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no disrespect intended but that comment made me have to google the phrase "wont to do" because I thought maybe i'd been using it wrong all along. Turns out its wont but it only ever seems to be used in that particular phrase

The escalation here would be that F16s would be taking off from NATO bases outside Ukraine. This is different from the west simply sending weapons to Ukraine making the west a direct active participant.

Regardless of his intent, he is correct as to the law.

Guess shitposting is always right lmao

me looking in my toilet after I poop

"Yup... the best and brightest right there... just floatin' on the top"

I suspect that the status quo works in Russia's advantage at the moment. The west is lagging behind industrially, and as long as there isn't a direct threat from Russia, it's politically impossible to start creating a war time economy. End result is that the west is becoming increasingly more depleted militarily while Russian military strength grows. The risk of attacking assets in NATO territory would be that it could be used as a justification to ramp up military production in the west.

And of course, Russia is winning on the economic front as well. There's now a whole alternative economy in place that's outside western control. Europe lost a huge amount of trade, access to food, fertilizer, and cheap energy. Meanwhile, Russia was able to reroute their trade to friendly countries. In effect, Europe is the entity that's actually being sanctioned right now, and they're doing it willingly to themselves to boot.

Russia also chose to largely ignore the media game. They don't really care what people in the west think, and people in the west seeing Russia as being weak ends up playing into Russia's favor because it makes it harder for western leadership to convince people that there is an urgent threat. The west is trying to sell contradictory messages right now. On the one hand they paint Russia as weak and incompetent, and on the other they say that Russia will invade Europe. The more Russia plays along with the incompetence narrative the less seriously people take the second.

Given all that, my expectation is that Russia will likely opt out for hunting f16s in the air over Ukraine, which I'm sure they're very much capable of doing. They might end up having to deal with a few long range missiles getting through, but that's obviously not going to change anything strategically. Russia will shrug that off and just keep doing what they're doing.

Given the political unrest we're already seeing in the west, I imagine we'd see mass riots if the idea of a draft to fight a war with Russia was floated. There's a reason they keep repeating that the west isn't at war with Russia.

Oh it was here https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm#:~:text=The%20background%20was%20that%20President,condition%20for%20not%20invade%20Ukraine

this bit in particular

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.