Was Russia invading South Ossetia and Crimea also engineered by the United States to switch Europe to American energy? Or is it more reasonable to just conclude that Russia is expansionist and Ukraine has been seeking the protection of an organization that has never been attacked by a major power?

Whatever the case, I'd love to hear your Asian proxy war plan. Japan and Korea vs China?

Georgia acceding to NATO was viewed no differently than Ukraine by Russia and Russia clearly stated that this would cause a war, which it did. It's strange to me that you think that the US had nothing to do with expanding NATO to these countries despite Russia's threats of war if this happened. What do you think the US' role was?

Regarding Asia, look at US' vying to have unfettered access for its Air Force over the Strait of Malacca, despite popular disfavor by Indonesians, after a $15 billion energy deal with their government. The US having command over the South Korean military - in what world is that in South Korea's interest? Vietnam's new dependence on US LNG as a result of the attack on Iran. Look at the disputes in the South China Sea despite the disputants having China as their biggest trading partner, and the disputes rising exactly at the time of the US' pivot to Asia. Same pattern with Taiwan - a plan that has been in place for decades but which has become a political token coinciding with the pivot to Asia.

Japan and Korea vs China sounds absurd doesn't it? Why would they pick a fight with their biggest trading partner, who also appears much stronger than them militarily? Surely it's not in their interest right? Yet that's exactly what we've been seeing (belligerence from Japan's PM over Taiwan is a case in point). Does rising belligerence against a key trading partner/US geopolitical rival sound familiar?

Meanwhile Russia can't defeat Ukraine but Europe is convinced it has to arm itself and join the proxy war. This aligns with the 2026 National Defense Strategy - feeding proxies into wars against US rivals, what the US euphemistically refers to as "'burden sharing".

> Georgia acceding to NATO was viewed no differently than Ukraine by Russia and Russia clearly stated that this would cause a war

You put a lot of faith in Russian rhetoric. They've made many hollow declarations before and during the war, particularly around territorial integrity and western support. Meanwhile Putin has made all sorts of claims to contradict this casus belli you cling to, e.g. Russia has a historical right to Ukraine. And I won't even start with Medvedev.

> It's strange to me that you think that the US had nothing to do with expanding NATO

I don't recall saying the US had nothing to do with it. But this wasn't the unilateral action by the US that you asserted. And Russia doesn't have veto power over NATO or Ukraine or Georgia. Their warmongering threats don't suddenly mean their neighbors are no longer sovereign. Nor does it mean "it's someone else's fault that they are forced to invade". And yes, the same also applies to Trump's stupid Monroe Doctrine 2.0.

> Japan and Korea vs China sounds absurd doesn't it?

Yes, it does. And brave rhetoric from politicians doesn't somehow equate to the US puppeteering them into a proxy war. You seem to think that US power is awful and should be resisted but when Russia tells its neighbors not to join a defensive alliance, the smaller countries should oblige. And that Japan has to walk on eggshells around China because of its military inferiority.

In any event, your only evidence of an impeding proxy war is Japanese "belligerence" and US influence. Unremarkable.

> And Russia doesn't have veto power over NATO or Ukraine or Georgia. Their warmongering threats don't suddenly mean their neighbors are no longer sovereign.

both can be true at the same time: russia does not have veto power and nobody can stop russia from invading ukraine if russia wants to keep ukraine from nato. unfortunately, being morally right does not protect you from a bully

I mean yes, clearly.

  > Russia stated that Ukraine joining NATO would start a war. The US began that process knowing Russia's reaction. Russia did what it said it would do. 

This has nothing to do with reality. Ukraine wanted to join NATO in 2008, but allies did not support it and that was the end of it. Russia invaded in 2014, over the prospect of deepening EU-Ukraine economic relations.

Russia did not threaten anyone with war over the prospect of NATO membership. In the first years of the war, Russia did not even acknowledge that those were Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Russian government claimed that it was a civil war.

>> Russia stated that Ukraine joining NATO would start a war. The US began that process knowing Russia's reaction. Russia did what it said it would do.

> This has nothing to do with reality.

> ...

> Russia did not threaten anyone with war over the prospect of NATO membership.

As much as I hate Putin and his regime, we have to admit Russia did indeed said that it views the NATO expansion as an existential threat.

From Putin's 2007 Munich speech [1]:

> It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfill the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all. I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.

The speech obviously did not make a direct threat, this is a political speech after all, but the message was crystal clear for most, take for example the letter [2] Burns (US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008) sent after the Munich's speech to Condoleeza Rice in which Burns warned of serious consequences arising from NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia:

> Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. At this stage, a MAP offer would be seen not as a technical step along a long road toward membership, but as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze. . . . It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. (letter to Condoleeza Rice, February 2008)

[1] https://securityconference.org/en/publications/books/selecte... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladimir...

[edit]: formatting

> Burns warned of serious consequences arising from NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia

And then Ukraine accession disappeared from the policy menu. Then Putin annexed Crimea. Pretending Putin invaded Ukraine with any more strategic coherence than Trump going into Iran reveals a reality-defying bias in a source.

This is an intimidation tactic and not a real threat. If the vague threat is enough to prevent something from happening, then it has served its purpose. If not, then the vagueness gives an exit to do nothing.

Pretty much every country that has joined NATO since the end of the Cold War has seen a flood of such threats, Finland and Sweden most recently[1]:

  "Finland's accession to Nato will cause serious damage to bilateral Russian-Finnish relations and the maintaining of stability and security in the Northern European region. Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to neutralise the threats to its national security that arise from this."

Russia has attacked only Georgia and Ukraine, the two countries that did not end up joining NATO. There, the threats achieved their goal and shaped the battlefield in favor of Russia, which was then exploited. Elsewhere, the fake act of "We're soooo concerned with our national security" did not yield the desired results, and Russians moved on.

Burns and many other Western diplomats have been surprisingly ignorant of such games, treat Russians as primitive savages who are incapable of manipulating people (despite it being a deeply ingrained feature of their culture), and take their words at face value, which produces the kind of memos Burns wrote. The 2008 decision to deny Georgia and Ukraine entry into NATO is nowadays widely considered a mistake. The views Burns held and promoted in the memo made the war more likely instead of preventing it.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61420185

NATO doesn't expand eastward. Countries that see Russia as a temu-tier empire seek a defensive partnership.

The cold war is over, Russia lost in everyone's mind except the second rate KGB officer who now runs the country.