[MercyFlush]

Romania has no say over Moldova which is an independent and foolishly nonaligned country that the Russians consider to be theirs.

[Wallace T.]

The Russians may want to collapse the eastern flank of NATO by offering countries like Romania a carrot to abandon their current NATO/EU alignment. If the Russian Army defeats the Ukrainian Army and NATO proves inefficient in defeating the Russian incursion into Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia may decide to make deals with Putin. Remember that Hitler's successes in annexing Austria and Sudetenland into the Third Reich moved Italy and Romania onto the German side. Hitler was willing not to press demands for the South Tyrol in order to induce Mussolini into an alliance.

Putin is not Hitler or Napoleon, but more like Bismarck, an older politician willing to make a concession or two to achieve his goals of restoring the empire of the Tsars and the Soviets. If that means not pressing for western Ukraine or Moldova and letting Poland, Romania, and Slovakia have a chance to regain lands lost to Stalin, that may be a price worth paying.

All these assumptions depend on (1) the ability of the Russians to defeat the Ukrainians; (2) ineffective NATO response based on the decadent condition of Western militaries; and (3) assuming a simultaneous attack by China on Taiwan, an American decision to focus on protecting Taiwan.