The nuclear stuff is posturing on Putin's part. The biggest reason nobody's sending troops to help Ukraine is to avoid the risk of nuclear escalation in the fir

The nuclear stuff is posturing on Putin's part. The biggest reason nobody's sending troops to help Ukraine is to avoid the risk of nuclear escalation in the first place. To my understanding, fighting on the ground or establishing a no-fly zone in eastern Ukraine would require strikes into Russian territory using weapons like cruise missiles that could be loaded with nuclear warheads. So we're not doing that. Neither widening the war beyond Ukraine nor randomly launching nukes at NATO would benefit Putin. And this is not even close to the tensest moments of the Cold War. So I'm not worried about World War 3 starting. The most likely outcome right now is that Russia is able to conquer Ukraine and ends up fighting a bloody insurgency while suffering under heavy sanctions. I don't know where that goes, but the rest of Europe will survive to find out. All that being said, I don't want to downplay the significance of a major power starting a war to effectively redraw borders in Europe. That is a huge and terrible step away from the post-WW2 norm.