It makes me wonder why the west is doing this knowing how seriously it could backfire.
It’s true couple of personal thoughts
One of the lynch pin propositions of history and conflict is the mistakes made to mollify an aggressor which did nothing to stop an eventual conflict anyway.
So is this a time and place to stand up to an aggressor? It appears a lot of people believe so.
But yes war and conflict is always dangerous there are always risk. What are you to do.
Ukraine and NATO could have given Putin what he wanted sure. Ukraine never in NATO.
Would that have still stopped the eventuality of something like this? I honestly don’t think so. Might not have been this year might have been 2025 but I suspect eventually Putin a d Russia wouldn’t have been happy till their was a pro-Russian gov in Kiev like Belarus.
Here’s a wild hairy ass idea.
Putin rejects the no nato guarantees
A week of fighting continues much the same
NATO continues troop build up
And then NATO and Ukraine announce in special session Ukraine is now a nato member and Russia must withdraw within specified time frame or NATO would declare war on Russia.
Issues like this are
always fluid.
There are no hard fast proven doctrines that guarantee if you do this this will happen. There are only probabilities and time and events are always changing those probabilities