Russia - threadbanned users in OP

With respect, I don't think you get it. If Russia takes Ukraine, they then have NATO countries bordering them. So the idea of taking a non-NATO country out, just to end up bordering NATO countries is absurd. This is especially the case when Ukraine weren't anywhere near joining NATO.

The NATO thing is a ruse for Russian expansionism. Putin is known to have admired the USSR and he feels (as many Russians do) that the USSR was 'unfairly' broken up and that the glory days should return. He doesn't think Ukraine is a real country. He thinks it belongs within Russia.

yeah seems to be a lot of propaganda coming out of ukraine ,9000 russians dead ? surely nobody with a brain beleives that

@gandalf wrote:

A new policy of appeasement at this stage is merely storing up a new "crisis" further down the line. Agreeing to a scenario where Russia gets rewarded for invading another nation with redrawn borders or new autonomous puppet states is unacceptable.

Russia needs to be pushed back to Russia and driven into the ground. The sanctions lift when Russia formally agrees that it recognises the sovereignty of every nation along its borders and cannot object to any of them seeking membership of NATO or the EU at any time.

A lasting legacy of nuclear weapons that has come into stark focus here is that once a country has them, they basically have a blank cheque to violate other countries because the world does not want to spark a nuclear war.

Arising out of this should come a general agreement between all nuclear nations to dismantle their stockpiles with ongoing independent oversight and auditing. The doctrine of MAD quite clearly doesn't keep the peace. Now it's a get out of jail free card allowing nuclear powers to do whatever the **** they want, safe in the knowledge that the only countries who can stop them, won't.

While I am sure there is some tactical value in having nukes, limiting countries to (say) 20 weapons with a combined yield no greater than 50kT, is more than enough nuclear weapons to be able to wave your dick around without putting the existence of our species at risk.

Any country that doesn't agree to it, gets sanctioned out of existence. One can dream...

Serious bang of Neville Chamberlain of ya Wibbs.......

Putin could have Ukraine conquered within the hour if he wanted but he's trying to do it with the minimal amount of civilian casualties.

https://i.imgur.com/5whxzV2.jpg

The use of wholesale global sanctions currently being imposed on Russia by multiple countries and corporations is very much a new form of retaliation in the face of war.

It has in part came about precisly because Putin is hovering his finger over that big red button and no-one dares lift a physical finger against him. And even at that he has still raising the nuclear threat level because of those same sanctions.

The other facet of that is the digital revolution, where interconnectivity and global digitisation links ever facit of business, in contrast to previous decades where everything was largely based on bits of paper stored locally. There's also the argument that these types of sanctions work best in countries largely dependant on digital technologies. Banning Facebook or whatever in some remote or poor country is probably not going have quite the same impact as it would even in somewhere like Russia

Many of the wars in the last century have not only involved European Christian on European Christian but also Muslim on Muslim or Asian on Asian and were often limited in their theatre of war to a limited geopolitical region. I would agree the west have frequently interceded in many of those wars and caused not a few and for a whole load of reasons. One of which without doubt has been self interest.

Of victims of these wars many indeed have been cast aside, but that is not to say that atrocities in these theatres of war have been ignored. In the last couple of decades it's the direct opposite with mass media coverage, refugees agencies and movement and international aid now being a global phenomenon. But I wouldn't agree with the notion of 'oh look its white men fighting and getting all the attention as usual'. Any war that involves a superpower such as Russia, invading and thrashing another country with the potential of nuclear aggression is going to ring all the bells. Anyone crying racism over that can go take a long jump for themselves as far as I'm concerned.

Who are the other two?