= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on February 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (138)
I think Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire and is going to keep taking more territory until he encounters serious resistance, and this resistance could easily turn into a war in which nuclear weapons are used. Putin might rationally calculate that if he tried to conquer Finland (which used to be part of the Czarist Empire) there is only a 10% chance that the U.S. would put up serious resistance, and this was a gamble he would be willing to take. But if the U.S. did decide to fight it would easily beat back Russia if the war stayed conventional, and this might cause Putin to use atomic weapons.
Putin probably calculates that Obama is much less likely to use military force against him than the next U.S. President will be, so we might be entering a period of great danger.
Well, first the Finns are likely to put up serious resistance. There a reason why Finland was an independent country post-WW2 and not the 16th Soviet republic.
The "logical" next targets for Putin are the Baltics.
But the Baltic states are in NATO, and so the U.S. is more likely to defend them than it would Finland.
Whether US and Europe are more likely to go to war with Russia over Finland or over the Baltics is an interesting question, but there doesn't appear to be any way of deciding it :-)
NATO is a point in favor of the U.S. being more likely to fight over the Baltics than Finland. Are there any factors going the other way?
Yes. The Baltics belonged to Russia much more recently than Finland and have a much larger Russian minority population.
Good point.