I do not want to get involved with this war and I have no interest in who wins.
It is pretty much Iraq vs Iran. It is a pity they can not both lose. But if your actual fear is your neighbors joining an international coalition you probably should not threaten them.
That is just going to send them running to join.
So my question.
Either Russia is being really stupid or they are allowing themselves to be used.
A tough road ahead in the immediate future. Finland may be betting on a US oil energy resurgence in 2025. We have no influence on Finlands intentions/wishes or NATO application-nor should we. Hitler was stupid to declare war on the US. How was he gonna bomb us with no long range bombers? Let Putin pay the price. Make surety average Ivan feels it.
The war? Yes. The people? No. I support the Ukrainians despite yeah, they're corrupt. But they're improving and they're working hard on it. We can't really say the same for Russia.
Or the drumbeat of NATO expansionism was going to go on and on.
NATO wants to expand into the South China Sea and the Western Pacific.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The Russians had two options. One bad, one really bad.
They either had to attack, or watch the Kiev regime launch their planned spring 2022 attack on the Donbass, watch them be accepted into NATO and you can no longer do anything forever. Also in spring of 2021 Zelinsky said they were going to pursue an atomic bomb.
So it was do nothing and be left with a forever enemy on your border and watch the ethnic cleansing turn into an all out attack, or go ahead and roll. That’s why they launched it.
They tried to offer talks, but we flipped them the finger and literally said we would do whatever we pleased.
Turkey has put a stop to this; neither Finland nor Sweden will be joining NATO.
What nobody in Finland appears to have thought through is, once they decided to play hardball with Russia (by expressing an interest in joining NATO), what was to stop Russia from playing hardball with Finland?
If they were dumb enough to take our lead, then they haven't read up on history.