> OK, you can have Czechoslovakia! (stop there, please)
indeed, the UK, France, and Italy should not have been allowed to sign The Munich Agreement of 1938, moreso Poland should not have been allowed to annex Trans-Olza from Czechoslovakia, certainly not in an act of a military ultimatum.
I just checked: only Moldova is left that's not in NATO and in place where Russians could march to (but they would need to get the western Ukraine first). Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia are all under NATO nukes protection; Sweden and Finland will join shortly. Are you sure Putin - and all the people around, at the same time! - are insane enough to risk eradication of all its cities?
Nuclear weapons changed the circumstances so much that direct comparison with 1938-1939 is impossible. We neither can give Slovakia away, nor have we a reason to. On the other hand, for Ukraine, swallowing the bitter pill and losing territory would also clear the way for NATO application (the civil war in the east makes it de iure impossible) and would give them time to prepare to defend from much better fortified positions, with much greater access to Western weaponry, and with much better contingency plans.
Yes, because he isn't afraid. He attacked because of once in a lifetime perfect storm: USA maxing out its credit card, CoVID, China hunkering down, Molotov-Ribbentrop 2.0 with Germany, highest access to Western lobbyists it ever had, Turkey in turmoil, and so, so, so.
He will not let the West to recover. Were his 200,000 troops to march into Poland instead of Ukraine in February, the entirety of NATO in Europe would' be in a giant trouble until USA would've brought forces from North America.
For as long as the West will be showing fear, he will continue to attack.
Damn right you are (not in the literal sense of a secret deal, but the effects are similar). IMO Germany bears the most responsibility for this situation, on par with Putin himself. Ukraine was screwed big time by German diplomacy and their ambiguous stance. That Ukrainians still want to belong to the West is a miracle. Once the war is over, they should, and I think they will, start asking questions about all the "NATO membership is on the table, the doors are open" alternating with "well, you'll need to wait some 20 years to get past the doors anyway". I sincerely hope this will weight on the conscience of Germans enough to substantially lessen the amount of money they will demand from Ukraine for the support they (reluctantly) are showing now.
Buying time is the same as saving thousands of lives. I would hardly say that means it doesn't work.
Then there's the nuclear arsenal of NATO. Would Hitler attack Poland if it had nukes capable of putting an end to the Fuhrer himself, his Volk, and his Reich? From what I learned he wasn't suicidal until much later. Is Putin right now? Possibly, but I think he'd get assassinated long before his order to perform "special military operation" against a NATO country could reach his troops.
> Buying time is the same as saving thousands of lives
How so? If you prepare for war in the meantime ( like Ukraine did between 2014 and now), yes, but otherwise i don't see anything but postponing that loss of lives.
Yes, exactly - I should have written it more clearly:
> Buying time is the same as saving thousands of lives. I would hardly say that means it doesn't work [- unless you decide to waste that time by not preparing sufficiently.]
In short, you're right - buying time on its own doesn't help much.
I don't think Ukraine prepared sufficiently, by the way. I don't know what their leaders thought, but joining NATO was effectively a pipe dream due to the unresolved civil war in the east. Without NATO nukes it was obvious that they will need to fight for survival at some point. How come they need so much weaponry and ammunition right now? Where are the stockpiles accumulated over the last 8 years, where are the nationalized factories that produce tanks and guns, where are the roads, railways, bunkers, weapon caches, evacuation routes, minefields, trenches, and so on? Apparently in Switzerland - the most peaceful, neutral country (in Europe at least) - they have enough bunkers to house all its population and then some. They are used as warehouses normally... and mostly for long-lasting foodstuffs, too. How come Ukrainian civilians, after 8 years of preparation, need to hide in theaters? You could say that it's in hindsight that we know Russia would attack, but.. It's Russia we're talking about! They have a lot of similar wars in their history, both in the past ~1k years and in the past 50 years - enough to conclude that they will try to attack if the circumstances are favorable to it (after a major, world-wide crisis, preferably).
OK, you can have Czechoslovakia! (stop there, please)
OK, you can have Poland.
...France?
You see how this doesn't work anymore.