What's with the assertion that countries would go to war over a hasty AP report? Pretty sure military action would be taken based on the same primary sources that the AP was relying on, not just taking the AP's word for it...
Considering that Ukrainian leadership was tweeting that NATO needed to get involved after this story ran, despite the fact that they had to know where the missile originated is the real problem. They used this quickly ran story to literally try and rush WW3 instead of owning up to their mistakes.
A war between NATO and Russia right now would almost only happen by accident. Someone misinterprets something and escalates which causes the other side to escalate which feeds back, etc etc. So, escalating tensions is dangerous.
(Democratic) countries go to war depending largely on public support.
If they think the population is going to quickly turn on them then they hesitate to commit themselves.
As soon as this report was published I saw Reddit froth at the mouth to invoke Article 5 and call up Schwarzenegger and Rambo to teach the evil commie-nazis that this time they’ve crossed the line.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 50% of them will never even hear this story was retracted and someone got fired over it.
Reddit isn’t real life, but yes; there’s a large group of people who grew up experiencing war as an enjoyable clip show on CNN or as “Soldier returns home to puppy after 2 years in Iraq” on YouTube, who wouldn’t mind at all getting into yet another “war”.
