@Right_in_Virginia @Maj. Bill Martin
IMO, the information here https://contra.substack.com/p/how-the-west-sowed-the-seeds-of-war provides ample examples of "poking the Bear".
Okay, I was hoping you'd give me your thoughts instead of just link to someone else's (because I don't want to get sidetracked over what an article actually means), but I'll address the first point in that article, which is NATO refusing to discount the possibility of Ukraine or Georgia joining NATO at some point in the future. I assume that's the "biggie". The first and most obviously rebuke to that is that neither Ukraine nor Georgia were anywhere
close to actually being admitted to NATO. There was no application for membership submitted, NATO was on record as saying Ukraine had a long way to go, and we know that the process takes months anyway. So how can the prospect of something that is years away, and may never happen at all, constitute a freaking "existential threat" sufficient to justify a war of conquest??
But even if you ignore that point, the argument regarding NATO being an "existential threat" is bogus anyway. Your article first says this:
First, it’s important to understand why Russia views Ukraine’s suing for NATO membership as an existential threat.
But the article, despite saying it is "important to understand why" Russia views NATO memberships as an existence threat, never actually explains that WHY at all.. All it does it quote Russians making completely conclusory statements like “Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable." Okay, the Russians saying that something is "unacceptable" does not explain how it constitutes an "existential threat". And the reason the article never does explain how it is an "existential threat" is because it very clearly is
not. The only "existential threat" is to the Russian/Putinist dream of reconstituting the Russian Empire/Soviet Union. NATO membership threatens
that dream because Russia can't invade its neighbors once they have joined NATO. But there is no rational argument for how mere membership in NATO constitutes an existential threat to Russia itself.
And since the invasion of Ukraine our government from the top down has repeatedly called for a regime change in Russia, even calling for the assassination of its head of state.
You can't use something that by your own words only happened "since the invasion" to justify the invasion itself. And again, since this is supposed to relate to the claim that we've been "orchestrating a war" against Russia for
years, this doesn't cut it.
The comments about Putin can't be looked at out of context, which is the belief that Putin himself will never stop the war. I'm sure if Putin woke up tomorrow and said "guys, we are ending our Special Military Operation and heading home", everyone would celebrate and you wouldn't hear a peep about offing him. But absent that, him going to meet his Maker is the best way for this to end. That's just a fact.