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The whole NATO expansion thing has a lot in common with deplatforming. The claimed principle in both cases is free association, the actual goal in both cases is marginalization. A rightist having a meltdown, calling his opponents a bunch of fucking nazis and hopefully attacking them is the best outcome. He outs himself as the villain and you can destroy him with a clear conscience. And the best thing is, he is actually a villain, like a starving peasant turning to highway robbery or an incel turning to date rape.

And the worst thing for Russia is, this is not the end. There's absolutely no guarantee Russia won't remain a designated bogeyman, a Piliguinia, even if it loses convincingly, even if Putin is not allowed to remain in charge, even if it admits total blame for every war it took part in since 1618 and shows its belly in general. As I've said on the old motte, there's no one left in Russia who can pull off what Witte did in Portsmouth or Talleyrand did in Vienna.

There's absolutely no guarantee Russia won't remain a designated bogeyman, a Piliguinia, even if it loses convincingly, even if Putin is not allowed to remain in charge, even if it admits total blame for every war it took part in since 1618 and shows its belly in general.

This is what happens when a country goes out of its way to screw its neighbors for hundreds of years. There's almost nobody in Eastern Europe who has any faith that Russia wouldn't gobble them up if given a chance.

Having Putin invade Ukraine was the worst possible outcome. Russia is now excluded from Western markets and politically stigmatized, so it will no longer have an incentive to behave itself in interactions with the West. It will become like North Korea, an insular security state that uses terrorism and criminality to get what it can from a hostile global order. Ukraine itself has lost a third of its population, had a large amount of land permanently scarred, and had its economy destroyed, and even if it wins it will find itself with a long-term hostile neighbor. Large amounts of Western capital have been sacrificed to the war effort, and Russia's resources and economic contributions to the world are now for China to take. So economically, security-wise, and in terms of Ukraine's well-being it seems like the war has been a monumental disaster for Western diplomacy.

Can you explain the last references?

Reference one: When Russia lost its war and the better part of its navy against Japan, everyone expected it to pay a heavy price. Russian statesman Sergei Witte managed to minimize territorial concessions and avoid the question of reparations altogether.

Reference two: after a certain Napoleon was finally sent to his retirement home on Elba, the victors assembled in Vienna to redraw the map of Europe. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord managed to maneuver himself into the negotiations and ensured France lost only its new acquisitions and not, say, Alsace or Nice. Austria, on the other hand, ended up in a worse position than it was in 1790.

France lost only its new acquisitions and not, say, Alsace or Nice.

Extreme pedantry, I know, but Nice wasn't part of France immediately before or after Napoleon:

The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) once more gave the city back to the Duke of Savoy, who was on that same occasion recognised as King of Sicily. (...) From 1744 until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) the French and Spaniards were again in possession. (...) Conquered in 1792 by the armies of the First French Republic, the County of Nice continued to be part of France until 1814; but after that date it reverted to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

It only became part of France for good in 1860:

After the Treaty of Turin was signed in 1860 between the Sardinian king and Napoleon III as a consequence of the Plombières Agreement, the county was again and definitively ceded to France as a territorial reward for French assistance in the Second Italian War of Independence against Austria, which saw Lombardy united with Piedmont-Sardinia.

Thank you. I should've trusted my nagging doubt about Nice and just written "Provence".