Why hasn't war been declared?

Post Reply New Topic

When Hitler invaded Poland, war got declared by Great Britain. No one declared cancel culture on Germany and cutting off sources and funds to Germany as a way to get Hitler to stop his power and a way to get his troops to turn against him and the residents too.

What has changed when Putin invaded Ukraine and why is there no war declared? Why is it cancel culture instead on Russia and those who live there?

They are afraid of him

He can destroy the US / Europe with nukes in an act of mutually assured destruction if attacked

Yep. It isn't the 1940s any more.

Technology has dramatically altered both the rules of the game and the doing of the game.

In 1939 the Germans had to have thousands of crewmen fly hundreds planes to London to drop a million regular bombs and firebombs on it and today Putin could push a button between bites of borscht and launch a missile with a nuclear warhead which would cook London and everybody in it down to nothing but cinders at one go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war

Back there again.

Exactly.

"What has changed" is everything in the world, including technology, since 1939.

Not only can Putin incinerate Britain, or the US, at the push of a button-- but NATO can ALSO incinerate his country too.

So its not that "we are afraid of Putin". Its that both sides have been afraid of mutual assured destruction via nukes for the last 75 years. And thats whats kept both sides from starting a shooting war (a war directly between the main powers) with each other. However Putin SEEMS to have suddenly become an irrational actor who is willing to court global suicide.

The gossip of his cancer, if true, would make it not that irrational - just purely evil.

The astonishing number of people I've encountered through the decades who have said that the concept of mutual assured destruction as a deterrent to direct war between the superpowers is a stupid myth and impossible anyway seem to be unaware that they and their children have not yet died in a direct war between the superpowers.

Yes, but he'd take a picture of the borscht first and upload it to his Facebook timeline, which is what people would really respond to.

In 1921, France entered a military alliance with Poland.

In 1939, the UK also entered into an alliance with Poland.

Consequently, both countries were formally obliged to declare war on Germany following the invasion. They could have broken their agreements, but this would have damaged their credibility with everyone else.

Contrastingly, Ukraine is not in a formal alliance with any of the Western powers. There is therefore no formal obligation. All the major NATO powers made it clear they would not use military action to defend Ukraine.

If Russia invaded a NATO member, then things would suddenly look a lot like September 1939.

Hopefully not... Phoney war did little to help us back then.

I don't get this. Russia clearly went too far but no-one's stepping up because they've no formal obligation?
I'm more convinced they're just chickensh-t. If Ukraine was a member of NATO I'm certain they would've thought of some other excuse. Governments have no reason to care as long as they're not the ones getting invaded.

Also interesting to note everyone's so busy cancelling Russia, while never having shown much mind to cancel many other countries, farther away, who've committed all manner of human rights abuses over the years (especially when economic interests are at stake). All those sanctions are just a play to keep public opinion in check, I don't believe there's any place for morality in politics.
And this is what they call the developed world. Bloody hell.

This sort of warfare is mixture of both complex and simple themes

Imagine two men in a room - man A (US and NATO) and man B Russia.

Man A is bigger and stronger than B, they have an arm wrestling competition and A wins, they get into a fist fight A wins again

But they both carry guns of the same type and capability, so man B pulls his gun and shoots man A mortally but he has just enough life left in him to shoot man B back also mortally.

So both are killed or fight in the knowledge both will be killed in a gun fight.

So it’s a question of who needs it the most and who feels prepared to escalate to the death or back down?

Russia feels NATO on its doorstep in Ukraine is an existential threat to their country as it means US missiles pointed at them with a short flight time, so they are inclined to fight to the death using nukes if they have to so will unlikely ever back down

Just like the Cuban missile crisis meant Russian nukes short flight time to US cities meant the US was never going to back down either and would have gone to nukes also at the time and nearly did.

To make matters more complex we have the Ukrainians caught in the middle some want to live in the Russian world but the majority want to live in the western world and it has a western government

I think this will probably go to nuclear war anyway since I don’t think Russia will back down for reasons given (Putin’s war has a 70% approval rating in Russia) and things will escalate more.

The odds of a miscalculation event is very high, much higher than the Cuban missile crisis for multiple reasons least of all we had more capable and wiser leaders back then many who served in WW2 they knew what they were talking about and there was less media pressure then too

Sorry it’s 60% of Russians in favor of the war

Which is still quite high (not sure % of US favored Iraq war back in 2003)

Since then western media has been completely banned in Russia so they can spin their unchallenged propaganda all day long

https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/03/06/ ... t-ukraine/

The West did not declare a war but it's using the weapons with which it won the Cold War: economic pressure.

It would not be diplomatically smart to officially declare war.

It's hard for a Ukrainian stuck in a besieged city to understand this, or to justify this. I certainly wouldn't feel good about how the West is being "diplomatically smart"--my life is on the line.

It's understandable that the Ukrainian president wants the West to fully intervene in all ways. But, at this point, it just wouldn't be smart.

We, who are thinking diplomatically, have the benefit of being detached from the potential from having your home destroyed by rockets.

Unfortunately we cannot engage in direct battle without risking the entire world being destroyed in the process. It only takes one trigger happy person to set off a nuclear domino. No one wins in that situation. Even those left alive in bunkers have lost because their lives are now permanently changed. Russia started shelling nuclear plants recently, which is very much like nudging the red button. Putin knows that we would not want to start WWIII, so he is seeing how much he can get away with.

We have entered into a game of chess with Russia. What might look like a minor move (economic sanctions) may actually play out much larger on the world stage. Economic warfare looks much differently than bullets and bombs, but can still be devastating to the target. (Explain to a common worker why their money is now worthless and that they will likely starve.) The catch is that it will become costly on both sides to maintain that type of warfare. Yes, it is a less violent way to battle, but it still has a cost.