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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.

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.