I agree with this so long as the West plays within established norms.
Supplying defensive weapons is well established. Russia provided them to Vietnam to fight US. US provided to Mujahedeen to fight Russia. Etc. Arming of Ukraine to date follows similar pattern and has not escalated the conflict.
But if offensive weapons are provided and used to strike Russian cities, there are no established norms. That’s never happened between the superpowers. Closest is Cuban Missile Crisis in which Russia supplied offensive weapons to US neighbor, and that almost led to nuclear war or at least major escalation.
So forcing binary choice between zero and major shit storm is not so good if in uncharted territory, imo. Especially if it’s not really necessary, and I don’t think it is.
you cannot compare the might of US during iraq war, and russia’s army in the war with ukraine. look past the nuclear capability factor, and at relative populations, military preparedness, coalition of allies. it is not close. russia wants to be a superpower, but isn’t.
Not allowing military strikes on your homeland is the point of having a nuclear arsenal. Russia has been clear throughout that this is something they are prepared to use nuclear weapons to prevent.
Two can play the brinksmanship game. Suppose a Russian city is attacked by long-range weapons supplied to Ukraine by NATO and the response is a Russian cruise missile attack on a NATO staging area in, let’s say, Poland or one of the Baltics. Russia warns of an impending attack in advance and says that the attack is a one-off response, but that any retaliation or further use of long-range NATO weapons against the Russian homeland will result in the use of nuclear weapons against NATO staging areas. What now? Fuck it, let’s keep escalating and be legends?
This is a claim made by Vladimir Putin for which there is no evidence.
Edit: I’m not even sure that Putin claimed they were arming Chechen separatists, just that they were providing intelligence. I might be wrong about that.
CIA supplying some money for AK 47s to some terrorists (even if true, as noted by ChrisV, it is not verified) is not supplying an army with advanced weapons for the purpose of attacking Russia.
I mean, I hate to put up anything resembling apologia for the US invasion of Iraq, but there are some distinctions that make the Russian invasion of Ukraine clearly more evil. The US sought UN approval (yes, they lied, which is really fucking evil) and got it, so at the very least, there is a reasonable expectation that other countries won’t be dumping arms to Iraq en masse. Also, Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, while not at all a justification for the second Iraq war, did make him pretty unpopular with much of the rest of the international community relative to Ukraine, who hasn’t pissed of literally anyone except the one country who wants to eliminate their state and entire culture. Even from a completely amoral standpoint, one shouldn’t be surprised that a country seeking and getting international approval for its invasion (yes, on trumped up reasons) faces less international blowback than a country that goes it alone (excepting a single puppet state) out of basically nowhere for explicitly genocidal reasons.
Morality aside, the US faced less blowback because it’s unquestionably the most powerful country in the world by a wide margin. And, it used that power to get the support of countries like Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia (Vilnius 10 sign letter on Iraq) for the Iraq war and a year later 7 of those countries were rewarded with entrance into NATO with two more following 5 years after that and the tenth 11 years later. Enlargement of NATO - Wikipedia
The bar was offensive weapons to strike Russian cities and you’re acting like it was a victory that ctryi “admitted” maybe AK 47s were supplied? Maybe you should address what ChrisV posted and VotedForSocialists agreed with if you want to debate the facts.
wtf are defensive weapons? Small arms and mortars? Artillery? Drones? Tanks? Antiaircraft weapons? All these are defensive weapons in that they’re quite useful for defense. All of these are currently being used by Russia in their offensive war, and could be used by Ukraine in their own counter-offensive war if the Russian invasion goes badly enough. That’s the real risk of escalation imo.
Russia is a nuclear power and a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council. Russia is undeniably powerful. Russia is so powerful that the likes of Mearsheimer say that Ukraine should just kowtow and do what Russia says. Despite being this powerful, Russia did not even bother lying to or bribing other countries for support of their invasion, and the case that they made to other nations for their invasion was explicitly genocidal.
Russia could destroy the planet. Yes they are powerful. The US much more powerful and so dominant economically and politically as well as militarily that it can do things like ask countries to sign letters of support for its wars and they do it. 3 months after that letter the Senate approved a measure supporting the admission of 7 of those countries to NATO and less than a year after that they were admitted to NATO.
UN didn’t authorize Iraq War 2. They only issued a resolution that Iraq had failed to comply with its arms inspections requirements, but that didn’t authorize the US to attack. The US was supposedly going to seek a second resolution specifically authorizing the war, but didn’t when it was clear the vote would fail. Kofi Annan has explicitly stated that the war was illegal under UN law (although he waited till 2004 to make the statement).