If I was King of America we’d never have gotten involved with Ukraine in the first place so it would have never come to that. I’d cave immediately!
Why though? There’s no reason not to. We’re already established that Russia hasn’t escalated to nuclear war so far, we’ve reduced Russia’s sphere of influence and expanded our own. By the value criterion of Great Game politics, involvement was the correct maneuver.
In KeeeeedWorld, the only guarantor of security for any nation is having enough nuclear weapons to end humanity. Which might pose some problems!
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A very exploitable strategy
How so?
Also, Russia expanding its sphere of influence is neither good nor bad. It’s just what Great Powers inevitably do. But the US expanding its influence, even to nations that are begging for it, is bad, because US expansion is always bad, and the US is the only nation with any agency or culpability. This is Realism 101.
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Only if you care if the liberal world order extends beyond the US border, which Keed obviously does not
He probably doesn’t even think that. By his logic we should acquiesce every piece of territory we have if Russia makes a nuclear threat.
I don’t know what Russia’s red lines are. But let’s start by saying that I think Biden is right that the risk of nuclear war is the highest it’s been since the Cuban missile crisis. And why is that? Because the US is fighting an intense proxy war with Russia. Russia is currently in the process of escalating their involvement in this war by deploying many more soldiers to the war zone and will possibly escalate the brutality of their tactics as well. This might put pressure on the Ukrainians and their US backers. How will the US escalate in response? I’ll not pretend to know, but if the US successfully escalates in response, what will the Russian response be? And on and on. Where/how does it end? I don’t know. I agree with Admiral Fred Thompson:
This isn’t even the first intense proxy war between the US and Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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“Hasn’t resulted in nuclear war so far” seems like an odd criteria to choose for success. Do you agree with Biden that the risk of nuclear war is higher than it’s been since the Cuban Missile Crisis? If so, that seems not great, right?
Any action other than immediate capitulation raises the odds of nuclear war
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What do you mean?
Russia’s threatening nuclear war not because it’s lost territory it previously had, but because it hasn’t gained enough territory from its conquest and is attempting to solidify its gains.
Russia could just as easily threaten nuclear war is Ukraine itself were defeating Russia. The only thing that would reduce the threat of nuclear war to 0% is for everyone to immediately capitulate to Russia’s demands.
Let’s say the US stops sharing battlefield intelligence with Ukraine and withdraws any CIA/special ops guys from Ukraine. Does that raise the risk of nuclear war or lower it?
Neither
And if the US stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine at all? Same thing?
I generally don’t think that the West should get involved in any of the former Soviet republics. I guess the upside is that Ukraine could end up in the US sphere of influence? It’s not clear to my why that benefits US citizens to any significant degree.
I think that should be the primary concern when governments are crafting foreign policy. How does this policy help our country and our citizens?
I understand this general framework would be a significant departure from US foreign policy of the past few decades.