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Comment by ceejayoz

14 days ago

Your link backs up what people here are trying to get across to you:

> Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.

This is the latest of a long list of small, slow, racheting-up responses to unilateral Russian aggression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukraini...

no.

And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me', inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours, or simply downvoting.

Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US has continuously pushed across them.

But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater.

Why have they crossed it, now?

What do they hope it will achieve?

Most likely very little militarily.

But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future US policy.

  • > But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater. Why have they crossed it, now?

    For the same reason they crossed all the others - continued Russian aggression.

    Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on how that aid is utilized has followed logically from Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've initially balked at every single step since that before eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".

    It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about nuclear holocaust if they do this one more little thing to piss Putin off. It's also very clear the Russian "no don't send Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.

    • So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line, and a rather obvious principle of proxy warfare?

      And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.

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