The 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.

Re: containing Russia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nat...

It's actually exactly the opposite and the guy who wrote the book on containment called it a tragedy. We don't need to rewrite history.

I upvoted, this is a worthwhile point of view.

But it's also the case that the west is straddling strategies here. Either do as Kennan says and just leave NATO the way it was and don't poke the wounded bear, or actually encircle Russia completely, stick nukes in their back yard and show them who is boss.

Don't pretend to do both and neither, that is the worst of all worlds.

> 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.

What 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.

I 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.

Please explain why you think the West (Americans) ought to go die for Ukraine. If you want the west to go all in for this, I hope you've signed up to serve already.

That 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.

I'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.

I think he'd fold, say it's not the US's problem, and also reap a big (maybe justified) I-told-you-so about NATO's low defense spending.

> Maybe he'd fold, maybe he'd go direct to nuke.

I don't think the president of the US has the authority to nuke anything by his own accord.

You are, unfortunately, mistaken. The President has sole authority over launch decisions. There is a requirement that those orders be verified as authentic by the Secretary of Defense, but assuming POTUS gave the orders, it's not within SecDef's authority to countermand them. What would actually happen if an insane POTUS were to give a launch order that made no sense is probably up to chance and the quality of those willing to break the law and refuse the order.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football

"However, the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief is not unlimited and US law dictates that the attack must be lawful and that military officers are required to refuse to execute unlawful orders, such as those that violate the Laws of Armed Conflict."

Those laws are very very vague and like you said, it's possible someone in the chain of command could argue it's against the law since a nuke would likely cause collateral damage one way or another. I think it's technically incorrect to definitively say that the US president has complete and total control over nuking a target.

Hey, wasn't this the EXACT argument Democrats made about removing Trump from office before the election? Floating the idea he'd risk WW3 instead of losing an election?

Turns out Trump's general hard line on everything was useful for something.

the President can order nukes to launch. there's no law curtailing that power, and military orders are the purview of the Executive under the Constitution, so it's doubtful Congress could even prevent that.

the nuclear football is basically a fancy sat phone though, so it's less clear if the generals who get the war order would actually obey.

Thinking highly of opponents of the US and spouting off about how smart and savvy they are never seemed to stop Trump from treating them like opponents and using his power against them back when he was president, so I'm not convinced it would if he was still in charge - and it certainly wouldn't be safe for them to rely on that.

> Recent mutterings suggest Trump thinks highly of Putin though, so it's hard to tell.

Care to provide a source for this?

If you're referring to the podcast where Trump mentioned that Putin's move (annexation of Lugansk & Donetsk) is "genious", that's not some sort of fanboyism or admiration, but simply admitting that the move, tactically, was really good - a lot of people (myself included) did fall for it!

Here are some mutterings https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-putin-pretty-sm...

>“He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher and video footage obtained by the pro-Democratic group American Bridge. “He’s taking over a country, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, just walking right in.”

That's the quote I had in mind.

To anyone with basic reading comprehension, it's obvious that Trump isn't praising Putin, he's praising Putin's tactics, which, judging by the (lack of) response from the West, is pretty smart!

I'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

> 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.

> 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".

I 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.

The 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.

They don't care. Thousands of Russians and culturally Russian ppl will die on Ukraine, but the attack is still happening.

mutually 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.

Congratulations you just ended human life on the planet, would you like to play again?

Would you rather wait for him to invade Germany before risking nuclear war? No way he stops a Ukraine.

There 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.

which 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.

> which part of your own country are you willing to risk to be hit by nukes first?

I hope to avoid a nuclear war. If we get bombed I hope to be in the middle of the first blast or far away. (I'm actually not sure which I'd prefer.)

If it comes to the nuclear option it is that simple.

I've tried to live a good life and asked God to forgive me what I either have misunderstood or haven't been able to do right.

So for now I'll just try to focus on my assigned tasks:

- take care of my family

- take care of my customer

- take care of my neighbors and everyone else

- answer if my home country wants me back in uniform

There's some wisdom in this even if one forgets who wrote it: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A2...

Which 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.

I'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.

Nukes 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.

I 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.

I am guessing you are not in one of those "polygons" close to Putin on the map, so that is why you are so willing to sacrifice others for your well being.

Did not work out that great for the appeasers in WW2 in the end.

> so that is why you are so willing to sacrifice others for your well being.

are you really suggesting that threatening Putin with NATO nukes servers your wellbeing better than giving him a part of East Ukraine for a time being? Are you suggesting that your government won't be capable of negotiating a peaceful gradual transition of the region back to Ukraine in the post-Putin era? Such cases were possible in the past, if you read history. But it required skilled statesmanship and diplomacy instead of quick emotional reactions to intimidate and retaliate.

We know Putin by now. What you are proposing did not work since he's in power. He kept escalating. MAD worked on dictators just like him before. Actual power is the only language his ilk understands.

Or in 10 year you'll see the entire Europe in his hands while the rest of the world is being carved between him and Xi.

If Putin is going to use nukes over Ukraine, it is going to come to nukes eventually. No way he stops a Ukraine.

It's possible for nuclear powered thugs to be beaten off. Just look at the Taliban. Destroying things is easy, but maintaining control is hard

It 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.

US has something to lose. That logic doesn't apply to a caged animal.

...Afghanistan isn't a nuclear state

I think he was characterizing the US as the nuclear powered thug.

Or the USSR as a nuclear powered thug. Afghanistan has a decent track record of beating out superior foreign occupiers.