[poof131]

I don’t get the “appeal to authority”? His analysis is some of the best I’ve read and seems to layout the two options the west has: nuclear war or cold war. I hope your outcome is correct, but that choice is really up to Putin. As a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and former fighter pilot, I’m amazed at the naive warmongering on social media. People who ignored twenty years of war in the middle east are now all in for WW3. A no-fly zone means US jets shooting down Russian jets (and possibly Ukrainian jets or we aren’t neutral). And when US jets are shot down what do we do? People want to use NATO ground forces. When a tactical nuke is used against them, what do we do? People want regime change in Russia, when they counter and assassinate our politicians, what do we do? If we want to stand up for our values and Putin doesn’t change course, the best we can hope for is cold war 2. Cut off economically from Russia and any other country (China) that supports them. This will bring economic hardship across the world but it is better than armageddon. Maybe Putin changes course, I hope to god so, but we only have two options to really escalate if he doesn’t: cold war or hot.

[des1nderlase]

Well said. Also do you think that Russia military is capable of achieving air superiority? And how this the status changes in case they manage to do so? Ie would NATO be "forced" to respond?

[kavalg]

You assume that the US can simply tell China what to do, which is not the case. China always keeps a balanced position and seeks to extract value from each relationship - US or Russia.

[philistine]

And this time, a cold war started not by Russia completely steamrolling Nazi Europe, but completely showing its ass.