I have to wonder if there's a whole lot of projection going on from the
Russian Putin side. We, as westerners, have zero interest in invading Russia, so we think it's weird that Russians want to invade their neighbors. However, Putin is obviously *very* interested in invading his neighbors, so perhaps his instinct is to believe that the West wants to invade Russia in turn? Or, put another way, since Putin clearly has imperial ambitions, and wants to conquer other countries, he assumes other countries have the same ambitions?
Russia says setting up a no-fly zone would be a declaration of war, but so fucking what? It's not Russia's airspace so I don't understand why anyone takes that demand seriously. It's straight up terrorism: I'm going to take Ukraine, and if any other country tries to come into THEIR airspace we will nuke them. What? It's fucking insane that anyone is tolerating that bullshit. And if the logic is that we must acquiesce to all of Russia's insane and illogical demands because we fear MAD, then I don't understand how it makes sense to cripple them economically.
I keep thinking this through in my head, and your logic does seem sound.
There's no reason at all to avoid defending Ukraine's airspace. It might escalate things with Russia . . . but that's entirely on Russia. They escalated things by invading a sovereign nation without cause. A policy of appeasement in the hopes of avoiding war has not historically worked out all that well when tried against an unreasonable aggressor in Europe.
Agreed. I'm trying to think of a time when appeasement worked. I suppose you could point at North/South Korea, since they've been fairly peaceful for about 70 years, despite ceding the northern half of the country. Certainly it hasn't worked, historically, in Europe.
There is a huge capability gap between Russia and everyone else, in terms of incremental responses. Everyone else has everything from economic sanctions, to supplying arms to Ukraine, to supplying money to Ukraine, to all sorts of direct, conventional warfare, all the way up to nuclear strikes. And all of that is backed by economies that are functioning just fine, albeit with higher fuel costs. In other words, we have a whole spectrum of increasingly-painful ways to respond to Russia's aggression without actually putting our own people in harm's way.
What leverage does Russia have? They have a military, and could ratchet up the war crimes until we say "enough" or they have destroyed the entire country. They could cut off natural gas supplies to Europe (but that might harm them more than it would harm Europe, and would
devastate them in the long run as Europe transitions off of Russian oil). They have chemical weapons, and they have nukes. And Putin apparently has few inhibitions against sacrificing the lives of his subjects. With few levers at hand, he's using what he can, which at this point means mass destruction and incrementally-worse war crimes.
What if we flipped the script, and forced him to deal with the same sort of incrementalism the Russians are displaying?
We're supplying infantry weapons currently, and presumably (hopefully!) a lot of intel, and thus far, Putin hasn't responded with either of his last two cards--nukes or chemical weapons. The international sanctions have devalued the Ruble tremendously, and frozen much of Russia's assets, and while they have vocally complained, it hasn't crossed their red line (if there is one). What if we started to supply, say, fuel? Fuel trucks? Anti tank barricades? Radar systems? An MLRS or dozen? Personnel to train the UA on the MLRS? The MiG-29's from Poland? Some light artillery? Heavier artillery? What if we start flying unmanned, unarmed drones around Ukraine, with the Ukrainian government's permission, as "observers"? Which of those is a step too far for the Russians to tolerate?
Topic: Ukraine (Read 563008 times)
