[ben_w]

How much are you willing to bet on that? I saw plenty of people saying before the invasion that it would be irrational for Putin to invade and therefore he wouldn't. He did it anyway and we can easily see from how badly it's gone so far that it wasn't rational, so the obvious conclusion is that he's not acting rationally.

[jleyank]

He might be relying on people's grasp of history being terrible and that they have far more desire to be warm than concerned about naked aggression. Which is probably true, although frustrating after all of the examples Europe provided itself in the 1800's and 1900's.

[treis]

>I saw plenty of people saying before the invasion that it would be irrational for Putin to invade and therefore he wouldn't.

I didn't, but nevertheless there's a difference between "it's irrational because the cost is higher than the benefit" and "it's irrational because there's no benefit to getting your ass kicked".

[ben_w]

Isn’t one of those a subset of the other? Both look kinda like they’re applicable to Russia right now, but I’m aware my sense of scale may be wrong for stuff like this.