[user104658]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

Arista, your link doesn't work.


There are fundamentally two ways this can go; you could side with the Germans and not offer any assistance to the Ukrainians, therefore allowing the Russians to take over the Ukraine and hope they stop at that or you can arm the Ukrainian army so that they have a fighting chance against the Russians, where you will end up with all out war in the Ukraine. The Russians may step down but then again it may flare up into world war III.

What you do need to remember, or perhaps remind yourself of is Chamberlain who flew off to visit Hitler in 1939 to obtain his promise that he would not invade the rest of Europe. Now we have Angela Merkel meeting Putin on Wednesday in Russia to obtain his promise that he won't invade the rest of Europe if we let him have Ukraine.

The west are hoping that Russia will lose its nerve and back down from the Ukraine. I think its a very risky game to play and this could very easily escalate into world war. I suppose in the game of odds, this game of chicken might prompt the Russians to back down. Then again, the Russians might just call our bluff. The last time we were this close to World War III was in 1962 with the Cuban crisis.

Over the last week world interest has really peeked but this crisis has been brewing for over a year.

And yet ask the average man in the street who is not politically engaged, and he has NO IDEA that any of this has been going on. Probably still doesn't have any idea that there are any Cold War tensions at all. Why? Because he's had his gaze firmly (and deliberately) fixed on the Middle East / terrorist attacks. A huge and deliberate political and media game of distraction that has people ranting and raving about Islam and isolated terrorism incidents with low casualty levels, all the while ignorant to the superpowers that are clashing under their very noses. It's terrifying.