Complete and utter bollocks.
And when using words like "counterfactual", provide facts. Not imaginary nonsense.
What exactly is nonsense in my claim? I literally described the situation of the Cuban Missile crisis. A thing that actually happened. I just swapped the country names around to make a point. I even gave you a link in the end so as to not confuse the history challenged with too much subtlety.
Facts, like: Russia invaded because they want control over Ukraine and it's resources.
Address that fact for a change.
Assertions presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
edit: Oh, and now Finland and Sweden have joined, that's also a provocation. Surely they'll be invading Russia anytime now. Right?
Unfortunately they would if they could. The sad reality of the fact is that Russia has been making very stupid geopolitical moves ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. They are laboring under the mistaken belief that Russia is still the great power it was back in Soviet times and that therefore it has the same right to rape nations that displease it used to have.
Unfortunately for them those times are over and these days it's just America that has the economic and military power to claim that right for its own. And this fact has been tragically prove at the expense of the Russian nation and Ukrainian people.
Because it's more threatening to make up imaginary invasions instead of addressing the actual invasion. Using the cop-out: Russia had no choice, when they did. They could not have invaded.
It's baffling that Russia is painted as a victim in all of this. "I had no choice your honour, Ukraine was wearing a very short skirt. I just had to invade"
It has nothing to do with honor. Put simply, Russia newer successfully adapted its foreign policy to post Soviet realities. They are still behaving as if they were an important player on the world stage as opposed to basically a third grade power like say France. As a result their geopolitical opponents have managed to easily outmaneuver them at literally every single opportunity.
Their current behavior is basically akin to France deciding Napoleon newer went away and invading all of Europe because clearly it worked the last time.
And instead of learning from their mistakes and adjusting Russia repeatedly doubled down figuring that if they fake it enough people will actually start treating them like a superpower again. And thus they painted them self into a corner from which there was no good extraction. They tried to sit at the adult table and play great power games and lost, hard.
But OTAN was obliging enough to help them get to that corner every step of the way. They did it by destabilizing Russia's traditional allies in the middle east, expanding OTAN to the Russian border, chipping away at its sphere of influence in Europe and generally taking every opportunity to step on Russian toes in order to chip away at its interests, security and prestige.
Say what you want about made up worlds like freedom, truth and justice. But at the end of the day a great power, or a country that fancies it self to be one simply can not ignore things like that. The cost both in terms of prestige and flat out security of having a hostile military alliance sit on your physical border is just too great. This is why America could not ignore Cuba or socialism spreading in their back yard. It is why Russia could not allow the eastern block to perform even the most minimal of sane reforms. It is why North Korea still exists. And sadly it is also what is happening in the Ukraine today.
And unfortunately for the Ukrainians this tragic combination of aggressive pushing from one side and completely mental foreign policy stuck in the 70's from another has resulted in tragic but utterly predictable outcomes. There is literally nobody with any brain who did not see the invasion coming the moment the Maidan coup hit. The only surprise is really that it took this long. Well that, and just how much of an inept paper tiger the Russian military really turned out to be.
The only way he can guarantee Putin any of it is by the US withdrawing from NATO, and effectively ending it.
At this point I am not sure what he could possibly give him. Even if they literally took Kiev tomorrow and annexed all of Ukraine Russia has already lost this war. The cost both in terms of resources and manpower spent, international prestige lost and total collapse of lucrative trade opportunities in the west would render it a Pyrrhic victory.
Even if all of OTAN dissolved Russia would be too weak to capitalize on it. The opportunity for Russia to win this war ended after the initial march on Kiev. Right now the best Putin can hope for is some bone thrown his way to save his face and crown.
But that does not change the fact that the opportunity to preserve peace in europe was lost the moment OTAN started spreading east of East Germany. But not pushing the Ukrainians, one of the only two nations in Europe still at the time on Russias side onto a western path certainly would have at least postponed it.
it was Obama that came to Ankara , spoke in the Parliament and strictly implied things would change . It was Obama that oversaw the Arab Spring and it turning into a Arab Winter with no nothing anywhere . Our only "consolation" is that had it been Trump , he would mock us in the way he did about that handicapped person , Serge Kovalesky the NYT reporter .
if a memo from the White House could cut the coverage of war because of its likely effects on Elections , eventually leading to far fewer pages to read in some gaming forum , a new memo from a White House can open a lot of resources on who did what for what . Like basically it is going to be the first thing Trump is likely to do . We will then see .
The arab spring was the worst most catastrophic thing to happen to the middle east in this century. And it did Europe no good either. The world would have been better off if the west had not kicked that particular bee hive.
