On the one hand, this may be so, but there's always the chance that placing yourself into a corner (like US did, forcing it on a few unwilling partners too, apart from those willing) may actually lead to more dangerous escalation. I am not convinced this cannot get to a massive war involving many countries.
I won't think it can escalate much further, for two reasons.
One, no one involved
wants to die. Not even those tools of whomever (I stand by my eeralied statements about whose creature ISIS is), they didn't do a suicide wahabbi attack in case people here didn't notice - they planned to escape. So this thing won't escalate to the rightfully dreaded nuclear war. If I'm wrong we're all dead anyway.
Two, NATO doesn't even have the weapons to continue battling Russia alone for long, much less Russia and whomever finally breaks free of the "hegemony" and would normally be clobbered for it, like Libya, Iraq, Serbian, etc were. A coupe years ago I said observe what the arabs do. They went their own way, are triagulating. More than triangulating, the world has truly gone multi-polar already and they have already set themselves up as one pole. The emirates are rivaling London for financial services, Saudi Arabia wants to have more industry and has some very interesting plans (I admit I underestimated them) and Turkey (not arab!) is setting itself up to beat Germany in industry and start influencing politics there (and in France). Now that is a funny historical inversion!
Now, observe what happens in Niger and in Iraq. Both countries are trying to kick out unwanted US military bases planted on their territories. How many fronts can a weakened NATO, running out of ammo, with a visibly inadequate military industry, fight simultaneously? And who (once the poor ukranians run out) is going to volunteer to die for NATO or the EU? There's a reason why the french are so hyperactive lately: they're trying to salvage their francafrique with some backroom deal. But they have nothing to offer.
The threat of deploying to Ukraine is not credible. If french soldiers show up there they either shoot at russians or not. If they shoot at russians they get shot back to pieces. If they do not the russians simply march past them and have the police arrest and deport them afterwards.
One is reminded of Bismarck's comment about the UK attacking Germany: I will have the police arrest them. Because the UK had a joke of an army at the time. That's the UK now again. And NATO. France does have some ability, but face it 20000 is pathetic for the scale of a real war. That's two weak devsions, capable perhaps of holding a 18km front in a real war. And with no spares for rotation, who are they joking? The US does have a large capacity but it is busy dealing with crumbling influence everywhere and regards Ukraine as used up, otherwise Nuland wouldn't have been pushed out.
The war
can go on for months. There are still NATO weapons to burn. Only roughly 1/3 of its air defense systems were destroyed yet. But the artillery stock is very used up. Industry failed to scale, as was to be expected from the economic structure. Western europe's last remaining big steelmaking plant is about to close, bankrupt due to, you can guess it,
high energy costs. How are those sanctions working out?
I can only guess at the intentions of Russia's general staff and political leadership but I think they will welcome disabling more of what remains of NATO's war capacity. That was one of the stated goals: "demilitarization" of the enemy (Ukraine, I have said, is but the battlefield). If western governments continue to be so foolish as to commit more weapons to this war, say introduce their stocks of western planes into Ukraine starting with the old F16 or Rafale, I can actually see Russia
slowing operations in order to have more planes transferred there and destroyed by its AA systems before the war ends. Those are seriously expensive and slow to produce weapons. The only serious danger in such a strategy is if some western government is follish enough to introduce long-range missiles that than can carry nuclear warheads. Hence the noise abut the Taurus, which is such a missile. One of those heading towards a strategic target in Russia must be considered a possible nuclear first strike.
Sane, intelligent people would know that... apparently Germay has a shortage of sane, intelligent generals. But then what is new?
