Fair. You could also argue Putin didn't do anything because he knew having Trump there was a protection against US acting against him or supporting NATO. He could've just as easily been waiting out the brunt of COVID. A far likely scenario is he's sick physically, wants to go back to the Glory Days, and used the NATO issue to start his pretext for invasion. As to Finland and Sweden yes he's threatened but has he actually invaded? No. Will he try to? If this debacle has shown is that other than being psychotic and having nukes, he'd have no success because he doesn't have the resources. Heck China is likely looking at this and thinking Russia is kind of a bottom tier "ally".
I agree with some points here. It is looking like Russia is not the threat they used to be. Nonetheless, I think a lot of geopolitics can be explained by flipping the map, and looking at it from the adversarial viewpoint. Putin looks out and sees Russia's greatest military rival wanting to set up on Russia's doorstep. And he see one of Russia's biggest trade partners about to enter into a trade agreement with Russia's greatest economic rivals. And Russia is not one of the most economically prosperous countries. Same thing with China. They look out to the ocean, and they see a lot of American allies on their doorstep including Taiwan, who is just off of the coast. Would you honestly defend Biden if he tried to add Taiwan to NATO? It would be a level of absolute stupid we've never seen because it would basically start World War III.
Or you could argue that Trump’s recognition of the annexation of Crimea, blackmailing of Ukraine’s national security needs for his personal political ambitions, and disdain for American alliances and NATO was doing exactly what Putin wanted anyway — bending those alliances with democratic nations to the point that they would break, and unraveling the post WWII rule-based international order, so as to appear to allow for another authoritarian strongman to simply take whatever he wants.
I do, and not adding any additional nations to NATO made it irrelevant, until Biden and Obama decided to make it relevant again. I wonder if Biden's economic interests in Ukraine clouded his judgment.
So when Putin claimed he did this because he believes the land of Ukraine is full of Nazis and that land rightfully belongs to Russia, he was lying? His underlying reason is because Biden/NATO pushed him to this point?
Taiwan will never be in NATO. Wrong ocean. Jokes aside since I don't know the Pacific version of this, or if Taiwan has any other alliances with Australia, if something is already in place with the US, etc, then I don't know how to respond other than an unprovoked attack would be problematic for China internationally. They're big but I don't put them much bigger than Russia militarily unless something has changed in recent years (other than Russia having more nukes). Edit - I believe China is also part of the NPT.
There used to be an organization called SEATO, basically the same as NATO only South east Asia but it ended in 1977
The old man has re-built our alliances, provided vital intelligence and has the entire world lined up behind Ukraine. Ukraine is dismantling this supposed Russian "juggernaut". If you think about millions of Ukrainians standing up to 190,000 troops that have been lied to by their leaders, you can see that Russia is going to run out of bullets and gas before they conquer Ukraine. Ukraine on the other hand, is being supplied by the arsenal of democracy.
I mentioned this week's ago. You can't conquer the largest nation in Europe (if it doesn't want to be conquered) with that many boots. Russia is off by an order of magnitude.
I don't believe that Putin believes Ukraine is full of Nazis, but then again there are a lot of people who call their political adversaries fascists in this country, so maybe that is the orthodoxy of the one party state in Moscow? Is it a lie? Yeah, it is a lie, but sometimes people become so brainwashed into their political ideology that they'll believe the truth is a lie, and a lie is the truth. Does he believe Ukraine belongs to Russia? Probably, since he is former KGB. I do think Putin has a disdain for the post WWII global order and NATO, but I don't think he was out to pick a fight with NATO. Expansion of NATO provoked him.
Putin is a liar. Be wants to marshal support at home by calling the Ukrainians Nazis because Russia lost 26 million people in WW2, more than half of all who died.
I'm not sympathizing with Putin at all, but I think this attitude is grossly indifferent towards the lives that could have been saved given a different geopolitical strategy.
