You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

James_Miller comments on Calibrating your probability estimates of world events: Russia vs Ukraine, 6 months later. - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: shminux 28 August 2014 11:37PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (164)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: James_Miller 31 August 2014 02:15:10PM *  2 points [-]

Consider two reasons the U.S. has for protecting a country from Russia or China. (1) Because of some document signed a long time ago. (2) Because we would lose a lot if that country fell under the control of Russia or China.

(2) has always been a lot more important than (1). The dead hand of the past is a lot weaker than it seems in international relations.

Having the Germans and Japanese spend more money on their military would benefit the United States. If I were Putin I would consider the main downside of taking Estonia being that German would respond by militarizing.