Which was the correct prediction, shared by ambassador Burns in his secret 2008 cable. There was no ignorance at the White House about what expansion into Ukraine would mean.
The neocons ignored the danger (in my opinion they actually embraced it because they wanted this war - the alternative is they’re extremely naive, which is possible, but at this point remote) and plowed ahead with the moves that ensured it would happen.
There’s no better grift than an active war.
You think we’d let the Chinese put bases in Canada? Or do you think that would start a war? It’s a rhetorical question for anyone who has heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In your analogy, you’re treating China as an adversary not a partner. Which means you’re not comparing like with like.
Russia, Ukraine, the EU, the UK and the USA, were all IN A NATO PARTNERSHIP TOGETHER (it was even called the “Partnership for Peace” - look it up!) and there were MULTIPLE treaties and memoranda between all of us, declaring the old Cold War enmity over and asserting that we’re all friends now, when Russia started attacking all of us.
Even if the USA had factions that couldn’t stop treating Russia like the Soviet Union, on the other side of the Atlantic we were all trying to make an effort to bring Russia in from the cold. Ukraine had elected a pro-Moscow president. Relations between Russia, Poland and the Baltic countries were thawing. Russia was GIFTED a seat at the Council of Europe. Putin was given the VIP treatment at EU NATO headquarters. The idea we were all threatening Russia is just arrant nonsense.
But, after spending 2001-2005 pretty much saying that this thawing is what he wanted, Putin and Medvedev then started tag-teaming attacks against Europe, Ukraine, the UK, and the USA too. Specifically, they:
1. Attempted to assassinate a Ukrainian presidential candidate (he lost fairly, so there wasn’t even a need to attempt a hit.)
2. Orchestrated a plane “crash” (i.e. like Prigozhin’s!) that took out a whole bunch of Polish politicians and diplomats.
3. Blackmailed eastern Europe repeatedly by interfering with the oil and gas supplies.
4. Orchestrated Cyber-attacks on Europe and the USA, from Russian state actors, Russia-sponsored criminal groups, North Korean groups, Iranian groups, and groups operating out of China. And I would not be exaggerating if I said Moscow has been specifically waging a cyber war against the USA non-stop for the last 20 years (with successive US administrations blindly pretending it isn’t happening.)
5. Used polonium and novichok on British soil to assassinate Putin’s personal enemies. Tell me, if the Russkies used radioactive weapons in an American city, deliberately, and Americans died, would you be happy if the US administration turned a blind eye?
For far too long the USA and Germany and France kept turning a blind eye to every escalation by Medvedev and Putin. Every single time Putin escalated without cause, all we got was crickets from Washington. Accompanied by the Useful Idiots bleating “For the love of God, please don’t poke the bear!” as if they weren’t acutely aware that the bear was the one doing all the poking but nobody had any idea how to slap Russia down.
I don’t think you’re seeing the big picture here. “There’s no better grift than an active war” could easily be levelled at Putin himself. He’s the ONLY one who has been jonesing for this war since COVID paranoia rotted his brain.
Ask yourself how Vladimir Zhirinovsky was so triumphantly announcing to the Duma that Ukraine was going to get a very nasty surprise on a day in late February, shortly before dawn... over a month before Putin issued an ultimatum to NATO (the December 2021 one where he basically demanded the USA unilaterally shaft the rest of NATO and rewrite its charter so that Russia had a veto even over NATO exercises on NATO soil - and if the USA did not comply, he’d invade Ukraine.)
Three months after VZ blew Putin’s surprise, Putin was still insisting that he had any invasion plans at all, and Lavrov was angrily accusing the West of fearmongering. The presenters on Rossyia 1 were all protesting that it’d be UTTERLY UNTHINKABLE that Russia would ever stoop so low as to invade its beloved brother.
Within two weeks Putin had launched his invasion, and was in the process of criminalising any overt protest against the invasion. So if you believe Putin was dragged reluctantly into this quagmire rather than this quagmire being one that he, personally, had been planning for over a year, then I’ve got three London Bridges and a six-pack of Eiffel Towers to sell you.