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Comment by borissk | Hacker News Reader

Meeting aggression with aggressive response is what leads to escalation. Escalation of conflicts between nuclear powers sooner or later will end with some unfortunate consequences.

Facing an aggressive Russian or Chinese regime, armed with nukes and more or less modern conventional forces doesn't leave a lot of options for Western politicians. Specifically Putin have reacted with raising stakes and escalation every time he's been challenged. If the other side reacts in the same way a nuclear war is inevitable. There is no magical "leadership" that can resolve complicated conflicts without taking enormous risks with the future of humankind.

The war in Ukraine was handled by the West politicians quite well IMHO. They supplied Ukraine with enough weapons and money to be able to free big parts of occupied territories and to stop any future Russian advances.

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I emphatically disagree. A weak, non-committal response guarantees continued, escalating aggression. This has been amply demonstrated throughout history.

In particular, the West's response in Ukraine is a travesty: just enough weaponry to keep Ukraine going, but not enough for a decisive victory.

Ukraine is currently the only country that can defeat Russia. NATO countries are bound up in the treaty; all they can do is gear up to face Russia's re-militarized economy. The time to nip it in the bud was more than a year ago, before Putin had a chance to consolidate his grip over the country.

Proper leadership is to stand up for what's right, and to be ready to escalate beyond your opponent. However, the ethical principles that underpin "rightness" are missing in the majority of our political leaders.

> Ukraine is currently the only country that can defeat Russia.

No, they’ve demonstrably shown they can not. No wonder weapons would have changed the outcome.

The travesty was the wests meddling in Ukraine politics and having them antagonize Russia for years leading up to the civil war and invasion. Proper diplomacy would have saved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives.

Pretending the military always knows the right thing to do would have led to MacArthur nuking Korea.

Unfortunately, it's a widespread misconception that countries "antagonize" Russia, and even worse that this is somehow a "civil" war.

Make no mistake, Russia is the aggressor here. And they've done a really good job with the misinformation campaign.

There is no diplomacy with Russia, only a show of overwhelming force. Period.

It was proper democracy that antagonised Russia. People in Ukraine keep voting the wrong way as far as Putin is concerned.

> A weak, non-committal response guarantees continued, escalating aggression. This has been amply demonstrated throughout history.

What about Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Afghanistan?

> The time to nip it in the bud was more than a year ago, before Putin had a chance to consolidate his grip over the country.

What form would this nipping have taken?

NATO should have stepped in from the start, at Ukraine's invitation. Putin, and Russians, have no say in this.

Millions of refugees, and Russia's ramped up militarization, together with its continuing destabilization of Europe, is a clear security threat.

And I'm stunned that Ukraine continues to fight this war within its borders. It's almost as though there's some invisible hand preventing them from taking the war directly to Moscow...

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