Two broad perspectives have emerged as the civilized world tries to figure out how to respond to the inhumanities perpetrated on Ukraine by the war criminal Vladimir Putin.
One argument counsels restraint and containment in any NATO or other Western action against Putin. Localized aggressors have created bloody massacres before in Yemen, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (to name but three) this thinking goes. What matters most here is negotiation and containment, especially given the Russian president’s aggressive state and his military’s formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons.
No-fly zones, boots on the ground and other forms of direct military intervention, while tempting in the face of human suffering and pleas for help, risk catastrophic escalation that could destroy much of the planet.
