Originally Posted by
Big Pistons Forever
Failure in Ukraine means failure for Putin. It is not unreasonable to think that this puts Putins life in danger. If you think you are going to get killed when you are overthrown where is the downside in starting WWW3 ?
This is the part that scares me - if Putin thinks he's going down, what is he going to see as a downside of using nukes? Best case, the west backs down to avoid starting WWIII and he gets his way. Worst case is MAD - and he doesn't much care as he figures he's dead either way...
The parallels to Hitler in April 1945 are too real to ignore. Hitler decided that German had let him down and wasn't worthy of surviving - so in his twisted mind there was nothing that would have prevented him from going to MAD if he'd had the capability. Putin's actions the last year have come right out of Hitler's playbook.