smukler said. “That was to destabilize another part of the world.”

Check.

“Months before October 7, I said that if I were Putin, I would pull all the strings that were in my hands, I would use all my puppets, in other parts of the world, to switch attention from Ukraine to another painful part of the world.

“That painful part of the world is the Middle East.”

Mission accomplished.

“I have always been saying that October 7 didn’t happen because Hamas suddenly decided to attack Israel that day, and Israel failed to defend itself and its people,” Mr. Smukler said. “The operation was very, very well prepared and orchestrated and it was ignited from another part of the world, which badly needed the distraction.

“The major beneficiary of the war in the Middle East is Putin. His purpose is to move the world’s interest from Ukraine to the Middle East, so we don’t see the demonstrations on the streets every day supporting Ukraine. We don’t see civilians dying because of Russian bombardments. And when the United States supplies munitions to the Middle East, obviously it has fewer and fewer munitions to send to Ukraine.

“We fully understand that Putin wins the chess game he is playing against Western allies.”

And Putin is one of those chess masters who can play more than one board at a time, Mr. Smukler suggested.

“The ICC order to arrest Putin is irritating him,” he said. “It can’t really hurt him — there already are sanctions against him, and it costs him no casualties — but it is a direct insult to him, because he cannot travel.” There are some exceptions to that problem — he did go to Mongolia recently — “but he was not able to go to Brazil for a summit there. He cannot even travel to the countries that consider him to be an ally without violating the International Criminal Court order.

“So he already violated all the rules of the United Nations, but the ICC order really irritated him.

“So look at the chain of events that happened. Suddenly, stories about sexual misconduct at the ICC, allegations against Karim Khan, appeared in the press. Just days before a formal investigation was going to start, and probably would have prevented him from continuing in his job, suddenly he is signing an arrest order for Netanyahu and Gallant.

“That can’t be just random. There is a game that the Kremlin started. There is a tactic in a chess game that eventually leads to strategic success called mnogokhodovka, a term that translates, more or less, into “multi-move strategy.”

“That means that in a chess game, you take many steps,” Mr. Smukler said. “Your opponent does not realize it, but you plan them carefully. It’s a strategy that destroys your opponent, but it’s not just two or three or four steps. It’s many steps. But in the end, it gets you to victory.

“I believe that’s what’s happening with the ICC. Despite the fact that Biden and American senators made it clear that they are against any ICC involvement in the Middle East situation right now, and that they will never recognize the decisions, and despite the fact that many other countries sent a clear message to the ICC — don’t do it — suddenly the ICC and Karim Khan did it.

“Why?

“Because Putin pulled all the strings in his puppet theater. And now the prime minister of the most democratic country in the world is defending himself against charges of being a war criminal. And another president of another country, who is recognized by the world as an aggressor — Putin — can say ‘I am the same as Netanyahu. My country is defending itself. I am defending our country from the West. Netanyahu and I — we are both absolutely equal.

“Or he also can say the ICC is corrupt and has to be demolished completely. We have to rewrite the rules.

“So I think that the ICC’s decision has nothing to do with the political situation in the Middle East. It’s a way for Putin to get out of his corner.

“It’s his way of no longer being the Nutcracker. It’s part of his fight against the Mouse Queen. He initiated that order because he wants to stop being inside that wooden toy.”

One more thing. Mr. Smukler wants to be clear that this theory is not his alone. It was developed in conversation with “one of my very dear friends, who is very bright and very analytic.” He cannot name his friend but still he wants to be sure to give him credit.

And we all might see the “Nutcracker” a little differently the next time we’re at Lincoln Center, watching the tree grow.

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