i bet they said the same thing about Iraq in 2002. to the shock of everyone, the politician in charge of profitting from war wants to convince us to go to war

Russia cannot even handle the Ukraine. How do they want to handle NATO? Drones and sabotage I see, they're doing that already. But all out war?

Capitalism leads to war

Shareholders in the arms companies are feeling a bit hard up and not able to afford their fifth homes, new SUVs, Olympic-sized swimming pools and for the VAT on their kids' private education. Gotta risk nuclear annihilation for those poor guys.

Comments here are interesting. I came expecting to see pro Ukraine sentiment (good), but instead got cynicism towards the military industrial complex (also good).

…But these are at odds with each other.

One can support Ukraine militarily, which absolutely requires economic sacrifices, if not humans ones. Or one can not, or something in between. But it’s a spectrum of tradeoffs.

I think there was a precedent for this risk in living memory. I think there was even a term for it... some kind of "war" that wasn't "hot"...

But anyway it would be better if politicians talked about the way in which Russian aggression is already here ("hybrid warfare") because it simultaneously supports how this is not just scaremongering but something that is already happening, and modulates the risk under discussion. It's very unlikely that Russia would open a new front given that it can't make progress on the actual battlefield in Ukraine and is having manpower issues. But could it step up undersea cable sabotage, drone overflights, parcel bombs, terrorist attacks, assassinations, airspace incursions, etc? Absolutely.

And the thing is, those tactics are attractive to Russia because they're asymmetric: a parcel bomb in Russia does not cause the same level of public outcry when the president can bomb a few apartment buildings and get away with it, due to restricted media.

Just let them have their way with Britain. It worked so well for us with Israel