[From "As Nuclear War Looms, Does Russia Have a Right to Its Own Monroe Doctrine?"]

With news that Israeli intelligence has detected an “irregular presence” of nuclear-capable Russian bombers near Finland and retired general David Petraeus casually saying NATO would likely sink Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea fleet if Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, it’s perhaps time for a few questions:

First, can we discuss a situation that could very well result in thermonuclear war — and the end of life as we know it — intelligently and rationally? Or must all questions about our Dr. Strangelove policy be met with childish name-calling (e.g., “stooge of Putin!”) designed to silence debate?

Second, is it a good idea to essentially tell a man who controls 6,200 nuclear weapons, and who our pseudo-elites may label “crazy,” you want to kill him? This is what Joe Biden’s and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for Russian “regime change” really amounts to, mind you[…]
One element of what’s known as Just War Doctrine is that for a proposed military action to be moral, it must do more good than harm. Is this the case with our playing chicken with Putin? The best-case scenario is that we help an internationalist pseudo-elite, Zelenskyy, retain power and preserve the borders of what even the left-wing Guardian called in 2015 “the most corrupt nation in Europe”

The worst-case scenario is global thermonuclear war[…]
Some may now wonder, “Why do we have to back down?” The answer is simple: Russia’s “Monroe Doctrine.”

Consider: President John F. Kennedy took a firm stand during the Cuban Missile Crisis, establishing a naval blockade of Cuba after the USSR deployed missile bases on the island. JFK took this hard line because it was our backyard[…]
And so it is with Russia, with Ukraine being its Cuba[…]
There could be a reason to risk atomic annihilation—that Red Dawn scenario comes to mind