martsiva wrote:
So you think Russian leaders want to deliberately!!! attack NATO countries bringing assured destruction of their own?? How utterly ludicrous!
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Unfortunately, you are the ridiculous one. There is plentiful historical evidence that supports my statement, and not yours. Putin himself has voiced the same thing over and over in his national speeches, and has conducted now 9 wars to regain the territory they think they need for security.
Sorry, Mam, but you have it bassackwards, Putin will threaten the destruction of the US as his troops invade NATO nations, leaving us the option of using our nukes first on Russia, which we have vowed not to do. He wins, we will not use our nukes, and he annexes one or more Baltic states and perhaps Poland.
No one in their right mind would risk nuclear annihilation of America over Putin invading Latvia, for instance. Or Estonia, or Lithuania, and I believe over Poland, never mind that we could also k**l Russia in retaliation, but won't.
Looked at another way, neither Russia nor the US want to use their nukes. Russia uses that fact to invade a NATO nation, The US will not respond first with nukes, A. because it isn't worth it to take the Russian nuke attack response for a small NATO nation, and B. because we have vowed not to be a first user of nukes. So, Russia wins that nation, and can repeat the same scenario for further nations. MAD works, but at the cost of small nations one or a few at a time.
This is why NATO has sent large forces up to the borders of Russia, especially in Poland, to threaten a counter invasion of Russia if Russia invades a Baltic state, thus resorting to a non-nuclear response. These US forces also tend to ensure that Poland will not be first on Russia's agenda.
The Baltic states are weak militarily, and they are very hard to reenforce because of their geography and the narrow land connection to their south which Russia would try to capture immediately, joining up with their isolated d******n on the Baltic sea. The US has put small forces into them to act as tripwire insurance that if Russia attacks, we would be immediately involved, thus acting as a deterrent to Russia's ideas. Are all of our moves sufficient? Perhaps.
A comment: It seems that many Americans do not give credit to the nations composing NATO f or their ability to think for themselves and somehow conclude that NATO must act strongly against Russia right now! That the Ukraine is a key effort in blocking Russian ambitions, and that Putin is determined to restore the Soviet empire. They called upon the US to support the effort to stop Putin as we had already decided to do, of course, so we have a strong alliance. Sweden and Finland came on board for the same reasons: stopping Putin. Why is it that their take on the situation is ignored or downplayed by our average citizens? All 30 nations of NATO have made a serious commitment to fight Russia if necessary real soon now. We Americans cannot ignore this. These nations have heard Putin's speeches, and have been watching his 9 battles to gain back territory. They see the threat very clearly. We should also.