When you've been in as many SF streetfights as I have, you learn very quickly that just because your attacker is done with you, you don't need to be done with your attacker. Seven years ago, I purchased a chemistry book at Green Apple Books on 9th Ave. I was just minding my own business, nosing through it, when some beardo decided he didn't like me in my own neighborhood and slashed my arm. He kept walking, like he didn't do anything. In this scenario, I'm Russia and he's NATO. Should I have done nothing because he was done with me? Fuck that! I ran across the street and when I was about ten feet away, he spun around. “Why did you attack me?” “Fuck you!” He came at me. I threw my book in his face and snapped a front kick into his stomach. He tried tangling me with his lead arm and kept trying to stab my body or slash my neck with his knife hand. I kept kicking him in the ribs until a few broke. Finally an undercover cop ran across the street and broke it up. Motherfucker. I wanted to stomp my attacker until he lost all his teeth. I'd already decided I wasn't going to kill him when I had a chance to throw him into the plate glass window of the drug store we were fighting in-front of. But I wanted to fuck him up. Make him pay for starting a fight with a peaceful man who just wanted to learn some chemistry!
Trifling warmongers in NATO are starting to talk about peace with Russia. Why would Russia do that? Because it's weak? That assumption has been disproved. Because they cherish peace? Yes, that's why it took 25 years of NATO provocations to instigate offensive military action by Russia.
Russia is like me. It's attacked by cocky, xenophobic assholes who misunderstand what it's about. Like me, Russia is an asshole. No way around it. But also like me, if you think it's just going to tolerate some stranger cutting it without breaking some ribs in exchange, you're wrong.
My question: has Russia broken any of our ribs yet?
Answer: No.
Is there an undercover cop coming to rescue us from our folly?
No.
Therefore, the war will continue.
Negotiating a settlement is like letting some random fucker slash you in your own neighborhood and saying, 'ok, it wasn't that bad and I want to live in peace.'
Breaking ribs means never seeing that motherfucker on this side of the city ever again. It means making him pay. Making him remember that night he decided to go drinking in the Avenues, slashing some chinky looking dude, and getting so fucked up it took him months to recover. Making him scared to go to west side.
Replace me with Russia and replace beardo with NATO. Westside can be Eastern Europe.
What constitutes rib-breaking at this moment?
Taking all of Ukraine is just disarming the attacker. That would be like me doing something dangerous like trying to disarm beardo. I don't care how much Judo, Ju-Juitsu, and Aikido I know. I've always been shit at disarming attackers during sparring. This is Russia. Not great at soft-war with Ukraine. Thinking about throwing it through the plate glass window and pushing down HARD. Thinking about how that becomes a potential murder charge.
But if Russia can't use its proverbial nukes to shove its NATO attacker through the plate glass window, then what options are in front of it?
In my metaphor, it's not enough to beat the beardo. One must beat the undercover cop who did nothing when it was me being attacked, and did so much when it was the white guy losing a fight he started. In fact, one must beat everyone who allowed this fucker into the neighborhood and excused his aggression as something 'harmless.'
Russia isn't going to let beardo leave the neighborhood so he can come back with a bunch of his friends. Russia is going to beat beardo so badly he is never the same again.
If you think Russia is going to stop the war just because NATO is out of ammo, you are wrong. If you think Russia is going to stop, just because the attacks are becoming ineffectual, you are wrong. If you think that Russia is going to let beardo go back to his own neighborhood unscathed, you are wrong. Russia is going to jam that knife so far up NATO's ass, we're going to be lucky if we don't bleed to death.
It worked once as a way of removing Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy. This time it may compel to move NATO back to ‘92 bordes.
Not to mention the panic attack of the US electorate when they experience this kind of threat. The populist Republicans would be all over the issue …
Do you see Russia’s return to Cuba with few hypersonics in tow?