Thanks for the awesome reply! It's not that I don't see what you see. But we work with the Saudi Arabia too and they're no democracy either. I've never been happy with either situation. I'd just assume walk ;)

Accepting everything you say, I still believe there's a good chance he wouldn't have invaded if we placated him. That's all what-if now, so what you argue is the better working assumption at the moment.

You wrote that "it's unlikely that he'll manage to win too much", about my feeling that if you're right the U.S. should sent its military into Ukraine now. It's time for me to scratch my head at your logic ;)

As you wrote, he's "capable of causing a great amount of destruction." That's certainly been proven already. If he could keep Donbas a wreck for the past 8 years why not another? This time in a way that will ultimately starve a lot of people.

Why can't we give Ukraine the Polish Su-27s? Poland wants F-16s in the future. What's the problem? As General McCaffrey said in an interview, we spent $8 billion a month during parts of the Iraq war. We survived.

And why can't we promise 500 Abram M1 Tanks to Ukraine as he also suggests? I just don't get it. If you're right, and Putin is Mafia, shouldn't we say this is what's coming after you? All this sanction stuff is fine against a country that ultimately wants to be part of global market. You're saying not so. So I say, then we have to promise OVERWHELMING FORCE which is U.S. military doctrine. It's what I've been paying for my whole life.

It saddens me that so few Americans don't want to get what we, and the world, has paid for. Can you explain that? (I don't buy nuke excuse for a variety of reasons).