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Comment by elischleifer | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't take much to trigger very bad things from escalating. Luckily comms are much more reliable now than when Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated. Also - no one wants to blow up the planet which is what a direct NATO/Russia confrontation would look like.

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We can hope China would lean on Russia to keep them from doing anything stupid... On the other hand, they have not been much help in arresting Jung-un Kim's bellicose antics and he's a much smaller player, though tactically smarter.

Why would China do this? NATO expending it’s arms and resources in a conflict with Russia in Europe means that hardware is unavailable for use in the Pacific theater.

Because they would not want this to escalate to a nuclear conflict even if it’s limited to “tactical” nukes. Such a conflict would impact world trade further and would harm their domestic agenda and policies. They want to avoid things which could contribute to internal instability.

In a world where the geostrategic situation can be largely broken down into "the west vs. the rest", Russia is basically China's only ally (in the sense that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend") of any consequence. While it's likely that a conflict between Russia and the West (NATO) would greatly weaken the West, it's also possible that the West could "win" such a conflict without taking serious damage (i.e. via regime change instead of war).

There is no worse outcome for China than the replacement of a neutral/friendly regime in Russia with a pro-western one.

> There is no worse outcome for China than the replacement of a neutral/friendly regime in Russia with a pro-western one.

It's also one of the best outcomes for Russia.

And is also completely unrealistic. Russia will never be "pro-western", no matter who rules it.

Just imagine.

A more likely scenario is a broken up Russia. Russia’s boarders looked very different a few hundred years ago. And many of the countries Russia has taken land from in the past might lay claim to that territory of Russia falters.

Just like russia was America's best friends during WWII, they still let them bleed dry before entering the war ensuring a sufficiently weakened Russia after the war.

In South-East Asia there’s plenty of hardware used by countries around China, many of them US allies. I also doubt that NATO would be seriously involved in conflicts in that region: too big logistical problem.

Probably because the NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization isn't involved in the PACIFIC OCEAN so they don't care what NATO does. But they share a border with Russia so they're impacted by what Russia does.

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