Hacker News Reader

Comment by darebak | Hacker News Reader

I think I am well versed in European history, thank you for your snarky comment. There's no reason to believe some local conflict will undermine "democracies" all over Europe, notwithstanding the media that is always preying on people's fears.

View on HN

Sorry I didn't realize that. There are actually a lot of people shouting loudly who never read history.

I thought the salami slicing pattern was obvious for everyone to see now.

Since it is not point is that to me and many others the situation looks very similar to what happened just before WWII.

The difference between now and WW2 is that all of Europe west of Ukraine ( excluding Switzerland), and most of it north, are in a single military alliance, which has nuclear weapons ( and France also does, not under the NATO chain of command).

Sure. That military alliance was just recently kicked out out Afghanistan, in a very embarrassing way. That Alliance's most powerful member, the US, aren't as strong as they were in the past neither for various reasons. And Putin, it seems, wants to find out when that block is willing to go to war against a peer (or near-peer) aggressor. Because I wouldn't take it for granted that NATO would actually start a shooting war with Russia over the almost indefensible Baltics (beyond some honor saving measures) or that the US would actually got to war with China over Taiwan. What prevented those scenarios was, IMHO, the perception of the Wests power, and the real soft power backing that perception up. Now a lot of that soft power is gone, and the perceived power decreased considerably. At the same time the perceived, and soft, power of countries like Russia and China increased a lot. The balance changed, and naturally people want to gauge, actively, by how much exactly that balance changed. Ukraine will just be the beginning if it isn't stopped.

You seems to see Russia as expanding, they perception, I think, it's exactly the opposite. Putin is not thinking in expanding is thinking in making an stand.

Everything is a question of perspective, isn't it? You managed to put my thoughts into one sentence, thanks for that. Because I think Putin is exactly thinking like that. Let's hope all he wants is to make a stand, and not revenge.

All conflicts start as "local". What we know today as WW2 was originally reported as the German-Polish war, for example.

Didn’t the British get involved the second Germany invaded Poland?

France as well. Poland was never a intended to stay local by the Nazis, it was the beginning. Not that France and Britain did a lot between the invasions of Poland and the low countries / France so.

Britain and France did declare war, yes. But there's a reason why it was called the "phony war" for several months (until Nazis invaded France).

Your first and second sentence seem to be in conflict with one another.

In my opinion the existence of an any authoritarian entity, let alone the expansion of one is a threat to democracy.

Until all nations are healthy democracies, the institution of democracy faces an existential threat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com