But now, if Ukraine is abandoned, it's not because too many American lives were dying or anything like that, it will be because it costs some money (even if it's not a huge sum in the larger scheme of things). The freedom narrative are just words, now exposed to be empty of substance. This will have ripple effects on the image of the West both inside and outside.
I think that’s essentially true in Europe (modulo Hungary, maybe), but it’s somewhat more ambivalent in the US; the presumptive Republican candidate for president is all but aligning with Russia on this one.
To some extent this is probably to be expected; Putin has designs on EU states, particularly Poland, as a next step (you could question how realistic a Russian attack on Poland actually would be, but that does seem to be Putin’s thinking), whereas for the US, the consequences of Ukrainian defeat, while fairly dire, would be more nebulous.
Poland is a way too hard nut to crack. Attacking it is not necessary in order to advance his goals.
Baltics is just a way easier avenue to destroy NATO and EU to a smaller degree. It has a small population, unfavorable geographics and very small militaries. Even after Russian military was exposed to be far from its pre-war image, conquering Baltics is still within its capabilities. NATO has mostly just tripwire forces deployed there, but it's very far from certain whether they could really trip the wire if Russia managed to present a fait accompli. We'd see many discussions about "should our men die for these tiny faraway lands" or "we shouldn't start a nuclear war for this", but OTOH NATO failing to fulfill its primary role would very possibly mean its end.
Until Trump says that he doesn't give a crap about the Aleutian islands.
source ?
why would it ever make sense for Putin to invade Poland ?
I know it is popular nowadays to portray Putin in the states as a senseless lunatic, but he's far from. Of course he is a merciless power thirsty autocrat, but there's one thing he's not. Stupid.
He only invaded Ukraine because the US left him with no other option.
I've read RAND's and others' summaries of wargaming a China-US war, and know that defending Taiwan would be difficult. I hope Ukraine can hold out. But bien-pensants like Ferguson making up idiotic scenarios and warp them for the outcomes that support their worldviews does not help.
Another in this vein is from Lucian Truscott. <https://www.salon.com/2023/11/28/you-cant-win-a-by-dribs-and...> Hard to believe that Truscott is, or was, a respected writer during the glory days of New Journalism. You know a piece is bad when even the perennially word vomit-welcoming places like /r/politics don't feature it. (To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, the absence of posts with 17.5K upvotes and 2.5K frenzied comments repeating Slava Ukraini and denouncing Ruzzia is the curious incident.)
The drums of war are slowly sounding, and nobody will benefit from this.
What's worse, we can only stand in the corner as spectators, unable to counter this immeasurable inertia of our own animalistic nature.
Have there been significant advances in mineshaft technology since then?
see also https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994700393/nuclear-war-c...
or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...
The large issue now, as it was a big issue then, is still whether or not the powers will get involved, and how if they do.
[1] - It's hardly conventional anymore, just non-nuclear-warhead.
I have that I {heart} Nuclear War bumper sticker on the back of my car. The computer game was also awesome. A very hard game to win.
(sure, it may be just a game, but I claim there is at least one nuclear power that (a) cannot credibly claim a "no first use" policy, and (b) has been known to have leaders who fail to accept defeat graciously)
It is of course the duty of psychological warfare operatives to provide a non-button path for losing entities (does "cooling the mark out"* assume there are no psyop-immune "Doomsday Machines" in the launch path?); how confident are we they can do so effectively?
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00332747.1952.11...
