Being among the last Strong loyalists is no more foolish than believing our CIA-led foreign policy has been right about anything, ever, and here it looks to me like we've goaded Ukraine into picking a fight they can't win. We will defend their country to the last Ukrainian.
Or maybe not. The other option is WW3. Some of y'all seem think it will be a breeze but I am not so sure. Russia sucks on the road but is salty at home.
1. Putin is an autocratic thug who kills dissidents on occasion and runs a kleptocracy. That said, he is at reasonably popular in Russia.
2. Over the last 23 years, we (US-led NATO) have been backing him into a corner with two rounds of NATO expansion and worse, the promise of a third for Georgia and Ukraine.
3. We have always known Ukraine is a red line for Russia. We have always claimed it is of no strategic value to us. Why then did we promise them NATO membership?
4. He has responded militarily twice before -- in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. This invasion should not have surprised anybody (though it did everybody, including me) because this is what he has said he would do.
5. His plans go no further than breaking Ukraine. He does not plan to occupy it, much less go blazing off into NATO-land. Maybe he would like to but he just can't, and more, doesn't have even the potential to do so.
6. To understand global strategy you must have empathy. Not sympathy, but the ability to see things from the other perspective. You continually write off any argument along these lines as Whataboutism, but, fuck it -- well, what about if Mexico suddenly aligned with Russia and wanted to put a joint base in the port of Veracruz? Or had tank muzzles casting shadows in the Rio Grande? Or if Canada and China got cozy and the Chinese fleet steamed into their new base in Vancouver? This is what Ukraine in NATO looks like to Russia.
7. So what, you say. Fuck 'em. Well, here we are. And unless you are prepared to keep escalating this until we reach ww3, this is where we will always be.
There is a solution. A neutral Ukraine. Let Putin keep Crimea and the eastern provinces, but he GTFO out of the rest of the nation and we send in the Blue Helmets. He doesn't get to install a puppet -- the Ukrainians get to choose their leaders. Wealthy nations pour money into the country to rebuild. We strive to make Kyiv an international banking hub. If it's a little shady, we look the other way.
There is a precedent -- albeit an imperfect one -- in the 1839 Treaty of London that assured Belgian neutrality. Belgium can be seen as a sort of western version of the Ukraine in that it lies on a linguistic (and in Belgium's case, also a religious) fault line and at the time was situated between great warring powers. The treaty was honored until 1914, and when the Germans violated it, the consequences were drastic indeed.
This is the only sensible endgame for Ukraine: true neutrality. Otherwise the country will remain a chew toy in a tug of war between east and west forever.