If the Baltics want to remain independent, they're going to have to find a way to get 100,000 soldiers to man the front to deter the Russian invasion.
The whole Latvia Armed forces, for example is 17,000 regular personnel and 35,000 reservists.
Latvia is the most obvious Baltic invasion route.
Army Group North came the other way thru Latvia in 1941.
Imagine this scenario:
The US and Russia have been in a struggle over control of the oil and gas rich nations of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and Niger. We have been trying hard to strip them from Russia and get them under our control. In many of these places, you have both Russian and US forces in country.
If we could weaken Russia that would benefit us greatly in this struggle.
Now, this might be a stretch in your mind since we’re obviously only interested in spreading democracy, human rights, ridding the world of WMD and terrorism.
1). Could it be that in Ukraine we instigated a war?
2). And that this war has the Ukrainian’s doing the bleeding and the euros flipping 1/2 the bill while we stand to benefit on the world stage?
But, probably just a crazy conspiracy theory.
Let me ask you this, if the Chinese were to build bases along our Mexican border and base an undisclosed amount of troops there, for an indefinite time, nukes, missiles, mechanized forces, ships, bombers, fighters... Do you think we would allow this? Why are we not building bases in Taiwan, China’s back yard? Why do we treat two very similar cases very differently?
Here’s a clue. No major power wants another playing on their border. It’s unacceptable and we were willing to go to war over this very exact idea twice, once with the Cuban missile crisis, and the other with the invasion of Grenada. What we did in October 2021 ( https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/) was so ridiculous over the top, that it is likely that we wanted this war. We wanted the Russians to react.
And if course the “bad guy” is the one who fired the first shot, at least in the eyes of the layperson.