> Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes
To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.
A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
This has already happened. Just as in the US, all of the far-right "movements" in the EU are Russian fronts.
The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.
This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."
As a direct quote.
The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
How many armies in the world, have ever had a person in uniform demand that "the other army must be crushed" ? ok, is there any army that did not say that, to each other, or to an audience? Get a grip on the invective and do not blabber!
> This has already happened. Just as in the US, all of the far-right "movements" in the EU are Russian fronts.
And you, singlehandedly have the supreme insight into all these people, to ascribe motive on them? Impressive
or perhaps its possible that some people just have their own opinions that is not yours, and MAYBE has some overlap with russian? (assuming that to be true)
I bet you share many opinions with Putin, for example, I believe he considers exercise to be healthy, why, by your previous logic, that would make your health advice a russian front?
> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?
IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
This worked great in every other country where some other country believed the situation will be more stable if you just topple the current regime, didn’t it?
It's not about "hating the western way of life" or any such silliness. They can hate whatever they want within their internationally recognized borders.
War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war more likely in the future.
That's simply not true. The US response to Pearl Harbor was proportional -- you attacked us, that's war, so now we're warring -- but that didn't mean staying on the defensive.
If it's known that Russia is using ships to attack Western infrastructure, blockading those ships is entirely proportional. A blockade, in this case, isn't so much an act of war, as it is a response to an act of war.
They shot some of our boats and we dropped portable suns onto two of their cities.
A proportional response would be to take out of one their fleets. We explicitly went disproportional when we conquered their entire nation and dismantled their empire.
I know it's supposed to be an oversimplification, but this is pretty shockingly ignorant of the scope, scale, and brutality of the Japanese campaign. They didn't merely "shoot some of our boats"; that's an egregious minimization of their culpability and the proportionality of their comeuppance. The Japanese launched a coordinated all-out assault not only on Pearl Harbor but also:
- The Philippines, a US territory, where tens of thousands of American soldiers were killed or captured and
subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are killed during invasion and occupation.
- Guam, also a US territory
- Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore: British territories
- Thailand, an independent kingdom
All this after having already invaded Manchuria and French Indochina, and then later going on to invade and occupy Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, New Guinea, and a whole slew of Pacific islands and atolls.
Not only did the Japs attack Pearl Harbor, formally declare war on the United States, enjoy an alliance with Germany and Italy who themselves declared war on the Unites States, and conquer or attempt to conquer all those places to build their empire; they also fought fanatically and with exceptional brutality, they committed countless atrocities (wanton murders, amputations and mutilations, gang rapes, sex slavery, vivisections, human experiments--you name it, they did it), they administered conquered territories cruelly, and they treated prisoners of war even more cruelly.
Considering all of the above, conquering the Japanese nation and ensuring their total defeat was not only justified (as I believe you'd agree), it was also entirely proportionate to their warmongering and brutality.
And in exchange we destroyed their empire and government
We did not respond proportionately, we responded disproportionately. I don’t know how this is even being argued by people that our response on WW2 to any of our belligerents was in measured proportion.
Like, it was the last time we went to total warfare and indiscriminately bombed civilian population centers
They were busily destroying empires and governments. How is the destruction of their empire and government disproportionate?
And certainly neither Germany nor Japan had any compunction about indiscriminately bombing civilians, let alone intentionally murdering many millions of them.
I said our response was disproportionate, at no point did I say it was unjust.
Walk softly and carry a big stick, is still applicable game theory and the big stick was not meant to be held back just because someone hit you with a smaller stick.
If you only respond in proportion to an adversary, they basically get to dictate the engagement. A strategy that leads to less violence overall is to apply disproportionate retaliation to any attacks, which signals to other players that you will make actions against you not a viable long term strategy
I generally agree with you there, I simply don't think firebombing Tokyo and even nuking a couple cities was disproportionate. Morally wrong? Maybe. The only way to achieve a necessary military effect? Probably not. But they certainly had it coming in spades.
The Japanese tried to firebomb the US, too; they simply weren't as successful[0]. They also had a nuclear program, and God knows they would have nuked the US first if they could have. There was no Mutually Assured Destruction back then, either--just unidrectional Assured Destruction. I'm glad the US got there first.
Consider the handy Wikipedia chart of WWII deaths[1]. The main instigators of the deadliest war in history, Germany and Japan, have fairly low total death rates and, in fact, comparatively low civilian death rates compared to the Allies.
Further I want to point out that 'proportionate' is not the same as 'equivalent'. A proportionate response doesn't mean you try to kill exactly the same number of troops or sink the same number of warships.
Finally I want to reiterate that I do generally agree with you about the value and deterrent effect of some perceived probability of a disproportionate response, or at least the value of unpredictability in general. That is not to say that I believe the Madman Theory is an optimal strategy over the long term, but I do think it can be played effectively as a short-term tactic.
Hey, thats exactly what Ahmed al Ahmed was thinking. He ripped rifle out of Bondi Beach terrorist hands but didnt shoot him immediately because that would be "disproportional". Terrorist ran back to his friend, pulled another gun from the bag and killed several more innocent people.
No, pre-emptively starting another war is not a good idea. But yes, the West should work hard to make sure their enemy loses the war it has already started.
Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes on this big bad country that hates the western way of life ?