Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Because NATO works by consensus not majoritarianism, that would have given Russia a NATO veto, in effect. Despite that, Russia was on the NATO onramp from almost immediately after independence from the USSR until Putin demanded that Russia bypass the readiness criteria being applied to other new members and be immediately granted membership (and still technically was on the onramp after that, though no real progress was made between that point and when relations seriously started to degrade with Russia’s invasions of various of neighbors that were also, and more serious, NATO aspirants.)
At 70, I wonder if Putin thinks he doesn't have a decade to wait.
1) Contrary to what US intel is saying, Russia isn't going to invade Ukraine
and then it became:
2) Kyiv was expected to fall within a week
These two events, in rapid succession, gave a bunch of people expectation whiplash. I'm not an expert, but it seems like they are in for a very bloody stalemate.
> Maybe Uncle Sam is getting neutered? We all ought to consider the possibility.
The US has strengthened its alliance with the (1st? 2nd?) largest economic bloc (The EU). Meanwhile, China itself has put itself in an awkward position with western Europe.
Personally, I wouldn't consider zerohedge a reputable outlet as even its own former staffers claim they are instructed to spin every article to suit the political views of its founder. [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-29/unmasking...
And why would you believe Ukraine defensive capabilities are running out given all the weapons that flow into it from outside. Don't you think if they were running out of fuel they'd just ask and get as much as they need? NLAWs and Switchblades are still a tad more expensive than gas.
Is western media biased? Yes. But so is China. They're biased very heavily on the side of not having to condemn Russia. (They're also biased on the side of the invasion going well. If Russia can't do this, it calls into question China's ability to take Taiwan.)
In fact, from where I sit (also biased), western media is more willing to tell the truth than China is.
Despite what USA is telling on every occasion about China to get it somehow involved in this conflict, China appears like they have no horse in this game and calls a spade a spade better than Vatican does without trumping up the narrative to global conflict level. Besides I think China is way more preoccupied with internal matters like covid outbreaks to be able to really nake any strong effort to profit from this conflict.
India is way more pro-russian at the moment, given that the west was very unwelcoming to Indian ambitions and it was Russia who had their back.
this is just hyper-masculine posturing - because the US seems soft, optically, and yet we are somehow simultaneously hegemons, we are both reponsible for the war and also doomed to lose.
China is choosing a stance of non-neutrality. They seem to think that destabilizing all the regions outside of China is somehow going to help, or that a weaker Western bloc is somehow to their advantage. I obviously can only speculate but that is how it looks to me. I think it is a major error, because I think we could do better by repatching globalism and trying to de-fang nationalism, instead of going back to the dark ages and hoping to simply out-survive the other losers of global war.
If your goal is to prevent NATO expansion, the Ukraine invasion makes no sense. In its wake it has caused multiple neutral countries to explore membership (Finland, Sweden) and has caused an otherwise austere Germany to increase defense spending. It has also laid-bare problems in the Russian military on the global stage. Massive unforced error.
The counterfactual where Russia never invaded Ukraine in 2022 or 2014, we'd still be talking about leaving NATO - something Trump was floating in 2016. There were rumblings about dissolving it prior to these actions. If Putin had simply waited, further entangled Europe into its fossil fuel industry, and continued overtures to western right-wing parties, he could have probably eliminated NATO as a "threat" to Russia within a decade. Without a single shot fired, without a soldier stepping foot on foreign soil.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/21/world/soviet-disarray-yel...