2022 is not 1938 and bullies do not usually have nuclear weapons.
Absent Trump coming back to power in the USA (in which case all bets are off), Putin is not going to attack NATO members after Ukraine, unless WW3 is what he is actually after. Because that would be the consequence of such an attack - NATO can’t back down in such circumstances, and there is no indication that this would actually happen (again, absent Trump). If anything, Putin has strengthened, rather than weakened the resolve of the alliance.
And if Putin’s long-term plan was to go for a throw-down fight with NATO, then weakening Russian military by getting bogged down in an occupation of Ukraine doesn’t seem like the smartest move. Reality is not a videogame, where each conquest increases the resources of the conqueror snowballing into world conquest. Even in the best case where Russia rolls through Ukraine without resistance and installs a puppet regime, that regime is going to need to be propped up by a military presence for many years.
What happens in South-East Asia will happen irrespective of how NATO responds to Putin. If anything, having NATO (and the US) bogged down in a war in Ukraine would probably be better for the PRC than anything else likely to come out of this.
This is just patently false. I get the impulse to think so, but take a step back for a moment.
How exactly would a military build up have helped?
In reality, you can’t just teleport military forces around the globe. Any deployment meaningful enough to have an impact on the conflict would have taken months to get in position and would have been obvious to the Russians. And they were ready at the border months ago. Any race to establish a presence before the Russians could invade would have been won by Russia. A Ukranian mobilizaiton would have had the same effect.
A token presence would not have deterred Russia. It would basically just have provided the reality to back the narrative that Putin is trying to sell to his population. And it would have increased the risk of an escalation immeasurably to have US, UK or EU soldiers getting injured or killed in Kiev.
Honestly - I was a bit annoyed with Biden as well about him saying there would be no military intervention. But assume that the US has good intel on Russian troop movements and capabilities (as seems to have been the case during this crisis throughout), and realizes the (IMO) truth that sending a few companies to the Ukraine would be unlikely to deter Putin.
The absolutely worst thing - much worse than saying that there would be no military intervention - is to bluff when it’s obvious that you’re bluffing. What Biden did pulls some of the fangs from Putin’s propaganda warfare and exposes the lies about Western aggression (which Putin is still trying to use) as not only lies, but obvious lies. All of that stuff about NATO expansion (which comes straight from Russian troll farms)? Significantly weakened. All that would not have been possible to rebut as clearly with NATO troops in Kiev.
All of the above does not mean that Europe/USA will retaliate effectively and take the right moves now, but I think it is wrong to argue that Biden/EU could have prevented this if they had just acted differently. To quote ACOUP’s Bret:
- Putin’s objectives, as he stated them tonight, reveal all of the diplomatic lead up to have been lies - he aims to overthrow the elected govt. of Ukraine.
- Given that, it is not clear to me that any reasonable NATO action could have averted this.
Assuming we actually do what most affected governments have been saying - strong sanctions on Russian economy and freeze of Russian assets - how do you equate that with USA/EU not giving a shit about anything but our own interests? There are many ways much more effective than getting into a shooting war with the fourth largest military in the world to strike back if the West is serious - and united - about doing so.
