alt Hacker NewsYou're claiming a compromised peace in the Donbas could spiral into a nuclear exchange.
I'm claiming that continuing the proxy war between a jingoistic US government and a (probably) jingoistic Russian government could spiral into a nuclear exchange, and that the US government should be less jingoistic. Being jingoistic doesn't reduce the chance of nuclear war.
I doubt we're going to convince each other, so I would challenge readers of the two claims to decide for themselves what makes more sense for preventing nuclear armageddon.
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No. I'm claiming that a compromised peace in the Donbas with the annexation of territories of the Donbas and Crimea will further strengthen that if you have nukes you have a massive lever to use against non-nuclear nations. And Russia wants the Donbas, Crimea and the land bridge all the way around the Sea of Azov, that's a massive plot of land.
You are only considering a narrow point in time, think ahead in terms of 20-50 years the repercussions of allowing an annexation to happen uncontested.
Right now it's Ukraine, let's say next is Iran acquiring nuclear weapons over the next 20 years and moving towards Basra in Iraq + Kuwait for their oil fields, in this scenario they are a nuclear power, arming themselves for 20 years (and they already have ballistic missiles), to avoid a nuclear escalation between Iran and USA + Israel a negotiated peace happens. The Saudis see that happening and now they feel the need to arm themselves with a nuclear weapon, just in case Iran thinks of continuing this campaign.
Multiply this across many other nations under similar low-level confrontations, African nations fighting for water sources, one of them arms themselves with a nuclear weapon (let's say Sudan) to have leverage to control a massively important water source, what's going to stop others around it to not arm themselves (like Eritrea) to not get invaded?
It's a spiral, the moment you allow a nuclear power to use that status to force the hand of an opposing nation at war you open a can of worms. Since 1945 the world has been trying to control proliferation through other means, wars of annexation have been shunned, you really don't want that to come back into a world armed with nuclear weapons.
I don't have an answer, I don't think anyone does. Putin has changed the world with this invasion, you are choosing to vote for Trump on a flimsy argument, you don't even know what the fuck he will do since he's a massive liar. On top of that you're jeopardising your country's democracy based on wishful thinking of what you project Trump will do, it's all from your head, not from his words.
It's a classic short-term vs long-term tradeoff. Letting Russia get away with an invasion of Ukraine decreases the risk of a nuclear war in the next couple of years but increases it in the following decades. I personally believe the long-term thinkers have the better argument