If Putrid uses chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine

[boston bean]

Is the US gonna say wait until they attack a Nato country before we do anything more than send weapons, impose sanctions and provide intelligence?

[Tickle]

1. It's so upsetting

and now this 🤦‍♀️ I hope that doesn’t happen. We, nato should have never let this happen. We could have stopped it or at least put up a fight. Instead we watched Russia go there and we continue to watch them destroy Ukraine.

[boston bean]

2. We made a lie up about WMD and had a full fledged war in Iraq

over supposed bio/chemical weapons.

Putin is going to keep doing things until he has direct conflict with us. If we wait he will attack a Nato country, our red line.

[EndlessWire]

11. I agree with this.

It does seem that Russia is making public statements just to provoke the West. They admitted they bombed a maternity hospital. They shelled innocent civilians just trying to flee. They shelled nuclear plants. They threatened the rest of the world with nuclear annihilation. Now they are mentioning chemical warfare, which ALL of us know is a trial balloon.

I think they shelled that bakery just to promote food insecurity.

The only good thing is that we are now arming up and deploying assets. This is not our fault, but needs to be done. If they sent planes into Ukraine (Wart Hogs, please) they would just be there for the inevitable defense we are going to have to make. I think Russia is really effing up big time. He's going to get his country destroyed.

It will be over in a heartbeat. China will not have time to get into this side of the fight. Not unless they launch in a nano second. It makes no economic sense to destroy the West.

[Texaswitchy]

3. No matter what President Biden does he will catch hell.

Holding back will held against by the Republicans.

If he goes in the same thing.

A maternity hospital was attacked.

The whole point is to depopulate Ukraine.

Putin will not stop with Ukraine.

A NATO country will be attacked.

[femmedem]

6. We waited so long that we are left without good options. n/t

[Mariana]

9. When were there good options, and what were they, exactly? nt.

[femmedem]

13. Much of what we are doing now but much earlier, as laid out in this article from November.

This is from the Atlantic Council.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-to-deter-russia-now/

And our appeasement goes much further back. From an op-ed by Vladimir Kara-Murza in the Washington Post published in January:

Joe Biden is the fifth American president to deal with Vladimir Putin. His predecessors, in their own different ways, tried to placate a strongman who never hid his desire to solidify authoritarian control at home while furthering his ambitions on the world stage. George W. Bush tried to get a “sense of [Putin’s] soul.” Barack Obama engaged in a “reset.” And Donald Trump maneuvered to bring Putin back into the Group of Eight (among other things).

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U.S. presidents of both parties looked the other way as the Kremlin leader went after Russian media and the political opposition, tamed parliament and rigged elections, oversaw a mammoth spiraling of repression, and challenged democracies all over the world. As veteran diplomat Victoria Nuland (now nominated by Biden as undersecretary of state) noted in a recent article, “in no small measure, the United States and its allies have enabled Putin’s boldness.”

Many Western leaders assumed that anti-democratic abuses in Russia could be ignored as long as they can “do business” with Putin on other issues. This approach failed to account for a fundamental maxim of Russian history: that domestic repression is always followed by foreign aggression. For Putin, it was a short path from the closure of Russia’s last independent TV network to the annexation of Crimea, the first time one European nation seized territory from another since World War II. Appeasement is not only morally wrong but practically ineffective.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/22/heres-how-biden-can-move-past-trumps-fatal-attraction-russia/

Edited to add: General Wesley Clark has been advocating for providing more military assistance to Ukraine since 2014: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-is-a-work-in-progress-by-putin-says-general-wesley-clark/

And just now, former Ambassador Maria Yavonovitch just said on TRMS with Ari Velshi that Putin is a bully and he only understands strength.

Vindman will be up on Lawrence O'Donnell tonight and I'd be surprised if he doesn't voice similar views.

[femmedem]

14. And Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin's first foreign minister, says we had a window of opportunity in '93-94.

"Where America erred, Kozyrev insists, was in not investing as a matter of “strategic necessity” in Russia’s nascent and fragile democracy, which he and Yeltsin — at least in the earlier phase of his career — represented.

“We had considerable public support in 1993. I was elected to the Duma [the lower house of Russia’s Parliament] in Murmansk, and a large part of my base were naval officers at that city’s major naval military base. Seventy percent of them voted for me. Why? Because our policy of partnership with the West had considerable support at that time.”

The U.S. sent plenty of economic advisers, investment bankers and McKinsey consultants to help with the privatization of state assets, but Washington, D.C., didn’t mobilize all of its resources, Kozyrev believes, “to help us win the civil war against revanchist, hardline Russian nationalists. It was the only way to get rid of this mad situation. We were ready to cut our nukes to the bare minimum and end our strategic doctrine of preparing for a showdown with the West. The window of opportunity existed until 1994. And for America this wasn’t just a moral imperative — to help us. It was an existential one.”

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/russias-ex-foreign-minister-on-his-totalitarian-country/

[Poiuyt]

4. If you ask me, I'd say that Putin has already crossed over the line

Last edited Wed Mar 9, 2022, 10:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Is Russia attacking a NATO country the only thing that will exact a military response from the West? If an event like the the Rape of Nanjing were to be committed by Russian soldiers, would we just "show concern"? Bombing children's hospitals is pretty bad in my book.

[Texaswitchy]

7. Putin has crossed the line.

Attacking civilians.

Mother's with their babies.

Putin is just testing NATO.

To see what he can get away with.

I think maybe some of those NATO countries are getting nervous.

Fight Putin in Ukraine or fight him in your own country.

[femmedem]

5. If letting the Chernobyl reactor remain without power, using thermobarbaric bombs on civilians,

bombing a children's hospital, mining evacuation routes, letting cities go without food, water and heat in subzero weather doesn't spark stronger action, I have no faith that chemical weapons will spark a stronger response, either.

I feel as if we are little better than Susan Collins: very concerned.

[Texaswitchy]

8. Putin is nothing but a bully.

NATO could more then handle the Russian army.

[dumbcat]

16. The Russian Army

is not the worry. It's the nukes.

[Texaswitchy]

18. Goes both ways.

How long does Putin dictate to the world.

Russia would be gone if the missiles flew.

Putin is using this like a baseball bat.

We are already in WW3.

The world is in this fight already.

[bluestarone]

10. Pooty is probably STILL getting his information

From our great RETHULICON SPIES in congress!

[Texaswitchy]

12. Yes.

Absolutely.

[Darwins_Retriever]

15. This is my guess

1. Move in NBC/CBR units to address the chemical/biological agents and neutralize them.
2. Provide combat units to protect the NBC units.
3. If the units are attacked, bring in additional boots and helicopters (Blackhawks and Apaches). If Russian air power is used, it will be matched by US air power.

None of this crosses the boarders.

[RussBLib]

17. good question

another one is: if Russia uses tactical nukes against Ukraine, is that enough to get NATO or the US involved?

[SoonerPride]

19. The US will no intercede in Ukraine. Full stop.

Putin has carte blanche to use everything in his arsenal and NATO will not lift a finger.

But should he step one boot in a NATO country that would trigger Article 5 and all hell would break loose.

But Ukraine is on its own.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

20. Remember the "red line" Russia crossed by using chemical weapons in Syria?, that was sidestepped

...by the world, I imagine we'd do the same again, nothing