We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one | Hacker News Reader

We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one

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28 pointseatonphil12 comments

Everyone should oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, outside of Vladimir Putin, nearly everyone does.

Getting involved in a shooting war with Russia is a very, very different animal and IMO something to avoid at all possible cost. To be specific, at this moment those (truly awful) costs include the bombardment of civilian areas in Ukrainian cities by Russian forces, which is likely a war crime.

I’m very happy as a U.S. taxpayer to give the government of Ukraine nearly any military hardware they think will help.

But to have formerly-Polish-but-now-American-though-piloted-by-Ukrainian-pilots MiG jets fly from a NATO controlled base to Ukraine to shoot down Russian planes places us perilously close to an actual shooting war with Russia. Such a war could escalate in unpredictable ways.

Vladimir could just be “acting crazy” when he puts his nuclear forces on high alert. Maybe he’s just trying to convince us he’ll do it, so that we do nothing. But how great a risk are you willing to take that he’s only acting?

I do not think this Polish proposal, nor the idea of a NATO no-fly zone (which would require shooting down Russian planes!) are workable ideas. I say this with genuine disappointment for Ukraine. The potential costs are too high.

> I’m very happy as a U.S. taxpayer to give the government of Ukraine nearly any military hardware they think will help.

unless it's a big piece of equipment that can make a real difference?

> oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine

but not oppose enough to use force? I think that's just as useless as people saying they're sending "thoughts and prayers".

Against a sovereign entity that has disregarded international law, the only option is to use force for compliance.

> but not oppose enough to use force? I think that's just as useless as people saying they're sending "thoughts and prayers".

All the weapons, sanctions and money are good as "thoughts and prayers"? Isn't the Ukraine military running primarily on donated Javelin and stringer missiles atm?

If Ukraine housed all people, I'd say shoot down everything. It doesn't, and so (as the thinking goes) the world must simultaneously support the nascent democracy and also attempt to contain the violence. Otherwise, we really do risk escalation to WW3.

There are treaties in place for retaliation, but no such treaty existed for Ukraine.

A good book on these games is Strategy of Conflict.

OP's point is that if as a result of an intervention that is perceived as too direct by Putin, Russia wipes out Ukraine completely it will be a net loss to Ukraine. If on top of that he also wipes out Poland, then the loss will be even more dire. Russia has weapons it hasn't used yet, conventional and nuclear.

We can take a gamble and decide that Putin will decide to retreat because Poland donated some planes to the Ukrainians, but how much do you believe that will happen?

>But to have formerly-Polish-but-now-American-though-piloted-by-Ukrainian-pilots MiG jets fly from a NATO controlled base to Ukraine

This is just logistics. US if free to fly them back to Poland, land on the highway https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhh1UyBa3Ew in front of the crossing and push those planes on wheels over the border.

The point is US politicians have been making Poland look bad for the last week running from paper to TV station telling everyone how everything is almost agreed and its all in Poland hands and why are they stalling?

It's strange that Nato/USA seems to thing there's a hard and fast rule that says "indirect help of any form is fine, direct help is not and leads to war".

It's like they think there's some sort of law of physics that prevent Putin interpreting smashing Russia in any indirect way is acceptable to Russia and not a declaration of war.

Yeah, this line of reasoning did not work too well vis a vis the Japanese and Pearl Harbor.

There are rules, and consensus of action among allies is as important as anything when dealing with world powers.

I think it depends on precedence.

When we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia kept from directly confronting us. There was an issue once with Turkey and Russian planes around Syria once or twice, but rarely got into direct line of fire of each other and kept things going though proxies.

If we go beyond proxies that would breach precedent protocol and would be uncharted strategy.

It's quite simple though: indirect help is a line in the sand that was already crossed. It's not about laws of physics. If Russia wanted to start a nuclear exchange because of the Javelins, they had reasons from day 1. Extra Javelins won't make them any more morally justified.

It turns out now that Javelins and other man portable missiles are doing quite a good job in this war. The Turkish Bayraktar drone too [1]. That's what they need. And intelligence, and help on the cyber side, on the economic side and on the PR side. And they are getting all of those.

And more: they just sent a bunch of helicopters to Romania to have them fixed.

The Mig thing is just an unnecessary escalation, and the benefit is quite dubious too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=890z0skXQzI

[2] https://www.romaniajournal.ro/society-people/defmin-nine-ukr...

It’s not new. It’s the difference between a proxy war and an actual war.

Rome did it with Germanic tribes, China did with step tribes. You help the little guy fight the big guy to sap them, but avoid going head to head. When they failed at this, they’d get run over.

Direct help is a generally understood act of war. We’re tip toeing that line right now with what we’re already doing. And we should be afraid because there isn’t a quorum calling the shots in Russia right now. It’s essentially 1 man’s mood and folks trying to talk him down.

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