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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

IMO the right action is to counterattack with equal force, ideally in the same way. So cut one of their undersea cabals, fly jets near or over their airspace, etc.

That way, there's a clear line for what NATO will and won't do that Russia can understand. If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time. If Russia feels it's threatened, all they have to do is stop the attacks and NATO will stop. If Russia is going to nuclear warfare over not being able to unevenly harass NATO, because we can't read Putin and the oligarchs' minds, and what objective measure would allow that but not allow Russia to go nuclear warfare over not enslaving all of NATO, or claiming they can/others can't do everything not written unambiguously in a treaty (which would extend to new technologies like partitioning the solar system that we couldn't have thought ahead-of-time)?

But I'm no diplomat, so maybe I'm wrong and my idea would be catastrophic.

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>fly jets near

It's regularly done by both sides. And not only with jets, but also with nuclear-capable strategic bombers.

>over their airspace

Shooting it down will be a no-brainer for Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

>If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time.

So sending jets into their airspace is not an escalation, but shooting down the plain is? Yeap, you are not a diplomat.

Should I remind you how US reacted to the Soviet military presence in Cuba? On the US scale Ukraine is somewhere between Mexico and Texas in importance for Russia from the military point of view.

I don't know whether Russia is flying jets over NATO airspace. If they're not then NATO shouldn't be flying them over Russia.

In my idea it would be essential to confirm Russia is responsible for anything before the even counterattack. If there's an attack NATO can't confirm, the only thing they would do is defend and monitor more closely in case Russia tries the same attack in the future. Only the things that the Russian government definitely does to NATO, NATO would do to them.

So according to this principle, Russia can send military aid to the Syrian government to strike the US military bases on its territory and the US should not be able to retaliate?

Or station nukes in Venezuela

That would happen under Trump, and make Trump and Rubio look particularly weak at diplomacy.

In that case the US would be allowed to send aid to some other government to strike Russia (they're currently doing this with Ukraine but for a separate reason, for Ukraine's self-defense...)

Or in an ideal world, the US pays Syria more to not attack them, maybe even gets them to sign a treaty and commits to building Syria's economy and protecting them so they don't feel compelled to take Russian bribes. Although, it's certainly not so straightforward, prior US involvements in foreign countries have been disasters so it would have to be different somehow...

There are many other ways Russia could attack NATO that would be very hard to prove or evenly-counter. Russia could create a culture of NATO hatred and aggression, then set up "rewards" that are given out for obscure reasons, to get Russian NGOs and citizens to attack NATO in their own will. Then NATO can only encourage citizens to attack Russia, which I don't think any treaties forbid anyways, and creating a culture of hate is bad for other reasons. It's not a foolproof system.

But like for this event, there's evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the Russian government is directly involved (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...). And there are other ways NATO can weaken Russia's influence without even attacking them, like not trading with them, and (indirectly, by having a more liberal government) encouraging Russian citizens to emigrate.

So you do understand that the world can not work according to your simple tit-for-tat principle of "counterattack with equal force". It's a multi-dimensional game where each player has its own fairly opaque "reward function". "Equal force" from one point of view can become "disproportionate escalation" from another. This is where a proper understanding of your opponent becomes important.

Even worse, inside US and Russian governments there are groups with their own interests and agendas. The military-industrial complex can be interested in further escalation and fearmongering (i.e. "good war"), while civilian industry would prefer some kind of compromise as soon as possible (i.e. "poor peace").

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