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yakko@feddit.uk 2 days agoI still don’t think we’ve seen the upper limits of what western countries will do to support Ukraine. It’s becoming clear that what we’re up against is an attempt to re-establish the right of conquest by force as a norm. If Ukraine falls, then the Baltic states are clearly next and they know it, given the depth of defenses they’ve been preparing.
And look, I’m as sour as anyone about how Obama handled 2014. All I can say is, back then it was easier to pretend that Putin was a tolerable regional power, and not an existential threat to the international rules-based order. I don’t think anyone who actually understands Russia was tricked.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I hope we haven’t but I am very much certain we have.
For basically any country other than the US, selling The People on “we are going to get involved in a war in a different country” is political suicide. ESPECIALLY when that war is an hour or three away by train (one of the reasons it is incredibly unlikely that the US actually invades Canada or Mexico).
Especially when putin can barely eat a sandwich without threatening nuclear war as retaliation. He won’t do it (ironically, the publicly known russian controls on nukes means putin can’t use them without getting suicided himself).
Which is WHY so many of the EU nations have hemmed and hawed over what to give Ukraine versus what to keep for themselves (with Ukraine being treated as a good excuse to refresh stockpiles).
But also… I am not confident that the EU will actually come to the aid of Finland et al if/when russia attacks them. Especially since… Finland might be the only EU country even remotely taking russia seriously.
Which is why… I strongly suspect basically everyone except maybe Denmark will be glad to point out that Greenland is technically not part of the EU…
yakko@feddit.uk 2 days ago
I don’t think we disagree on a great deal, except in terms of the interpretation, and how much hope is left.
Personally I think people are cottoning onto the fact that the nuclear sabre-rattling is empty terrorism, and I think that just as war in the 2010s isn’t war in the 20s, war in the 20s isn’t going to be war in the 30s. We might be near a point at which production rather than manpower is the sole decisive factor in a conflict. That said I’m a Protomen fan, and I do feel that the willingness to stand up to your oppressors with your own skin in the game - and never any machine by proxy - will always be the final deciding factor. But I do see the way war is changing.
The main thing people forget in situations like this is that nothing is vouchsafed to us, no matter how much we know about history, no matter how well we can apply its lessons. The future is forever unwritten, and there is more potential in the infinite present than can be known. We only diminish it with despair.