You’re not thinking about things clearly. You can’t live as a hostage. Otherwise “do what we say or nukes” until you wind up a slave. Better off dead.

If Russia doesn’t like it they can stop with the dumb threats.

The best way to avoid confrontation is to have an irrational adult at the helm, then all calculated escalation bets are off and you tend to just not play.

I am glad you didn’t run the Cold War.

Edit: by that I mean, with that attitude we would just have never developed nukes, or given the nukes to the Russians preemptively, because who wants nuclear war, right? Anything is better than that.

> one that ends with the end of the world and billions dead

The point is it doesn’t. Ukraine is on its way to wiping out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It’s pure posturing to pretend Moscow is stupid enough to end its existence over a naval battle, much less simply credible threats of one.

Sounds like your criticism is better leveled at the country threatening nuclear holocaust if someone sneezes at them.

It's not yet demonstrated Russia will make the jump from a limited conventional confrontation to an all out nuclear war, even as its territory is under daily attack from a non-nuclear country.