> ... a fullscale Russian invasion to decapitate their government.

> ... encircle China and force them into peaceful deescalation.

While you have used the word "peaceful" I suspect a Chinese planner, if by some strange path they read your comment, would start preparing for wild escalations. Because it looks like the strategy is to wait for a moment of weakness then invade.

That doesn't sound like a path to peace.

Invading China will likely never be a good idea. I'm for peaceful coexistence of nations unless there's a renegade actor like Putin. I think peace comes from democratic systems. Even the USSR was intended to be democratic. There's almost nothing to stop Putin.

This nuclear hostage holding he's doing has generated a lot of ire. It just can't be tolerated and I don't think it will.

Although I occasionally commit the cardinal sin of entertaining political discourse on HN, I think such disturbing statements aren't appropriate for HN.

As a fellow American, I encourage you to reassess your comment and consider if it may be guilty of American exceptionalism. I'm particularly confused by the grouping of "Greco-Roman ideals" since Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece were quite different in political structure and philosophy. For the former, Rome definitely wasn't a democracy at times [1], [2], [3]. Even during the Republic, I'm not sure it resembled a democracy as we know it today, but I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable to answer [4].

Under the assumption, however, that "western civilization" is some unified blob of Enlightenment era thought, you must agree that there has been resistance to such ideas in the US [5].

Such arguments by vagueness remind me of Bezos's management style, which purportedly penalizes such communication approaches: "PowerPoint had become a tool for disguising fuzzy thinking" [6].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Kingdom

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principate

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominate

[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_the_Roman_Republic

[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_Americ...

[6] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/what-je...

Clearly you haven’t interacted with many Indians (particularly regarding the Ukrainian conflict) if you think they’d be on board with your Western Imperialist fantasy.

An invasion of Russia would risk the destruction of the entire globe by nuclear weaponry. Ousting Putin and destabilizing Russia would increase the risk of nuclear weaponry making its way to more violent regimes. I do not think either of those is particularly wise.

More violent regimes than Russia??

I am not sure they exist right now. Nobody else is threatening nuclear war, while invading a peaceful neighbouring country, slaughtering civilians.

I understand that you have language barrier and can't, for example, watch Ukrainian TV. Have you ever seen President Poroshenko bragging on national TV about how he will make Donetsk children hide in basement? Have you ever seen Arestovich, current aide to President Zelensky, two years ago, saying on national TV that large scale war with Russia is only possible way for Ukraine? Have you ever seen Ukrainian pupils chanting Moscalaku na gilyaku? Don't take my words for granted, translate this words yourself. I suggest you'll Google that videos before saying Ukrainian government is peaceful next time

Your comment equates to a mass-murderer pointing out that some of his victims had traffic-tickets.

And while you are busy doing that, your country is killing civilians by the thousands, turning cities into rubble, explicitly and undeniably targeting civilians, to get Ukraine to stop fighting the invasion.

Your glorius leader is Vladimir Putin - and from the looks of it - you have the leader you want and deserve.

Please enjoy the consequences.

I do my part fighting elections rigging in Russia for years, while you are lecturing me with words that you have heard on TV. I visited Denmark multiple times. I visited Crimea. Have you been in Russia? Friend of mine was independent observer on the referendum of Crimea. My friend's grandmother in Gorlovka now. Gorlovka. Do you know Gorlovka? You know, 8 years near frontline, regularly shelled by Ukrainian forces? My uncle have to leave Mariupol 5 years ago. My father's ex girlfriend is reporting from Donetsk. We are enjoying consequences. Thank you very much.

Have you read my post about Ukrainian official saying that large scale war is inevitable? Two years ago? Friends of mine in Mariupol now. They wrote that they was rescued by Russian army. Do you have any ideas why they have written this?

In west you are accusing Russian people of being victims of propaganda, brain washed and controlled by Putin. I have access to media that represents either points of view on conflict. Have you?

Ukraine was anything but peaceful. They’ve had neo-Nazi national guard troops fighting communist separatists for 8 years now.

Xi and Kim have killed far more people than Putin has (so far). There may be up to 2 million Uyghurs in camps, and it's not a stretch to assume that at least 10% are going to die of natural causes.

Oh!! no.. We will only invade far-off countries who cannot retaliate. Who wants to invade a neighbour, esp. if the refugees come running into our country?? We want our war games played without any consequence to us.

A policy that anyone with nuclear weapons can freely bully the rest of the world seems like a less wise course for the long term.

You're not helping.

I'm sorry but comments that harken back to ye old Rome are infuriating and it leaves a sour taste in ones mouth. I know this war is bad, but man people need to just own up, otherwise none of us can more forward. Pax Americana is fine, but you don't get to kill people and then turn back and tell me to wave a flag because grand old Europe is having it's "freedom" threatened.

The first Iraq war (occupation of Kuwait) was legitimate. The second one was started under the (known) false premise of the presence of WMD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

"The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths through February 2020 in their table. All estimates of Iraq War casualties are disputed."

The official civilian casualties count in Ukraine so far is 600, according to the UN. Both wars are horrible.

> Comparing what Russia is doing in Ukraine to anything the US has done in the last 100 years is an exercise in false equivalence. One so blatant that it defies any attempt to interpret in good faith.

Are you fucking kidding me? Are you completely ignorant of history? What about Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq?

The wars and embargo in Iraq ?

(Hopefully we'll be careful this time about what is being embargoed, the Russian population is now the best shot of getting rid of Putin, once the horror of what is happening in Ukraine to their friends and family filters through Putin's propaganda.)

It might also help, if it makes a politician think twice next time before calling to invade, sorry "bringing democracy" to a country... (USA, thank you for giving democracy a bad name by the way.)

"Pax Americana is fine but you don't get to kill people."

I don't think you understand what you're saying.

I’m also from a former British colony. What have the romans ever done for us? https://yandex.com/search/?text=What+have+the+romans+ever+do...

Perhaps read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't think it's controversial that Putin deserves to be ousted by a foreign military as much as anyone. He's certainly much more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler because he can unilaterally end human life on earth at any moment of any day.

> Install anyone else that's not insane, say Navalny.

Well, we definitely couldn't install anyone. We'd have to administrate an open election.

> I read they have 50% of their total combat brigades in Ukraine now.

This is a pretty antiquated assessment of military power. Boots on the ground show only that Russia wants to take Ukraine rather than completely destroy it. They can level the entire country with tactical nukes if they want.

> Installing a leader that is open to integrating with the west, along with India, we could encircle China and force them into peaceful deescalation.

I think it's more likely that we'd make China very dangerous and hostile, and we'd also re-open the world to the possibility of foreign regime change.

If we can decapitate Russia, why couldn't someone say, "Hey, this Biden guy stole the election, we should murder him for the good of the American people!"

Biden didn't steal the election, but I think you see where I'm going with it.

from my understanding of the development of the international oil trade in the 20th century, one of the key advancements by multinational oil in the West was to learn lessons from the British, and do two important things on foreign soil: always back a leader that can hold on with local support; always pay the Nationalist/Military oil interests very well, in addition to making trade rights built-in.

Unfortunately, it seems that the "wild west" behavior of the USA in South America, in the wake of the brutal Spanish conquest long ago, made some enemies (that have oil) that are not easy to talk to now.

Do you have a good book rec around British oil and lessons learnt?

Oil, Power, and War : A Dark History should be close enough ?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42527868-oil-power-and-w...

>He's certainly much more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler because he can unilaterally end human life on earth at any moment of any day.

This is Biden too. Literally can unilaterally start a nuclear war.

> This is Biden too. Literally can unilaterally start a nuclear war.

So what? What does that have to do with anything?

Biden has never threatened nuclear war and has nothing to gain from it. Putin has threatened it repeatedly in the last few weeks.

Biden is more powerful than Putin, Stalin, or Hitler, but he is not as dangerous.

>So what? What does that have to do with anything?

Because my reply was to:

>much more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler because

Note the "because", the exact same argument stands for Biden, but we wouldn't argue he's more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler. I was pointing out the weakness in the "because".

Biden frequently misspeaks or gets confused, and refuses to take dementia tests, so if he really can unilaterally launch then I'd actually be pretty worried about that.

(I think there are other people in the loop in the case of the US president though? Personally I've always been most worried about the Royal Navy's submarine captains, who really do have the ability to launch unilaterally in a very direct way)

True, it's an extremely dangerous situation for nuclear weapons to exist at all.

Biden, however, has not threatened to use them. Nor does he rule over his subordinates on pain of extrajudicial murder, so there's a few checks and balances there. Alas the same cannot be said for Putin.

You probably won’t take this advice, but you should really start making peace with the fact that the US is completely incapable of accomplishing any of these warped fantasies of yours.

The vast majority of the world is celebrating the self-evident decline of US-centric unipolarity. But those of us who live here have some hard years ahead.

That's the thing. Even if we were to suggest that the parent's ideas had merit (big "if"), it's pretty laughable to think that the US is capable of doing this properly. Looking back, it's hard to find American successes in this sort of meddling, all the way back to WWII.

True, and the US didn’t even properly defeat the Nazis (see, for instance: Adolf Heusinger, Operation Paperclip, and the many Nazis who happened to find themselves in positions of power in West Germany).

Thanks god Russia has nukes, otherwise American liberators would have already liberated us. (I don't justify Ukrainian conflict, it's another issue).

You do seem to be having some difficulty liberating yourselves.

Living without free press is better than being dead. And it doesn't matter to me whether good or bad guys kill me.

I don't believe in liberating anyone from authoritarianism that doesn't want to have a free and democratic system. That's why mideast liberation hasn't worked. No one was asking. The Russians want a better life, just ask the ones that come here to study, find mates, and never go back. I know plenty of them from my university, happily married to whoever from wherever, and residing in the US or Canada, working and living peacefully as contributors to society. Russians are quite intelligent people too.

The Russians are probably the least likely to want liberating from what I've seen of all Europeans, but I do think a plurality of Russians would want this. Which justifies it. That said, without this invasion of Ukraine and the danger I feel it presents to my homeland (the US), I wouldn't even be bringing this up. The Russian Federation would be on their own. It's just that the leadership over there is now a danger to everyone else.

Well I think in an ideal world "liberating" would not involve mass murder of the "liberated" population. I am aware that this is a historical weak spot.

Even still - I don't see a problem with countries rescuing other countries from despotism, in principle. I eagerly include my own country in this - if a Putin-like figure arose and I was not permitted to speak out or face death, it would comfort me to know that help was coming. The terror of an oppressive regime is its inescapability.

Today is just a large prisoner's dilemma/tragedy of commons.

The ideas have to be out there or they'll never get traction. We have major influence recently. The path of the world was changed dramatically with the election of Biden over Trump. I can't imagine how emboldened Putin would be had Trump won. I realize others say everyone was scared of the rich man's son, but I don't see it. He withheld 400 million in military aid from Ukraine, says it all as far as the path we'd be down.

I’m sure Putin is really afraid of the guy who can barely get a coherent sentence out. Trump reportedly wanted to exit NATO, which would have avoided this conflict altogether.

>I can't imagine how emboldened Putin would be had Trump won

I am a bit confused. It seems like Putin was not emboldened when Trump was president. Why do you think his second term would have been different?

Putin attacked Georgia when Bush was president. Putin attacked Ukraine when Obama was president. Putin attack Ukraine when Biden was president.

The only US president in the last 20 years that was in power when Putin didn't attack a neighboring country was Trump.