"Balls" have little to do with it. It looks to me like the invasion of Ukraine was the act of a desperate old man whose time is running out to achieve his ambitions, and a mistake based on wishful thinking rather than a sober assessment of relative military capability and popular sentiment of the two countries. This is not a man you can trust to be rational. We should assume he will continue to act out of pride and delusion. If he thinks he doesn't have anything left to lose, we should assume nukes are on the table.

Unfortunately with that logic then we will never push back against Russia. Putin invades Poland? “Oh we shouldn’t attack because Putin is irrational and might use Nukes, we’ll try appeasement first.” This interview with exiled Russian M. Khodorkovski (who used to be the richest guy in Russia until Putin jailed him for 10 years) is pretty convincing that this fear makes the “West” look weak to Putin and he’ll keep pushing until he’s stopped. https://youtu.be/OX6ISz0FotU

Poland is a NATO member, so invading it would trigger a really massive response of all treaty members to which NATO has been preparing since 1970s at least.

Ukraine is being beaten exactly because it is not a NATO member, but actively considered to become one.

Exactly, but then why doesn’t NATO just start a massive response now to save the lives of potentially tens of thousands of Ukrainians that may die in the next few weeks?

Because NATO doesn’t care enough.

Yep. If we had any justification for military intervention in Ukraine, they wouldn't have been invaded in the first place. We kind of just have to hope this damages Putin's and/or Russia's power enough that they don't do it again. Signs are not entirely unfavorable on that front.

Poland is a NATO member, and an invasion would be treated entirely differently because of that.

Just to write down a thought that nobody likes to express--maybe the best move is to let a nuclear aggressor take whatever they want. I think in retrospect it might seem like the best move if things take a turn for the worse.

Nah, I think MAD and letting Russia eat itself from within is working as well as anything can be expected to.

So if Putin wants to take over all of Europe we should just let him?

>I doubt Putin has the balls to use nukes.

That's a very bold claim to make. What is that based on?

It is based on Turkey shooting down Russian jet without any consequences.

It's one thing to shoot down a russian jet that was allegedly flying into turkish airspace (despite the kremlin claiming otherwise). It's a whole other thing to declare a no-fly zone above ukraine and actively shooting down jets.

Why Turkey can defend its airspace and Ukraine can't do the same together with its international partners, in a manner similar to EU airspace protection for example?

The main practical concern here is just that russia can launch planes and missiles from inside russia. If you want them to stop you're going to have to bomb some airbases.

Or you're going to honor the border I guess? Are they free to bomb civilians as long as it launches from their side? Even the best planes will get shot down if you give the other side enough chances, is nato going to allow that? Anyway where even is the border at 50k feet? How many conflicts have started because a pilot accidentally entered another country's airspace? Or at least that the other country claimed they had.

No fly zone does not concern to Missiles, yes you honor border and you can't bomb anything without invading airspace.

>How many conflicts have started because a pilot accidentally entered another country's airspace? Or at least that the other country claimed they had.

Exactly 0.

You're not arguing against an impartial observer. You're arguing against putin. You seriously think that putin is going to be persuaded by this type of lawyering? I think even to a layperson it's fairly obvious that the two represents two very different actions, and very different levels of escalation when it comes to their relations.

Putin did nothing when Russian jet was shot down.

> without any consequences

Are you sure there were no consequences?

Yes I am sure.

He does not have balls to sit close to his top generals and cronies.

He is rational, just misinformed. Dude is scared shitless of losing and he knows he can’t win this game. He will pretend he’s willing to though, because it works.

Maybe, though it is still to be seen. One of the more "interesting" sub-games in the bigger war is how much support NATO is willing to give to Ukraine. The English sending MANPADS is apparently fine, even though Russia said beforehand that they would regard the delivery of weapons an act of war. The Polish jets were a step too far. USA sending over drones (sorry, "loitering munitions") and anti tank weapons is apparently still OK.

The same logic that works against the West has also been working against Putin: "what are you going to do about it; escalate into WW3?"

The problem with the Polish jets was apparently that they planned to fuel and load them from a German airbase. It wouldn't really matter that the planes only were flown by Ukraine pilots. The German airbase would still be a legitime military target.

And then NATO would have to respond when cruise missiles started flying into some of their member states.

The problem with the jets is that everyone involved thinks that they are a bad idea whose military utility isn't worth the degree of provocation no matter what route they are supplies through, but no one wanting to be the country to say no to Ukraine about it; all the maneuvering was about countries making it so someone else would have to be the one to say no.

The US finally said no to the specific plan, and put forth the general rationale for the more general no when it did so.

(OTOH, the tolerance for acts that might be seen as provocation by Russia among NATO countries—at least those on the Eastern flank—is going up rapidly, with Estonia and Lithuania calling for a NATO-enforces No Fly Zone, and Poland hold-my-beering them and calling for a NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine.)

Except US was the initiator of the whole idea with Blinken doing press rounds for over a week telling everyone how he negotiated this deal with Polish gov.

The problem with Polish MIGs was deferring the decisions entirely into US hands and exposing all talk and no will, at least when no profits are to be made by US arms manufacturers /1. All of a sudden something "obvious and imminent" became "complicated and untenable".

/1 Of the declared $800mil Anti armor launchers account for ~$400mil, then the other $400mil pays for some small arms, personal armor, ammo and 100 drones? Its pure mil complex walfare program.

AFAIK it was an American base in Germany. Americans were ok with Poland donating their planes to Ukraine, but not ok with Poland donating their planes to the US to donate to Ukraine.

Yes, because of a simple reason - NATO will only defend its members if they didn't "provoke" the other side to attack. Poland is in a far too precarious position to risk anything that could be read as provoking Russia and therefore losing the protection of NATO - Putin would happily take Poland next after Ukraine. Giving the jets to US and then US giving them to Ukraine would avoid that particular issue, but US decided against it.

Poland is already a NATO state, the Russians could just bomb the Polish airbase instead even if they didn't go through Germany.

The significance was that they needed to be based in a NATO country, and not in Ukraine. I agree that it wouldn’t make much of a difference if it was Poland or Germany.

>The same logic that works against the West has also been working against Putin: "what are you going to do about it; escalate into WW3?"

It's not so much that putin doesn't have the balls to escalate into WW3, it's that supplying weapons isn't considered very escalatory (for all sides involved), so putin is more likely to let it slide rather than escalate himself. It's not something that can universally extended (eg. to no fly zone or boots on the ground).

> It's not so much that putin doesn't have the balls to escalate into WW3, it's that supplying weapons isn't considered very escalatory

It wasn't seen as too likely to effect the conflict, but as the conflict drags out it becomes a greater irritant. Russia is recently openly threatening to attack “supply lines” of those arms if they continue; since anything in Ukraine is already clearly subject to attack this at least implicitly is a threat to potentially attack convoys and logistics points outside of Ukraine.

Hitler is reviled for the Holocaust, not merely invading another country in a war of conquest. This whole situation is depressing and frustrating all around, but I don’t think anyone is being hypocritical.

War of conquest became taboo after WW2, written down in the UN chapter. The concept of "crimes against peace" itself was ironically invented by Soviets.

We might well be in 1939, when hitler had not yet done the holocaust. The comparison seems fair to me. Who knows what Putin would be capable of if he kept on going full tyrant for another 3 years…

I was specifically referring to Hitler's territorial expansion prior to WWII.

Putin's expansion into Crimea and Ukraine reminds me very much of Hitler's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Its my firm belief that we're at the "Peace in our time" phase, just before WWIII, and it would be better to nip it in the bud and take action now, rather than 2 years from now, when Putin has had more time to prepare, and he attempts to invade a country that we are obligated by treaty to defend.

That comparison does not make sense.

Russia is not the USSR of old or Germany in the 30s. It's not a great economic power with an independent industrial base. Right now, Putin is throwing in all the conventional forces he can spare, but Ukraine – a smaller and poorer country - has managed to stop the attack with some material support from the West.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has not been idle. Europe is increasing military spending significantly. Unprecedented sanctions are in place, and their purpose is to destroy Russian economy and cut their access to many key technologies. If the sanctions remain in place, a large part of the Russian losses in Ukraine will be permanent.

The allies fought Germany because they had no choice - the Nazis basically declared war on the world. Yet the Holocaust is very much a post-facto justification. At the time, the allies did nothing to impede the Holocaust, and it played very little part in their justifications (just watch 'Why we fight' and check where it's mentioned - nowhere).

Only after WW2 the allies decided to remember the Holocaust existed, and justice still played a second fiddle to interests.

Hitler was reviled for everything he did, not just the Holocaust. The Allies didn't even know about the true extent of the Holocaust until they started liberating concentration camps in 1945.

Gladly its not you to decide that, as sad as the situation is. And also as sad as it is, the Hitler comparison is still inappropriate in both directions, please refrain for dignity.

Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and the international community did essentially nothing about it. It both emboldened him for further invasions, and provided him a huge manufacturing power to pump out tanks and armaments. If the international community said "Hell no, we're defending Czechoslovakia on principle because that invasion is BS", they would have fought a much weaker Germany and very likely prevented WWII (or at least one nearly as bad). Frankly I don't see how you can argue that's not an extremely apt comparison.

I think OP is referring to 1939 Hitler, i.e. invaded countries and clearly doesn’t care about killing civilians, but before the Holocaust. It’s clear from the last couple of weeks that Putin doesn’t even flinch at the thought of killing thousands of innocent civilians just to satisfy his own twisted reality.