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Agree that China is playing a long game and has tremendous patience. If I read your argument right, you're saying that it is foolish to think Russia could be "won over" to Europe, that they were always destined to be autocratic, and therefore their "values" are just too opposed to the West to ever be a partner. 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. |