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It's debatable whether there is anyone in office in a NATO country who is prepared to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, or who has sufficient democratic political support to manage or sustain a land war. If China takes Taiwan at the same time, it's mutally beneficial for both Putin and Xi. What leader in NATO can persuasively threaten either Xi or Putin right now, let alone if they acted together?
The responses on this thread haven't really shown a capability for reasoning about the conflicts in economic or abstract terms, which is concerning because as a sample, if an inability to be clear eyed and unblinking about these things is consistent with the view of people in media policy circles, not only is there is a real risk of being blindsided, but it's evidence of a culturally held bias that creates the incentive for these powers to act.
FTFY
Or just used the threat of doing so to take Ukraine piece by piece.
If Russia were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it would be a pariah for centuries, assuming it didn't lead to global thermonuclear war.
This seems to be the case, but no one knows for sure. It's likely that there are people in power who think they can gain an advantage using tactical nukes. Some weapons are specifically designed for this purpose, such as the American ER weapons (PDF) https://www.llnl.gov/sites/www/files/1975.pdf
Chernobyl released ~400 times as much radioactive material into the environment as the Hiroshima bomb. The nuke isotopes are also much shorter lived than what Chernobyl released.
Why are you also denying sovereignty of those countries?
Whose soverignty? Russias? What on earth does the dealings of Estonia or Finland have to do with the sovereignty of Russia? Or did you mean something else?
> what incentive or assurance does Russia have for leaving its former territories exposed to being absorbed by it
What do you mean assurance or incentive? If they want to join a defensive pact they are sovereign and can do so (please, talk about Canada or Mexico joining China/Russia in a military alliance it would really lift the quality of discourse)
(Depending on the surrounding circumstances, it might not be the "start" of WWIII. If Russia invaded Estonia tomorrow, WWIII would probably be seen as starting with the Russo-Ukrainian invasion of 2022.)
The problem with this view is that you are completely alienating the sovereignty of countries within those buffer regions. As an example, take the Baltics: they were under Soviet influence (and actual control, at some points), fought it off, and never felt safe in their independence, because they were within Russia's sphere of influence, even if they weren't within Russia's borders. Within these people's minds, they weren't truly sovereign - the actions of their governments had to appease Russia, or otherwise risk military conflict with a major power, which they would very likely lose, losing what little sovereignty they had. You can certainly see why this would be undesirable for these buffer regions, I hope?
NATO (and later, to a lesser extent militarily but a larger extent economically and culturally, the EU) gave these countries a way out, a hope to get out of the "Russkiy Mir" - Russian World. While Russia was weakened and unwilling to engage in military conflict, they joined NATO, which meant that they no longer needed to pay any mind to Russian influence and sensibilities: if Russia wanted them back, they'd have a fighting chance, instead of being rolled over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWzI9V3WSnc
On the other side, to have any claim that anyone wants to be a part of russia is to literally invade them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
or send FSB colonel to command russian "volunteers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin
Here's said war criminal admitting there was near zero support for russian annexation on the ground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcCqrzctxH4
I fully agree with you - NATO -is- the US Sphere of Influence made manifest. The difference (in my view, anyway) is that the US is a better master than Russia or China, at least at this moment in time. The US tries to keep appearances at least by treating its partners as, well, partners. And the NATO military officials do believe we're all peers, at least all the ones I've had personal dealings with. Russia does no such thing (see Belarus).
But an even bigger difference, and the most important one, is this: Ukraine seems to want the EU and NATO. Sure, there's the oft-used argument that Euromaidan had US hand in it, but the US does not by itself mobilize nearly one million people (by Russian sources - so they'd have reason to diminish those numbers). Besides, Ukraine has been moving towards the EU as a country (even if not accompanied by Russian-aligned politicians) for years before Euromaidan. There's the more realistic complication that Eastern Ukraine is far more Euro and NATO skeptical than Western Ukraine. But those are internal Ukrainian problems, and not something neither the US, the EU, nor the Russian Federation should meddle in except for calling for peace, negotiations, and compromise.
Yes, that's the entire point of comments like this: You can't discount his viewpoint when trying to figure out Russia's next actions.
Putin said that Russia does not need a world if Russia is not in it. The West is saying they're not okay with a militaristic expansionist nuclear-threatening Russia in the world. I tend to agree with the West's viewpoint, even knowing what may ultimately come from it.
There's no obligation to engage in bad takes. Just downvote and move on.
Or this is bad because it might cause Russia to attack the Baltic states.
Or so now it's only fair if Russia attacks the Baltic states.
All of which are nonsense.
I'd rather say a big portion of nowadays so-called „Russian federation“ is rightful territory of Baltic states, Poland and Finland.
Although historically Finland was considered one of 4 Baltic states. The 4 states that escaped Russian empire after WW1. It shrunk to 3 after WW2 and (re-)occupation of 3 of 4 of them.
What do you mean by Russian sovereignty in this sentence? What does it include?
The problem is Russia. Russia could be a normal country like its neighbors and make money from trading goods while wooing foreign investors, but Putin took the history books he read too seriously and thinks he can pull another round of territorial conquests.
I don't see how other countries joining a defensive pact "mitigates" Russian sovereignty. No one is encroaching on Russia's borders.
Kinda makes one wonder how come the privileged part of the world that lead us after "the end of history" now seems to have strained or even terrible relations with Russia, China, India, most of the Middle East (even Saudis are super grumpy at this point), half of Africa, and even souther parts of Americas.
All this talk of "mutually beneficial peaceful trade" and "respect for sovereignty" is cheap and empty - systemically confirmed in practice in many parts of the world, in different environments, tested against one constant.
This is really horrifying how the perspectives on the current directly oppose each other, completely Orwellian.
It's not like it's some ancient history, all of this is following the lessons learned from interactions in the 2000s - when the US had been violating the INF treaty with missile "defence" system in Poland and had uncorked local ethnic conflict with arms supply.
From Russia's point of view the events of 2013 in Ukraine along with the previous grievances (the Second Chechen War, Georgia, NATO missile systems, etc), along with the denial of its pleads of new security agreements - were all a consecutive persistent strategy against it.
And sorry, sue me, downvote me and tell me I'm brainwashed all you want, but this is a fair point - let's not pretend that NATO is a strictly defensive organization and nothing ever more than that.
It's funny how Russia always pretend to be a victim when it's the aggressor. God forbid someone endangers „rightfully conquested“ territories :D
Why put up with NATO expansion? Russia's expansion is also totally defensive! wink-wink
> It's funny how Russia always pretend to be a victim
It's ironic how Russia is always assumed to be a passive unresponsive corpse with no concerns or perspective and memory of its own.
I wonder if it's even hypothetically possible for people to try to fairly grasp that perspective, otherwise Europe (and yeah, that includes Russia) would be an "interesting" place to be in the upcoming years.
Indeed, and apologists of Russia often take this position: in their mind, Russia has no will and no ambitions, and only reacts to what the US is doing. Whatever they do is always the fault of americans and never a manifestation of their own will.
Here in Eastern Europe the perspective is a bit different: Russia is a failed state that never developed a free and open civil society, and instead fluctuates between soft and hard authoritarianism. Their dictators tend to develop imperialist delusions from time to time and that makes them a direct threat to their neighbors and that's why everyone is so keen on building international cooperation to set up an unified front against Russian invasions. The ground under my feet has seen Russian invasions, raping, pillaging every 1-2 generations for as long as Russians have existed.
Thank you for that perspective, but isn't it similar to the mindset of north-atlantics? "Russia is acting totally unprovoked, we hoped for totally good neighborhood trade and whatnot"
> Here in Eastern Europe the perspective is a bit different: Russia is a failed state that never developed a free and open civil society
I've been to Eastern Europe and my experience with it makes me feel like this is a European chauvinism mentality bit and a patting thyselves on the back.
> Their dictators tend to develop imperialist delusions from time to time and that makes them a direct threat to their neighbors and that's why everyone is so keen on building international cooperation to set up an unified front against Russian invasions.
Eh, Russia is fighting against imperialism (at least from its perspective) and that "international cooperation" largely consists of countries that had historical struggles with Russia, as you say.
> The ground under my feet has seen Russian invasions, raping, pillaging every 1-2 generations for as long as Russians have existed.
I always chuckle when Europeans try to do some historical moral grandstanding. Yo, man, Europe is the source of the most of genocides and is the birthplace of fascism and nazism. The people that had lived on the ground under your feet had been doing the same to everyone around, including Russians, all while being awfully proud of themselves. Even more so when spoken of Baltic states, but whatever, by all accounts, the historical perception of Europeans is that of pompous brutal animals.
Eastern european anti-Russian stance is chauvinism, but Russian imperialism worth defending? Niiice.
> I always chuckle when Europeans try to do some historical moral grandstanding. Yo, man, Europe is the source of the most of genocides and is the birthplace of fascism and nazism.
Really?
You may want to look into Golden Horde, Mongolians, Khmers, Chinese commies, Japanese empire, all sorts of shit in subsaharan Africa.. Not to mention pre-european Americas history.
> The people that had lived on the ground under your feet had been doing the same to everyone around, including Russians, all while being awfully proud of themselves.
If you want to play this game... Muscovites are a wee of a special crowd around here. Yes, people here are no saints. But some people take it a wee further. Everybody did wage war here and there. But not everybody went this far with „rape & pillage“ part.
And, despite victimhood card they love to play, modern Russia is mostly just a cruel expansion of duchy of Moscow. Rather than trying to defend from surrounding people. Unfortunately their tactics seem to work pretty well.
> Even more so when spoken of Baltic states
Alright, bring it on :) What are you going to throw at us? Nazi or Soviet war crimes where our local collaborators gave them a helping hand?
The difference between NATO's expansion and Russia's expansion is that Finland is not under a threat of violence from NATO. Quite clearly Russia is threatening Ukraine with violence if it doesn't become part of Russia.
That would be why Russia's expansion isn't totally defensive. I mean, it's defensive for Russia sure. Just not for Ukraine.
Similar to the old joke. A man from American tells his Soviet friend; freedom is being able to criticize Regan from outside the White House without being arrested. His Soviet friend tells him; we have freedom too! You can criticize Regan from outside the Kremlin as well!
But Finland isn't technically under a threat of violence from Russia. "Wasn't" at least, as there had been no warm grievances that anyone really cared about.
You'll say that Finland has to assume threat and mitigate risks, but this is hardly any different from Russia's perspective against NATO.
> Quite clearly Russia is threatening Ukraine with violence if it doesn't become part of Russia.
Eh, methinks this is an overestimation of Russia's ambition. One could realistically argue that Russia merely "defends" east-leaning loyalish "Russian-speaking" regions. Realistically, even action towards Odessa would automatically involve Prednisone and then no one would be handle that Genie without major clusterfuck.
> I mean, it's defensive for Russia sure. Just not for Ukraine.
Sure, but that's exactly the point I am trying to convey: enemy military can talk about "defense" all it wants, but at the end of the day their job is to kill people and that might as well include you.
Finland is considered by Russia to be an unfriendly country. That's an escalation towards violence and the USSR and Finland have fought several wars. No reason to wait a decade to get invaded like Ukraine; just join NATO now while you can.
The difference is how Finland and Russia are mitigating their threats. Finland is mitigating the threat of Russia by joining a defense alliance. Russia is mitigating the threat of NATO's power expansion by invading countries that might join.
Russia could create their own defense alliance, lets call it the Warsaw Pact. And then it could allow Ukraine to join their Warsaw Pact. If NATO invaded Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from joining the Warsaw pact I'd say NATO was in the wrong.
> Eh, methinks this is an overestimation of Russia's ambition. One could realistically argue that Russia merely "defends" east-leaning loyalish "Russian-speaking" regions. Realistically, even action towards Odessa would automatically involve Prednisone and then no one would be handle that Genie without major clusterfuck.
The problem is the phrase "regions". Nobody cares when you kill people within your own borders. Ukraine is outside of Russia's borders and so we care.
In fact, I am very concerned about its death-worshipping perspective and distorted memory.
You still have to stand up to a bully, or you encourage them. A strategic mistake was not putting severe sanctions on Russia in 2014 when they annexed Crimea.
Elaborate? The point of distorted memories and elective outlooks on the past event had been on my mind for some time now.
> bully
Anthropomorphizing countries distorts reality, but do you honestly don't see how every narrative of Russian imperialism and so on could be just as well applied to western post-Cold War totally never-ever threatened very polite expansionism?
Anthropomorphizing coutries - yes it distorts, but much less so in dictatorships, because so few (actual!) people hold the reigns. Putin is a bully, let's rephrase it like that. Not kicking his balls encourages him and others like him.
What? Neither of those involved NATO at all?
Georgia was one of the thirst countries of that were pushed to NATO where things went badly. The US had been slowly supplying Georgia with NATO equipment and this shifted the balance of power and "status quo" and uncorked a local ethnic conflict - president Saakashvili attempted to score patriotism points, hoping that NATO would back him and that Russia would not act on Sochi agreement. NATO obviously didn't back his invasion.
Point is, there is no much trust in western military branch from the perspective of those outside it's protection.
I'm so sorry.
at which point now their new borders would be even more directly exposed to NATO borders. How does this make any sense?