Not exactly. There is a lot of noise that NATO should intervene directly in the war. An example of that is calling for a NATO enforced "No Fly Zone" (NFZ). Of

Not exactly. There is a lot of noise that NATO should intervene directly in the war. An example of that is calling for a NATO enforced "No Fly Zone" (NFZ). Of course NFZs have to be enforced to actually be NFZs and that means NATO shooting down Russian jets/helicopters/missiles that violate the NFZ. This would be a direct attack by NATO forces on Russian forces. Such an attack, would give the Russian's a legitimate "out" for attacking NATO forces (say in Poland) where a lot of refugees and material is being shipped through to Ukraine. That would trigger Article 5 which says, briefly, "an attack on one is an attack on all." and we would be in a full hot war with Russia. At that point, Russia can legitimately claim they "feared for their existence" and launch a nuclear strike (tactically or globally) against NATO countries (including the US) and that ends up with the US and Russian destroying a lot property using nuclear weapons. There is an argument being made that Putin desperately wants to get attacked by NATO so that hey can threaten nuclear war, and cause NATO to back down. It certainly looks better at home if Russia is on the ropes because NATO is attacking it rather than being on the ropes because a former satellite state of the old USSR is handing it it's ass on a platter. There is a lot riding on the outcome of the current conflict and it reached a point, quickly enough, that I believe it will reshape geopolitics for decades. Throughout the Cold War there were people, on both sides, who felt "we could win such a war." Their definition of "winning" was somewhat twisted (as a full out war would result in knocking the world into a very very bad place civilization wise) and it was the subtext of the movie Dr. Strangelove. We have been exceptionally fortunate that we haven't tested their theories. I am, somewhat obviously, in the camp that full on nuclear hostilities would reduce the planet to a population of perhaps one or two million humans, mostly in South America and the Pacific island nations. But I am not anywhere close to being an expert on these things, just a systems analyst type. So my observations have been: Call: "We should go in there an kick the Russian's asses." Response: "We won't because that would start a nuclear war, and we don't want that." Response: "What if we would 'win' the resulting Nuclear war? Still not going to go kick there asses?" If you watch any sort of "large conversation" like this, where part of a group wants some action and another part of the group doesn't want that action, you will see this sort of interplay. It happens in companies, it happens in counties, states, countries, and the world at large. Various voices attempting to achieve a sufficiently high level of consensus from the group in order to take an action. Failing to achieve a high enough level consensus results in "group antibodies" which are basically people who become so offended at the action proposed the switch to becoming active members of resistance and start trying to generate counter action consensus. I have exploited this effect to create change in large organizations that were stagnant. You start by pushing just enough on the change to 'surface' the people who had been acting through intermediaries to act directly. Then you can identify them and have a one on one conversation to get them signed up for the change. Do that enough times to surface all the resistance, and then at some point the change just "goes through" because "everyone seems to think it is the right thing to do."