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But there is always question whether you do, in actuality, have the ability to win the war. You may think there is no question, but then you go into the war not choosing to win the war vis-a-vis choosing to fail, but simply believing failure is impossible.
Which is the crux of what it means to choose victory- no one 'chooses' victory, as if it were an alternative to choosing failure, because no one chooses to fail by preference.
Not really. If Putin is not risk-adverse, and escalates to the point of NATO intervention (or nuclear retaliation), the military success is lost regardless of what Putin thinks. Likewise, what Putin thinks is irrelevant to what the rest of the critical actors believe must be done regardless of what Putin thinks. Putin can, of course, claim to be a madman who Really Might Do It, but (a) Putin has a long established history that undermines the credibility of this claim, and (b) the nuclear deterrence modeling that Madman theory relies on has a pretty direct answer to this strategy- which is not to concede to the madman.
Madman ploys are based on the assumption that, when faced with a madman, nash equilibrium rewards conceeding to the madman. But if the madman can be appeased by concessions, he's a rational actor, and thus not a madman. Whereas if he's a genuine madman, no concession can be rationally predicted to result in a stable nash equilibrium, because the candidate is, well, a madman. A madman bluff will not actually do a madman-only action even if denied, while a madman might do a madman-only action even if conceeded.
In such a context, game theory shifts from risk avoidance- the conceit of nuclear deterrence- to damage mitigation- which is to minimize the potential harm the madman can do.
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