I still think that this support for Ukraine by NATO is motivated by the untold billions of dollars that a corrupt Ukraine can provide NATO and US politicians more so than any concern for the people of Ukraine.
Exactly, only a complete imbecile would think Russia even wants to occupy all of Ukraine, let alone more of Europe.
That might be true. Doesn’t mean Russian imperialism isn’t the enabler though.
You can’t create a proxy war without a plausible enemy.
Russia’s elites have been talking about restoring the Imperial Rus for twenty years and has been run as the personal piggy bank of a mostly ex-KGB gangster oligarchy for thirty years. The Enemy doesn’t get more plausible than that.
Putin has sidelined anybody looking at a more modern, westernised style of government - that includes Mikhail Khodorkhovsky who first articulated the enormous opportunities of opening Russia up to western standards of business accounting, formal education and training, and embracing the internet.
On the flip side Russian propaganda acts as if European / American values and Nazism are all the same thing, so no matter how the EU or America does business with Russia it’ll always be painted internally as dealing with Nazis.
Support for Ukraine by NATO (in Europe) is based on one far more compelling thing than making money from arms sales while simultaneously whining about the money being spent. That’s an American obsession.
The NATO countries in this side of the Atlantic have to actually live next door to Russia, and we all hear its incessant butt-hurt over losing the Soviet Empire every damned day. Have been for 20 years.
We backed off on Chechnya. And Georgia. And Ukraine in 2014.
Nothing we’ve done to appease Putin has talked him out of his mission to restore the Imperial Rus by conquest.
And he’s running out of non NATO countries to annex. Sooner or later, he’ll call our bluff on Article 5 by invading a Baltic state and sending proxies into Moldova and Poland.
Either we (Europe, not America) just wake up to that being the reality, and spend billions now, and take the pain of sanctions, or we kick the can further down the road.
The longer we dither, the more it’ll cost us overall to bring an end to this Russian conquest fantasy.
And don’t think America isn’t affected if it reverts to sitting it out in world wars for 2-3 years. If the bombs start hitting the USA after years of sitting this conflict out, it’ll be at the behest of a nuclear capable superpower - China and/or a revitalised Russia.
The more Russia succeds, the bigger the prizes start to look for China. If Russia wins, China will make a fortune arming Rusdia. If Russia tests the resolve of the West to repel its pathetic army and wins, China knows it won’t be stopped if it invades another country.
I generally agree with VDH at least when it comes to current events, history since 1930 and before 1830. He’s all wet on this one though. I don’t think Russia ever intended to take Kiev (they really though they’d take a city of 2.5 million with 40,000 troops? I see no evidence that they ever desired to take all of Ukraine....western Ukraine where the Russians are hated would be a nightmare to hold. It would require most of their army to do it leaving them largely defenseless elsewhere. There’s certainly no evidence Russia had the capacity or desire to try take all of Europe.
Oh, and he apparently still hasn’t gotten the memo that fantasies about the Ukes winning are just that. They are losing. Even the lying corporate media can’t hide that anymore.
Hanson doesn’t speak to the economics of the situation, which will be the deciding factor in the coming months as the world starts freezing their asses off and hunger gnaws at their gut 24/7.
In Central Europe, the motivations for supporting Ukraine are
1. The Poles, Romanians, Baltics, Czechia etc know about Russian atrocities.
2. They also have a real fear that if Ukraine collapse, they would be best on the crosshairs.
Putin since 2001 has lamented the fall of the USSR and has looked to bring it back, first in Georgia in 2008, then Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and then the next step was exactly as the article describes, an aim go grab all lands east of the Dniesper and make the rest into a vassal state that would be assimilated in a few years.
Once again, somebody started a vast project with half-vast ideas.
Hubris and overconfidence work, however indirectly, on the side of good. Even though there is little good so far in the events occurring in Ukraine, this has left the Russian Federation in a much weakened state, reeling and suffering severe internal collapse from economic pressures, both from the war effort and international pressure.
Putin has two choices - suffer the effects of a Pyrrhic victory, or withdraw ignominiously. Not much of an up side for Russians either way.
