Others have pointed out that, unfortunately, the threat of nuclear war never really went away, we just got better at ignoring it except at times like this.
At all times there are submarines just floating around out there in various oceans waiting to nuke someone with a ballistic missile. They can operate underwater for 3 months without surfacing. Someone can get a call and press some buttons and just vaporize a town filled with people they have never met. I lie awake at night thinking about this a lot.
Unironically, it is exactly that crisis that is key to understanding Russias actions right now, as there are many similar parallels. That, plus the 2.5T barrels worth of shale that Chevron and Exxon prospected underneath the Crimean peninsula.
If Russia really did go to war over securing some natural resources and a geopolitical strategic location, over a false pretense of something like liberation, it would sound so much like...well, us.
So let us take a quick moment of pause and realize that this demon lives well within our own borders, too.
Russia may or may not care for it's own wealth in the shale prospects, but it can't allow for Ukraine to have them. They've shown interest in being a western aligned democracy, and having such resource exports would make Ukraine much more wealthy. A wealthy, friendly Ukraine as an energy provider is much more attractive to Europe than Russia. They would have a much easier time being admitted to the EU and NATO, and it would be a severe blow to Russian pride and potentially economy, and the strategic position provided by being an energy exporter.
Yes, this is spot on. Russia has spent the last 10 years or so rebuilding pipeline infrastructure to avoid Ukrainian tariffs. Ukraine in response has begun to align itself with the West as it seeks to ramp up its own energy production, threatening the overwhelming majority of Russia's GDP. Sometimes these things really are simple. This isn't to excuse what Putin is doing, and he is performing some serious brainwashing on the Russian people. Let us hope that the Russian people wake up to the lies they've been fed and finally rid themselves of this man. The fact of the matter is, the majority of the Ukrainian and Russian people have much more in common than what separates them. My hope is His Holiness Kirill can also wake up from his slumber, set aside his notions that God cares about the restoration of the former glory of the Kievan Rus, and see what is going on around him, because he can act as a major unifying force if he chooses to do so.
If we equate Saddam Hussein with Zelensky, then sure. I'm not so sure the parallels are actually there, though. Intelligence tells us Putin's actual reasons for invading ukraine have a lot more to do with restoring the glory of the Russian Empire. Putin's "denazification" and "liberation" rhetoric seems more like a bone thrown towards those who are fair-minded and want to believe in an equivalence between Putin and W. I get that impulse, but I also think the just world fallacy can take us to some strange places and drag us all down to hell. Sometimes people are just evil.
Maybe projecting nihilism is a strategy of its own. If I act as if there is nothing I care about except my goal you will never convince me to give up. So you have to give up to spare casualties.
