Schrödinger’s Superpower: The Russian Bear

The great Paul Knaggs writes:

Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment places a cat in a sealed box with a radioactive atom that may or may not decay and trigger a poison. Until observed, the cat exists in a quantum superposition—simultaneously alive and dead. This paradox perfectly encapsulates how Western powers portray Russia today: a nation that somehow exists in two contradictory states at once.

According to NATO and Western media, Russia is both an existential threat capable of rolling tanks across Europe at a moment’s notice and a military weakling that can’t even subdue its smaller neighbour. This quantum superposition serves a purpose—keeping the defence industry thriving with funnelled public money while justifying an ever-expanding military alliance.

Russia: Existential Threat or Paper Tiger? The West Wants It Both Ways

It’s the West’s favourite paradox: Russia, the nation that somehow exists in two states simultaneously—an unstoppable juggernaut poised to roll through Europe and a paper tiger that can’t advance on its Ukrainian neighbour.

Ukraine—a country that has nothing but a brave, plucky, rag-tag army, fighting on borrowed equipment, no air force, and no navy—that somehow miraculously halted the Russian bear in its tracks. The same bear that apparently, if we don’t plough billions into ‘defence’, will conquer Europe, rolling over each country, squashing resistance under the tracks of its main battle tanks.

But for those that have a more critical understanding of the world and have committed thoughtcrime by daring to question the ‘newspeak’ of government and its Ministry of Truth, the contradictions become glaringly obvious.

When NATO defence ministers gather behind closed doors, The Ministry of Truth through press releases transforms Russia into an unstoppable force requiring immediate and massive military spending—with demands for member states to commit 5% of GDP to defence budgets. “The bear is at the door,” we’re told in grave tones, “and only billions in new weapons systems can save us.”

Yet, this narrative collapses under basic scrutiny. If Russia truly sought to rebuild its empire, why wait until now? Did it hibernate for the past two decades when NATO and US military forces were stretched beyond capacity fighting their forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East? Or was Putin just biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment—when NATO was finally free to give him its full, undivided attention? That’s some next-level military genius—no wonder Russia’s still stuck in Ukraine.

But if you swallow the official narrative that Ukraine single-handedly is holding back the mighty Russian war machine, then answer this: Why are 32 NATO countries being commanded to pour 5% of their GDP into defence budgets? Why this desperate call to arms if Russia can’t even subdue its next-door neighbour Ukraine, which has miraculously held back the Russian juggernaut for years? The bear, it seems, has no teeth.

This Schrödinger’s superpower paradox demands we hold two irreconcilable truths in our minds: Russia is both omnipotent and impotent. Threatening enough to justify endless defence spending but weak enough to be defeated by that same spending. The cognitive dissonance would be merely amusing if it weren’t driving us toward potential catastrophe.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is the one forbidden in polite Western discourse: the bear has stopped exactly where it intended to stop—at the Donbas contact line. Russia is simply doing exactly what it said it would with its “special military operation”—securing the Donbas region. An area, mind you, that had been locked in civil war since 2014—a civil war that ended the moment Russian tanks crossed the border on February 22, 2022. A point very rarely mentioned in Western media. There’s that thoughtcrime again—funny how that works, isn’t it?

But the most dangerous part of this quantum state manipulation is how it masks the true existential threat. All this talk of conventional military spending is ultimately theatre when dealing with nuclear powers. The Cold War stayed cold for one reason—mutually assured destruction wasn’t just a doctrine; it was the only real deterrent. It still is.

As someone who served in the military, I am all for a strong defence force, but this is not it. I’m reminded of Major General Smedley Butler’s candid assessment: “War is a racket. It always has been… A racket is best described as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”

So again, the question must be: “Why are we still emptying our pockets into NATO’s coffers?” That’s 2.5% of our GDP, mind you, at the moment, that’s over £75 billion on defence. Think what we could do with that money—fix our crumbling schools, breathe life back into the NHS, maybe even patch up a pothole or two.

Yet, while we ponder Schrödinger’s Superpower, austerity kicks in with brutal efficiency. This government cuts disability payments, strips winter fuel allowance from pensioners, and refuses point blank to lift the two-child cap on benefits. It torches its green policies and slashes foreign aid commitments without a second thought. The war must go on, we’re told, and somebody’s got to pay for it.

Meanwhile, BAE Systems reports profits exceeding £3 billion, marking a record high for the company, driven by increased global military spending amid these manufactured geopolitical tensions. This profit figure—the company’s underlying earnings before tax and interest—tells the real story. War’s a racket, and business has never been better.

In the end, ask what has genuinely changed since the Soviet Union collapsed. Only that NATO has expanded from 12 founding members to 32 member states, creeping ever closer to Russia’s borders while Russia stands militarily isolated. The Russian Federation possesses neither the conventional military might to conquer Europe nor any rational motivation to try. But it retains the one capability that truly matters—nuclear weapons that ensure mutual destruction.

When we open Schrödinger’s box and observe reality clearly, we see that this quantum paradox of Russian power serves only to enrich defence contractors while leaving pensioners cold, the disabled hit hard, and children hungry. Meanwhile, the real threat—nuclear annihilation—grows with every escalation, every misunderstanding, and every wrong step in this dangerous geopolitical dance.

The longer we maintain this deliberate confusion about the nature of the Russian threat, the closer we edge toward discovering which state our collective cat truly occupies—alive in peace or dead in war. And unlike a thought experiment, there will be no resetting this particular box once it’s opened.