Allowing Russia to do whatever the hell it likes because we're too afraid of MAD will be what kills the West. He'll push against a NATO member soon enough. If we can't stand up for them, he won't stop. And even non-military, these punitive sanctions drive us all closer to midnight, as we plunge the citizens of Russia into a deep economic depression.
Short of a friendly and broadly supported coup or a complete ideological u-turn from Putin, there is no way forward here that doesn't risk everything. Trying to ignore it seems the least helpful.
> Allowing Russia to do whatever the hell it likes because we're too afraid of MAD will be what kills the West. He'll push against a NATO member soon enough. If we can't stand up for them, he won't stop.
This is fear mongering, why the hell do you want a nuclear war so bad. I hope NATO officials keep sanity and do not start a war with russia.
> there is no way forward here that doesn't risk everything.
Yes there is, NATO can provide arms to ukrainian people and they need to fight for their freedom.
Saying ~"don't take any direct action or he'll nuke us all" is also fear-mongering. He might. From what we've seen recently, we need to understand that he might anyway.
Sitting on the sidelines and expecting the tiny countries that surround Russia to individually win wars, or expecting the beaten and suppressed peoples of Russia, Belarus, etc to rise up is inhumane… because they will fight. And die.
And say we do sit it out. Do you think the restoration of the USSR is what's going to bring us nuclear peace? Or just another border, more tension, more of this?
We've played this game before. As a European, my life would be extraordinarily different if the world hadn't eventually come together 81 years ago. Just imagine if Europe and the US had drawn together two years earlier.
I don't want nuclear war but holding up the threat of that as a cause for inaction —heaping guns on Ukraine while they're outnumbered 20:1 doesn't count— is the rank cowardice that nuclear dictators count on to get away with murder. It's not good enough.
This conflict is not about restoring USSR, It is about Ukraine joining NATO. No Russian leader is going to allow Ukraine to join NATO, because it is a serious danger to their own country.
Er, Moscow surrounded by subservient states seems an awful lot like the later iterations of the USSR and the route they're using to get there is demonstrably more dangerous than anything NATO would do. The more violent Russia is, the greater the call for NATO and missile shields on its doorstep.
And again, allowing Putin to subsume a new democracy doesn't make the world safer. It shows him he can dictate over his neighbours while the West does nothing.
