The difficulty is some of this is that, outside of a declaration of war, it is basically a wartime practice. The next step is internment of people from a specific country.
What Putin is doing is basically how the issue of Yugoslavia was “solved” 25 years ago. It was a messy solution… and still not ended.
Best thing the West/NATO can do is lots of economic sanctions in the short term, and isolate Russia in the long term by securing alternative energy sources (basically go nuclear fully). But that also means the end of the wind turbines which the eco crowd loves so much, because they are so unreliable in the power delivery that you need loads of gas power stations to take up the demand when the wind isn’t there (nuclear delivers a fairly constant base load). It’s the fallacy of wind power…
A serious crisis sells newspapers. A prolonged serious crisis sells lots of newspapers. It isn’t in the interests of the media to reduce Covid-19 to such trivia.
There’s no direct media control here, just an alignment of interests and a tacit agreement not to disrupt the situation in that sort of way.
Everyone knows you just don’t really stick it up your nose if you need a negative test, but you’ll find few people admitting to it.
Graham wrote:
Arrest and deport every Russian from every EU and NATO country. Seize (not freeze) every last cent of their assets.
This would be a massive human rights violation and deliver countless people who have left (or in cases fled) Russia because they disagree with what is going on there.
Cut Russia off from every little bit of international trade and international cooperation. Make them like North Korea.
As much as possible yes. Again, this will mean massive disruption not only for Russia but also for those imposing the sanction. e.g. a huge precentage of airline flights cross Russian airspace on a daily basis between Europe and East Asia. Shutting off this routes for instance would be a MASSIVE problem for the Western Airline industry. North Korea can be easily avoided, Russia on the other hand is quite big.
Graham wrote:
Admit Ukraine to NATO overnight and deploy a serious military force. Not ‘military assistance’ but a major warfighting deployment – multiple armoured and infantry divisions along with the necessary air support. Stick the best trained and equipped military units in the world on the Ukrainian borders, facing off with the Russian conscripts, and then see what he does.
Admitting Ukraine at the moment would also violate NATO’s own regulations as no nation currently engaged in military conflict can ascend to membership. Deploying a warfighting deployment will take time the Russians, with the forces they have in place, won’t give. And if he is pushed in a corner, the problem is, the guy has quite a few nukes at his disposal. And I don’t think he would be beyond making use of at least some of them to make a point.
Cobalt wrote:
The big lesson of the 1938 Munich Agreement is that it is not a good idea to give in to a a power-hungry dictator, even if on occasion he has a valid point, as you are simply feeding the beast that does not stop when it runs out of valid points to make…
The big difference here is that we are talking about a guy who has nukes at his disposal. If NATO and the Russians start exchanging fire 1:1, all gloves come off. And quite clearly the Russians would take any action necessary to achieve their goal, even if it means risking retaliatory action. This was what the whole danger of the Cold War was, but right now, the situaition is much more delicate.
As frustrating as it is, NATO can not really interfere in a Ukraine-Russian conflict directly without violating it’s own reason of being, unless Russia were to invade NATO memberstates territory. And for now, Putin will avoid that at all cost. So the only way to retaliate without directly triggering WW3 is unfortunately limited to sanctions.
I don’t believe that if NATO deploys forces to Ukraine, Putin would attack them. NATO can change its rules overnight about how it admits members, if it wants to.
He’ll do anything except actually engage NATO forces. Firstly because he’d lose, secondly because his whole approach is based on his belief that we’re more scared of war than he is. If he suddenly finds that’s not the case, he won’t know what to do.
He won’t push the nuke button either.
As frustrating as it is, NATO can not really interfere in a Ukraine-Russian conflict directly without violating it’s own reason of being, unless Russia were to invade NATO memberstates territory. And for now, Putin will avoid that at all cost. So the only way to retaliate without directly triggering WW3 is unfortunately limited to sanctions.
I agree.
He’ll do anything except actually engage NATO forces. Firstly because he’d lose, secondly because his whole approach is based on his belief that we’re more scared of war than he is. If he suddenly finds that’s not the case, he won’t know what to do.
That may be true but a NATO buildup would take a long time. Look at the Gulf business.
He won’t push the nuke button either.
Probably true but it could also happen by accident, due to command/control failure. Russia has not been great at controlling this stuff.
Graham wrote:
He’ll do anything except actually engage NATO forces. Firstly because he’d lose, secondly because his whole approach is based on his belief that we’re more scared of war than he is. If he suddenly finds that’s not the case, he won’t know what to do.
Agree and a a small force that could act as deterrent could be deployed quite rapidly. However:
He won’t push the nuke button either.
Of this I wouldn’t be too sure. In the speech he gave he came across as seriously unhinged. That said, his own generals might balk at that.
Which, btw, is one more scenario how this might play out. If he pushes the situation too far (say, by ordering an attack on Poland), the military may well say ‘enough, this isn’t going to work’. I actually wonder what kind of conversations are going on right now in the upper echelons of the Russian military.
NATO does keep a rapid reaction force on standby. So does the UK, independently.
What are those for, if not for this sort of thing? I don’t know details, but one assumes they can deploy a useful force around Europe in hours and days rather than weeks. You only need to get a small number of units there in the first instance, and once they’re there he won’t attack them.
If we don’t do something unexpected, something that ‘breaks the rules’ now, then he’ll take all of Ukraine in the next few years and then it’ll be wherever he fancies next. We should have stopped him taking Crimea, and we should stop him now.
He is evidently a bit unhinged now, but I think that makes nukes less likely rather than more. A good chance his senior military commanders would disobey his orders if he requests something stupid.
Graham wrote:
If we don’t do something unexpected, something that ‘breaks the rules’ now, then he’ll take all of Ukraine in the next few years and then it’ll be wherever he fancies next. We should have stopped him taking Crimea, and we should stop him now.
Amen to all that.
I suspect the current situation may save BoJo’s bacon. Partygate may seem less important to his rivals and who wants a change of leadership in a crisis?
