The people who want the USA/NATO to start World War 3 (some of whom like Fiona "we're already in WW3"[1] Hill played key roles in preventing a pre-war diplomatic off-ramp) are doing their damndest to propagandize the public into supporting WW3.
"World War 3 has already started, don't you see it would be more dangerous not to shoot down Russian planes? The nuke plant is melting down and a Russian talk column is headed to Berlin next. The Ghost of Kyiv just needs a wingman to complete his mission in memory of the Snake Island 13!"
If NATO enters this war it will make Iraq look like an overly rough game of laser tag in comparison.
> NATO is a mutual-defense alliance. It's not a defend-everyone-else alliance.
NATO is a regional security alliance that also includes a mutual defense obligation; it is not just a mutual defense alliance. Most NATO operations and missions, including most of those involving active combat, have not been mutual defense missions under Article 5.
> Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland, Georgia, Moldova, would not send troops to defend Russia attacking a NATO member like Latvia, for example.
That's purely speculative; they absolutely could legally and indeed Ireland, as a fellow EU member, has a mutual defense commitment to Latvia without being a NATO member. The existence of one treaty with mutual defense obligations does not prohibit collective self-defense between nations that aren't members, from o a non-member to a member, or from a member to a non-member without another treaty, nor does it prevent the existence of partially overlapping treaty organizations with mutual defense commitments.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population in 1999 weren't a NATO member state.
> NATO is a mutual-defense alliance. It's not a defend-everyone-else alliance.
> Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland, Georgia, Moldova, would not send troops to defend Russia attacking a NATO member like Latvia, for example.
It's not as clear cut as you make it sound:
1. Ukraine has wanted to join NATO for some time, and at at least some NATO countries have expressed a wish for it to join.
2. IIRC, Ukraine also sent troops to Afghanistan, which I believe was technically a defend-the-US NATO mission.
> We need to keep the rules crystal clear because one of the most important factors in preventing nuclear escalation is predictability.
IIRC, that's mainly about the use of nuclear forces themselves. It's also possible to be too predictable, which lets someone rules-lawyer you into submission, or to be callously bureaucratic and legalistic.
> 1. Ukraine has wanted to join NATO for some time, and at at least some NATO countries have expressed a wish for it to join.
Which ones?
France and Germany weren't particularly too warm about it.
Heck, NSC Anthony Lake to Clinton's first term thrown it out there to let Ukraine join NATO and his colleague responded that it is the "reddest of red lines" back in 1993[0]
As NATO enlarged since the fall of the iron curtain, it's neo-containment of Russia. As new countries are added to the alliance, they form the new eastern border, where if conflict starts, it would be on their soil. There'd be self-interest to encourage adding others to move it further east. It's not a judgement on them - if I was running a place that forms the eastern front of a containment alliance, I'd want someone to take my place too.
> George Bush this morning said he "strongly supported" Ukraine's attempt to join Nato, and warned he would not allow Russia to veto its membership bid.
> At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, NATO decided it would not yet offer membership to Georgia and Ukraine; nevertheless, Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members.[44]
>>>> 1. Ukraine has wanted to join NATO for some time, and at at least some NATO countries have expressed a wish for it to join.
>>> Which ones?
>> The US.
> So of course US would want Ukraine to join.
Then why ask "which ones"?
The point is Ukraine isn't totally outside of NATO unless you're being absurdly legalistic, and it's quite possible it would have come to a NATO country's defense.
NATO is an alliance led by the US. US drives most of the policy, but within NATO there’s still a lip service to get consensus within.
US wants Ukraine in NATO is a given, because it would make neo-containment so much easier.
The question that I ask is which other countries in the NATO is hot on the heels to let Ukraine in? It’s certainly not Western European countries who rightly recognized that such a move is a provocation to the Russian and likely to drag themselves in a conflict that they don’t want to be in, something that’s paid in money, bullets and blood.
The newly added members on the eastern edge of NATO in their self interest, might want that, but I don’t think they’re dumb enough to be that vocal about it for the same reasons as the Western Europeans.
> The point is Ukraine isn't totally outside of NATO unless you're being absurdly legalistic, and it's quite possible it would have come to a NATO country's defense.
No. This statement above is the absurd one. Ukraine is outside of NATO. Do you see US boots on the ground? France? UK? Germany? Poland? No. NATO members has article 5, which means members have to come to the defence of a member being attacked. Invocation of article 5 obligates the rest of the members to fight, there’s no choice there.
Why would Ukraine come to a NATO country’s defence? Ukraine isn’t obligated to do so, but it can choose to. Choosing to help a NATO country’s defence has no bearing on whether one is in the alliance.
But the world isn't divided into Russia, NATO, and countries no one cares if they're invaded. Just because a country is part of NATO, doesn't mean that that country can't respond to an invasion of a non-NATO country. And just because a country isn't part of NATO, doesn't mean they wouldn't help NATO either.
Dunno. Today two USAF B-52's circled over Moldavia for a while. Coming from England, crossing Germany, flying figures over a military shooting range there, going on to Moldavia for hours, flying back to England. Not alone OFC. There is a massive operation underway since days. There are large and smaller AWACS/AEW circling near Kaliningrad, Belorussia and just short of Ukraine. There are a dozen to several dozen tankers in the air over central and east europe almost all the time. I guess they aren't there just for fun, and probably escorted by fighters(which only rarely pop up on tracking services). Also over the seas.
There is an armada of C-17 Globemasters and C-5 Galaxies in action, shuttling whatever between bases and continents.
I don't expect them to accept being pushed back.
Wanna watch? https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ <- FILTER for MILITARY on the right sidebar, maybe click M for selecting multiple ones, which makes their tracks persist, let it run...
Just consider that until last week people in Europe were wondering if whether or not we needed NATO, while Putin had months of drills our politicians/intelligence were sleeping the best dreams
> If NATO enters this war it will make Iraq look like an overly rough game of laser tag in comparison.
In the long run, NATO might not have a choice, and then it becomes a question about who picks the time to their advantage. Right now it looks like the Russian Army miscalculated and is quite vulnerable in Ukraine. However if they're allowed to grind away to a victory, they may very learn from their mistakes, fix their issues, and be emboldened to take on a NATO country (say, one of the Baltics), from a stronger position.
If opposing the Russian Army (while they're invading an ally) unacceptably risks nuclear war, then there's really no option except cede to them whatever they want and hope that someday they'll be satisfied with less than all of it.
I mean europeans I think have a background of waiting until it's too late, like Britain and France didn't look the other side while Hitler was annexing countries in central europe? Just to wake up when the nazis were in Paris? I think he has a point, Putin destroying Ukraine and taking on Baltic states is not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN
I think it is foolish to try to predict what Russia/Putin is up to once Ukraine has been dealt with (which, I assume, it/he will have achieved at some point in time). There are numerous reports of fact as well as opinion pieces published over the decades since the fall of the SU by esteemed and respected strategists which or who pointed at/predicted Russian military intervention, if NATO did not call off its eastward expansion plans. We have arrived at that point in 2008 already, and then again in 2014, and now finally also in 2022.
For those wanting to involve NATO and set off WW3 along with the nuclear apocalypse, I wonder - why the rush? We can still nuke this planet's civilization to scraps after Russia's/Putin's plans for re-establishing the "Great Russian Empire" have materialzied - or rather, if they actually do.
Please excuse my cynical undertone, but this reckless calling for intervention that may very well lead to a kind of catastrophic escalation that human history would never ever recover from REALLY scares the shit out of me :(
> For those wanting to involve NATO and set off WW3 along with the nuclear apocalypse, I wonder - why the rush?
1) Atrocities are being committed and innocent civilians are being killed right as you type this tone-deaf question.
2) Appeasing dictators only leads to escalation, and early intervention minimizes damage. This is not theoretical, just look at Putin's belligerent last decades.
3) The risk of Russia unleashing nuclear Armageddon over Ukraine is very small. For all intents and purposes the West is already involved militarily - doing so overtly would not fundamentally change the equation.
Finland is not in the NATO but it is an EU member, which has a similar mutual defense clause. So at that point Russia is already attacking a state with nuclear weapons.
Obviously, "unthinkable" is now struck out. Two weeks ago it was (at least for civilians around here) unthinkable that Putin would invade Ukraine (and many Ukrainians seem to have been of a similar opinion). Last week it was unthinkable that Russia would start to level Ukrainian cities. What's unthinkable this week?
>"Two weeks ago it was (at least for civilians around here) unthinkable that Putin would invade Ukraine"
Yup I was that idiot. Still I think it is even more stupid to start WW3 right now rather than act in response should that abomination of human decide to attack Europe. If we do not attack there is still a chance and a good one for that I think. If we do the chance might still exist but I think it would be pretty slim and do we really want to test it.
The EU/NATO is already over-extended as a polity. This is not how you win in the long run.
Sweden/Finland have a complicated status with NATO. It's long been understood that extending NATO up to Russia's borders would trigger a response, which is why those countries have always partnered with NATO but never been technically a member. Indeed, through this whole debacle, the folks with brass balls have been the Swedes and the Finns.
Ironically, that is part of Putin's public justification – that Ukraine may gain Finnish status. But the reality is that Sweden and Finland are very much socioeconomically Western, whereas Ukraine is not, which is partly what makes Ukraine much harder to defend. In order to defend them, they need to be part of the polity. The EU has already had a hard enough time with Poland and Romania.
Which is partly why Russia has been belligerent. The Swedes and Finns have an arrangement dating back to the Cold War. Estonia, et. al were admitted after it seemed the order had changed. But given how things turned out after the end of the Cold War, it makes it look all the more complicated in hindsight.
I admire his chess skills and standing up against Russia but it should be understood he is extremely pro-intervention. He wanted nuclear weapons employed by the west during the War On Terror. So on the topic of war I don’t consider him a careful or critical thinker
I couldn't find any explicit call for the use of nuclear weapons but I found the following he wrote on the War On Terror in 2002 [1]:
> If the war on terror is to be won swiftly, Mr. Bush must not lose sight of the war's twin imperatives: a decisive counterattack and a total unwillingness to appease our enemies.
> Baghdad remains the next stop but not the last. We must also have plans for Tehran and Damascus, not to mention Riyadh. The tactics will vary, but the goal -- total defeat of terrorism -- is clear. Once American ground troops are in Iraq, the message must go out to all terrorist sponsors that this game is up.
> Those who instigated the current war must remember that Coventry and Pearl Harbor backfired on Dresden and Hiroshima. There will be no peace in Gaza, no freedom from fear in Jerusalem, until we have prosecuted the war on terror in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus and elsewhere. U.S. leadership saved Europe from fascism and communism. It is again the last hope.
With a funny quote:
> In another striking resemblance to World War II, Russia could once again be America's valuable ally. Despite Vladimir Putin's record in Chechnya and on human rights, he is way ahead of "Uncle Joe" -- the hero of the Western liberal press from 1941-45.
I don't know if Kasparov is right, but I disagree that he is not a careful thinker. He has been thinking about and writing about the dangerous of Putinism for years. He published "Winter Is Coming" nearly 7 years ago now. He wrote then (p. 9): "Giving a dictator what he wants never stops him from wanting more; it convinces him you aren't strong enough to stop him from taking what he wants." You may disagree with his thinking, but it is certainly thought-through and consistent.
Not OP, but I believe their point was there is a difference between being known for something and being good at it. He was known for being good at chess. Now that he is already known, he spends his time focusing on politics. That doesn't mean he is as good at that as he was at chess.
At least that is how I read the comment. For instance, Curt Schilling was a great baseball player. That doesn't mean his understanding of politics is great, regardless of how vocal he is about it now that he is retired. Same concept.
I think that was the point of the comment right? Kasparov is a bit of a hawk and very much against the current government in Russia on literally everything. Doesn't mean he's wrong, but it definitely speaks to a bias, which I believe was the point of the comment.
Back to the Curt Schilling example, if he were to tweet 10 things he hates about Biden, whether or not they are legit criticism would be lost on the audience due to his known biases.
> Doesn't mean he's wrong, but it definitely speaks to a bias,
So to be clear, of Mr Kasparov's track record, his 2015 book "Winter Is Coming", was basically proven correct about Mr Putin by recent events, but ... never mind the track record, bias or something?
The book published after the CIA-financed Ukrainian coup of 2014? Easy to predict a response from Russia after a pro-western coup has taken place right? Doesn't make him a prophet. It's like predicting a US response in Afghanistan after 9/11..
Calling the Maidan (1) "the CIA-financed coup" and a bloody invasion a "predictable response" really is showing your true colours. You should not be taken seriously.
Although I don't disagree with the general meaning of your comment - that experts on one area might often are not experts in another one - but in this case it's false; also, last time I checked, he was the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Also, it turns out he was right when he wrote Winter is Coming.
Moreover, let's be honest: you wrote your comment just because you believed the parent that Kasparov wanted to use nuclear weapons. What he proposes is completely different, and several of these points have already been implemented, at least to some degree.
Ukraine negotiated a bad deal in the 90's, giving up its own nuclear deterrent for vague, ineffectual security guarantees from the West. That said, Kasparov's perspective on what is referred to as "extended deterrence" is at risk.
Also, spillover is on the menu:
The SCMP reports: State Department counselor Derek Chollet warned Beijing -
If China tries to help Russia evade sanctions in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, it will face countermeasures, a senior US State Department official said on Thursday, without providing details.
State Department counsellor Derek Chollet said the allied nations that have joined in sanctioning Russia represent a combined 50 per cent of the global economy; China accounts for around 15 per cent.
"China, if it were to seek to evade the sanctions, or somehow dividing the sanctions, they would be vulnerable," he said. "Any country that tries to evade these sanctions will also face the consequences of its actions. I don’t want to speculate with that would be."
You know... That seems like just about the most click-bait title possible. I'm leaving that one alone. Dismissive? Maybe, but some things really are better left dismissed. Tell the mods I'm sorry, I'll review the guidelines again, and I'll try to be more substantive in the future - just not for this on a Friday.
Why do you think our current (weak) stance will avoid it? A lot of people are really not convinced of that, including Gary but also many military experts.
What's the use of being a shill for civilisation ending environmental policy? I think Dr. Strangelove himself demonstrates the character profile..
If the world is going to stick to a sanctions plan it needs to destroy all those pipelines now and sanction Russian Oil, shutting down only the parts of Russia's economy that don't reinforce Putin's power is only going to work if it has been done early enough and it has been over 2 decades, so probably it is not.
I think even for Putin it's always a cost/benefits analysis. Obviously he wants Ukraine and is willing to pay a high price for it. But what's the price he's willing to pay for Poland or the Baltic states? The price for attacking a NATO country is likely higher, and I assume Poland and the Baltic states are less important to him.
So, yes, I think that the current stance has a good chance of avoiding it. Much higher than the possibility of a nuclear war in case of NATO directly helping Ukraine.
Unwillingless to use nuclear weapons undermines MAD doctrine and makes nuclear war more likely. The behaviour of Western countries might have made Putin believe that they won't respond with nuclear weapons in all scenarios. The credibility of nuclear response is the cornerstone of global balance, but if your reaction to everything is "I don't want to die", then you erode that credibility.
This is beside the point somewhat, but he never lost to her in classical chess. But what he did was worse than lose. He once played a losing move against her but realized it was losing...and changed the move to one that didn't lose. i.e. cheated. He did a similar thing with Nakamura a few years ago, which was ridiculous to watch. His opponents didn't protest, for whatever reasons. I don't know if it registers in his mind that he cheats. Sadly, that's the character of the greatest chess player of all time. Hopefully Magnus keeps playing a while longer and takes that title.
A great way to weaken a position is to make weak arguments in support of it. Externally, such a move opens an otherwise strong position up to new criticism. Internally, it invites internal dissension between those who agree on the main point.
On the other hand, I think people listen to his views on politics largely because he's well-known as a chess player. In a sense, people do the opposite of an ad hominem attack, by putting more stock in his arguments because of how respected he is in chess. We have to remember that he's as fallible as anyone else.
Covering politics can range from "feverishly refreshing hackernews" to "Chatting to Mr Putin every week over a game of chess" (and letting him win, obvs).
>Covering politics can range from "feverishly refreshing hackernews" to "Chatting to Mr Putin every week over a game of chess"
Indeed.
> The one thing I do know, is that I do not know.
Any you made zero effort to find out anything at all about the matter before asserting that "Gary doesn't know any more than anyone else" (about Russian politics)
well I mean I would expect him to know more than me because I'm not Russian and I haven't as yet ever been an important asset for the Russian intelligence services to track.
I don't think it's a case of knowing more. What more is there to know, anyway? Unless we believe that there are extremely relevant moral or logistical justifications to what Russia is doing, we should have enough information to act.
And the presence of propaganda (however that's being defined now), while super unfortunate, doesn't relieve us of our duty to act when there is injustice in the world. It can make it hard to know things, but we can still rely on what we can be confident is true: innocent people are being massacred.
And if that moral argument alone doesn't seem to matter, the logistical one should; that we are the frog in the pot while the water slowly heats to a boil. It becomes a matter of confidence that the violence won't end here, regardless of how Ukraine shakes out.
The soviets were sending SAMs and soviet operators into Vietnam which shot down American planes. That was more directly WWIII than where we're at now.
And we are sending a massive amount of Swedish AT4 antitank weapons, along with stingers, javelins, planes and the surprisingly effective turkish drones.
There is this line that we can't cross which is sending NATO troops directly into Ukraine, which is just insane logic driven by nuclear weapons. If you do that you risk response directly on sites in NATO countries and can tit-for-tat into a "strategic missile exchange" that risks the entire planet.
There is a reasonably agreed upon policy for keeping conflicts between superpowers contained so that they don't boil over into nuking the planet and we're following that policy. That means Ukrainians have to do all the dying. The alternative is everyone dies.
Mr. Kasparov is using what seems to be a very fatalist viewpoint (WWIII has already started) to demand we accelerate the timeline.
Is there a version of WWIII where nukes are not lobbed around the world? I don't think so. If that's right, then Gary is asking us to accelerate a timeline toward the end-game, mutually assured destruction and our modern world ending as we know it.
Mr. Kasparov implies that cratering the Russian economy with sanctions, isolating the country, ruining the lives of the Russian Oligarchs, are the actions of weakness. In my very western view, they are not.
If there is even a slim chance Mr. Kasparov is wrong and the non direct military pressures being exerted upon Russia will ultimately erode Putin's ability to exert authority on his slowly starving, battle weary, and drained military, then we have to do everything we can to increase that chance.
We need to take as many bullets out of the gun as we can before Putin pulls the trigger.
Either Putin is a madman willing to trigger mutually assured destruction, or he's not.
From your post, it appears you believe he's not a madman in the face of economic strangulation, and he's also not a madman when the West supplies weapons that kill his forces.
If the sanctions and the weapons work to lose him the war, does he retain his sanity? Or does he only remain sane if the sanctions and weapons fail, and he prevails in Ukraine?
A smart man who has despised Putin for years is leveraging this crisis to push the west into full scale war. There are many people dying as a result of an unjust war, but I have yet to see evidence of "industrial scale genocide". Putin is an unstable man with enough nukes to render the planet uninhabitable. This is not WWIII yet. It sucks, but thousands of deaths is probably not worth risking the future of billions of humans.
Agree, with the addition that Kasparov is operating something like an attorney, zealously advocating for his client, or in this case, against his opponent. We shouldn't do what he says, but his voice is the purest anti-Putin sentiment in the world, and has been for a long time.
Regarding nuclear brinkmanship, I suspect that a purely rational actor will lose: the nuclear thug will take some, then take some more, and each time the rational actor will acquiesce to avoid nuclear war. This will result in the nuclear thug taking over the world, piece by piece. Ergo, it makes sense to risk nuclear war, or at least convey that you're willing to risk it, because if you don't you lose.
That's the point of MAD. It's a Mexican Standoff, if anyone pulls the nuclear trigger then everyone does and everyone dies. That doesn't mean you can win by other means, any action that threatens the other party will be met with the nuclear option. The only players allowed to move or be moved upon are those outside of the game. Treaties like NATO can bring non-nuclear powers into the fold which serves to "protect" them but also signs them up for the suicide pact.
MAD assumes rational actors. As soon as you introduce crazy people (AKA Putin) that no longer functions. Even if Putin is rational it's plausible that he is not, so he is an asymmetrical threat.
If I were Putin (a sociopath with no regard for my own safety), I would drop a low yield bomb on Eastern Ukraine. Then ask the rest of the world to roll over give me whatever I ask for. Or Else you'll be next.
>There are many people dying as a result of an unjust war, but I have yet to see evidence of "industrial scale genocide".
Indeed; Russia was expected to completely flatten all major Ukrainian cities by air in the first day of the war. All those clips of angry Ukrainians jeering nervous Russian troops wouldn't exist if the troops simply gunned down all hostile civilians.
This is also why I am reluctant to call the war "genocide" or a "war crime". They are both terms with pretty specific definitions. Not all wars are genocidal. What Putin and Russian troops are doing is bad enough without misrepresenting their actions.
1. Putin overwhelms Ukraine, via dirtier and dirtier tactics and we lose the leader of a generation (Putin Wins completely)
2. Ukraine resists for an unusual period of time, creating an even more irrational Putin (Conflict gets worse and wider spread, guaranteeing a world war)
3. Putin is knowingly targeted by his own ranks (Putin becomes cornered animal / nightmare scenario)
4. Put is taken out by his own people swiftly, and soon (We win)
There are even more scenarios. I'm mostly trying to point out (via speculation), that the only bullet point that exists on this infinite list where we win is number 4. The rest are all bad and we are in the world's worst casino odds.
Sanctions do not do nothing. But if Putin has complete control and everyone is too scared to touch him, then sanctions will do nothing and we have a much larger problem on our hands. We are kind of assuming he cares even a little bit about his own people. If he doesn't at all, we're fucked.
EDIT: very specific KGB education, weird imperialistic ambitions. Country with unimaginable resources and majority still living in XVIII century. Probably declining health combined with substance abuse. New imaginary friends from complete isolation every day.
It's very unlikely that someone worse would step in. Even someone equally nuts would still likely prefer to stop fighting putin's farce of a war because it just makes them look weak.
I don't think it's unlikely at all. In fact, it probably is more likely that someone worse would step in since Putin hasn't exactly been training up any successors. So whoever fills his shoes will be inexperienced and would probably only have the support of a subset of the ruling elite. Viewing Putin as "nuts" is a bad mistake. He is a rational actor and very capable, the proof is that he is still in power. That doesn't mean he's a "good person" just that he is good at what he does.
> would still likely prefer to stop fighting putin's farce of a war because it just makes them look weak
You don't seem to understand the stakes here. Completely giving up on the war would make Putin or any other leader look weak and would undermine any credulity they have. If the war ends diplomatically Russia will have to gain something by it in order to satisfy both internal and external perception of them as well as their desire to secure themselves against perceived threat. A skillful and level headed leader might be able to negotiate this but an unskilled person newly entering a leadership position and being buffeted by internal forces would probably make the wrong choices and wind up with even more blood spilled.
> I don't think it's unlikely at all. In fact, it probably is more likely that someone worse would step in since Putin hasn't exactly been training up any successors. So whoever fills his shoes will be inexperienced and would probably only have the support of a subset of the ruling elite. Viewing Putin as "nuts" is a bad mistake. He is a rational actor and very capable, the proof is that he is still in power. That doesn't mean he's a "good person" just that he is good at what he does.
This invasion has been a massive blunder. Complete failure and frankly makes the likelihood of him being killed off higher than its ever been before. Incredible incompetence on his part.
> You don't seem to understand the stakes here. Completely giving up on the war would make Putin or any other leader look weak and would undermine any credulity they have.
If putin ends the war without an extremely, extremely compelling reason, I'd expect him to be assassinated fairly quickly due to appearances of weakness. It's very difficult to imagine a world where this ends well for him regardless. The best case for him is he gets his version of Afghanistan for decades and suffers severe economic sanctions for a long time.
If putin is killed and replaced, the obvious geopolitical move is to say "no, russia's not bad, putin was bad. Take off the sanctions and I'll be a good boy for a few years".
5. Western intervention with a sufficiently justifiable rationale that putin has some ability to withdraw while saving face, e.g. preventing nuclear disaster at a nuclear power plant
6. Nuclear attack on kyiv, without further nuclear conflict.
7. Individual western country steps in without the whole of NATO, possibly provoking (6) but otherwise ending the conflict.
Well, there's also the most likely scenario. It's the same one that arguably ended the Soviet union:
The war goes on for decades or more, with growing desperation on both sides. The Russian economy bleeds through any loose change under the couch cushions to build more tanks & artillery. Ukrainian resistance sustains a long term insurgency against the occupiers, using essentially the same tactics as the Mujahideen or modern Taliban. The West slowly stops caring as other "breaking news" pushes this down the front page. Years of war bankrupt the central government, and regime change deposes Putin. American and British companies come in and privatize anything left. The country is left in poverty and austerity. And then the same thing more or less happens 30-50 years later...
Its important to note that Putin has support of his own people. There are polls, anecdata and articles [1] like this to grasp his own people view. It seems that vast majority of working class support him [2].
Data might be wrong so I am open for different perspectives.
We are standing by as a bully dominates another country, its culture and people. It's understandable why we'd do this, as they are a nuclear power. But what signal does it send Moscow and the world and where will it end? That we won't fight even when a country that is our friend is razed? Does he even believe that we'll defend ourselves if he decides to conquer Europe? Perhaps we will lay down our arms in order to avoid nuclear war.
The West is definitely not standing by, they have issued unprecedented sanctions. Of course we're clearly not facing a rational actor, so there's no telling when intervention will be "enough". But sanctions are not necessarily worse or less impactful than the alternative being proposed here.
The question is: will sanctions stop Putin from conquering Ukraine? If not, then I don't think you can say we're doing anything to help them.
I'm not saying that Kasparov is necessarily correct in his thinking. The military option of the US/EU/NATO sending a joint communication telling Russia to lay down their arms or face war is incredibly dangerous. But openly considering it does seem necessary to me and it might be inevitable.
Is Putin an irrational actor? Right now, we're showing him that we won't attack him militarily no matter his actions.
But I don't agree that it should only be people that go to war that should discuss or decide whether we should go to war. If that were the case, it would be soldiers themselves that voted to take us to war.
> But I don't agree that it should only be people that go to war that should discuss or decide whether we should go to war.
If someone is pro war, they should see their convictions through.
But don't worry: you don't need convictions here on the internet. You can just impotently post, make all the insinuations you want, and then go back to Netflix. The internet is great because you don't have to actually do the hard work of following a belief through, and can instead adopt styles of posting while they're relevant.
I'm trying to respond seriously and you're being quite irritating.
Decisions to go to war aren't only taken by people that directly put their lives at risk. This has never been the case and it wouldn't be a good idea if it were the case. Also, I don't agree that your decision to impotently post on the internet is somehow more dignified than my own because it better aligns with your default behaviour (in-action, passivity towards violence, etc). Neither of us are doing hard work to follow our beliefs.
I simply disagree that "appeasement" or "detente" policies are necessarily better in the long-run. We don't know this and should seriously consider the possibility that they aren't, even if in this case, not going to war is still the best option (which should be our assumption by default).
They are generally further away and less western. Also, the countries involved are less powerful -- I suspect that if China were to attack another country, there would be similar hysteria because people apppreciate that they could be dangerous to us, too.
War in Ukraine is ongoing from 2014 and Russia was there all the time, it's not a secret. I dont see any changes besides stocks falling down since November and promises to stop QE.
If a country has nukes, the dictator can stay in power and do whatever he wants. North Korea knows this and so doesn't Iran. SO some method that really works need to be found and employed. Starving the dictators Country does nothing since all he needs to do is keep his military happy. Happy military, happy life for the dictator.
I don't think it sends much of a signal, because it has always been communicated that attacking a NATO member is the red line. That's why Ukraine wanted to join NATO.
Attacking Ukraine, without crossing the red line, doesn't mean that Putin doesn't respect the red line. We just don't know.
There is truth to this but I worry that we're the frog being slowly boiled alive, and that we're acting amorally because of our fear of the consequences of standing up to him.
It's interesting to see this framed as "Putin is starting a war in Ukraine because he wants to expand Westward", vs Russia's own narrative that it is merely stopping NATO's expanse eastward. Ie each side thinks it is defending itself from the other. All while Ukrainians die.
Anyway, I think Putin's aggression is a very bad thing, but I worry about hawkish posts like this that frame it as "we have no choice but to engage in armed conflict". THAT is how you get WWIII.
This is idiotic. I don’t want to die in a nuclear blast, or because of the following radiation, or get beaten to death in the mad max world that follows all this idiocy. I empathise with Ukraine and understand anything they do or say to make sure their country and freedom survives. But i sure as fuck don’t care enough about them to invite the apocalypse. Screw Gary K. Screw Putin. Screw NATO. And most of all screw Twitter and may god damn it to hell.
He's exactly right — Putin and Lukashenko don't care about the fineprint. They don't care about following the rules. They are breaking all the rules, and continuing to lie about it while doing it. The pacifism of the Western powers is directly fuelling Putin's brutality.
And when Russia comes to the West? What does the West do? Oh, we take photos, apparently.
Sweden is not a NATO member, and is not a "Western power" (implying some substantial/unusually high military potency). If Sweden were invaded by Russia the West (meaning NATO) might intervene on its behalf, but there is no treaty or law requiring it to do so.
I'm currently reading his book - "Winter is Coming - Why Vladimir Putin and the enemies of the free world must be stopped". He warns against exactly what is happening right now.
Why is it considered "all or nothing" when discussing NATO involvement?
NATO has been known to defend (or "defend", take your pick) multiple non-NATO countries in the past, no total war started.
So if NATO put troops in ukraine to just defend it (not attacking pro-actively russian forces or territories), what would happen?
Is the scare now that Putin is so mad that he would immediately start nuking random NATO cities around the world if that happened?
>"Biden & others insist NATO would retaliate should Putin attack Baltic members. Watching Ukraine, I am not sure of that at all, and Putin won't be either. "
Of course Gary. We'll just start WW3 right now so that you can be sure. I did not know playing chess melts one's brain to such degree. If you are so brave what are you doing sitting in NY? Go buy a ticket to Kyiv and join the fight. You can still post from there.
In chess the end justifies all means. You can win with only the king left doesn't matter if the others died form radiation and it also doesn't matter if the chess board is still usable after the game.
For those of you who say "we can't provoke Russia" and "we can't risk a nuclear war", I'd like to ask, how far are you willing to go to prevent a nuclear war? I assume you are OK with losing Ukraine. How about Poland? Baltics? Finland? Western Europe? Alaska? And yes, there was calls in Russia to "get Alaska back". What's that? You say "it can't happen"? The same thing was said about Ukraine before, and yet here we are. Imagine this situation: Putin overruns one of the Baltic countries, a NATO member. Then he says, if anyone intervenes, there will be a nuclear war. What then? Avoid the war at all costs? It didn't work that great in history, it wouldn't work now.
”Putin is not afraid to use nukes so just attack him already, what are you waiting for?”
To me this proves that a grandmaster in chess is not by default a grandmaster in strategy.
He makes a good point here though: if the threat of nuclear war stops NATO from intervening now, why wouldn't it stop them from responding to a relatively minor transgression? Do we expect Putin to believe that we won't risk nuclear war to save Ukranians, but we will risk it over the technical violation of a treaty? If the west does nothing now, they will likely be willing to tolerate more and still do nothing. He knows that.
NATO involvement is all or nothing. If we go to war with Russia, it won't end until the world is a cinder. There is no limited engagement. It feels like we all have complete amnesia about the Cold War and the reasons why so many proxy wars were fought. Nuclear powers cannot go toe to toe without destroying the world, as soon as one side perceives that it will lose a conventional conflict they will resort to nuclear weapons. Even if they try to justify it by a limited deployment of tactical nukes on enemy positions just to shift the balance enough to prevent being routed it will almost immediately escalate into strikes on civilian centres and so the world dies. Does nobody understand this anymore? Just reverse the roles in your head and think more than one step ahead.
Personally I don't think the West is "doing nothing". While they could do more (we're still a few days into this conflict, after all, i hope more will come), I fully agree with the strategy of full economic isolation, minimize resource purchasing from Russia (and move towards zero, which will take many years), sanctions, asset seizures of oligarchs, etc. as well as helping Ukraine with absolutely anything they need, but NOT direct military intervention. The moment NATO troops attack Russian troops (or the other way around), then we'll be in WW3. Up until that point, considering Russia has invaded a non-EU, non-NATO member, I think this is as much as the West should do. After all the US got away with something similar against Iraq with nothing more than vague lies about weapons of mass destructions and got zero punishment for it.
Ukraine is not part of NATO!!!! Hence, “NATO” will not ever intervene. Now some individual members of NATO may choose to intervene, but that is not NATO and there is zero treaty to defend Ukraine. The west has not done “nothing” they have crippled Russias economy. Thousands die or billions die. Bad choices but those are the choices.
As far as I understand: NATO is drafted as a defensive (not offensive) alliance. So if Russia attacks a member state, other member states are obliged to go to war. If a member state attacks Russian troops (at least arguably an offensive move) and that escalates into a war between that member state and Russia, than NATO member states would have a very good excuse not to come to that members aid (as it would not technically be a treaty violation).
On the contrary, it's pretty clear what the red lines of NATO are – the territorial and sovereign integrity of its members (with some complicated bits, like the status of Sweden and Finland).
The NATO response has very very much been calibrated for three things:
1. Do not send NATO troops to defend non-NATO members (with caveats, see Sweden/Finland).
2. Damage Putin as much as possible, within the constraints of the previous point, and
3. Try to give Putin a way out (again, complicated because different members have been less confrontational than others, but this has essentially been the theme).
I'm sorry, Gary Kasparov might be good at chess, but he does not understand geopolitics.
I believe he’s demonstrated for years that he does understand Putin, however, and predicted this scenario long in advance.
So you may feel his advice is bad, but it’s also possible, even likely, that we have no good options and his is the most likely route to something resembling peace.
He's very good at stirring the pot, but I wonder if he has our best interest in mind making these claims. I still don't think any country in the world is keen on nuclear warfare, at least not yet, because not even Putin is that much of a fanatic. Xi definitely isn't.
But exactly this is also why the NATO can intervene.
As long as they don't bomb Russia or Belarus (territory).
NATO already promised Ukrain membership in the past.
I don't think there is any clause to prevent the NATO from making
Ukrain a member _now_.
Then it wouldn't be the NATOs choice weather or not to start a nuclear war,
but Russias like it already is.
Plus Russia can't use Nukes, they would be done for, not because of Nuclear war but because of losing Chinas support.
At the same time while thinks are not looking good, they also make it increasingly harder for China to take action against Taiwan... China might already be quite annoyed with Russia by now tbh. (If the war would have been over in a day it would have been a complete different matter.)
> As long as they don't bomb Russia or Belarus (territory)
You think Putin will just roll over and allow NATO to kill Russian soldiers? We've almost gone to war for a lot less than that, doing so would be an egregious act of war.
> NATO already promised Ukrain membership in the past.
This means absolutely nothing, they also promised they wouldn't expand Eastwards and look what happened.
> I don't think there is any clause to prevent the NATO from making Ukrain a member _now_.
That would immediately invoke Article 5 and start WWIII
> Plus Russia can't use Nukes, they would be done for, not because of Nuclear war but because of losing Chinas support.
I'm sorry, this is just so incredibly foolish. Do you honestly think nuclear war is not a big deal? All sides lose in a nuclear exchange, not just from the cities that will burn but from all of the ensuing fallout and climate effects. If you think CO2 is bad for the atmosphere just take a peek at what ash and dust clouds can do.
If NATO, through private channels, said to the Russians "start to leave Ukraine in 36 hours or we will enter Ukraine through Poland and force you out. We will not enter Russia," do you think Putin would use nuclear weapons?
They've already called that bluff, it's no use attempting to bluff again. The current bet is that NATO will not get involved militarily because doing so is armageddon. They knew there would be sanctions and they knew there would be material aid so whatever they have planned will play out on a short enough timeline that the sanctions won't starve it and with some number of predicted losses. I don't think they've fully played their hand yet, it seems like they're setting something up.
Saying it privately gives the Russians a chance to negotiate something with Ukraine and/or act like this operation was a short incursion and save face.
There is a point where war is unavoidable, and the problem with fights between 2 parties is simple: if one party believes it is in a fight ... you're in a fight. It does not matter what the other party thinks.
If Putin believes we're at war with Russia, we are at war with Russia and we will need to fight. Fight a little or a lot? Today we could fight a little. Tomorrow we will have to fight a lot.
Our red line is NATO, same as it always was. And will Russia have greater or lesser capability to wage war in a year or two, with their economy ruined by sanctions? Dependence on international trade today is far greater than anyone could have dreamed in the 1930s, and it's dangerous to try to force historical analogies that simply don't hold up under scrutiny.
Because the Russian military have chosen to target and kill civilians, sometimes with weapons that the use of which constitute war crimes. The aim is to force Ukraine into capitulation so that Putin can overthrow the current government and ensure Russia's sphere of influence.
"World War 3 has already started, don't you see it would be more dangerous not to shoot down Russian planes? The nuke plant is melting down and a Russian talk column is headed to Berlin next. The Ghost of Kyiv just needs a wingman to complete his mission in memory of the Snake Island 13!"
If NATO enters this war it will make Iraq look like an overly rough game of laser tag in comparison.
Don't immanentize the eschaton!
[1] https://twitter.com/KaminskiMK/status/1498377775350267906