People still don't get the full gravity of this current conflict. Similar to what the west has grasped the full gravity of Taiwan with China.
First of all, all of us arm-chair generals must understand that US/China/Russia are brutally rational countries. Otherwise, Cold War would have been ended with nukes, somewhere some scale. The fact that the Cold War 1.0 was ended peacefully speaks volumes on a megaton scale.
With that, the development of NATO vis-a-vis former Soviet republics is viewed as an existential threat to Russia (the nation). But the same cannot be said to NATO, particularly US, which is just icing on the cake.
I am not sure if any of you have engaged in a real street fight of life-or-death. I fully believe Putin will use tactical nukes in those buffer countries, if he believes the his current engagement is failing. And I can bet my house that NATO would not declare war overtly against Russia, even that worst case scenario actually happens. The calculation is as simple as I said above.
Taiwan issue is even more existential to China than Ukraine to Russia. Hence the readout of the latest Xi-Biden meeting. Mind you that this is the first time in my lifetime that I see the China readout starts with Biden's words, instead of Chinese leader's words. And please re-read what Biden said to Xi at the beginning of the meeting. So that is abundantly clear that Biden admin has been mis-judging China's bottom line as well as China's strategic aim. I will guarantee you, as someone grew up in China, that China would do WHAT-EVER-IT-TAKES when the war over the Taiwan Street finally breaks out (God forbidden). And US would absolutely not escalate to the levels that China would be willing.
So please, put some sanity into a real war. Emotion destroys money in stock markets but destroys lives in real wars.
Yes, if Sweden or Finland finally joins NATO, that would be suicidal in my books. And mark my words, those 3 little Baltic states will somewhat move toward neutral in the future, in essence if not on face.
