“Vandals”? Interesting word choice.
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That article is recommended reading.
He’s right - that’s exactly what NATO should do but I fear it has not got the balls to say so or do it. Even if some in NATO are aware of the need to respond as described to an escalation, there will be enough naysayers to kibosh it. In that respect Putin will be proven correct - NATO is weak, and he will get away with it.
I fervently hope I am wrong.
ETA the point not overtly made in that article is that it will be no good doing something after Putin escalates, if we have not signalled beforehand that it is what will happen if he does. Unsignalled action will be treated as hostile action/escalation by Putin and he may well press a button we do not want pressed. If we tell him in advance “this WILL happen, if you…” and then we DO IT when he does, he will then have to decide if HE wants to escalate further. If we do not signal it in advance he will simply treat escalation as his only response to what he will see a our pre-emptive strike, to which he must respond.
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They can’t win the war in the mud fields so now they trying to win the war by going after the crop fields?
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And major generals.
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Even turning Ukraine into staving rubble won’t get him a victory, so… Pull back, but interdict western aid and rebuilding, and create a massive permanent refugee problem for the west to deal with, while amplifying xenophobia.
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Gah, why is The Guardian using “Nato” and not “NATO”. Do they have some sort of style guide that doesn’t use all caps for acronyms? Do they call them "Atm"s? “Nasa?” “Eu”? “Uk”?
I think I agree with his point, we should draw clear lines in the sand and leave it up to him to not toe them, vs the other way around. I understand no one wants to escalate to the point a low yield nuke is used. But
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Yes, the Guardian’s style guide (as well as the BBC and some other British institutions) doesn’t use all-caps for acronyms that are pronounced as words rather than a series of letters. So they do say “Nasa” and “Nato” because of how we use those essentially as words, but will say BBC, FBI and CIA because we still say the letters individually.
Just a British thing, I guess. Maybe you can get them to stop doing that if you start calling the EU “the eww” and the UK “the uck” in conversation.
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Well, I don’t like it. I’m writing a letter to the editor, ASAP.
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I’m really struck by this one (it’s a portion of the whole picture)…
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It’s a translation thing in the Finnish versio they used ilkivalta (something like “mean authority”) it’s usually translated as vandalism or mischief.
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If you start a petition, I’ll sign.
Or NATO, N A T O, or NASA, N A S A (i.e. stop pronouncing acronyms as words).
I hate it too, but it’s a battle long since lost.
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My workplace once had a “Fast-Action Response Team” but they got renamed.
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