The irony is that China is the big winner from all of this, simply by staying above the fray and making trade deals with all the countries that more bellicose superpowers start fighting. When your adversary is making a mistake, let him.
The mistake here is in seeing this as a clash of two nation-states that are each unified actors. Humans have agency; states are social constructs. It is quite possible for a state to disintegrate if the ideas holding it together are proven false. The Soviet Union did just that 35 years ago, and it could easily happen again this generation.
Too bad though, don't start wars man. No one is going to throw you a bone if you start a war that no one else wants happening. If you star a war, you need to be able to finish it. It's like that Seinfeld line about the car reservation, except wars. You don't get points for being scary, you get points for winning.
> This is a worse security outcome for the U.S. than having a hostile dictator in charge of Russia;
I disagree... bigger picture we don't want this kind of thing festering, it never works out well. It's not managable, despite people acting like these things can be managed. They can't, and that's why we're seeing this situation. Similar to Hamas in Gaza. It was left to fester, thought it had more clout and power than it did, and look what happened. Nothing good.
> The Soviet Union did just that 35 years ago, and it could easily happen again this generation.
Russia is going to fall apart, we're going to be left with Muscovy, God willing.
europe and east asia whove been helping to fund and arm ukraine are also taking the real pressure from iran and the US halting energy exports from the gulf.
the oil price for high enough to where russia gets paid the same amount despite having most of its infrastructure blown up, vs having its infrastructure blown up and also the oil proce being low.
The war with Ukraine is currently doing huge damage to Russia. Maybe Putin wants to be more securely in charge of a diminished Russia. IMO again, I doubt that.
This is impractical. There is a hierarchy of thousands of Mullahs that ascend when you kill off one. There is no "head". It's a distributed hierarchy or hydra, rather than an effective dictatorship. ofc, Trump wanted to appease Bibi and Trump fired most of the advisors who object to his bad ideas, so it was a perfect storm for a global quagmire.
He would also want the munitions stockpile to be depleted, which it is now.
Though I do agree, not literally every move Trump does is on a string from Putin and the Iran war isn't one; it sure still is mighty convenient all the same to make the US military look weak and incompetent.
Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.
Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.