Originally Posted by
Video Mixdown
Clutching past events like a security blanket won't help you now. When Russia rolled the iron dice they rendered any previous treaties/agreements null and void, along with any control over the outcome.
No argument, the law is silent in wartime.
That imho is exactly what Mearsheimer and others have been harping on, when nations feel their vital interests are threatened, they will respond, irrespective of prior treaty obligations.
Given the results to date, it seems obvious that the Russian response was wrong. In context of Putin's oft quoted view that the collapse of the USSR was the seminal catastrophe of our era, the effort to decapitate the Ukraine simply provoked a concerted US/European effort to prevent Russia from turning back the clock.
So now both sides are stuck, while Europe hopes that sanctions will cause Russia to withdraw and Russia hopes that economic pressures will force Europe to remove the sanctions, .people are dying in Ukraine.
It is stupid beyond belief, even worse is that such stalemates make escalation almost inevitable, as Verdun and the Somme examples from WW1 underscore.
Mearsheimer points out that there is no visible diplomatic path forward to settle this conflict, so that escalation is the most likely outcome.
Of course, imho this is just the latest in the west's fratricidal wars which have opened the door to Asian dominance in world affairs. I don't think that these wars are desirable.