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Originally Posted by Olefin
I dont agree with appeasing Russia for one big reason - its never worked in the past. With anyone. In fact appeasement has usually led to wars breaking out because of mis-calculations that the other side was too weak and that they wouldnt reply this time because they didnt all the other times.
Remember Hilter kicked off Big Mistake Number Two for the Germans on the assumption that he had gotten away with it by remilitarizing the Rhineland and the Saar, built submarines and battleships in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, taken over Czechoslovakia and Austria - so why should anyone mind if he settles accounts with Poland?
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Oh, good. I'm not the only one who has noticed that Putin seems to be using Hitler's 1938 Playbook. It amused me in a horrifying way when Putin was accusing the Ukraine government of being Nazis, when his Russian government was the one most emulating the Nazis in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
And Russia has nuclear weapons - but frankly I dont think even Putin is stupid enough to actually do something that he knows will end with his homeland a radioactive wasteland in the cause of defending the right of his boyos to shoot down unarmed airliners.
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And its time we grew a set and actually had the guts to stand up to Putin because frankly if the British and French had done that in 1936 or 1938 we may not have had Europe look like a moonscape by 1945.
Or are we saying that any country that has atomic weapons can act like barbarians and we will let them get away with it?
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Two points.
- In September 1938, at the time of the Sudentenland Crisis, Chamberlain met with the heads of the British military and asked if they were ready to fight a war with Germany. They told him no, they weren't, that they needed more time. With that knowledge, he went to Munich and appeased Germany. However, also in September 1938, the British military started calling up and training their army and RAF reserves, and factories started running around the clock.
- You always have the question with nuclear weapons how far you can push someone before they strike back. Could we threaten Putin with losing Moscow or Volgograd? Yes. Can he offer to trade it for Chicago or LA or Miami? Yes. Hmmm.
The shooting down of the Malaysia Air liner certainly ups the ante in eastern Ukraine. Is the United States (or France, Britain, German or the Netherlands) ready to send boots on the ground? I don't think so yet.
Uncle Ted