The decisive US defeats in the aforementioned countries, and the equally compelling Russian/Soviet defeat in Afghanistan provide hopeful models.
> Ukraine is the defender in this conflict. Every reasonable action it takes to encourage a Russian withdrawal is, by definition, defensive.
War is peace etc etc.
I'd like to point out that an attack is the opposite of defense and the scale of the attack does not make it not so. Your argument does not negate the GP statement which btw is true.
If Russia wants to stop these attacks, it can do so at any point. Their government simply has to stop their attacks on Ukraine and retract its troops. Surely, even to a madman like Putin, this humiliation would be preferable to global nuclear armageddon.
I can think of numerous reasons why it wouldn't be preferable, even to a non-madman.
Note that subjective assessment of the situation is sufficient. Putin is dependent on nobody to come to such a conclusion, especially not the west, and why should he care anyway? Western war escalation enthusiasts apparently are willing to take the risk anyway or do not seem to understand this.
It's funny how 'realist' viewpoints, when applied equally from both sides, lead to inevitable nuclear annihilation.
The intent is to put pressure on the regime, not the "homeland".
This attitude floors me. I can't figure out if people legitimately believe that we can just ignore the nuclear war risk [...] or if the plan is to purposefully explore for a limit where Russia snaps.
There shouldn't be any mystery to this. The intent is to help the current regime in Moscow come to the only rational decision available to it, which to stop the war it should have never started in the first place. There is no intent to make it (and certainly not Russia as a country) "snap". That's just your projection.
On the contrary, the intent it is to help the regime come to its senses. Like the US was finally forced to do in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.