"Unwilling to go to direct war against Putin" means Putin can nibble at Europe one country at a time.
"cant risk WW3 over Ukraine"
"cant risk WW3 over Poland"
"cant risk WW3 over Latvia"
"cant risk WW3 over Estonia"
etc, etc ...
"cant risk WW3 over Ukraine"
"cant risk WW3 over Poland"
"cant risk WW3 over Latvia"
"cant risk WW3 over Estonia"
etc, etc ...
1914 saw large imperialist empires on both sides. There were no real "good guys" in that war, as both sides were looking to either keep and consolidate power over colonial empires (the Entente) or break up the colonial empires to get some for themselves (the Germans and Austrians).
1939 saw an ambitious despot attack democracies to brutally subjugate them. That is also what we are seeing now.
My point here isn't that russia will be proven right in the future. Its that war always sounds like a good solution, or even the only solution to avoid something worse. But we have to avoid getting into that same cycle over and over again, Especially when we are in a nuclear world.
By the way, the comparison with 1939 Germany is completely spurious imo. Germany did not attack Poland because it was a democracy, had already purged it's own Jewish population, had started gassing the disabled and mentally ill, had already eaten 2 medium-sized countries in a year, was in an offensive pact with italy, openly planned to engage in ethnic cleansing...
If you think that is comparable to the current situation then all nuance has been lost and all wars are comparable to ww2. That ww2 was morally unambiguous makes it very convenient to use and project ourselves as the equivalent of the allies in 1939 and call for military action while the opposite is true for the first war. But the comparison is still baseless beyond the war rhetoric
I'm starting to feel that our sense of morality is not well adapted to a world where a despot can end civilization with the push of a button.
We may be a week or two from "culmination point" when the strength of the Ukrainian forces exceeds that of the Russian ones.
And then those other countries are NATO and attacking them would be quite a different kettle of fish. Those truck convoys probably would have been smoking ruins within a day if NATO air forces had had a go.
My country is next on the list together with other Baltic nations. This current inaction is identical to start of WW2 with everyone paranoid about their own nose and "unnecessary escalation". We have maybe 2-3 weeks to sent troops into UKR before its too late. If we dont help Ukraine its a sign NATO wont intervene beyond sending arms and "stay strong" prayers when our time comes. Another Yalta is on the table, after all why should we risk Nuclear war if Putin gives us a word he will stop at German border, right? :(