On the third day of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin called a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defense. Seated at the opposite end of an extraordinarily long table, Putin ordered them to “transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army”—which include its nuclear weapons—“to a special mode of combat duty.” The directive was aired on Russian national television. As Putin made his announcement, both Gerasimov and Shoigu looked surprised and uneasy.

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American adversaries such as Russia and China are using cyber-enabled deception operations to spread divisive messages. In 2016, Houston’s Islamic Da’wah Center became the site of two dueling protests, both of which began in online communities formed by a Kremlin-backed organization. Discovering and calling out specific disinformation campaigns can be difficult, but by increasing awareness that our adversaries are actively trying to inflame divisions in our society, we can begin to counter these insidious efforts.

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks like a horrific Cold War throwback. Once again, a strongman rules in Moscow, Russian tanks are rolling across borders, and a democratic nation is fighting for its survival, street by street, day by day, armed with little more than Molotov cocktails and a fierce belief in freedom. For all the talk of emerging technologies and new threats, the violence in Ukraine feels raw and low-tech, and the world suddenly looks old again.

And yet, amid all these echoes of the past, Russia’s invasion has ushered in one development that is altogether new and could dramatically change geopolitics in the future: the real-time public disclosure of highly classified intelligence.

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As horrific and needless violence unfolds in Ukraine, my friends, family, colleagues, and media from around the world have all been asking the same questions: What’s eating Putin? What has driven him to start the largest war in Europe since World War II? What is driving him to threaten World War III, including the use of nuclear weapons?

My answer has been: It’s complicated. No single answer fully accounts for the display we are seeing of Vladimir Putin’s anger and grievance. Many Russian experts who know Putin well have been commenting on his mindset, but I want to lay out how I think about the picture. As I see it, at least eight different factors account for Putin’s erratic and dangerous behavior:

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Russian president Vladimir Putin is keeping the world guessing as western intelligence says the invasion he ordered of Ukraine has not been as successful or as swift as he had hoped.

Nearly a week into the largest military campaign in Europe since World War Two, Russian forces have encountered fierce resistance from Ukraine while global condemnation has spurred sanctions that have roiled the Russian economy.

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"These sorts of offense-defence races have been taking place globally for many decades now, and what we consistently see is that offence has the advantage," said Cameron Tracy, a researcher at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. "North Korea will continue to deploy more missiles and to develop faster, more manoeuvrable systems that will keep South Korea vulnerable to attack."

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President Joe Biden’s administration is conducting a missile defense review in parallel with its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Those reviews will determine whether to adjust the nuclear and missile defense programs that the administration inherited from its predecessor. They will also shape decisions on the contribution that negotiated arms control could make to meet the increasingly complex challenges of maintaining strategic stability and enhancing U.S. and allied security.

One question the administration should consider is whether it can design a missile defense approach that would protect the homeland against limited attacks by rogue states such as North Korea while avoiding an offense-defense dynamic that would frustrate efforts to achieve nuclear arms reductions with Russia that go beyond the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) or to agree on any constraints on nuclear forces with China.

Read the rest at Arms Control Today