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Scott shut this argument down. You can’t just play nuclear blackmail games. Maybe Ukraine is the right place to back down. Maybe it isn’t. That is a complicated question.
The solution to Russia has nukes is not back down anytime they want something. Then the whole world would be ruled by Russia. A thing worse than nuclear war.
The one big issue with not defending Ukraine is it raises a question of who really is under the umbrella of U.S. protection. Any country that thinks they might be outside of the security arrangement would be very interested in being a nuclear state. And as N Korea has proven just about any civilization can get nukes and a missile program. The reason even places like Taiwan do not have nukes despite real risks is because getting nukes would piss off the U.S. and they view security help from the west as more valuable than nukes.
Even places like Georgia would probably buy some nukes and launcher systems as soon as possible. And those type of states do have some political instability which means eventually some people you don’t like are nuclear.
The alternative is Russian Roulette. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the other guys won’t actually go through with it. But the thing is, you can’t ever misjudge in that game because if you do, the consequences, not just for your country and her allies, but for the entire world are absolutely catastrophic. Billions dead, mass extinction event, famine, radiation. And so the consequences should at least be weighed against the benefits with those consequences in mind. Is Ukraine worth it? I’m not sure. But what has always worried me about the NATO approach is that they’re playing chicken under the assumption that Putin never actually means it. And we honestly have no way to actually know this. We might guess, or assume, but we don’t know for sure that the next line we cross won’t be the one that Putin was serious about. The west in my view absolutely doesn’t take the nuclear threat seriously. They aren’t asking whether Putin would, and in fact they seem to be deluded into thinking that Putin is less likely to use them if he feels cornered. This simply defies common sense. If he loses in Ukraine his life is in danger because Russian coups tend to happen after Russia loses a war, and quite often the leader who lost gets executed. And so you have a cornered man whose only way out is the nukes, but that’s somehow something he’s going to care about. It’s nonsense, and dangerous nonsense.
You play Russian Roulette whether you fight in Ukraine or not. If you choose not to your just playing with a different gun.
Appeasement didn’t work in the ‘30’s. Looking weak today increases the risks China or Russia oversteps in the future. You even marginal raise the risks of a Russian/Chinese first strike if they think you are too soft to counter.
Playing brinkmanship is just part of the game. It can’t be removed.
"we need to fight this stupid war or we a pussy" this is the stupidest fucking argument in the world, it's responsible for so many deaths, and it's exactly why I don't trust the pro Ukraine people.
The point's less "we need to fight wars all the time", and more "if we give the impression that someone's under our protection, we need to actually back it up or people will think our word's worth nothing".
What word, exactly, did the US give that Ukraine was under their protection? When was this agreed? This is the problem. You people are constantly trying to push the scope of US responsibility, creep it out. And you're so eager for that expansion that you think you're not beholden to actually write those decisions down or make them legible to lesser nations. America can just swoop in on any war it feels like, or not, depending on what God told the President that day.
There's an argument that we shouldn't have made noises about Ukraine joining NATO. Once those noises were made, though, the idea of leaving them high and dry got significantly less tenable.
I do agree that the USA should drop the ambiguity over Taiwan; it's not helping matters.
I would appreciate it if you didn't impute random unrelated opinions to me.
This seems like a very bad deal that allows interventionists like yourself to ratchet up international obligations when in power just by making noises, and doesn't ever allow for those obligations to be abandoned.
Is there some reason for this immediate assumption that I am your enemy?
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