This sort of thinking during the Cold War was, in retrospect, wrong and extremely dangerous, and that was when the USSR was actually projecting power all over the globe and countries were falling into communist dictatorships. See also all the talk of a “clash of civilizations” during the height of worry about Islamic militancy. This is a regional squabble. Being like “oh well I guess some sort of nuclear standoff is inevitable at some point” is lunacy.
Wat? Let’s go to the tape.
Which is it? Should US policy in Ukraine be about Ukraine in a limited sense, or are we worried about containing future Russian aggression?
so, your hope is for putin not to lose? or not to suffer humiliating defeat?
seems like an argument that once a nation has nukes, no smaller nation should ever put up a fight. which is bonkers. why even have international agreements
i largely agree with you, but this incident was probably a single occurrence somewhere in LNR. russia itself has endless supply of AKs. some of them may be rusted, but they literally made millions of them even before 1991.
Russia > Ukraine. Need to sue for peace and let Russia have land to stop the eventual Ukrainian bloodshed from an unstoppable Russian army
Russia < Ukraine. Need to sue for peace and let Russia have land to stop the eventual Russian bloodshed and possible nuclear reaction
Russia = Ukraine. Need to sue for peace and let Russia have land to stop the grinding stalemate, but also it’s possible what Western powers want so we need to get to one of the other options.
it’s not lunacy, because about a week after the invasion it became apparent that russia wasn’t going to win quickly, and could easily lose eventually. the nuclear standoff threat is talked about precisely because putin ran out of other ways to win. even in a regional squabble.
I think you’re countering an argument I’m not making here. I’m not saying “let’s not have Russia lose because of nuclear escalation”. I’m just saying nuclear escalation is a threat that should be taken seriously and that “well who cares we have to confront Russia at some point” is insane. The approach to Russia now has to be North Korea style containment. It is pretty clear from the way this war has gone that Russia is finished as a conventional war power of any note. The idea of them engaging in conventional war with NATO is comical.
“well who cares we have to confront russia at some point” isn’t the argument. since ~march 2022 it was “russia will be using nukes in this conflict, so we will have to confront it”.
the north korea containment could have been a policy before the invasion, but not since. to draw parallels with the korean war, freezing the conflict and containing NK came after major bloodshed, and i don’t think that has a chance of working anymore in ukraine.
in other RU news, the duma and federal council voted on annexation, and there are some notable absentees from the total. biggest one is Anatoly Karpov.
Or we could just let Ukraine figure out whatever modus vivendi they want with Russia and stay the hell out of it. Fight a war, don’t fight a war, figure it out. Up to you. Doesn’t need to have anything to do with the US at all.