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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The obvious question to me is are they arming to defend themselves from Russia or from other European nations rearming? Russia struggled against Ukraine so it seems unlikely that they'd fare well against a country with a similar GDP.

Sardonic congratulations to the fine minds at NATO for manoeuvring us towards this outcome. Anyone who feels optimistic as all these armies limber up is beyond an idiot. As a culture we've missed several decades of opportunities to de-fuse this situation.

I hope all this is a short spark that goes away.

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> The obvious question to me is are they arming to defend themselves from Russia or from other European nations rearming?

From Russia of course.

Then get some nukes and threaten to use them if attacked. Strategy seems to work fairly well and way cheaper. If Russia did not have any their conventional forces most likely would've been wiped out by now. Very strong conventional force I think is mostly needed as a threat to others which is not what progressive society should be looking for.

And what comes after the nuclear exchange? A military conflict is 90% logistics. To rebuild, a nation that is well prepared for catastrophe will manage.

The whole idea is that potential damage is so high that it makes no sense to start conflict. MAD so far worked good enough to prevent major powers from going to war.

This assumes all sides will act rational.

1) eventually, there will be a madman in charge of the nukes. Only a matter of time. As long as there are nukes, I believe they will eventually be used.

2) another option to consider. MAD assumes the 1st strike party will also be annihilated. Perhaps someone will figure out a way to use their nukes first while somehow preventing a counter strike. “Unknown unknowns“.

3) technical malfunction

The madman will most likely be some isolated small entity. Yes it can do some damage but will be wiped out of the face of the Earth by the rest of the world.

As for massive, world ending attack - hopefully over the time all those treaties, agreements and monitoring that were in place before this attack on Ukraine will be restored over the time and improved.

Bra användarnamn där...

What would "de-fuse this situation" have looked like?

The ones that leap out to me are:

* Investment in Russia post-USSR collapse to replicate what happened in Germany after WWII.

* Not expanding NATO towards Moscow in the 1990s-2010s (including the discovery that Ukraine is de-facto partially under the NATO security umbrella).

* Working to bring Russia into a security alliance targeted at China.

* The US not adopting a policy of prolonging the war in Ukraine to bleed out the Russian military. It should have been treated like Iraq 2.0.

But it is people like Victoria Nuland who have been influencing policy in the region so I expect there are a lot of other opportunities that have been missed. She's part of the cadre that should have been working somewhere outside foreign policy (ideally, McDonalds or Walmart) following the Iraq war.

> Investment in Russia post-USSR collapse to replicate what happened in Germany after WWII.

Allied powers occupied Germany which made sure that Germany won't simply use that money to re-arm for the next war. No control like that existed for Russia.

> Not expanding NATO towards Moscow in the 1990s-2010s

That amounts to letting Russia recollect its empire piece by piece. The idea that Russia would just like that lose its imperialism, if only we were nicer to them, is naive.

Even then, why should we assume that letting Russia recollect its empire would Russia make a West's friend? That's basically cold war 2.0.

> The US not adopting a policy of prolonging the war in Ukraine to bleed out the Russian military.

I guess we all wish Ukraine/US/West could expulse Russia out of Ukraine outright, but that does not seem possible. I don't think US is prolonging the war intentionally, but simply because of real constraints.

> Allied powers occupied Germany which made sure that Germany won't simply use that money to re-arm for the next war. No control like that existed for Russia.

I mean; look at China? The US didn't need to occupy them. They're much worse than the Russians when you look at the organisation of their political class - trigger that sort of prosperity in Russia and we'd probably be seeing them just bunkered down waiting for Siberia to thaw through global warming. It'd certainly have allayed their fears about an eventual US attack if the US had been investing in their success instead of spending the last few decades preparing a military response.

> The idea that Russia would just like that lose its imperialism, if only we were nicer to them, is naive.

Russia literally dismantled their own empire in 1990. They aren't a top-10 power. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR; they can barely even reclaim the Donbass. Even without US interference they couldn't plausibly fight Poland or the Nordics without being ruined. Norway, population the size of a large city, has an economy within spitting distance of the economy of all of Russia!

People can pretend that Russia is an imperialist power, or driven by imperialist ambition, or whatever but that just casts doubt on all the other propaganda being thrown about. They can't plausibly enact any sort of imperialist vision.

> I don't think US is prolonging the war intentionally, but simply because of real constraints.

Well, think what you will but the US has done nothing to end the war. They could negotiate and end to all this without too much effort.

> trigger that sort of prosperity in Russia and we'd probably be seeing them just bunkered down waiting for Siberia to thaw through global warming.

Russia during late 2000s and early 2010s has been more prosperous than ever, yet Crimea invasion and annexation, Donbas invasion happened. No, you can't undo imperialism through money. You can make it more powerful with money, though.

> Russia literally dismantled their own empire in 1990.

No, it certainly wasn't "Russia", only some of its ruling class making that decision under pressure. A historical aberration.

Even then there was kicking and screaming, with violent suppression in Baltics. Yeltsin never let go of imperialism either with keeping Moldova and Georgia unstable and talking about unification with Ukraine and Belarus (Russia was too weak to do anything about that, though, so all in friendly manners for now).

> They aren't a top-10 power. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR; they can barely even reclaim the Donbass.

Militarily they of course are. They aren't going to reclaim the USSR, mainly because some of the countries in questions are already off limits as members of NATO. I'm pretty sure that if Baltic States were not members of NATO, they wouldn't be sovereign nations at this point of time.

> They can't plausibly enact any sort of imperialist vision.

Have you watched Russian media recently?

> They could negotiate and end to all this without too much effort.

As usual, where "negotiations" means "surrender".

> As usual, where "negotiations" means "surrender".

A quarter of Ukraine's population has decamped, now lives in Russia or died, 15% of what was their their land in 2010 is now in Russian hands, their infrastructure is slowly being pulverised and their allies plan on having them die gloriously to achieve geopolitical objectives. If a generation of young men haven't been killed off yet they'll get there at this rate. The last 6 months has achieved the grisly fall of Bakhmut and not much more that I recall. Lots of bodies. There are nukes being set up in Belarus pointed at Kyiv and/or the rest of Europe. And pouring weapons into one of the most corrupt countries in Europe is also going to have repercussions, somehow.

They can keep fighting or they can stop fighting. Fighting isn't working out very well. Life is unfair.

Putler’s cadre of useful idiots spouting this naive bullshit are so tiresome.

To effectively "de-fuse" the situation in Ukraine, significant historical events would have to have not happened.

To start, the EU loan deal in late 2012 and the CIA-backed coup d'etat known as "Euromaidan" in 2013, could/should have played out differently. Instead it's evident that key players like Victoria Nuland, the CIA / Imperialistic Neo-con agenda played a significant role in exacerbating tensions during that time, ultimately leading to the destabilization of the country.

Secondary, Ukraine should have ceded the eastern territories as "independent states" in 2015 post the Minsk agreements.

Those events have lead to the "special military operation" in 2022, as they disregard the clearly defined "red line" of NATO being in Ukraine which was set by Putin a long time ago.

To defuse things now though? (It's too late now, the Military industrial complex has their pound of flesh.) Have Ukraine exist freely, similar to Finland before it joined NATO. This would respect Ukraine's sovereignty and ensure its independence without it being a vassal to geopolitical alliances.

> To start, the EU loan deal in late 2012 and the CIA-backed coup d'etat known as "Euromaidan" in 2013,

Still the easiest and most foolproof way to identify a Putler propagandist: They always mislabel the EuroMaidan revolution as a “coup”.

Oh well, I suppose one oughta be grateful to them for making it so easy.

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