That was Saturday evening, after the news began to sink in of another day of heroic Ukrainian resistance, a new wave of arms supplies from the West and the coordinated escalation of financial sanctions between Europe and America . What was Moscow going to do?
Thanks for this smart gathering of analyses. This crisis unfortunately now mirrors a 1980 academic simulated nuclear war game I was then a part of: underestimating the takeover target and the global response. Off-ramps will be effective only if we still believe the aggressor, Russia, remains a rational actor.
The rhetoric against Russia and the continued rhetoric about appeasement makes it all the more difficult to de-escalate. The public mood in NATO is to go maximalist and NATO's elected officials know that. It feels like a race of who can be the most provocative. Very scary times.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about Russia’s concerns about Ukraine joining NATO. What I do not understand is why that should matter in the current era of technological advances. Aren’t current weapons such that geographical proximity becomes a lot less important, in terms of the various missiles that have very long ranges? And also in terms of a Russian response to any NATO attack, surely Ukraine wouldn’t be their first target if it ever came to that. So if all of that is right then why would Putin attack Ukraine? Is NATO just a pretext and he simply thought he could without very severe sanctions?
Thanks for this smart gathering of analyses. This crisis unfortunately now mirrors a 1980 academic simulated nuclear war game I was then a part of: underestimating the takeover target and the global response. Off-ramps will be effective only if we still believe the aggressor, Russia, remains a rational actor.
The rhetoric against Russia and the continued rhetoric about appeasement makes it all the more difficult to de-escalate. The public mood in NATO is to go maximalist and NATO's elected officials know that. It feels like a race of who can be the most provocative. Very scary times.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about Russia’s concerns about Ukraine joining NATO. What I do not understand is why that should matter in the current era of technological advances. Aren’t current weapons such that geographical proximity becomes a lot less important, in terms of the various missiles that have very long ranges? And also in terms of a Russian response to any NATO attack, surely Ukraine wouldn’t be their first target if it ever came to that. So if all of that is right then why would Putin attack Ukraine? Is NATO just a pretext and he simply thought he could without very severe sanctions?