Clique Bait

If you were the President a year ago, planning options for what to do in Ukraine, the first thing you would have been told is that there are three potential outcomes. One is the Russians invade and defeat the Ukrainian army. The other option is the Russians invade but are stymied at the line of contact in the Donbas. The third option is the Ukrainians defeat Russia and retake the Donbas and Crimea.

That means there are three outcomes and two are good. The President would naturally want to know the odds on each outcome. At the time, scenario one was around 40%, scenario two was 40% and scenario three was 20%. On paper, the Russians have the bigger and better army, but it has been a long time since they have fought this sort of war, so there was the screw-up factor to consider.