Sure, just like Neville Chamberlain prevented the German-Czechoslovakian war.
The odds of Putin deciding to do a Hitler are lower than the odds of the US installing a Hitler in Russia with some sort of ill-advised regime change exercise or economic pressure campaign. The strategy that has worked multiple times is encouraging economic prosperity as soon as possible, and promoting stable government even if they aren't very good. Long lived dictators generally aren't interested in stirring up major catastrophes that will lead to them dying.
And if the US hadn't spent the last few decades marching NATO's borders towards Moscow the Russian army would probably not be in Ukraine today, following similar logic. There is no need to start fighting if there was no threat and the Ukraine government had held together through 2014.
Last Russian soldiers left Poland in 1993.
> if US hadn't spent the last few decades marching NATO's borders towards Moscow
They would be in Poland right now. Completely unwelcomed. With me at the front lines. (I was born 40km from Kaliningrad)
Also, US was not marching anywhere. We wanted to join NATO and EU.
Central and Eastern Europeans have agency and goals independent from USA.
> There is no need to start fighting if there was no threat and the Ukraine government had held together through 2014.
Russian were string trouble in split Ukraine long before that.
The biggest issue with Ukraine for Russians was neighborhood of EU and prosperous Poland.
In 1991 after collapse of Soviet Union Polish and Ukrainian economies were exactly the same size. Last year Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukrainians. Ukrainians are associating success of Poland with the EU membership and related reforms.
And again people, dammit, have agency. We want prosperity and security.
WE DO NOT WANT TO BE BUFFER STATES.
Also, 2014 revolution was over joining EU, not NATO. Ukrainians were not that excited about NATO in 2014 until Russia invaded them. Then they decided to put the goal of joining NATO into constitution.
Yes, it's widely regarded as a mistake to be punitive to the replacement regime after you win the war. The Marshall Plan is the new model. If the Russians throw out Putin, we should have a similar plan in place.
> The odds of Putin deciding to do a Hitler...
are a hundred percent, as he's already performed acts of genocide in Ukraine. I hope he takes Hitler's final decisions to heart, though.
> And if the US hadn't spent the last few decades marching NATO's borders towards Moscow...
Russia just triggered the most significant expansion of NATO's borders in years via their actions, and their invasion of Ukraine brings the Russian border even closer to NATO.
The idea that Russia gets to tell countries like Poland they can't make alliances is lunacy, too. Bullies love to isolate their potential victims from friends.
> The odds of Putin deciding to do a Hitler
This has already happened with the level of war crimes in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
But every conflict must be compared to WWII (in which we are the good guys and the other side is literally Hitler) don'tcha know?
This sort of reductive simplistic childish thinking is going to be the undoing of the Collective West, you can't wish a state of affairs into being no matter how much you desire and no matter how much you propagandize your own populous.
Fair play to you for speaking out.
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crickets from HN about the biggest news in tech at the moment:
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1582646512202395648 “This is real: Masha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and a bunch of other senators sent a letter to Biden "demanding he act quickly to prevent Huawei building the [PXW] semiconductor plant."
The plant in question is... in Shenzhen, China!“
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/17/export-...
Western suppliers cut ties with Chinese chipmakers as U.S. curbs bite
Export controls aim to deprive China of equipment and software it needs to manufacture high-end chips with military applications
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prediction: this spells the beginning of the end for the so-called West's dominance in high-tech semiconductor manufacturing