[rayiner]

> I think we have every reason to believe putin will continue to conquer more land over time.

What makes you think that? Historically, Ukraine has been conquered by various countries in the region (Russia, Poland, Lithuania) because of its strategic location.

Clearly, western europe doesn’t think that’s true judging by their defense spending.

[zippothrowaway]

> What makes you think that?

Becasue Putin has openly talked about how Latvia and Moldova, for example, are part of Russia.

[rayiner]

But there’s geographical limits to expansion based on that principle, right? It wouldn’t affect any place that directly affects America?

Say India decided to relitigate the Islamic conquest of the subcontinent and take over Bangladesh. Say India keeps going into Pakistan. Does the U.S. get involved? Why should America care?

[throw16180339]

> Say India decided to relitigate the Islamic conquest of the subcontinent and take over Bangladesh. Say India keeps going into Pakistan. Does the U.S. get involved? Why should America care?

India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons. If a conflict between them escalates, then even a limited nuclear exchange would lead to tens of millions of casualties, mass starvation, widespread electronic outages, and releasing millions of tons of black smoke into the atmosphere; crop yields worldwide would be severely reduced.

There have been a few studies on a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, although as you'd expect, they're mostly from antinuclear advocacy groups. There are many unknown factors and a wide range of estimates, so I'd take all numbers with a grain of salt.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31616796/

https://psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/two-billion-at-ri...

There's also an active National Academies study on the environmental effects of nuclear war (https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/independent-study...), although they haven't released anything yet.