They fucked up Ukraine for like a 0.0001% chance at hurting Russia. They don’t care for their own people, why would they give a shit about some ukrainians who they were probably making racist jokes about like a day prior to Feb 2022.
I think the chance was bigger than that and was real, after all in the past it’s exactly what happened multiple times, most notably with Iraq. What really thrown the wrench in that plan was China actively working to oppose it and India using it for their own interests, and a lot of countries following such. I think US counted on China just doing nothing as and India actively joining USA.
India is especially interesting, since they don’t even hide they will play both sides to get the most of it, as clearly seen in the last visit of Biden when he fawned to Modi like i never seen any US president fawn to any other head of state, but literally next day India announced they intensify dedollarisation - and what did US said about that? Nothing. Paper tigers.
I was exaggerating for effect, but very correct that it could have ended badly for Russia, but now the chances are very low and they are still trying to grind Ukraine into dust like a gambler chasing a bad bet.
India is especially interesting, since they don’t even hide they will play both sides to get the most of it, as clearly seen in the last visit of Biden when he fawned to Modi like i never seen any US president fawn to any other head of state, but literally next day India announced they intensify dedollarisation - and what did US said about that? Nothing. Paper tigers.
I think here, the US is hoping that India will join a fight against China. Modi knows this and is using it to his advantage. That’s why it’s getting a hall pass.
That’s why it’s getting a hall pass.
India is playing it smart currently. Something that a lot of people expected and hoped EU to do, especially they would get a lot more leeway from US, but alas. History will remember it as a great opportunity for EU to rise but they blew it completely.
I mean, didn’t NATO always know this? It’s clear that provoking Russia was the goal, not an unintended consequence.
The assumption was that Russia was weak and this was going to be an easy in and out adventure they could get out of the way before focusing on dismantling China. Now it turns out that the whole thing has gone terribly wrong, and they’re starting to realize that the whole NATO framework is now at risk because NATO is looking increasingly impotent.
It definitely was the goal as now it’s US in place of Russia fulfilling food and energy demands of Europe, but at highly inflated prices. It’s the dumb Europeans playing in hands of US getting perished/exploited in someone else’s war.
They assumed that the sanctions would work and as a result Russia would be forced to withdraw if presented with a credible threat of Article 5 invocation.
The situation now is so bad that an Article 5 invocation would be the end of NATO as many countries in the alliance would refuse to intervene, or experience domestic political crises if they did.