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I think it's the other way around: Russia is aggressive but a show of strength would deter it. In other words, Russia isn't desperate to avoid a confrontation with the West. Russia wants a confrontation with the West, and it needs to know that that's a confrontation it won't win. (China also needs to know that, and it's watching the situation in Ukraine closely.)
That's not to say that we should seek out such a confrontation with the goal of intimidating Russia. A high-stakes situation like that does have the risk of escalating out of control. However, the situation in Ukraine is already such a confrontation, initiated by Russia due to its belief that the West is weak. It would have been much better to avoid creating such a belief, but now is too late for that. The best we can do is to avoid reinforcing it and, from a pragmatic perspective, it helps that most of the risk is borne by Ukraine.
In short, the nightmare scenario is Russia invading a NATO country like one of the Baltic states. Then either there is a war between nuclear powers immediately or Western unity collapses and a war between nuclear powers becomes much more likely in the near future. Our best chance of avoiding that is to stop Russia in Ukraine, where we can do so indirectly.
Edit: Also people shouldn't be down-voting you. You're making a valid point that needs to be addressed.
I disagree. As the cold war showed, shows of strength escalate, they do not deter. I don't believe for a moment Russia wants a confrontation with the West or that they believe the West is weak. I think they invaded Ukraine because they were scared of the West. They were scared of Ukraine's rich agricultural land coming under the control of the West, and they were scared of NATO being on their doorstep. I think the invasion of Ukraine was an act of fear and desperation, and if we continue down this path, more acts of fear and desperation will follow.
NATO has been on their doorstep since its inception, so this argument is unreasonable.
Norway is a founding member and share a border with them.
The geographical argument for Russia wanting to take Ukraine is nonsense BECAUSE of the nuclear threat. Having a physical buffer zone or whatever is complete nonsense in an era where anyone who poses a real existential threat can simply be nuked out of existence and start the apocalypse. A few thousand kms of extra land does exactly zilch to change the calculus for the West starting a war with Russia. Russia wants Ukraine because it wants to make more money, and no other reason.
I think Russia wants Ukraine not in order to make money but in order to have Putin go down in history as the restorer of the Russian empire. That lack of pragmatism is what's going to make negotiations difficult.
That, but also the fossil fuels underneath Ukraine, let's not forget about those.
What exactly was the west supposed to do though? They weren't gonna stop at ukraine. They want to take Moldova, Georgia, maybe even parts of Finland as well before they joined NATO. Stopping then now and letting the countries join nato/eu would solve future invasions. Russia shouldn't have to feel threatened if they stopped acting like a threat to everyone else.
The scenario you describe has already come to pass. Russia has NATO on their doorstep since Finland joined, Russia's chances of breaking through the Ukrainian army and actually capturing that agricultural land are rather low even if Western support for Ukraine drops significantly, and Ukraine is going to be friendly to the West and hostile to Russia even if it isn't allowed into NATO. If this scenario is intolerable to Russia, then whatever would happen is going to happen.
I do think there is a small but significant risk that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (a scenario where both escalating and not escalating are likely to be disastrous) if its army is driven back to the border but not if the war becomes a frozen conflict with Russia controlling the territory it currently does. With that said, I disagree that shows of strength don't deter. Western strength deterred a Soviet invasion of Europe, and it deters a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. There definitely is a risk of escalation, but there always will be. The USA has tried being isolationist before, but it was still drawn into both world wars. It will be drawn into the next one if such a war happens.
Yes, but it also encouraged the establishment of the "iron curtain" of Soviet satellite states and a nuclear arms race. It's only by the grace of god, or sheer dumb luck that full scale nuclear war didn't break out.