Why was Wetern Europe and Japan in our interests then but not now?
I’m still trying to figure out why having a relative handful of Putin’s military in Syria is a threat to us...
How about a 'handful of Putin's military' in Georgia? Ukraine? Lithuania? Latvia? Poland? Romania? It's going to keep coming up, one country at a time, until someone tougher than Putin puts their foot down.
Reminds me of that apologist song about Hitler just wanting a little peace... "a little piece of Poland"... A world war would have been avoided if he'd only been stopped on his first or second adventure.
and such a threat that it’s worth trading cities over.
There's not going to be any "trading of cities" ...Putin's ambitious, but not stupid. Like a fart, he will expand to fill the void, no more, but definitely no less. The size of the void isn't his to choose, but it is his nature to stink up any space he's allowed to fill.
I don’t claim to be able to read Putin’s mind, so I really don’t know how far he’ll go if prodded...I guess you have some special capability there.
I wasn’t aware that Putin is threatening Western Europe and Japan the way the Soviets did - perhaps you have a link to that.
As to the other countries, we’ll respond when he actually DOES SOMETHING, and that will depend on the country. Ukraine is a done deal - unless we’re ready to send 500,000 troops there (yea, I know, a wet dream for the Neocons here, but not going to happen). As for the other countries, nothing much happening there.
As to starting a war with Russia for the heck of it. I suggest we first rebuild our military so that we at least have a chance at winning. We’ve sat on our assess for 25 years and handed them virtually all of our technology for the first 20 years of that. If we really need a war to feel better - let’s first try to have one that WE CAN ACTUALLY WIN. Please.