As for the sanctions, well, we can already see the pressure to ease up on them. It’s bad for business, the price of oil, inflation, wag, wag, wag, as soon as the shooting stops the sanctions will start to be ignored, and before long it will be an unseemly scramble to wipe them out and pick up as if nothing had happened. People will get rich finding ways around the sanctions. You know the Chinese will, and we’ll still buy their crap and ship them our jobs, and let them violate our copyrights, because we want ‘access to their markets’ and we love their low prices. And others will complain about how the Ukraine shit is interfering with their March Madness brackets, or that trip to Vegas, or how the Economy will affect the Election.

Meanwhile, people are dying, millions more are homeless, or refugees pouring into other lands. But hey, at least they’re white, eh? Not just clever, tough soldiers fighting bravely for their homeland, but kids, women, old folks, and even stray souls who find themselves in the path of a missile fired from a thousand klicks away. And all the time, your country is being ground away to rubble, it will take a century to rebuild. Schoolyard fights don’t end with a handshake or few punches any more. You watch the news, kids get knifed, and shot.

Nukes and crazy people change everything. We used them in 1945, we weren’t crazy, and we were winning.

And there’s the unforeseen consequences. You know how the Winter War ended, but do you remember what happened then? The Swedes sold the Nazis iron and let them transit their territory, and the Finns joined the Wehrmacht in the attack on Russia. Some problems cannot be solved, they can only be managed. If we’re lucky, maybe Putin will learn that this time.

Again, this sounds so much like the Moscow Treaty as a truce to the Winter War. Which really didn’t solve anything, just kicked the can down the road.

A bully demands your dessert in your lunch box. You say no. He starts beating the shit out of you. Or tries to. You give as good as you are getting, maybe more so. Still a bloody mess, a cat fight, tufts of fur all over. There’s a circle of other kids gathered now, trying to figure out whether or not to get involved. They are not cheering on the bully. Eventually, you and the bully tire of this crap and agree on a solution. He gets your cookie and your apple. In return, the entire school doesn’t burn down.

Not a perfect analogy, I know.