“You are aware of the “boy crying wolf” story, right?”
They are what they are and there’s not much flexibility to pretend to be something else...like reasonable. If you’re doing something and it fails, then do it again, but harder, louder and with more force. If Russia fails militarily than they are faced with a humiliating retreat or using nuclear weapons. Would they do that? I for one don’t want to find out. I wish Finland and Sweeden had moved quickly and quietly and presented an accomplished fact. They didn’t because they too were posturing, not wanting to do it and hoping the threat would force Russia to back off. It was silly but it is going to take some scary admissions that the security regime has changed, and we can’t go back to the way things were when Trump could issue a mean Tweet and the Russians would back off. Biden’s inability to talk or walk up stairs has prompted the Russians to take this one last chance to establish new borders and a new security regime.
Russia thinks NATO is like their fifteen Republic countries, totally owned by the US. They want to totally own the former republics of the Soviet Union. Those countries would rather die than be back under the Russian thumb. When this is over and probably right now, all of those countries are planning to go nuclear because had Ukraine kept those nukes they inherited none of this would be happening now.
“Russia thinks NATO is like their fifteen Republic countries, totally owned by the US”
Except NATO IS owned totally by the US, that is not even debatable
Exactly.