It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement. Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.
I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.
But it's a very clear escalation in western 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack, and so everyone involved surely understands that this is an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.
Well the somewhat obvious thing you’re missing is that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine, not the US or NATO.
From that follows the logical conclusion that it’s not the US’ or NATO’s job to “reply to constant attacks”, and instead getting involved in the conflict is just that — waging war against Russia.
Would depend on the definition of this term "escalation" that you and many other people use. It sounds to me like a silly thing to say. Isn't it natural to try and win a war as quickly as possible?
Joining in on a war that you're not part of is a deliberate and calculated choice in the same manner starting a war is.
What exactly are we even arguing about? I think it's massively irresponsible of NATO to get involved in the war through military aid. Sanctions and humanitarian aid are one thing, but every single NATO member should have been involved in finding a peaceful way out of this conflict since 2010 or before.
If what you're saying is the opposite, that NATO should attack Russia with as much force as possible to "win the war" (that we have no business being part of in the first place), then I'll just call you crazy and move on. Enough brave soldiers have died on both sides, it's time to find a solution that ends the killing, not amplifies it.
Yes I've heard this magic solution before and it always means the Ukraine giving up and letting the orcs win. Somehow those peacenicks never propose russia going back home, isn't it ironic.
That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation' which is bound to mislead people.
Normally, if we show up at the flagpole at noon to confront each other, and you throw a punch, you have escalated things to a fistfight, and then my return punch is not an escalation. If I pull a knife, I have escalated things to a knife fight. We escalate from fist to knife to gun. Reciprocation - self defense - does not count.
The only way to torture the term into contextual use is to suggest that Russia is not firing rockets at NATO because Ukraine is not NATO, but NATO is firing rockets at Russia because all these missile systems are not Ukrainian, but NATO. This is Putin's framing, and it incorporates the idea that the missile systems are actually being manned but US & EU soldiers.
If you are not adopting that frame, "escalation" only really works if you explicitly define the context as a Great Powers proxy war with a potential nuclear endpoint, where Ukraine is stipulated for the sake of argument to have no agency.
> That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation' which is bound to mislead people.
I am not the OP, but I think your interpretation is not as obvious as you make it to be. This often leads to misunderstandings.
AFAIK military analysts use the term escalation as a morally neutral term. Escalation is anything that goes up on the 'scala' (= "ladder", the Latin root of the word). In this interpretation, D-Day would be an e_scala_tion (climbing up the ladder) simply because opening a new front means number_of_fronts_today > number_of_fronts_yesterday. In this interpretation, self-defense and escalation are not mutually exclusive.
Apparently, the term changed meaning. Many people now treat it the way you do (if I understand you correctly) as something associated with aggression. Therefore, they assume that when someone labels something like an escalation, they mean it is an act of aggression, unjustified, something you should not be allowed to do, and not morally neutral.
I am not saying you are wrong. I am just pointing out that when people talk about escalation, it is worth checking whether they mean the same escalation.
I only learned about this a few years ago. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis (where Russia installed nuclear missiles in Cuba), the US installed nukes in Italy and Turkey. This made USSR very upset. Plus, the US was heavily meddling in Cuban domestic affairs. The first two paragraphs are very instructive here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
My point: I think USSR (and Cuba) had a good reason to install those missiles. It wasn't an unprovoked action.
Definitely! I think the obvious quid-pro-quo would be if Russia and Ukraine both agree to stop targeting anything behind the current front lines.
Arguably, this would even be in Russia's favor, given its manpower advantage. But Ukraine might agree to it to stop civilian terror and power infrastructure attacks.
The current war in Ukraine is a direct result of the international community not making much fuss when Russia, largely unopposed, took chunks of Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine over the last few decades.
As with appeasing Hitler, we prioritized short-term quiet for longer-term encouragement of aggression.
Ukraine is very clearly a proxy war between NATO and Russia, merely framed as a plucky country defending it's sovereignty, though it is that too, of course.
With all the backlash here, I feel like some kind of radical, but here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically says what I'm saying: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrlq1840o
Although they miss out the bit about a media campaign, and so on, of course.
This is the BBC, pretty much the mouthpiece of the UK government.
And although they frame recent actions as trying to give Ukraine an advantage in any Trump negotiations with Russia, the truth is that these missiles will probably not advance Ukraine's military position, but will certainly change Europe and America's standing, possibly to the point of derailing any possibility of negotiation.
I took your comment to be a dismissive 'Russia should just retreat' directive.
Ain't gonna happen.
And The problem is, Ukraine really is not just a simple country that got invaded. It really matters, for the whole world, if we let Russia get away with aggression. It matters if we push too hard and in the chaos Russia unleashes nuclear weapons. It matters how the west conducts supposed peace-keeping operations, etc. It's reallt is not just about Ukraine, and the very fact that you (probably not Ukrainian or Russian) are commenting is evidence.
Absolutely! The thing that rubs me the wrong way is that Russia has very intentionally used nuclear sabre rattling in an attempt to limit the flow of Western military aid to Ukraine.
Unfortunately for the world, that's an extremely dangerous propaganda approach to take, because it blurs the actual red lines that Russia would resort to nuclear retaliation. (Of which Russia certainly has some! And possibly even some within Ukraine's military ability to inadvertently cross)
Trusting that "Russia never means what it says" is problematic on so many levels.
Imho, the biggest mistake in the West's approach to the entire war has been its failure to proactively announce military aid changes and the conditions that would trigger them.
It's like the West collectively forgot how to properly create deterrence in the 1960s sense.
F.ex. the West could have publicly announced "If Russia receives military aid from North Korea or Iran, in the form of ammunition or soldiers, then we will provide additional long range strike options to Ukraine and authorize their use against Russian territory."
That might have encouraged Russia to self-limit and not pursue those actions.
Instead, it's been a hamfisted, weak display of waiting for Russia to do something, then hurriedly conferring behind closed doors, then announcing a reaction.
Which... the entire point of deterrence is to cause the opponent not to take the action in the first place. >.<
"Imho, the biggest mistake in the West's approach to the entire war has been its failure to proactively announce military aid changes and the conditions that would trigger them."
Yes, exactly. Everything is justified post-hoc. It's almost as if they are deliberately treating Russia like a naughty child. The last thing we want is a tantrum.
Your link backs up what people here are trying to get across to you:
> Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.
And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me', inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours, or simply downvoting.
Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US has continuously pushed across them.
But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater.
Why have they crossed it, now?
What do they hope it will achieve?
Most likely very little militarily.
But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future US policy.
> But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater. Why have they crossed it, now?
For the same reason they crossed all the others - continued Russian aggression.
Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on how that aid is utilized has followed logically from Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've initially balked at every single step since that before eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".
It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about nuclear holocaust if they do this one more little thing to piss Putin off. It's also very clear the Russian "no don't send Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.
So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line, and a rather obvious principle of proxy warfare?
And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
> So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line...
I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely for the ATACMS situation.
"No, not ever" is a red line. The Russians love issuing these for other people, but it's embarassing when they're crossed without significant consequence.
"No, not now" is not a red line. The US tends to shy away from issuing them - one of Obama's biggest mistakes was proclaiming one in Syria and then looking a bit feckless when they violated it. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-president-bli...)
Letting Ukraine hit Russian territory with ATACMS is like the fourth or fifth expansion of how they're permitted to use that weapons system so far, as was giving them ATACMS in the first place after HIMARS (which saw a similar set of gradually reduced limitations; https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/07/08/us-to-send-more-...).
> And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
I've closely followed the situation in Ukraine since Euromaidan.
"I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely"
No doubt, but the fact is the US told Ukraine they couldn't use ATACMS to target Russia, and now, they can.
And it's really more than an incremental change in US involvement in the war. The fact that Ukrainians are supposedly operating these weapons is almost incidental.
But the article itself addresses only the context of ATACMS. Not whether the US is "dictating what can and cannot happen in the war" generally.
Either way -- according the definition in Wikipedia, it is a proxy because one side is strongly supported by an external power. Sounds reasonable, and I can go with it (on at least a technical basis).
Where people go wrong (not saying you here) is when they accept the term "proxy war" and assume (or insinuate) that it means or supports the idea that Ukraine is simply a puppet state, not really fighting out of its own motivations.
North Korean troops are helping Russia invade Ukraine (by freeing up Russian garrison troops to participate in their offensive).
Ergo, redress is something that helps Ukraine resist the military advantage North Korean involvement gives Russia -- e.g. being able to target Russian military targets supporting the invasion, in Russia.
> In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed at North Korea?
The problem is at least as much Russia inviting NK as North Korea positively responding, aiding Ukraine works against all the belligerents aligned against it, NK as well as Russia, and the North Koreans in Russia are not protected by the Armistice the way North Koreans on the Korean peninsula are.
> are escalating the war (they started, with the long-range missiles),
Wrong. Using long range missiles is not an escalation. Russia has been using them against Ukrainian lands for years now. Why shouldn't Ukraine be allowed to use them against Russian land?
Russia are at war with Ukraine, so they are bombing them. Ukraine have every right to reply with their own long range weapons too, and that would indeed not be an escalation in the fighting itself.
But, the west clearly prohibited the use of their donated long range weapons in direct attacks on Russia, in order to limit their liability, responsibility, 'participation' or whatever, until now.
Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Whether it is right or wrong is not the point, it is a clear change in the depth of western involvement.
This seems like an arbitrary line [0] drawn exactly where it suits your argument. How does having North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia stay on the right side of that line? What about any components that originated outside of Russia but are employed in Russian weaponry or equipment (for example chips)? The information war is a part of "the war", is an "official" non-Russian hacker or troll crossing the line? Or a non-Russian boat or crew employed for acts of sabotage.
[0] It can be fair to draw an arbitrary line, at least you know it's straight and will intersect whatever is unfortunate to be in its way regardless of the side you prefer. But you're trying to draw tiny arbitrary circles around whatever you don't like and that's feeble.
> The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict within the theater, or risk a world war. That was already breached by Ukrainian incursions into Russia...
In what insane alternate Marvel universe is Russia not part of the Russo-Ukrainian War theater?
The line isn't clear, because there is no line. These lines you keep bringing up are just gamesmanship. Nothing changes because any of them are crossed. The war was fully escalated when they invaded. Ukraine has every right to attack targets in Russia. Russia and everyone else is just posturing to hopefully extract advantages. Everybody is trying to figure out what they can get away with that doesn't negatively impact them. When Trump won the situation changed for the current administration. Do you believe Russia wouldn't use nukes if it would strengthen Russia? Do you believe Europe and the US wouldn't have immediately shut down the invasion if Russia wasn't a nuclear power.
> Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Since the war started, Russia has moved their red lines dozens of times. The “escalation” argument lost it's meaning.
