Putin's decision to invade has already destroyed literally millions of Ukrainian families. Ukraine was in no way threatening Russia. Since 1998 or '99, I forget, Chechnya, Grozny, anyway, it should have been clear (as it was to those nations which reacted by applying for NATO membership) that Russia was becoming more and more under a Fuehrer-Prinzip, regardless that there were still political institutions which were no longer the Soviet Union. 2008, 2014, 2022. It seems clear to me that we can take Putin at his word, that he will institute a "mythic Russia" everywhere he establishes control. He said that in February, just after the invasion started.
If I had been Bill Clinton, or if Bill Clinton had actually been the foreign-policy decisionmaker, I would have engaged Russia and offered them an economic package for their nation's development that would have prevented what is taking place now.
Of course, the neoconservative cabal has been in charge of the foreign policy of the United States ever since the promulgation of the PNAC in 1996, of which the kernel was that America had a limited number of years after the breakup of the Soviet Union to establish world hegemony.
And also of course, immediately after the breakup of the USSR the Russian Mafia would have had to be dealt with more directly perhaps than today, though it is no mere slur to say that Putin overlaps Mafia, apparatchiki and oligarchs.
But that approach, had it been followed, might have moved the world towards more actual multipolarity, even a world working together on the real problems, rather than having to just sit and watch, and hope that with our and other nations' help, Ukraine can exhaust the creaky Russian juggernaut (it was a blunder for Sec. Austin to SAY we want to weaken Russia).
That is, if the primary motivating factor in Putin's mind was and is his nation's economic stability, equality, longevity.
Unfortunately, for all that some VFP members don't believe that Putin is an old-fashioned conqueror who would go on into Europe if Ukraine had not held him up, well, the Chinese are using the invasion, and Putin, as good examples in their propaganda. One commentator I read actually thanked Putin for restoring Josef Stalin's reputation as a great wartime leader. Sorry if it is heresy to some, but Russian/Soviet history is one of my academic subfields, and I say Putin would like, in his mind, to be seen by Russians as in the line of Stalin or Peter the Great.
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