The only way to stop a monster from destroying you is make him afraid you'll crush him back. If you let him know you are willing to let him do anything to save your skin, he will do it. Including destroying you, in the end.

Your moral certainty is laudable and impossible to dispute without sullying one’s own ethics with hypocrisy, and inviting charges of moral and literal cowardice.

But. Nuclear weapons are far beyond the ken and capability of humans’ intuitive game theory, the hueristics we apply in escalatory conflicts of all scales. Applying such intuition risks thoughtless apocalypse; MAD is a novel idea because such weapons required either an entirely new paradigm in power politics, or humanity’s rapid suicide.

Nuclear weapons are a deus, or devil, sprung from the machine of human civilization.

The possibility of their use, even by a bully who wields them especially to intimidate us, must inspire some cowardice in any soul who cherishes humanity’s potential.

The west must find its moral courage within the contraints of antiquarian post-Congress of Vienna style Realpolitik, as others have stated. Partition of Ukraine and many decades applying a new strategy of containment is the most realistic ‘victory’ that can be sought.

We might hope that Russia’s once promising liberal civil society will revolt and save this decade for peace - in vain, I expect.

where do you have that from? you can obviously predict human behaviour very accurately, so you must base that on something. this is a serious situation after all. are you a psychologist?

Met plenty of bullies in my time, it’s their basic psychology.

Putin is turning 70 soon. He knows he's not immortal and his latest moves look to me that he really wants his position in the history books.

He's shown time and time again that from within Russia, he's untouchable and everyone who tries will either be killed or deported to gulag. No sources needed, just look it up quickly on your own.

I do not see an easy solution for dealing with him - left alone the assassination route.

A popular uprising would do the job but Putin has very carefully neutered anything could be a catalyst on that front.

I've always been of the opinion that the only way out is nuclear proliferation. Ukraine gave up their nukes. See where that got them.

We gave them assurances; their translation said guarantees. They aren't the first to be let down by an agreement with the west, only the latest.

It is up to Biden now to live up to his tough talk of Putin fearing him (from during the election, if you have forgotten) and other western leaders to find an end that doesn't involve bending over.

> They aren't the first to be let down by an agreement with the west, only the latest.

Why are you singling out "the west"?!? AIUI, Russia also signed that agreement.

Yup, Russia did, and Putin's excuses for the invasion are weak at best. The peace is broken. Does that excuse the West's inaction?

The US gave assurances not to invade, not to offend them. Big difference

Then where does he stop?

When there's a coup.

Things will have to get really bad for that to happen. I mean it didn't happen / isn't happening in the US despite the people getting royally fucked left and right.

Oh wait there was an attempt, people didn't accept a democratic vote and decided to go and find politicians to lynch. I'm still pretty shocked that there hasn't been a more severe reaction to that one.

What I’m shocked about is, it’s only been a little over a year without the former guy and the world is already falling apart.

He does not.

Everyone saying "but we should let Putin do whatever he wants with lives of innocents because otherwise nuclear war" is Putin supporter, whether they know it or not.

No one is saying that, if he touches a NATO country NATO would be forced to intervene.

What people are saying is that no one wants to get nuked to save Ukraine and I'd be hard pressed to blame them.

This isn't Call of Duty

This is very unfortunate, but true. The reality is this: the window to deal with Putin in a non-confrontational manner has already closed, there are no 'good' options that do not carry a very hefty price tag in front of us right now, but people are - understandably - still having trouble adjusting to that reality.

But Putin - and Russia - are being dealt with, via international sanctions and being cut off from the world's economy. That's a big source of attrition. Russia is self-sufficient to a point and may still have (financial etc) ties with China, but it will hurt them badly.

But that's as far as it will go at this point. Russia invading Ukraine (again) has been universally declared a Dick Move, but since Ukraine is not an EU or NATO member and as far as I know there's no defense pacts either, there's nothing that they can do that would not be considered an unnecessary escalation.

If sanctions worked the first few times, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Why think it will work this time?

EDIT: of course, my opinions are shaped by being in non-nuke-equipped country in Europe, so depending on West's response this time, we're next. I'm sure it looks differently for someone sitting in New Jersey or Australia.

> But Putin - and Russia - are being dealt with, via international sanctions and being cut off from the world's economy.

Putin can be faulted for many things but not looking ahead isn't one of them and you can bet that he has priced this in already. If anything he is probably amazed at the lack of response.

> Russia invading Ukraine (again) has been universally declared a Dick Move, but since Ukraine is not an EU or NATO member and as far as I know there's no defense pacts either, there's nothing that they can do that would not be considered an unnecessary escalation.

Yes, there will be all kinds of justification for letting Ukraine burn, this one will be near top of the list for sure.

there's a notable difference in confrontational options between war and popular uprising and your logic is frequently used to support the former

What's your proposal? Let Putin eat Ukraine? Baltic states next? Sit tight, run for the west and hope Putin stops at sooner than we run out of places to run to?

Baltic states might be next, yes. I can't see NATO going in on a full blown war to defend the baltic states, as it would very much lead to the destruction of the world we know.

> I can't see NATO going in on a full blown war to defend the baltic states, as it would very much lead to the destruction of the world we know.

Then the NATO charter is useless.

I agree 100% but the only time Article 5 has been invoked was after 9/11, never to defend against a nuclear armed dictator.

But that doesn't really matter. Article 5 was drawn up when nuclear weapons already existed, and presumably everybody that is a signatory to the NATO treaty knew full well what they were getting themselves in to.

There's NATO troops in the baltic states. 0 chance Russia sends in combat troops and if they did 0 chance NATO backs down.

What's happened in the last ~10 years was that Ukraine was Russia's proxy, then the West's, and now it will be Russia's again. That's a very different story than one that starts with "was a member of NATO".

Which makes NATO not only an arsehole but also a chump for not admitting Ukraine as a member at the latest shortly after Crimea.

So you are saying NATO should have started nuclear war because of Crimea?

Because when you admit state that has part of it's territory occupied into a defense pact, you are effectively declaring war on the occupying state.

Imo it's not quite arsehole thing to not start WWIII due to non-alliance country.

What is enough to start nuclear war then? Baltic states? Poland? Germany? UK?

Yes, when you are in defense pact with nuclear powers, you have way better detterence on your side. Why is that so hard to understand?

People are also forgetting that you can't just instantly admit Ukraine into NATO and instantly teleport all the alliance armies onto the battlefield. Trying to make it quicker would very likely just hasten the Russian invasion (because the head douche apparently wanted Ukraine all along), so it really boils down to "do you want to start throwing nukes for state that you never made nuke-backed promises to?"

It's appalling how many people here are not seeing bigger picture and would love to just try to end humanity just because some nation got dealt _really_ bad cards. Economically Russia is cratering, so the impatience to end it all here (or in 2014) is just irrational. They were already losing technology (e.g. see how their space program is faltering), this will just accelerate Russia's slide into irrelevance. Even their weapons tech is not keeping up, see the latest kerfuffle in Caucasus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war

Actually, promises were made to Ukraine when it gave up it's share of Soviet nukes.

Yea, but that was weak at best https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

Also the wording is fuzzy when it comes to conventional war, but maybe the wiki has wrong wording. Either way, that is nowhere close to full defense pact which NATO is (with forward allied military bases and such).

The agreement literally says "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" on page 3. What is fuzzy about the wording?

Just read the thread, your quote says nothing about going into nuclear war because of anyone breaching the treaty.

EDIT: and wiki wording is unclear whether the treaty applies for conventional war. That's all I meant by "fuzzy"

How can the treaty be read to not apply to conventional war? Are you saying that one can invade Ukraine and still "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine"?

If you want to find a way to not defend an ally, you'll always find one :)

NATO treaty itself does not talk about rapid response forces, joint bases and so on. All of that comes beyond the treaty. What stops key states from retreating back to basic treaty and then finding an excuse when Article 5 comes? E.g. if Russia comes as non-marked „rebels“?

But there was no defense alliance between NATO and Ukraine, right?

Maybe NATO has also weak wording in the treaty itself. So ask yourself - why did Ukraine want so badly to be accepted into it? Why is Russia opposing NATO expansion so much?

Budapest treaty is pretty damn close to defence alliance in it's wording.

Why did Baltic states or Poland wanted into NATO so much? It's one more treaty you can show to media when shit hits the fan. One more treaty your supporters can use debating governments for help.

In reality, if Russia attacks a NATO member, it won't be automatic full-on NATO response. It will still be debates. But certain people will be much more uncomfortable saying „no we won't defend NATO allies“. Yet some will still say it.

Russia wants it's own NATO, with black jack and hookers. And countries joining the real NATO obviously won't join theirs.

NATO has no obligation to Ukraine and it'd be a huge defensive liability. And, as we see, Putin would go to war before seeing Ukraine a part of NATO. The chumps here are the Ukrainian leadership and people. NATO made it clear they wouldn't be admitted. Russia made it clear that he'd invade if they tried. Ukraine did it anyway and this is the unfortunate result.

What would you offer? Retract NATO to just US+UK?

Baltic states are undefendable, even compared to Ukraine. If Ukraine is down, Poland is as indefendable as Ukraine. Then we are back to Cold War state where Germany is barely defendable.

> NATO has no obligation to Ukraine

Yes, Sherlock, that was exactly my point: Dodging that responsibility is what makes NATO an arsehole.

Wrapping up NATO by not defending a NATO member would be very much the destruction of the world as we know it.

If we don't initiate nuclear war, a nuclear war would be on Putin. He can do that with or without us defending Ukraine, I don't see how you could blame nuclear war on anyone but the aggressor. Put this pathetic dog down.

It's completely irrelevant on who would be the nuclear war. A nuclear war will wipe out an absolutely humongous part of humanity. Even if you survive, you will be doing much much worse as essentially all supply chains will get broken.

Avoiding nuclear war is the top priority.

> Avoiding nuclear war is the top priority.

Problem is, "Avoiding all-out war is the top priority" is exactly what Chamberlain thought in 1938, too. And look what that got him: all-out war.

Yeah, a ground war with aerial bombardment is totally the same as nuclear holocaust.

Great analogy.

You are missing the point which is: your greatest fear will be turned and used against you by your enemy. So the only actual solution is to stand up and confront what you fear. Then you have a fighting chance to avoid that fate.

So call Putin's bluff? He's already made an explicit threat to take things further if anyone gets involved: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/24/vladimir-putin-w...

But, fine, let's play this game. The US is sends troops into the Ukraine. You do understand this is right at Russia's border. What does Putin do? He'll engage. Great, now we're in a shooting war with our nuclear rival. Now do you want to roll the dice this doesn't escalate further. Does Putin go after neighboring NATO countries? Now the US has to escalate further to defend an ally. And if the US/NATO pushes into Russia, does Russia go nuclear?

This is why the Cold War stayed COLD. We didn't directly engage Russia on anything close to their borders. Yes, we fought two proxy wars in Asia and just look how that turned out.

Do you really want to roll the dice and hope your neighborhood isn't a parking lot in the next five years?

Not exactly. But I’ll let someone smarter and who thought more about this stuff to propose his ideas: Garry Kasparov

https://twitter.com/kasparov63/status/1496865471995523080?s=...

I prefer outsourcing my opinion on world events to Wordle players who get all green boards. But you do you.

This is literally insane.

We are dealing with "insane" people. If he is willing to use nukes over Ukraine, I can guarantee he does not plan just taking Ukraine. When should we react? Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Austria, Germany?

If you are talking about Putin, then yes. He is literally insane.

He might be insane but his background is FSB so he's still very much in control of his moves as shown within the last decade.

That makes him that much more dangerous and stopping him that much more essential and urgent.

Are you typing this out from a stocked nuclear bunker? Because you have an incredibly blase attitude regarding nuclear war.

He says no. Probably enjoying one last sunset outside before closing the hatch! I can't help but wonder about our h n founders, safe in their bunkers in NZ, reading dog eared copies of The Soveiregn Individual. And then I wonder about all the Ukraine war news stories leading up to this being and flagged and burried here. I hope it's just coincidence. As I have said before, they think they can survive nuclear winter, no problem. But those assumptions are built on test of single small bombs. 10,000 going off at once is an order of magnitude worse, and might easily produce surprising effects. Science is always finding surprises in old experiments when they crank the power way up.

Actually PG and JL live in the U.K. currently.

And I am no HN founder, but I live in Eastern Europe. NATO planes and helicopters kept flying overhead all day and my house doesn’t even have a basement.

So I bet we are closer to the danger than you are. And I also bet that the ones doing the flagging and burying are other brave "class warriors" and "eaters of the rich" who can’t accept that their beloved ideology has created monsters like Putin while the capitalism they despise has given the world prosperity, (relative) peace and Elon Musk (the last one's a mixed blessing, I admit).

No way? I'll have to call in on them for a cup of tea. Are they in London, by chance? https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2021.1...

PG if you are reading this, I love you really, man. And if there's any room left down there for a resourceful fella, I will work for bunk and board. (In fact, I've been stockpiling tins since Feb 20, so I only need the bunk ;)

Hell no I hate every kind of war but I am sure that I need to be ready to fight if I want to be left alone.

Putin took control of Chernobyl tonight, you know. How do you think he thinks about this stuff?

> He might be insane but his background is FSB

How long was it called that, and when did he start in the game?

I'm guessing most of his background is actually not FSB, but KGB.

If Putin directly attacks the West you'll get your dream. Until then you might actually stop advocating nuclear Armageddon. If you are really willing to do this you are no better.