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To some extent this situation feels analogous to a street mugging happening in very slow motion The thug accosts the victim, threatens and then proceeds to ass
by ripvanwinkle 5y ago
To some extent this situation feels analogous to a street mugging happening in very slow motion
The thug accosts the victim, threatens and then proceeds to assault the victim in full view of a large number of bystanders who are numerous enough to defend the victim and alter the outcome but not convicted enough to take on the inconvenience of doing so.
Nevertheless all the bystanders voice words of encouragement and sympathy and even offer to sue the aggressor in court after the fact if the victim is harmed or killed.
- jacobolus 5y agoWhen the thug has nuclear weapons, responses get a lot trickier.
- nickpp 5y ago
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- lamontcg 5y agoCongratulations you just ended human life on the planet, would you like to play again?
- nickpp 5y ago[flagged]
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- ghostwriter 5y agowhich part of your own country are you willing to risk to be hit by nukes first? It's easy to be militarily bold at someone else's expense, more so if you don't serve in a regular army.
- nickpp 5y agoWhich friend or family member are you willing to sacrifice first so that you’ll be spared? It’s easy to try to appease aggressors thinking that somehow they will have enough eventually, but this is short term thinking. In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight.
- ghostwriter 5y agoI'd try really hard not to get into a situation that requires taking this kind of choice in the first place. It means taking measures of reasonable appeasal. Diplomacy used to be a virtue, nowadays it's being replaced by acts of daring: Russia does it, the US does it, the Ukraine does it. > they will have enough eventually, but this is short term thinking. In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight. There's such a thing as a lifespan. People come and go, and everyone should be proactively seeking long-term beyond-personality diplomacy and statesmanship. > In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight. this is no longer a WW2 era, you can't just stand up and fight, nukes don't care if you stand up or lie down.
- nickpp 5y agoNukes are an ultimate weapon, equally destructive for both sides no matter who's using them. Threatening with nukes on the other hand is an almost as good weapon but only effective of you convince the other party you mean it and only countered by the others also being willing to use them. It's the MAD policy and it worked quite well during the cold war.
- ghostwriter 5y agoI disagree that it worked well during the Cold War, numerous declassified archives suggest a different picture of continuous escalation and bringing the world on the brink of total annihilation. The main reason it did not happen was a presence of people who were willing to de-escalate the peril by all means at key moments, including sacrificing their military ranks, political stances, and sometimes integrity of borders of their own countries. Borders have been moving and they will be moving in the future, a long-term strategy should be to never let politicians stake the humankind for the sake of the current polygons configuration on a world map.
- meragrin_ 5y agoWould you rather wait for him to invade Germany before risking nuclear war? No way he stops a Ukraine.
- lamontcg 5y agoThere is no way he doesn't stop at Ukraine. He doesn't have enough troops to hold it against a population which will be against him. He has already bitten off more than he can chew. The idea of Russian tanks marching on Germany is delusional fantasy and hyperbole, even apart from Article 5.
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- 8note 5y agoIt's possible for nuclear powered thugs to be beaten off. Just look at the Taliban. Destroying things is easy, but maintaining control is hard
- disillusioned 5y ago...Afghanistan isn't a nuclear state
- csee 5y agoUS has something to lose. That logic doesn't apply to a caged animal.
- jacobolus 5y agoIt is by no means clear that Russian military/state will “win” long-term in Ukraine. When there is significant local opposition to military occupation, it is indeed hard to maintain control. But in the mean time, they’ll be able to kill a whole lot of people and destroy a whole lot of lives, and wreck Ukrainian democracy and economic prosperity for years if not decades.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asdff 5y agoThe US has a major security advantage in terms of mutually assured destruction in that its home to many people from around the world. There are like tens of thousands of Americans living in all of Russia or China. Meanwhile, there are millions of both Russian and Chinese Americans in the U.S.. This provides safety. Good luck finding morale in your military after you've just told them to nuke millions of their own people.
- NmAmDa 5y agomutually assured destruction will not leave you any functioning military to have morale after nuking US. And in this case we will test the nuclear winter theory. Hopefully we can avoid that.
- ant6n 5y agoThey don't care. Thousands of Russians and culturally Russian ppl will die on Ukraine, but the attack is still happening.
- ripvanwinkle 5y agoI'd say in this case everyone has nuclear weapons i.e. thug and bystanders with abundant second strike capabilities and also a healthy desire to live. With that level of mutually assured destruction, conflict if any would almost certainly stay conventional. In fact if NATO had moved in about 50 to 100K troops at the invitation of Ukraine sometime over the past 3 months, its really unlikely that Putin would have upped the ante. If anything the multiyear patience and planning on his part suggests he absolutely wants to win and wont take a chance if he thinks he might lose or draw
- 8ytecoder 5y agoI don’t know. Mr P would have made that the excuse to invade. In war perception and public sentiment is very important too. Biden would easily lose popular support in this hypothetical scenario. As is there doesn’t seem to be much support from the right at the moment.
- kqr 5y ago> With that level of mutually assured destruction, conflict if any would almost certainly stay conventional. It's useful to remember that "almost certainly" is a synonym for "not necessarily".
- nyokodo 5y ago> In fact if NATO had moved in about 50 to 100K troops at the invitation of Ukraine sometime over the past 3 months, Meanwhile Russia being right on the border quickly invades Ukraine before the NATO troops can arrive and now we have NATO troops entering a war zone or pulling back and looking even weaker. Also, this sounds eerily like the start of WWI although then it was Russia mobilizing and Germany then decided to move quickly into Belgium and North into Russia.
- lordnacho 5y agoThe thug also thinks his knife won't be needed. Often I wonder which of our leaders has ever played poker. It seems like Putin has figured out that we won't push all-in, ever, so he steals another pot. If the west really cared about this, the only way now is to retaliate way out of proportion to what's happened. Before this happened, the west also didn't act like it wanted to contain the Russians, so the Russians got brave. If there had been some sort of response the Russians would have backed off. It's somewhat stable for both sides to bluster about this or that minor victory. Can't do that now.
- chronofar 5y ago> If there had been some sort of response the Russians would have backed off. Are you sure about that? Are you really willing to risk your chips betting on a retreat? This sort of geopolitical chicken would be incredibly dangerous.
- dbingham 5y agoWhat if he never retreats and just keeps pushing? You have a o draw a hard line somewhere, and the longer you wait the harder it is to do it.
- xenocratus 5y agoI mean, Nato does have a real, physical border.... So if you have to draw a hard line somewhere, I guess it's already been done.
- flyinglizard 5y agoThat was something great about Trump; he could not be easily predicted, not even by his own circle. Although in this case I’m not sure he wouldn’t have sided with Putin.
- lordnacho 5y agoI'll give him that, you don't know what DJT would have decided. Maybe he'd fold, maybe he'd go direct to nuke. That baseline unpredictability is actually useful strategically (there's even an essay about how being rational isn't necessarily a good game theoretic strategy, can't recall the name now). There's at least one other world leader who clings to power because of this trait. Recent mutterings suggest Trump thinks highly of Putin though, so it's hard to tell.
- Pelam 5y agoWell said. Additionally and even more sadly, in this case the thug has a strapped on bomb belt powerful enough to kill everybody.
- mc32 5y agoThis is too simple. Ukraine and Russia, Orthodox and Catholics, Polish, Ukrainians and Russians have had a varied history in the proximate territories. Despite the bluster of "I'm the only one who's gone toe to toe with Putin" there is only so much anyone can do in this situation. If KSA decided to invade one of its neighbors, there is only so much anyone could do because doing anything would severely disrupt energy. But in the Caucasus and Dnieper areas there, I mean you have nukes involved. Like India and Pakistan. Then there is the promise we made not to station missiles in territories bordering Russia and the whole Orange Revolution Obama thing. That's a big deal to them just as it would be a big deal if Russia stationed missiles in Mexico or Cuba. We'd throw a fit too. Just as China would throw a fit if we stationed missiles in Taiwan. The US could do the same thing. People like to complain about how much a bully the US has been (Chile, Guatemala, Vietnam, etc)... Now they are seeing how real bullies act in Russia and a lesser degree China (but they are on the sidelines biding their time) They can do what they want because they have little constraint --with big players it's self-imposed.
- 8note 5y agoI have a strong feeling that the US has missiles stationed in both Japan and Korea, which is about the same as putting them in Taiwan for this comparison
- mc32 5y agoAny missiles there have historically grown up with the CCP. Japan had an SDF --so the US's presence was added deterrent. In Korea we have the excuse of N Korea being a menace. As part of the negotiations during the collapse of the USSR, US officials acknowledged the Russian request that there be no NATO missiles in proximity of the RU border. GW Bush laughed it off and so did Obama.
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- throwaway2037 5y agoRegarding official sources, US does not share nuclear weapons with anyone outside of Europe. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing Even Canada does not share nuclear weapons with the US. That genuinely surprised me. US and Canada have unbelievably interconnected militaries -- see NORAD and various Artic zone military bases.
- nradov 5y agoAre you suggesting that neighboring countries should go to war to defend Ukraine? If I see a street mugging then I'll call the police but I'm not going to risk getting shot in order to intervene in a random street crime. This is obviously a terrible situation for the Ukrainian people but at the same time they could have done a lot more to prevent it. They essentially let their military deterrent collapse years ago through a mix of corruption and apathy. If they had had a real combat effective military back in 2014 then Russia probably wouldn't have invaded in the first place.
- rectang 5y ago> at the same time they could have done a lot more to prevent it. I'm skeptical. Russia has been harrying and undermining Ukraine for many years. Remember Viktor Yanukovych and all the turmoil of that era? It's not like Ukraine has been through a period of decadence where they slacked off — they've never caught a break. And now the full force of Russian imperialism is crashing down on them.
- stickfigure 5y agoDoes it need to be "go to war"? How many NATO aircraft would it take to give the Ukrainians on the ground the upper hand? For all his bluster, do you think Putin really wants to escalate beyond Ukraine? He's playing a game of chicken with the west and winning. Hitler did the same thing right up until 1939. From what I've read he was actually surprised that the allies finally called his bluff after Poland, considering they just rolled over after the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
- ghostwriter 5y ago> do you think Putin really wants to escalate beyond Ukraine? He's playing a game of chicken with the west and winning. Have you read his recent announcement? He warned every foreign nation not to meddle or else: > To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside - if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,’ he said on a television broadcast around 6am Moscow time.
- VictorPath 5y ago
- thjkgfgrrioppo 5y agoCouldn't it simply be true that Putin doesn't want Ukraine to join Nato and Ukraine is trying to join anyway?
- rym_ 5y agoRussia should have no say over Ukraine.
- age_of_stone 5y agoIn reality, Russia does have a say over its neighboring countries. So do all superpowers.
- ncann 5y agoAnd yet you have to wonder, on an alternative timeline, what if Ukraine says it won't join NATO and stays under Russia's sphere of influence? It would suck for national pride but maybe under that alternative timeline they won't get invaded now and possibly wouldn't even lose Crimea earlier? Practically speaking, perhaps you should avoid poking the aggressive neighbor next door, especially when you can't have definitive assurance from the police station three blocks over?
- stargazer-3 5y agoThere was little support for joining NATO before Crimea was annexed. Ukraine wanted to join NATO precisely because it realized that it will be devoured piece by piece by its imperialist neighbor unless it does.
- denton-scratch 5y agoWhy is this downvoted? It's not just Putin; Russian leaders through most of the 20thC have feared encroachment on their western borders, and have launched invasions and installed puppet regimes to create a buffer. The fact that Ukraine has clearly expressed its desire to join NATO, and NATO's refusal to reject that possibility, means that Russia perceives a threat that their greatest enemy will suddenly appear right on their border. Georgia also wanted to join NATO; so they got invaded. The West has played this hand very badly. Instead of declaring that under no circumstances would they send troops to Ukraine, they should have kept silent, or possibly sent a division of ground troops, to be dispersed around the country. They should also have leaned hard on Ukraine to make Donetsk and Luhansk officially autonomous regions. The Donbas would then become Russia's buffer zone, making them feel a bit less paranoid about NATO encroachment. FWIW, I think NATO should have dismantled itself following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The modern NATO is a global organisation, not restricted to the North Atlantic. It's no longer a mutual defence pact for countries at risk of Russian attack; its main purpose now is simply to intimidate Russia.