Posted by swamphawk22 on 12/4/2012 2:54:00 AM (view original):
The only reason that MAD works is the belief that the other side would go to war if any ally was attacked.
I was alive during a lot of the cold war and was interested in military and foreign policy issues. I used to have a reoccuring dream about nuclear war.
If we let our allies get picked off we are in a "Red Dawn" scenario before we can blink an eye.
You're still ignoring the critical fact that the nations in question WERE NOT OUR ALLIES. Palin isn't even advocating simple defense of our allies, which as I've said I think would not have been a good idea, but I can see where this is a negotiable point. Certainly I'm not going to dismiss the argument that we need to protect our allies. There's a big difference between saying we'll go to war with Russia if they attack Great Britain and actively bringing Russian conflicts into a US military treaty. That's not defending an ally. It's basically going out looking for conflict with Russia. Taking an action to deliberately incite US-Russian conflict. It's not remotely the same thing. How are you missing this? The Cuban Missile Crisis was basically a question of one side provoking the other, we were, according to all inside sources, extremely lucky not to have gone to nuclear war, and afterwards neither side actively provoked the other into conflict. Obviously we were still at a stand-off, but neither side took any action to immediately incite a potentially catastrophic conflict between the United States and the USSR/Russia. Inviting Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO while in a Russian conflict would easily be the most aggressive move made by either side since the CMC. And you're saying it would have been a good idea. Fortunately nobody with the credentials to actually get into government was so stupid.