Are you a Russian troll?
Why?
I thought that what I said was self evident. Let's take the example of the Ukraine. The more often Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, has to be trotted out to make statements about having "grave concerns" re: Russia's actions, or that there is a "growing and strengthening resolve of the Allies" to defend Ukraine's territorial and geopolitical sovereignty, the more one begins to doubt how much substance there is behind these words. In Ukraine especially, at this point it only causes a rolling of the eyes. You can add every other Western military and political leader to this list, who has made any such statements from a grand stage. The problem is, ordinary people watch actions.
From this perspective, the Old West has once again demonstrated that it will compromise with Russia when it comes to its historic neighborhood at the cost of its local so-called "partners". From the Ukrainian perspective - they put everything on the line in 2014, and were expecting that their awesome sacrifice for democracy would mean that the Association Agreement would be quickly followed by an even tighter embrace with the EU, including potential membership. Now, seven years later people are saying it will be good if Ukraine can join within 20-30 years. During these seven years, Ukraine got perhaps $2-3B in military aid (mostly non-lethal), and another few billion from the IMF which they would probably have gotten any way. At the same time, Germany, the supposed leader of this union they want to join, builds a second natural gas pipeline with Russia which will deprive Ukraine of $3B in direct ANNUAL earnings to the state budget. Macron is seen regularly meeting with Putin and making noises about how sanctions are counterproductive. Britain meanwhile leaves the Union entirely, and is now more focused on little islands in the South China Sea. Nobody will say it out loud, but the Maidan was for nothing, because Europe turned out to have no balls and instead being focused purely on commerce with the much larger Russia. The more often this is discussed, and Western leaders are forced to make their pathetic protestations, the more the Russian aim of dividing and conquering is furthered. This is what I meant by saying it does not matter what will happen in actual fact.
When Latvia or Estonia was admitted, and Poland for that matter, no serious person could claim that in the 21st century Russia would military invade a neighbor and then annex a part of its territory. But it happened, not once but twice now if we include Georgia. So confronted with the idea that there may actually be a scenario where Americans need to be sent to the Baltics to defend them from the Russians, the tune changed pretty drastically. Trump famously did not want to explicitly state his commitment to Article 5 and spent most of his European tour berating allies for being freeloaders. Newt Gingrich, who was a close adviser to him, said - quote - "Estonia is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg" to indicate that Russian designs on the Baltic states are not at all unreasonable. Rich and Johnny are pretty reflective I think of most Americans when it comes to this issue. No one wants to get nuked for Tallinn.
