That these two things are remotely comparable in you mind is crazy. The Baltics are NATO members. NATO has no obligations at all to Ukraine.
To Putin they are all lost territory to be reclaimed.
The US would be at war with Russia if the Russians invaded the Baltics. That’s a big difference! I agree it’s not implausible that Russia could test NATO by invading the Baltics at some point in the future, especially if the US was in a war with China over Taiwan or something. That’s part of the powerful argument against NATO membership for the Baltics: the triple threat of the Baltics being completely insignificant to the US, basically indefensible, and lost territory of the Russians. And before someone posts a GDP graph of Estonia, yes, I know that joining the West was hugely positive for the Baltics.
Would we though? With Trump in the White House you think that happens? Creating an environment in which we do not go to war over eg Estonia has been Russia’s foreign policy project for years. It’s the entire point of backing Trump and Brexit and US and Euro neofascism.
Which one of these reasons no longer applies if the Baltics are not a member of NATO?
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Putin. He’s NATO’s archenemy and vice versa.
Most likely he will not be able to hold onto Ukraine and he won’t want to let go. It will cost him. NATO will increase his costs, accelerate payment, and accept an increased risk of direct conflict. If the risk of ww3 last year was 1%, then wild guess is we go to 2-5x that this year.
It’s crazy but that’s the game.
The threat of Russian domination of the Baltics is obviously much worse if NATO stayed out of the Baltics. The threat of starting a catastrophic nuclear war is much lower, which is what I care about. Expanding NATO to the Baltics makes the alliance more brittle and outcomes more unpredictable, exactly because the Baltics are so inconsequential to the US and so indefensible.
Why would US go to war with China over Taiwan - are they in NATO?
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OK when you say it’s an argument against NATO membership “for the Baltics” it sounds like you are arguing from their perspective, but I guess that’s not how you meant it.
No, but we used to be in another defensive pact with Taiwan until I think 1979. Then it was replaced with the Taiwan Relations Act when we recognized China diplomatically, which has strong but ambiguous language committing the US to the independence of Taiwan. I think its generally understood that the US Deep State is committed to the defense of Taiwan, and it makes sense when you understand that the mutual defensive pact was immediately replaced with the Taiwan Relations Act.
Wondering if the US could just pay for penis enlargement surgery for Putin.
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Some say that real penis enlargement is the key to world peace…
yes, i am admittedly biased here because that’s where i am from.
of course it’s gibberish because we are not operating with perfect insight into what both ukraine and russia know about each other on the ground. but i don’t see any outs for putin right now, barring an offramp of his own choosing. he will have to mobilize and he is prepared to use his nuclear threats. he has said that for years. he doesn’t err on the conservative side. his miscalculations are almost always catastrophic. you said it yourself there are no targets in ukraine or anywhere else that are tactical for russia.
the view that putin will not use nukes is predicated on the assumption (still!) that he will win or at least claim to have won in ukraine. that’s not going very well, and i don’t see how even the thickest of information fog can bring you to the conclusion that watching the fire enveloping 44m is the only sane response. scratch that, the crisis is 44m of ukranians plus millions of fleeing russians.
yes, the apparent racism is obvious. i’m not defending the policy to stay away from human catastrophes because of sklansky deaths. i am proposing that interventions are necessarily situational to where they can be first of all won, and equally material to whether the world community will support them.
treating it like czech/hungarian uprisings is erroneous, for instance nato power imbalance wasn’t yet what it is now, there wasn’t an EU or global integration like there is now.
treating it like the war in the balkans is also unrealistic, that conflict is described as both the west sat and allowed it to happen, AND at the same time western phantom strikes in serbia were serious violations of international law. like those things are completely ignoring years of how events actually unfolded and how many off-ramps were in fact not taken by war criminals.
yemen, syria, ethiopia, uygurs. you are right of course that the policy we chose didn’t do enough to stop those very real very evil crimes. which is the entire point that we must do something different now. i am not in the mood to equivocate that it would be unfair to the victims of those atrocities if the west saves ukraine now.
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lmao “didn’t do enough to stop”. We’re selling the Saudis weapons and spare parts and collaborating with them on intelligence. We’re actively aiding the Saudis in their war, which has killed a third of a million people and currently, right now, are putting millions at risk of starvation.
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For russian aggression to stop, Putin wants donbas, crimea, a russian stooge as PM under Zelensky, no NATO, no EU.
Zelenskyy said no.
Last week Putin wanted total surrender.
we are going to know very soon. i see it as putin has decided to use nukes when he has no other way to escalate anymore. it’s not a given due to sometimes plans are thwarted, and at the same time prepare to not be surprised if he does.
I don’t think he will ever use Nukes unless nukes are sent his way or a column of tanks is encircling Moscow.
There are many many escalatory steps to take before needing to use Nukes and he hasn’t even done those yet.
i don’t think nato at war with russia is going to progress to encircling moscow. just like it is impossible to occupy ukraine with 200k troops, it is impossible to occupy even west of moscow with nato troops. occupation of territory can only be achieved in relatively tiny slivers.
what escalatory steps do you think putin has between now and using nukes? are you talking about door to door cleansing of opposition in kharkiv? thermobaric strikes of city centers? pivoting away from kyiv to control the south?
I generally agree with Chris but an aspect missing from his analysis is the Budapest agreement. A burnt to the ground Ukraine particularly if there’s a nuke involved likely sets backs non-proliferation for 100 years and immediately sends every nation in Eastern Europe and Latin America at minimum scrambling to acquire one.
In fact Mearsheimer has written before that this is what he wants.
lol? Only thing I’ve read him say about that is that it’s rational for threatened countries to try to get nuclear weapons because it guarantees their security far better than some promise from some great power. Which is obviously true. Does Mearsheimer “want” every podunk power to get a nuke? Of course not, that’s absurd.