> The EU doesn’t stand a chance against the US: look how they forced us to wage a proxy war against Russia.

America forced the EU into a proxy war with Russia... by having Russia invade Ukraine? Sounds like somebody has been huffing Russian propaganda.

It's a a reasonable assessment if you accept following three (I think easy to accept) items.

- That the US has a long term goal of preventing a "peer competitor" from arising.

- That the US has a financial and strategic interest in causing the collapse of the Russian Federation.

- The US leadership is capable of intelligent long term thinking (so we have to ignore Trump/Biden).

https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1346.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-rise-and-conflict-with-us/a-550...

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/nato-versus-russia-in-u...

A quick quote from the last link sounds like classic US policy to me:

"A much more truly ambitious apparent long-term US ambition seems to have been to instigate the breakup of Russia into smaller manageable countries, paralleling the emergence of nations in eastern Europe after 1989. It could then deal with a reconstructed historical Russia of smaller emerging statelets run by competitive elites at odds with each other. These new polities, anxious for revenues, will then, presumably, be eager to sign lucrative commercial deals with US corporations since the entire region is extraordinarily wealthy in raw material resources."

And if we look at the result of the current crisis (I'll quote myself from a post above):

"- Potential collapse of the Russian Federation and the economic benefits this would bring (for the West)

- Solidifying EU support of NATO

- Increased energy sales to Europe at higher prices

- Increased military sales to NATO countries due to new threat

- Increased budget for "the military industrial complex"

- Further the long term goal of preventing a peer competitor from appearing by both weakening Russia and making the EU more dependant on the US both economically and militarily.

- Mutually beneficial German/Russian cooperation is pretty much dead now so no threat of such an alliance appearing in the future."

I think its pretty well played on the part of the US; nothing to be ashamed about. I'm interested to see what happens next.

Except that those aren't really US goals anymore, those are wins for the entire western world.

Still, what matters is who invaded. Russia did. And of course what _really_ matters is who ends up being the loser, and again, it's quite obvious it's going to be Russia.

I dunno maybe? I don’t think the outcome is obvious.

It’s easy to imagine Ukraine coming out just as big a loser as Russia even if they “win”. The EU is in for a tough time too.

I do wonder where we’ll be in 12 months time.

Well, Azerbaijan seems pretty convinced, they wouldn’t risk fighting them otherwise. Georgia sounds interested too. And those are small countries, they are making a colossal bet here.

BREAKING: It appears Kazakhstan might be finally leaving the union they had with Russia; China just acknowledged they will guarantee Kazakhstan's security, which essentially means a huge middle finger towards the "second army of the world".

Unfortunately it also means Armenia is screwed. That's what you get for putting trust in Russia.