There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
If that does not happen, these sabers will be rattling from time to time. If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.
Buffer states happen for a reason.
I believe USA kind of understands this (see how they reacted to Cuba) and EU surely understands this too (see how Sweden reacts to any signs of Russian militarization), but they have trouble projecting it on other countries or still believing they can coerce these countries into "dealing with it".
> There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
Look, we tried normalising relations. In the end, Russia just takes what it can. It’s lunacy to believe that everything would be better if European countries just rolled over, accepted being bullied, and just gave Putin what he wants. It’s insane.
We'll have another cold war, carefully watching each other like Koreans on both sides of the DMZ do. Russia likes frozen conflicts so that what they'll get, until it collapses again like the USSR did and like all empires do. The trouble with that is a bunch of unstable dictators with nukes instead of one czar with nukes.
Can you explain? European (NATO) countries will "provoke" Russia into invading by securing their internationally recognized borders?
So far, we have seen the opposite pattern of Russia messing with countries which didn't make it into NATO in time.
There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
If that does not happen, these sabers will be rattling from time to time. If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.
Buffer states happen for a reason.
I believe USA kind of understands this (see how they reacted to Cuba) and EU surely understands this too (see how Sweden reacts to any signs of Russian militarization), but they have trouble projecting it on other countries or still believing they can coerce these countries into "dealing with it".
> If Russia's (and China's) immediate borders are packed with countries armed to their teeth, there would be wars.
I like this Putin's style of passive threats like "there would be wars". Just say the threat explicitly, Russia would invade their western neighbors.
> Buffer states happen for a reason.
Ukraine was a buffer state, yet it was invaded by Russia three times in the last 10 years. People have now justified doubts about this model.
20 replies →
> There is no good way out of the situation where both sides are armed to the teeth. The best bet is a political failure of one of the sides.
Look, we tried normalising relations. In the end, Russia just takes what it can. It’s lunacy to believe that everything would be better if European countries just rolled over, accepted being bullied, and just gave Putin what he wants. It’s insane.
1 reply →
We'll have another cold war, carefully watching each other like Koreans on both sides of the DMZ do. Russia likes frozen conflicts so that what they'll get, until it collapses again like the USSR did and like all empires do. The trouble with that is a bunch of unstable dictators with nukes instead of one czar with nukes.