No amount of equivocating can obscure the difference between aggression and self-defense. The just & rational policy for NATO to pursue at this hr is to provide Ukraine w/ maximum capabilities to exact the greatest cost possible from Putin if he takes one more cm of their soil.
If the Kremlin signals that it does not believe in NATO's temerity to do so, that policy should not only be pursued w/ respect to Ukraine but also Georgia, Moldova & all Eurasian states where Russia has initiated (hybrid) security ops. It's time get serious about containment.
NATO leaders have pursued every conceivable diplomatic course w/ Putin, well past the point of absurdity. It has produced near zero results. If we genuinely want a different relationship w/ the Kremlin - & I'm not sure all in NATO do, alas - it's time to impose actual costs.
If Ukraine falls, it will not be the end but the beginning of a far wider Eurasian conflict. We are standing, collectively, at the precipice of a gaping maw of chaos. The choice to merely walk away is no longer available; decades of appeasement have foreclosed that.
I've long argued re: the Western Balkans that as goes Bosnia and Herzegovina, so goes the whole region. And that's true. But as goes Ukraine, so goes the whole of Europe. Even if all you care about is your own comfort & security, the defense of Ukraine is an existential Q now.
So, NATO either gives Ukraine the ability to turn any further incursion by the Kremlin into its territory into a terrible, grinding, costly horror show or we have to do it ourselves in a few yrs time, anyway, w/ God knows what kind of "unity" left w/in the Alliance.
And before you squirm & feign outrage over this language: that's what war is, horror and terror. The Ukrainians didn't choose it, no more than the Bosnians did. But NATO must give them the tools - yes, the horrible, terrible tools - to end it. For their sake and ours. /xxx
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