What were we to do, let them cut the damn thing six ways.. Give them Serbia. Like we did Eastern Germany?. Spoils of a war they did not fight at all this time....But that's exactly what they expected and they expected it because they got away with it before...So what did we get out of it? What do we ever get out of it? When have we got something out of it? When have we ever asked for something.??
The only person who ticked them off was Weasel Clark when he tried to prevent them from taking over a airport.
We have never attacked Russia. We have never done anything to them that they have not done to us. Even to include taking a few pot shots across the border with what was then East Germany. (I was there)
The Eastern block was dismantled at a time when Russia was weakened by the fall of the party apparatus.
They want it back. and then some.
But it will take time and the way they will do it is not by force, but through political and social means backed by force. What they must do would be the equivalent of Canada taking over the US. It can be done, but it has to be done skillfully. Or, Putin has to rebuild his military and his Navy and you need ports and places to put it all. Seems to me that he is doing both and as well as strengthening what he has now.
You forget that Putin was KGB. It's what he has done all of his life. fears are one thing, but every country in Europe has borders. So your defense is that they don't like what is on the other side of that border even though they are not being threatened. The only threat is that they are western friendly. What kind of reasonable assumption of a threat is that???
The fact is that your comments are exactly the same as those comment I have been hearing lately and none of it is based on anything that can be seen as a reasonable assumption of a threat by anyone against Russia. It's a excuse. It's agitprop. It's what Putin has been doing for years. It's not true..or reasonable or even a assumption. It's what they want the world to believe is true.
Not one poster here who is neutral about Putin can forget that.It is posted endlessly. To which I often want to reply that we had Ziggy Brzezinski.
And look, he is the largest idiot ever. ziggy
Remember those comments on America being exceptional?
"“[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.” ― Zbigniew Brzezinski
And don't miss this
"America must therefore shape a political context that is congenial to Russia's assimilation into a larger framework of European cooperation, while fostering the independence of its newly sovereign neighbors."
And to further endear him to many of us he said 'Now that the USSR has fallen, the remaining enemy of the west is the Orthodox church'
Ziggy wrote, of course, a book - The Grand Chessboard. Ironically it was mostly a remake of geopolitics from Mackinder. I say ironically because Russia now has a geopolitical dirtbag by the name of Aleksandr Dugin. Anyway I don't know how much you know about geopolitics but Ziggy thought Russia should be broken up to reduce her power.
It is important to understand that Putin is not operating in a vaccuum. We in the west have sown many seeds of distrust in their direction.