We have no will to fight a war over this in the US. Any talk of that is absurd.
I keep thinking about the Scorpions song Wind of Change. That spirit is now completely dead. I just can't believe it.
a band-aid solution at best. The fact that putin has desires to resurrect the soviet superpower, is the problem, and i doubt there would be any possible diplomatic solution to that.
Nobody likes war (least of all nuclear war), but if the threat of such weapons is shown to be a bluff, the peace brought about from it's use in WW2 would all but be in vain.
Somebody must back down, and i would say putin and his ambitions must be the one to back down, or the US & allies must escalate. Otherwise, the next authoritarian country is going to want in.
France has nukes, so this isn’t going to be Hitler 2.0 with Putin posing by the Arc de Triumph.
There are several ex-Soviet countries that are NATO members, so that’ll be the real hot spot if it gets there as the US et. al. will be required to act militarily in their defense (in theory).
If so, expect Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and so on to test nukes within the next 10 years.
Or, to be charitable, since India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons and nothing happened.
Which is why the Ukraine should have been accepted into NATO (and preferably the EU too) in 2015 or so.
Though, now that the invasion has started (again),
the alliance is already pretty consolidated. I think putin sees a NATO ukraine as more dangerous imho - esp. if ukraine becomes more and more democratic.
The invasion would be successful if the west does not deploy troops and intervene. I say the west has already failed, and this sets a precedent to which china would follow.
And if the west waits for too long, the military edge that the west has would diminish. Unfortunately, the public is reluctant to commit to war, because in the minds of those who are used to peace, diplomatic solutions seems to be the only cost they're willing to pay.
I agree that there are difficulties in developing arms in peace times, war can be a driver of innovation. But it is not the only one and there are preferable alternatives, even if arms suppliers see that differently out of egoistic ambitions.
A civilian population rejecting involvement in arms manufacture is preferable to one that calls for a war.
Post-Vietnam the US hasn’t engaged in large scale active combat against communism or Russian-backed forces. It has instead favored selling weapons to Eastern European states and building the NATO alliance.
Putin has been clear about the breakup of the USSR being a mistake in his eyes. He’s been annexing territories (or in his eyes, re-annexing) since 1999. He looks for countries with strong Russian cultural and linguistic backgrounds and props up allies that will take over. If that doesn’t work he ratchets up the pressure until he feels comfortable using military force. See: Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and now Ukraine.
The US is far stronger militarily than Russia, but with nuclear weapons in the equation, no one wins.
It’s easy to be an arm chair hawk and say we should go fight, but it’s another thing to look you kids in the eye and explain they’re going to die from radiation fallout.
Instead, the US will likely prop up the resistance once Ukraine falls and try to make occupation as costly as possible just like we did in Afghanistan.