There is no way he doesn't stop at Ukraine. He doesn't have enough troops to hold it against a population which will be against him. He has already bitten off more than he can chew. The idea of Russian tanks marching on Germany is delusional fantasy and hyperbole, even apart from Article 5.
which part of your own country are you willing to risk to be hit by nukes first? It's easy to be militarily bold at someone else's expense, more so if you don't serve in a regular army.
Which friend or family member are you willing to sacrifice first so that you’ll be spared?
It’s easy to try to appease aggressors thinking that somehow they will have enough eventually, but this is short term thinking. In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight.
I'd try really hard not to get into a situation that requires taking this kind of choice in the first place. It means taking measures of reasonable appeasal. Diplomacy used to be a virtue, nowadays it's being replaced by acts of daring: Russia does it, the US does it, the Ukraine does it.
> they will have enough eventually, but this is short term thinking. In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight.
There's such a thing as a lifespan. People come and go, and everyone should be proactively seeking long-term beyond-personality diplomacy and statesmanship.
> In the end they will only stop when you stand up and fight.
this is no longer a WW2 era, you can't just stand up and fight, nukes don't care if you stand up or lie down.
Nukes are an ultimate weapon, equally destructive for both sides no matter who's using them.
Threatening with nukes on the other hand is an almost as good weapon but only effective of you convince the other party you mean it and only countered by the others also being willing to use them. It's the MAD policy and it worked quite well during the cold war.
I disagree that it worked well during the Cold War, numerous declassified archives suggest a different picture of continuous escalation and bringing the world on the brink of total annihilation. The main reason it did not happen was a presence of people who were willing to de-escalate the peril by all means at key moments, including sacrificing their military ranks, political stances, and sometimes integrity of borders of their own countries. Borders have been moving and they will be moving in the future, a long-term strategy should be to never let politicians stake the humankind for the sake of the current polygons configuration on a world map.
I am guessing you are not in one of those "polygons" close to Putin on the map, so that is why you are so willing to sacrifice others for your well being.
Did not work out that great for the appeasers in WW2 in the end.
> so that is why you are so willing to sacrifice others for your well being.
are you really suggesting that threatening Putin with NATO nukes servers your wellbeing better than giving him a part of East Ukraine for a time being? Are you suggesting that your government won't be capable of negotiating a peaceful gradual transition of the region back to Ukraine in the post-Putin era? Such cases were possible in the past, if you read history. But it required skilled statesmanship and diplomacy instead of quick emotional reactions to intimidate and retaliate.
We know Putin by now. What you are proposing did not work since he's in power. He kept escalating. MAD worked on dictators just like him before. Actual power is the only language his ilk understands.
Or in 10 year you'll see the entire Europe in his hands while the rest of the world is being carved between him and Xi.
