“Brandon or putin.....I’m not sure anymore who’s the bigger lunatic”
We promised Russian that we wouldn’t expand NATO to the east, yet have done so as far and fast as possible. Biden only exacerbated that threat to Russia by egging on Ukraine and refusing to rule it out; his utter weakness in Afghanistan, and his INCREDIBLY foolhardy invitation to Putin to make a “limited incursion” was what made this inevitable.
Putin, for all of his brutality, acted rationally for a national leader intent upon restoring his country to its former territory** and thus strengthening its security. That he miscalculated in several ways is independent of the rationality of the initial decision.
Further, part of Putin’s miscalculation is due directly to Biden’s multiple displays of weakness - it is similar to why the Japanese made the final decision to attack us, based on us passing a reauthorization of the draft by a single vote in Congress, i.e. it was in both cases based entirely upon the perception in the mind of aggressive foreign leaders that we didn’t have the will to fight them. You can argue that perhaps Putin should have known this...and maybe he should have. But so should we have known how our adversaries have looked at us over the last century.
On the Japan decision to attack us in WWII, my view is that it was the inevitable result of our trade sanctions, though you may be correct on the reason for the exact timing.
Japan was totally dependent on raw materials outside their homeland, and our sanctions were hitting them very hard.
They had to do something about it.