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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

It's a scary world we live in when countries with nuclear weapons start to fight with eachother. I wish Biden and Putin would try everything to make a new deal instead of stopping trading with eachother.

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We famously tried policies of appeasement for dictators in Europe looking to expand their borders in the past, without success.

This keeps being thrown out but it doesn't change the fact that we are provoking a massive nuclear threat at the moment.

There will be no massive nuclear attack of any kind. War is just an extension to politics, it has its goals. Everyone around Putin knows about MAD and have their own families, no one will sacrifice them to altar of Putin, he will be removed before anything like that happens. Your fear is exactly what he wants, this is his goal, to paralyze the west in fear so he can take country by country in upcoming years. The only language he understands is force and strength, he will take how much you will give him until you say no more.

That was before nuclear weapons though.

The fact that dictatorships have nuclear weapons doesn't change the fact that their ambitions must be resisted, at the cost of war if necessary.

The West has called Putin's bluff, and will continue to do so in the future.

If Russia wants to start a nuclear war, that will be on them.

That they have nuclear weapons changes little. The point is that men like this cannot be appeased. What does Putin want for? He’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful men on the planet. Yet he’s still seeking more wealth and power, and has demonstrated that he’s willing to use extreme force to get it. It’s not a rational drive. Putin could have resigned and lived in utmost luxury until the day he dies but instead he chooses a high risk pursuit of power for power’s sake. There’s no halting point here, no obvious point where he would decide he had “enough” power. Why would he be satisfied with Ukraine? With that in mind, unless you are prepared to give him everything: it is a question of how, not if, he must be resisted.

Russia doesn't want to make a deal.

India and Pakistan went to a war(although localized one) after they were nuclear powers. I think as long as you give the other side a way to back out, nuclear war is not likely.

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