Then they're going to have to remember what a world without police looks like.

I wasn't intending to suggest that America or anybody else should take action or 'police' anything, but I do find the 'all bark, no bite mentality' currently being paraded about by the world's leadership to be, at best, disingenuous and at worst cowardly.

I suppose somebody might ask what I would prefer the US State Department say, and I guess I'd personally want more realpolitik: "Putin's a megalomaniacal piece of shit with nationalist historical aspirations that stretch back to Peter the Great; NATO's contributed to all this to the extent that it's been dick swinging in Eastern Europe for the past 20 years; the Ukrainians should probably just surrender since they're all basically (and historically were) Russian anyway, and they stand no chance of actually resisting, and no other country on Earth is going to risk nuclear war over them."

Not exactly feel good material for a bolded NYT headline, but at least it's honest.

The sanctions are extremely tough and not entirely painless for the US and other western countries.

Also the US has delivered weapons to Ukraine.

They don't want to engage in a war with Russia, and that decision I think is the right one for now. A couple years down the road, if the sanctions don't succeed in containing Putin's aggression, we might have a different discussion.

Putin is going on seventy already. A couple years down the road, with some luck he'll be six foot under.

>A couple years down the road, if the sanctions don't succeed in containing Putin's aggression, we might have a different discussion.

Yeah well we tried that back in 2014 when it was the Crimean Penensula. I think its time we have that discussion NOW.

Any direct confrontation with Russia may go nuclear. The NATO doctrine understandably requires a direct attack on a NATO member to run that risk.

In my opinion, Russia will not have a lot of appetite for further aggression after all those sanctions. Invading NATO members and setting off a huge, unwinnable conflict should be pretty far down the list of priorities in the next few years.

“People” don’t want their regular neighborhood police either, but take it away and people start appreciating it.

The defund the police rhetoric caused politicians in my city to poll the populace and it was found that 85% wanted more police.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is “people don’t remember why it was good to have world police”.

What people are you talking about exactly? Those in Ukraine?

Ukraine hasn't requested any foreign military aid so far.

Of course they have, privately, all the while knowing they were never going to get it.

“Of course” according to what?

Of course according to the repeated pronouncements of everyone ranging from their President to Foreign Minister to Defense Minister to the ambassadors.

See this report for a brief example: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07...

The US and UK governments have been formally and repeatedly asked for help.

This information is also constantly in the news. The US has provided almost $3 Billion in military aid to Ukraine in the past several years alone. The UK has also provided significant amounts of aid. Ditto for NATO. All of these are not 'forced' on Ukraine!

My bad. I've not followed the situation closely enough to see these information before. Thanks for the enlightenment.