What's actually going on here is people are committing the classic mistake of assuming if one side of a quarrel is in the wrong, the other must be in the right.

As far as I'm concerned, while we could bicker about whether Russia or the West has been more insanely stupid in its part in the escalating spiral of provocation in recent years, it would be quibbling over details.

The point that matters is that all of the governments in question are behaving like fools, and need to be brought under control or replaced with saner minds before the same pattern of stupidity that we saw a hundred years ago leads to the same results - and this time around, both sides have nuclear weapons.