Might be interesting to revisit your post from May and see how your perspective might have changed on some things in the intervening time...
I think it is a truism in war that wars are never avoidable on the basis of "opting out". In context of WW II, the lesson learned was in the discrediting of "appeasement" as really only encouraging aggression... and, of course, that's just as true today in the chimpoid logic of the playground as it is in international relations.
The "pro-peace" or "anti-war" movements more often than not end up enabling and fostering war... due to their ignorance re the nature of their own and others behavior. And, that's assuming they're acting in good faith rather than as the patsies of an opposing force seeking to undermine an intended foe. It's pretty simple, as I've noted before... generalizing it here... that no one has the ability to "opt out" of some others choices.
You may choose for your own part to not participate actively in committing an armed robbery... but there is not any resulting force intrinsically applied in result of your own choice that inhibits any others from making a different choice ? And, that's a truism that's not somehow different in context of war ?
Russia's been "nibbling" at Europe for a long time... whether in Georgia, during the Bush years... etc., etc.
There is nothing in Russia's behavior that legitimizes any element of their choices ? Russia has no right to determine whether Ukraine... or Switzerland (etc., etc)... opts to choose a deliberate neutrality... or opts to take some other path in crafting a best fit to an ideological view that is intrinsically "their own".
I don't think anyone outside... including not many of those in Russia... would actually make an informed decision to deliberately adopt what Russia has today... And, it's not rocket science to puzzle out why Ukrainians (or Swiss, etc) would prefer to have what they might only by "opting out" of participation in Russia's plans for them...
It might be more useful, here, to ponder a bit "what it is they do have" and why anyone might want that ?
Many now... are insisting that "Russia has already lost this war"... versus what they were saying six months ago about the inevitability of Russia winning it ? I will continue to take all of that with grains of salt... including all in yours below the bits on physics and sensors... while tending to have no meaningful disagreement with that above that line... other than in the excess in optimism you have in the successes attained in the balancing of collective versus individual interests. It is an intrinsic problem that comparisons too often tend to be made on the basis of presumed "efficiency" in delivering "greater good" as measured in... what, and why ?
The resulting arguments are generally engaged in context of the social as metered on a scale of resulting benefits from free markets versus systems dependent on centrally directed decision making...
Too rarely are they considered instead on the basis of more freedom versus less in social context... or on the basis of maximally empowering the locus of innovation... at the same locus as is the primary element of society... as opposed to benefiting some loci more by constraining others more... or taking from them more to benefit others without concomitant rewards... all of which meets at that focal point where society (and its rules) intersect with the reality of individuals being individuals...
A free market... is not (as some would have it)... an absence of rules that enables others to act without constraint... rather than "the right rules"... enabled and enforced so as to optimize individual ability.
I've flogged it often enough: no fraud, no monopoly, no barriers to participation... each of which are adopted as the necessary elements in basis in the structures of socialism, communism... AND capitalism... which is NOT the same thing as "a free market" without rules properly enforced to prevent fraud, monopoly, and barriers to participation... Capitalism is indistinguishable from its cohorts in socialism in its many disguises... whether as national socialism or communism... or democratic socialism... in which the evils of democracy apply no real benefit in preventing that same brand tyranny...
Communism, in all but name... has failed and been so widely discredited that it is no longer "serious"... while the world has largely devolved into an varying array of competing pseudo-capitalist / national socialist proto-empires... each of them vying to determine which of them should be empowered in establishing dominance in asserting global governance... as "globalism"...
To which my answer is... "no thanks"... I'm opting out. :<)
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