Originally Posted by
jclay
We're doing it. Species extinction, unsustainable population growth, boundless resource consumption & environmental destruction and nuclear saber rattling which sooner or later will not end well be it via evil, miscalculation or fuckup. Hell, the cold temp reservoirs necessary to the operation of the heat engine we live on are warming and melting, and we keep buying larger vehicles, building larger houses, etc. It's not that we'll eventually destroy ourselves (and most higher order life), we're still at the party as the Titanic roars into the ice field.
Glad to hear that alternate viewpoints are getting a modicum of exposure. Putin may well have screwed up but Ukraine is paying the cost and I think Mearsheimer makes a strong case that continued avoidance (allowing for slow, positive change in the relevant areas) was possible.
It's relevant bc recognition of any problem is the first, necessary step to it's address. Though it may well be too late from Putin's perspective I just don't see a problem with with a ring to Putin and asking if he will cease and withdraw if NATO membership is taken off the table. Of course we won't do it for reasons similar to Putin's likely rejection but we'd give nothing meaningful up; we're still armed to the teeth; and responsibly unable to exercise our superior military power (which is neither news to, nor the ramifications lost on, any major power). If he doesn't agree then he loses even more in the court of international opinion, possibly including changes in his relationship with China.
I don't deny a country's agency but the major influencers are pretty obvious. We could have told Ukraine that we'd pressed our luck hard enough for the foreseeable future and that further NATO expansion, arms sales and so on would be dangerously destabilizing and not on offer. Refraining from aiding a governmental overthrow might have been a good idea, too.
We're not in a gunpowder limited world anymore and it's kinda like investing; it's the potential downsides of decisions, often ignored, that can do the most damage; and the potential downside in this age is nuclear destruction. If humanity doesn't start backing away from that then the only framework question is whether the proximate trigger to destruction of advanced life on this planet will be the controlled flight into ground of conventional environmental degradation or catastrophic nuclear exchange. And it ain't about utopia or lefty this/that; it's about survival of the planet and it's remaining species.