Chillicothe
Platinum Member
- Feb 14, 2021
- 10,451
- 6,698
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Well, first, thank you poster Mushroom for responding with suggested tactics. You are one the very very few that have responded when quieried with...."Well, what would you suggest?"
So that's appreciated.
My comments though, follow along these lines:
The world and NATO's options are not abundant. America's even less so.
What Russia did for weeks and weeks with their too obvious build-up was on their land, in their country. They did put troops and equipment into Belarus but did so at the invitation or acquiscence of that country's leadership. So, neither NATO, the United Nations, or America had much of an avenue to intervene when what Russia did was in Russia.
Plus, recall the American's claiming Putin was gonna invade, and Ukraine saying 'No, we are talking, you are overreacting."
An analogy that may or may not work is the battered wife who fears a bad husband, but until he smacks her the state (law enforcement) has no say in what goes on between them. And when they do stop by for a safety-check.....she says..."We are talking, you are over-reacting."
OK, that was then, and this now. The brutal husband has now smacked the wife. But it is a wife and husband who live in a different country. Not America. America has no entre' into a dispute between two former allies. Neither of which has a treaty requiring America to protect either one.
Still, America, and more so, NATO, does have some reason to fear the husband as the wife does. The MoFo has nuclear weapons. He can be as brutal as he damn well wants to be to the little wife. Because, he can simply say....."If you intervene into Ukraine...NATO. Or you, America. Or you Sweden. Well, I can always pull the trigger. Even if it is one of my smaller triggers. I can do it. So f*ck off!"
And the world then has got a whole helluva bigger problem than the poor little wife.
I say all that, simply to establish what the stakes on the table are.
But, poster Mushroom does suggest a way forward.
More sanctions.
Cut off travel between Russia and any other NATO country.
Cut off trade.
Cut off the SWIFT banking protocols.
But again, those are sanctions.
America does not want to send the 101st Airborne over there, neither does Australia, or France. So, we do what we can as bloodlessly as possible.
But remember, even with strong sanctions, it takes time.
Russia can survive on its own internal resources. Maybe China can become a bigger trading partner, a bigger banking partner. A life-line. They have an incentive. The lessening of Western, particularly, U.S. power.
And not unimportant, any sanctions the West....NATO, Eurozone, America, Canada, Australia, others put on Russia......well, the knife can cut both ways. So America cuts off all Russian oil. And our gas-pumps (and all other nation's pumps too) goes to $10 a gallon. Sure, it hurts Russia. But it hurts on this end too.
The magician's trick with sanctions is to hurt the other guy much more than you hurt yourself.
And that is, I would suggest, a tricky trick to pull off.
It's complicated. And the temptation to jigoism. To oversimplification.....ain't helpful.
Nonetheless, thank you poster Mushroom for offering suggestions you put some thought into. That is a too often a rarity on this venue.
IMHO
None of them do, which makes this so hilarious.
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