John Mearsheimer

They have nuclear weapons.

We have nuclear weapons.

They've used nuclear weapons.

What is the happy ending here?

And just to take it a step further and go back to our earlier discussion about moving NATO up to Russia's borders, the point I made, which you surely agree with, is that the Russians are very fearful when they see NATO coming up to their border.

Well, here's a case where not only has NATO come up to their border, but they're in a war with NATO right on their border.

What do the escalation dynamics look like there?

You know what the answer is?

Who knows?

That should scare the living bejesus out of you, right?

You know, there's a story that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy put out the word, no aircraft under any circumstances are to penetrate Soviet airspace.

And he then found out a few days later

that some guy hadn't gotten the message and had penetrated in an aircraft deep into Soviet airspace.

And this supports your basic point that, you know, bad things happen.

And again, the overarching point here is we've never done this before, thankfully.

Therefore, we don't have a lot of experience as to how it plays itself out.

Mm-hmm.

It's really a theoretical enterprise because there's no empirical basis for talking about escalation in a nuclear crisis.

And that, of course, is a wonderful thing.

Well, I think the main reason was that you had this suffocating occupation.