> The lesson learned should be that if you don't stop the thug with force, then he will eventually become strong enough to stop you.
this is a lesson of a past war, the world has moved, this is no longer a WW2 era, if you try to apply a similar foreign intervention now the chances are you'll get a nuke on your lawn.
No one, and I mean, no one... Wants to ne the first firer of nukes in anger. I could see a State nuking themselves before nuking anyone else to keep that fuse from getting lit.
You don't get to put that one back in the bottle, and you're going to have to have more faith than the Pope to think that no one will respond.
Nuclear War isn't like Civilization. It's a momentary bang followed by a lot of whimper.
I think you can call the bluff. Putin wants to build an empire not have Russia leveled. Of course you are playing a high stakes game in actually doing this though.
I'm pretty confident that Putin doesn't want to go down in history as the guy who started the nuclear war that ended Russia (and much of the rest of the world). We can call that bluff.
this is a lesson of a past war, the world has moved, this is no longer a WW2 era, if you try to apply a similar foreign intervention now the chances are you'll get a nuke on your lawn.