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by rsynnott
856 days ago
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> The West has pretty unilaterally proclaimed Ukraine to be the morally right side fighting for its freedom and that the West stands besides it in its rightful cause. I think that’s essentially true in Europe (modulo Hungary, maybe), but it’s somewhat more ambivalent in the US; the presumptive Republican candidate for president is all but aligning with Russia on this one. To some extent this is probably to be expected; Putin has designs on EU states, particularly Poland, as a next step (you could question how realistic a Russian attack on Poland actually would be, but that does seem to be Putin’s thinking), whereas for the US, the consequences of Ukrainian defeat, while fairly dire, would be more nebulous. |
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Poland is a way too hard nut to crack. Attacking it is not necessary in order to advance his goals.
Baltics is just a way easier avenue to destroy NATO and EU to a smaller degree. It has a small population, unfavorable geographics and very small militaries. Even after Russian military was exposed to be far from its pre-war image, conquering Baltics is still within its capabilities. NATO has mostly just tripwire forces deployed there, but it's very far from certain whether they could really trip the wire if Russia managed to present a fait accompli. We'd see many discussions about "should our men die for these tiny faraway lands" or "we shouldn't start a nuclear war for this", but OTOH NATO failing to fulfill its primary role would very possibly mean its end.