No, you’re right we should just keep escalating and escalating.
Win at all costs and sleep walk into world war 3.
Where is this escalation you speak of?
Putin’s 3 day Special Military Operation started with an invasion of Ukraine by Russia - FACT
2.5 years later, it is still ongoing with no clear end in sight - FACT
Russia’s ability to wage war has been seriously hurt by their performance so far - FACT
No external country has joined in the fighting on either side - FACT
So again, where is this escalation you speak of?
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@planb Well that’s where our opinions differ, we aren’t sleep walking into WW3, as per my previous post, the West shouldn’t fall for that. WW3 didn’t happen when the USSR collapsed, and it won’t if Russia loses this War. The oligarchs aren’t suicidal.
I’d actually make the opposite argument, by not opposing Putin we embolden authoritarianism, and therefore are closer to WW3.
What will Putin think of the Baltic states if he succeeds in Ukraine. What do you think China will think regarding Taiwan if the U.S stop supporting Ukraine and it falls.
What will Japan and Korea do regarding their own security if they lose faith in the U.S ability to support allies, in relation to China?
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In May the US gave Ukraine the green light to use their weapons offensively inside Russian territory.
Is this escalation or de-escalation ?
That is escalation…I’ll give you that.
But I certainly don’t see that as a precursor to WW3 breaking out.
In fact, I see it as giving Ukraine the potential to further damage Russia’s ability to wage war upon them.
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It could be one of the dominoes
Yea I don’t even want to unpack China, haha.
The fall of the USSR isn’t really a comparable scenario, is it?
USSR losing in Afghanistan then collapsing shortly after.
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Yea, okay - I probably need to brush up on my history on that one.
And it could just as easily bring about Russia’s demise.
Fear of what might happen brought about Appeasement in the 1930s.
Hitler kept saying he would stop after each country he overran.
But he never did.
Putin is the same…he wants all of the old USSR back under the Russian umbrella.
Why do think that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are such strong backers of Ukraine?
They know that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, they are likely next on his agenda.
There is no appeasing Putin…he needs to be beaten and to be shown to have been beaten.
Then maybe, the Russian people might throw him out as they have to be sick of losing their loved ones for nothing.
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C’mon now, we can’t be back to Hitler comparisons.
@planb Yeah, history is a good indication. The world will persevere, doomsday isn’t as close as it appears, but we are at an important juncture in history right now and the West needs to figure out how much the ideals of democracy mean to them. (despite its flaws…I mean we are in the U.S politics thread after all, one of the more chaotic and flawed democracies, but it’s better than the Putin style alternative!)
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Ok.
Escalation management. This isn’t a simple game where the US controls all the cards. This hasn’t played out as the RW talking points suggest.
The war in Ukraine has not escalated in any meaningful way. I say this as an Ukraine war nerd who has watched this in an absurd amount of detail for 700+ days.
What has happened is that Russia has threatened nuclear retaliation for every minor uplift in support that Ukraine gets. Then when each step is provided, Russia immediately says that this is inconsequential and not anything for them to be concerned about. Fighter jets. Tanks. HIMARS. Stormshadow. ATACMS. Everything came with threats and then was downplayed.
The reason is that Russia loses every step from here up the escalation ladder. They would get absolutely obliterated in any conventional conflict. They would break even in a nuclear duel, meaning they’d be dead too.
So what we’ve been seeing is Putin take advantage of what he sees as Western weakness and Biden act timidly in an effort to “manage escalation”. The reason this war happened is that Putin believed there wouldn’t be a Western response, that we wouldn’t escalate and he could get away with a war of conquest backed by nuclear threats.
(FYI this blaming US for escalation stuff traces back to Russian propaganda, in case you want to review what media you are taking in)
…
As for the $58B that the US has given Ukraine… only a tiny fraction of it was actually provided to Ukraine directly. The vast vast majority of the funding was directed into domestic US production. It has uplifted manufacturing capacity for munitions that are directly useful in a potential conflict with China. Vast swathes of 1970s equipment has been liquidated and replaced with systems that are relevant to a Pacific conflict.
It’s cunning budget manipulation, but this has in effect been a positive transformation of the US military to the long planned pivot to China. And the bonus of this is they’ve successfully destroyed the Russian army so badly that it will take a full decade to rebuild to something resembling the force that rolled over the border in 2022.
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Nice detailed response, Benny.
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I’m not a big fan of Biden on this, but my frustration is he’s been timid. If Obama had gone hard back in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea, the 2022 war may not have happened.
There’s sometimes a time where not escalating is a bad thing.
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A question though.
As pointed out above, Is green lighting use of US weapons offensively not an escalation?
This seems significant.
When you say Russia would be obliterated in conventional conflict, do you mean against the US?
Or against Ukraine?
There may also be more than a hint of truth to the statements made by Trump that Putin saw the absolute fiasco that was the US withdrawal from Afghanistan then he was emboldened to such a degree in his belief in US weakness that he put his long-term plans to annex Ukraine into fast forward.
Yeah it becomes appeasement. @planb hates the Hitler comparisons but again history tells us alot.
@Benny40 I’m interested in your opinion though on Biden’s timid response. Is that somewhat strategic because the U.S can pivot the investment to China as you said, and also drag the conflict out longer inflicting more economic and military pain on Russia.
The U.S can’t lose in a way with a timid response?