This seems like a big "what are you going to do about it? move by Putin, and can also see it being a way for China to gauge our reactions regarding Taiwan.
I read an interesting comment on Reddit that was very well reasoned regarding the whole situation At this point Russia has [uck fay]ed up pretty much no matter what 1) they don’t want a war with NATO, because they will get utterly demolished 2) US and UK have rapidly provided Ukraine with a lot of shit, particularly anti-tank weapons, so its far from a sure thing Russia will even have a good time if NATO ignores it and Ukraine just beats the hell out of the invaders and makes it not worth it to continue. The Ukrainian forces are also much more motivated and just all around better than the Russian ground forces, so the chance for embarrassment going down the invasion path is relatively high 3) Russia still heavily plays the brinksmanship game, and one of the few things they have in their favor is that we simply don’t know what the [uck fay] they are going to do next. But they have put themselves in a position where if they tuck tail and don’t invade, it could really affect public opinion within Russia to the point that it severely weakens a lot of those in power positions. This is not to mention the rest of the world looks at them and thinks “yeah, all bark no bite” Of course there is also the possibility that we are no longer dealing with a rational actor, but it seems like a pretty low probability, and frankly not something I want to think of anyway. Again, this was just some person on Reddit who seemed to have a well-thought out take. Could all be bullshit, but it tracks and there are some angles there I either wasn’t aware of or never really thought too much about
One of my fears here is that we see another civilian plane shot down or something to that effect and it escalates rapidly
All this is true. I could be just overly paranoid because I just finished reading a bit of US/China/Russia relations and China/Russia seem to be getting friendly. Putin isn't a China pawn, but he'll gladly be the shit-stirrer to see what they can do. JMO
Nobody did shit after the last 2 Russian invasions, so why the hell would we expect this one to be any different.
I believe, and someone can correct me if I am wrong, NATO is much more interested in Ukraine now than they were during the last two invasions. This is not to mention Russia managing to royally piss off essentially everyone besides China and India in the last 7-8 years, to a level not seen since the Cold War. They are like a drunk at the bar. Yeah, the bar kind of ignored the first time he showed his ass, and the second time they got close to banning him but he still had a couple influential friends vouching for him. But now the bartender has gone on a couple dates with the girl he’s always leering at and he’s about 6 feet away from crossing the line for the last time before he ends up through a windshield courtesy of that bouncer that always hated his ass anyway.
It would be a huge mistake on China’s part to extrapolate our reaction to a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine to gauge what we might do should they attack Taiwan…
It would be a huge mistake for China to do anything to piss us or the rest of the world off, tbh. They are already in economic trouble. I’m not saying it would be all sunshine and daisies for us, it clearly would not, but it would be much much worse for China long term. Particularly for the current ruling parties. Further, if Russia is banking on help from the Chinese, there’s a real good chance they have made a major miscalculation.
The fact that China is in such straits economically makes me wonder why we haven’t made more of a push in North Korea. I know Kim is a whack job but I don’t believe he’s got the full backing of China or Russia either should he decide to lob a middle or three. I imagine it’s probably a timing thing more than anything else. Having just pulled the plug on Iraq & Afghanistan it’s probably not the time to start another issue elsewhere…
As an aside, I used to work for a company that sold electric motors (among several other things…) that shipped from China. They couldn’t keep the power running long enough to fill even the most modest of orders and this was going on for years before Covid wrecked the supply chain. I have a hard time taking a country seriously as a global military threat that can’t keep its manufacturing plants running without constant power issues…
China has improved...............drastically recently. Right now Afghanistan has at least made people wonder if we really will support them if push comes to shove. Fair or not, it's reality.
It’s hard to deal with or reason with someone who not only doesn’t care if they die, they don’t care if they take everyone else with them as well… the bad thing is, whoever comes after him will be just as bad or worse, especially his sister.
Because it is politically bad for the more hostile US party, for one. This is all about keeping NATO from expanding closer to Russia. Trump was ready and to cut funding to NATO and making a case to end it entirely. When the US POTUS is saying dumb things, don't interrupt him or contradict him. Because they have backed themselves into a corner for two. Not moving forward will look weak at home and abroad. Three, imo, is Putin is looking to get some lasting glory for his legacy.
Russia wants the US out of Europe, so it can be the big dog there and push the EU around on all manner of things. NATO is in the way of that. For further reinforcement of this NATO/Russia/Trump nexus, look at the interactions between the US, Turkey, and Russia over the past 5 years. What that was about was keeping Turkey from getting any closer to EU/NATO, creating a wedge between the US and Turkey, and thus de facto closer to Russia. And it worked, we tripped all over our [Richards] with Syria during the Trump administration in this regard, though it didn't get a lot of headlines because there was so much domestic bullshit to cover.