Russia would lose a war with NATO, Poland warns
“It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said.
A war between Vladimir Putin's Russia and NATO would end with Moscow's “inevitable defeat,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Thursday.
"It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” Sikorski said during a speech to the Sejm, the lower house of Poland's parliament. “It is worth reminding about this, not to increase the sense of threat in the Russians, because NATO is a defensive pact, but to show that an attack by Russia on any of the members of the Alliance would end in its [Russia's] inevitable defeat.”
Sikorski, who was laying out Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s vision for the new government's foreign policy, said Russia’s military and economic potential “pales in comparison to that of the West,” as NATO has three times as many military personnel, three times the aerial resources and four times as many ships as Russia.
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Western allies and top military officials have become increasingly worried about a potential spillover of violence from Putin’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine — as the Russian leader continues to issue veiled nuclear threats toward the West and stashes atomic weapons in Belarus, which borders NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
A war between Russia and NATO would result in the textbook definition of a pyrhhic victory. Everyone should be afraid of that. There will be no winners in nuclear combat.
There is a great novel written in 1959 called Alas, Babylon by an author named Pat Frank about the survivors of a nuclear war between the US and the USSR in a small Florida town. The novel ends this way:
Great quote! That's one of my absolute favorite books. I recommend it to people all the time.
If you liked Alas, Babylon, I'd strongly recommend On The Beach by Nevil Shute.
I know On The Beach well! The movie is good too. There's also a decent BBC radio dramatization:
https://archive.org/details/on-the-beach-by-nevil-shute
That book was wild. Read it in high school as part of a class that also covered the classics of the era; On the Beach, Fail Safe etc. It stuck with me with its description of blindness from the blast and the metaphor for confusion.
That last line has haunted me for decades.
And that's the whole point of MAD. It doesn't matter if you can "win". You've just managed to kill a few million more than the other side, everyone loses anyway so there's no point in starting such a conflict.
Until someone is too crazy or too stupid or both and thinks they can win.
Yeah exactly. Of course you can "win" but everyone will lose a great deal in the process.
MAD goes way beyond Pyrrhic victory, even. Pyrrhus of Epirus won a battle but lost the war as a result... and then recovered in time to wage different, unrelated ones with other people.
Which is the reason there won't be one. Nukes are seen these days as a weapon of last resort and has no tactical use.
They're a weapon of last resort because of (warranted) fear of them. Hence, everyone absolutely should be scared of war between NATO and Russia.
Correct, fear of retribution. War between Russia would be brief without nukes, and you would be counting on NATO pulling back before Russia became desperate for survival.
And NATO wouldn't be able to impose conditions of surrender, but rather, the loser would impose the conditions. There's no playbook or precedent for any of it.
Exactly. I've read the UKs pm recently talking about the need to increase defense spending as the world's so much likely to be at war. It's like world leaders want to see WWIII not realizing or giving a shite that by talking it up that only destabilizes things like the economy as people become anxious and worried. And before anyone comes out with Russia invaded Ukraine first or out of nowhere. They didn't invade in 2022, they invaded in 2014 with Crimea. Russia had been at war with Ukraine since and regardless invading the rest of Ukraine is a world of difference to invading a NATO member which would invite retaliation from 32 members and so would be an act of self sabotage when some of those members have nuclear weapons.