| That's EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. Literally all of Europe and the US bent over backwards for Russia. German made it one of there central geopolitical missions to integrate Russia. They invaded Georgia and did many other questionable things, then took Crimea and still most countries were willing to basically not upset the Apple cart. So they did 'cultivate' Russia. Russia always loves to only talk about NATO and how bad it is. But NATO actually helped Russia because it let the Eastern European feel save and that convinced them that economic collaboration with Russia was in their benefit. And it also passivized these countries, making them far less militarist. Without NATO, these countries would have invested far more in conventional defense for the last 30 years and would have refused any Russian integration. But at some point cultivation goes to far and you can't just forever say 'well we need Russia against China so they can have Ukraine', 'well we need Russia against China so the can have Georgia', 'well we need Russia against China so they can have the Baltics'. Like at some point 'cultivating' only works if you have a partner on the other side that has even the slightest interest in cooperation. Russia elites care about their own power, and that power is threatened by justice and democracy, not China. They will not switch and view China as their enemy unless China want to start to be an enforcer of democracy or actively take Russian land. China knows this and is prepared to wait to get back their Russian territory (and maybe more). China is well aware that Russia is a massively declining power, suffering from massive brain-drain, bad demographics, surviving off left over Soviet industry and massive amount of natural resources (that China can already acquire). So China, despite Russia owning a lot of land that China absolutely believes is theirs, will focus on the US because the West, is a much bigger economic, political and ideological competitor. So the simply reality is, as long as China has major 'Western' allies close to its borders, you will simply not get Russia and China to really go at each other as they did during the Communist competition days. No matter what day dreaming old Cold Wars have about doing the Sino-Soviet split again. > Throwing more arms and Ukrainian youth into that meat grinder is a very cynical way to proceed. Its not cynical if the population there actually wants that. This is not a case where Ukraine has some dictator who is doing some vanity invasion of foreign territory. Its not even like Afghanistan. Because in Ukraine you actually have a pontifical system that can be converted into a long time useful ally. > driven Russia further into alliance with China and Iran This is always the fear mongering people use. But this has a number of limitations. First, non of these countries actually like each other. Russia and Iran work together but don't like each other. Russia and China are the same. Russia know well that China really wants to own 80% of Russia, even if this isn't their primary focus right now. They will never be true allies as the US is in NATO, its just not happening. Unless maybe where one is a complete client state of the other. And in terms of commercial relationship, oil and weapons, they are already doing that. Appeasing Russia in Europe doesn't massively pull them away from China and Iran. Sure maybe they sell slightly less oil in that direction, but the relationships aren't effected that much. At the end of the day, these 3 regimes, have one thing in common, they don't want Western values based system of values and worst of all democracy. So they will always cooperate along that line. PS: > The attempt to Balkanize and neuter Russia looks like an abject failure. Overall, its not except its not a failure at all. Finland, Baltics, Poland and all the others are now well integrated into Europe and will never go back to being Russian in any sense. |
Ok, but I don't think Russia has to be a "Western-style" democracy to not be an active ally of China. They have interests like any other sovereign nation. Maybe breaking up the Russian Federation is a bridge too far, but the achievable policy goal is to weaken Russia internally and make it quite inconvenient for Russia to be allied with other US geopolitical rivals. These are, primarily, China, our true superpower rival, and regionally, Iran (Persia), that asserts privileges in the Middle East that threaten US interests. Russia is the one that could be inconvenienced by alliance with either China or Iran. It was inconvenient and costly for Russia to support Iran ally Syria. There are some pipeline interests for Russia there but Syria is more important to Iran than Putin. Instead of making it costly for Russia to support China, we've made it costly for Russia not to support China. The opposite of what is needed to destabilize our rivals.
Look, I like Europe and have spent a lot of time there and have family there, but I care mostly about American prosperity. To the extent that Europe promotes American prosperity, our interests align. But Ukraine is also about disciplining Europe. Europe has shirked its own security obligations to police its European neighborhood. Worse, some European powers (ahem, Germany) have tried to assert independence from US political control by exploiting access to Russian energy and trying to achieve some kind of energy independence from the US. No bueno. Given its history, the calls for Germany to raise an army and invade Eastern Europe in a war for independence sound like a bit of farce, don't you think? Anyway, not going to happen. Europe must remilitarize, but only to a point. They need to spend enough money to carry their share of the burden, but not to achieve political independence.
I would also challenge the coherence of any arguments based on "Western values" and democracy. Those are terms that have many possible meanings, or no meaning at all.