... what I meant is that it will only make it worse, which is why we've got to be careful. We can't further break up Russia because we'll make the situation that led to the rise of the Nazis look like a schoolyard brawl, and I don't know about you, but I don't want a leadership that is like the actual Nazis with their hands close to the nuclear button.
We're already too close to ZDF's World War 3 to be comfortable with as it is.
That sort of situation would likely have a chance of the leadership acting like Makarov from the original Modern Warfare series. The mentality of 'Russia will be victorious, even if it must stand upon the ashes'...
As the saying goes, let them hate, as long as they fear. There is quite a number of nuclear armed governments in the world with strong feelings regarding their neighbors, and that will always be the case, probably more so than less.
According to some supposed leaks, current situation is a direct result of them not fearing enough - of Kremlin believing that once they finish their Desert Stormski and have their parade in Kyiv, the West will be so shocked that it will basically shit its pants, roll over and give them almost anything they demand, including partial or complete breakup of NATO, confirming Russia's return to the table of world powers, as an equal to USA and China, kinda like in the good ol' days, despite the fact that in reality Russia is so far equal, if not superior, to such only in the size of the ego of its leadership, which is not enough to substantiate such claim.
A precedent where any nuclear power can get at least a favorable compromise in any conflict just on the implied threat that it will become suicidally aggressive out of sheer butthurt over getting anything less than that is one no one sane wants to set.
Especially in context of the existence of Islamic political factions that are or may become nuclear powers, while having a far clearer and better evidenced history and ideological motivation for willingly engaging in suicidal degrees of aggression than Russia.
The biggest mistakes here i think were the lackluster responses of the West after 2008, 2014 and the covert ops chemical attack in UK, gradually emboldening Russian leadership in its provocative actions and increasingly convincing them about how cowardly or impotent western powers must be if they react so sheepishly, in turn shifting expectations low for future reactions to other events from said countries.
The core problems with that are twofold: 1) the necessary occupation required would require somewheres near a billion or two (proper occupations require something along the lines of 10 soldiers per person under occupation) and decades to accomplish (we're talking better part of a century here), and 2) it'll require the nuclear question to be thoroughly answered in everyone else's favor (but the likelihood of this getting answered will also have the problem of having large-scale wars becoming a thing again, rather permanently).
Few would even consider occupying whole of Russia, if at all, and that's what would in fact require answering the nuclear question. Other options though, it gets murkier.
And the problem of large scale wars returning is obviously already a done deal considering that one is quite clearly happening.
