But if you really want to worry about this, you don't need to consider the current war in Ukraine. You could look at this article from 2017 that describes a long-term plan to equip the U.S. submarine missile fleet with "superfuze" warheads can accurately destroy hardened missile silos, which completely changes the strategic balance against Russia, in a way that might make things more dangerous for everyone [2].
[1] https://bnn-news.com/russia-moves-missiles-from-st-petersbur... [2] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...
I have many concerns about the current situation. For example Zelensky's frequent requests for things that would definitively mean WW3 if he actually got them, and the popular misconception that one must be ready to wage all-out total war to defend Ukraine or else you're on Putin's side. But all of our problems are amplified by the American penchant for cluelessness about what our adversaries are really thinking.
Either Russia loses now or loses later. No matter what, the Russian state will collapse. Only question is whether or not anyone follows Putin and just how suicidal they are...
I mean that is obviously overly dramatic posturing nonsense.
If we give them the territory they hold today they're in no shape to take anything else, and they certainly won't launch WWIII.
I don't support appeasement in any way, but that isn't the road to WWIII.
> no shape to take anything else, and they certainly won't launch WWIII.
Bear in mind this is only true because of the relentless resistance of the Ukrainians, backed up by the material and economic support of the west (granted, a lot of the Russian military was still in rough shape, but they would have been in a much better position to discover and fix that on their time if Ukraine had fallen quickly). If not for both of those factors together, Russia would be smacking its lips after Ukraine and looking for its next meal. We've already had to call a lot of nuclear bluffing to get here to this point where we're neither appeasing Putin or launching nukes at him.
This isn't WWII and Putin isn't literally Hitler and you sound like you read something once about WWII in a history textbook and you're desperate to a construct a parallel with appeasement that doesn't exist.
Appeasement is still bad, but it has nothing to do with causing Putin to launch nukes. The nuclear threat is still due to him having his back against the wall and while I don't think we should back down over that, you're trying to construct an alternative reality where its the opposite actions which could result in a nuclear exchange. That is a dangerous denial of reality which doesn't help in clearly thinking about the situation at all.
Your posturing to be more anti-Putin than anyone else may make you feel better about yourself and let you get angry at everyone else that isn't as edgy as you are, but being grounded in actual REALITY is the only way to get out of this crisis without a nuclear exchange (which more or less ties in with the topic of the OP since failure to clearly understand the motives of the other party in the conflict in the cold war nearly led to nuclear annihilation). You aren't helping.
> actual REALITY is the only way to get out of this crisis without a nuclear exchange
Ah yes "realpolitik". Which is straight up Russian propaganda to prevent us from reacting because "nuclear weapons". You aren't helping.
Ah, no actually? None of that. Obviously he won't launch nukes after he gets what he wants. He probably won't even launch them if he doesn't, though that counts on him keeping a shred of rationality.
My only point here (distinct from those of others on the chain, please note) is that preserving liberty globally depends on not being cowed by someone threatening to use nuclear weapons. Even if they never actually launch, it would be a catastrophe if aggressors could get away with anything just by threatening to use nukes. Without exaggeration, you're potentially talking about the death of liberty worldwide. The only reason this is unlikely is that free nations tend to wake up before they get completely boiled frog-style; this is, in fact, my read on why everyone is suddenly supporting Ukraine and cutting off Russia after doing jack shit in 2014, they've lost all deniability on the threat Russia poses.
There's no WWIII if we appease Russia. There's a lot of other bad things though, including allowing Russia to get another win and to put up with their influence in our politics and society and watching as we slide further into Fascism. But that isn't a nuclear exchange.
We are risking WWIII by confronting Russia because of all those other things.
The situation is precarious enough that Biden has threatened retaliatory decapitation strikes to kill Putin in the event of the use of Russian tactical nuclear missiles. And that sounds like a rational and proportionate response that might avoid nuclear war (but opens a massive can of worms since retaliatory assassinations become likely).
You can't "flip the script" and argue that its the other side of the debate that leads to nuclear annihilation. You don't get off that easy, you have to deal with the fact that its worth it to risk it.
(Although with the way our politics is going it may be ultimately immaterial anyway in the long run).
> I don't support appeasement in any way, but that isn't the road to WWIII.
These two statements are in conflict. You obviously _do_ support appeasement if you suggest Ukraine stops defending itself.
No it is not, not in the least. I wouldn't be so dismissive of someone when you clearly don't know the subject area (geopolitics).
There are geopolitical reasons for what Putin is doing in Ukraine. I recommend listing to "Peter Zeihan" on the subject, for starters. He's covered the war very well.
The underlying goal is to push the Russian "frontier" up to defensible geographical choke points before Russia's demographic decline makes it impossible to do so. This doesn't stop at Ukraine. The push would take all of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, a north eastern chunk of Romania, and an eastern chunk of Poland up to the Vistula. Finland would also have to continue to be neutral, or would have to be taken as well. This is why the Russians have reacted badly to the suggestion that Finland is joining NATO. The gas restriction to Germany was a Russian attempt to push the country out of the NATO alliance, which would have made any NATO response difficult once Russia started on NATO states in the Baltic.
Putin has also made it clear that what he can't achieve with conventional military force, he is willing to attempt with tactical nuclear weapons. Taken together, the clear and stated desire to annex NATO nations (see Putin's recent speech on the Baltics historically belonging to Russia, and Ukraine "not being a real country"), the willingness to use nuclear weapons, and the fact that he is very clearly acting with the above aims in mind, should have you concerned.
The fact that the Russian army has been beaten back in Ukraine should not lull us into a false sense of security. They have plenty more manpower reserves they can draw on, and the Russians have a history of starting wars in somewhat of a shambles, before reforming and producing an army that is more of a stream roller.
These were all reactions to those countries being post soviet states that Russia wants to occupy due to their imperialistic ambitions.
Its why Russia hates post soviet states like Poland being in NATO because they know it means they cannot remake their imagined glory of the Soviet Union.
My theory is that Covid-19 has screwed up the general intelligence of the population way worse than the 1-6 IQ point loss that some studies show.
Except that didn't happen: the 2008 war was over a de facto independent oblast in Georgia that Georgia tried to recapture, and that's pretty much what the war remained limited to.
Lest we forget, the Iraq war occurred with zero justification half way around the world. Every bad thing you can say about Putin, you can say worse about George W. Bush (who ran a torture program).
The most important thing we can do is come to a peace agreement and an arms reduction agreement.
Ukraine isn't a pawn for world powers. They're an independent democracy with the right to choose their own destiny.
They were friendly with Russia for decades and got burned. Even Zelenskiy tried to slightly repair relations with Russia and end the war in Donbass. But in the end Russia has shown it's all a façade, their goal has never been to live peacefully with others but rather conquest and genocide.
Kennedy and McNamara knew that, because they both had experienced death and destruction firsthand in WW2. Our generation, on the other hand, only knows flame wars on Reddit. Hence the convenient, black and white rhetoric.
This is my concern about the current tensions around Ukraine - we really have no idea what's going on in Putin's head or his inner circle. They could be calmly bluffing, or suicidal, or scared we are about to preemptively assassinate them.