Russia begins moving troops into eastern Ukraine

[Dill]

(03-25-2022, 05:42 AM)hollodero Wrote: I can offer an explanation why he did not incorporate Georgia then and there - he maybe simply didn't feel up to it. He went as far as he could without risking serious repercussions. NATO and the west needed substantial weakening first.
When the Russian propaganda attacks on the west started on a large scale - and this is not solely about the US - that's when I'd say there always was an endgame to that. But I can not know what he was thinking and planning, how could I. I have a hard time to believe though that back in 2008 and in the upcoming years his one and only goal was to protect the status quo from an evergrowing NATO threat (which, I'd agree, was an understandable worry). Imho, the status quo at the time was not satisfactory for him, for a man that again always mourned the end of the Soviet Union, as the end of Russia being a superpower. He wanted to participate in the big game of chess that decides the fate of the world and, imho, suffered greatly from being more or less excluded from that and being merely seen as a leader of a weak and miniscule country with no real sway. But, again, I can not prove that, or that along with that he harborded expansionist plans (imho a logical conseqnence of aspiring greater might for his Russia). It's just how I've always seen him, especially after he started his propaganda warfare against Europe and the US.

Just a quick note on this while I get my other ducks in order--

I am in part arguing an analogy here, between US and Russian FP. 

Did the US want missiles out of Cuba or undermine legitimate governments in Guatemala, Chile, and Nicaragua simply because it "wanted to participate in the big game of chess that decides the fate of the world"?  While I have disagreed with many such actions in the past, I have never have never assumed US leaders did what they did because it felt good to be important in the world. Fear of Communism, though often unfounded, and damaging to "freedom," was a real fear. 

What I am seeing in yours and others' comments is a reluctance to recognize that, from the Russian perspective, NATO encroachment was and is a real threat to Russian national interests. Cheney told Gorby he saw no reason why the US should not continue to "break up" Russia after the collapse of the USSR. And the US behaved that way afterwards.

I am concerned by the tendency on this board and on tv commentating to view three decades of instability in Eastern Europe as something simply emanating from Putin, substituting analysis of personality for analysis of foreign policy. No doubt Putin has become an autocrat, and that increases legitimate resistance in former satellites to incorporation in Russia's near abroad. But I think it quite wrong to suppose the current crisis would have happened no matter how Putin/Russia were treated from '99 to the present because we "feel" Putin always wanted the empire back.

The US, after promising NOT to back NATO expansion, ran it right up to Russia's borders. And when Russia pushes back, that's just them not wanting to appear weak? They've been trying to reconstitute their empire all along? 

PS If, in the Georgian case, Putin went as far as he could without repercussion, that suggests he was more rational than he is now, doesn't it? He clearly did not bite off more than he could chew. He drew a red line and maintained it--and still hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics.

PPS you frequently refer to cyberattacks, not just against the US. But these two correlate better with my hypothesis than yours, as it appears to have first become a thing in resisting NATO encroachment in Estonia and Georgia--only later becoming a problem in Europe. Once Putin abandoned the notion of working with first the US, then Germany and France, THEN we see him actively undermining the politics of those countries--mostly post 2014.