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For context, Ukraine's 'antagonisation' consisted of existing as a sovereign state that wasn't under the Russian boot.
Personally I have a lot of sympathy for the Venezuelan people. Sure, they elected Chavez, but it's not as if they are the only country in the western hemisphere to elect an erratic, authoritarian populist. I'm glad that Maduro has been deposed, and hopefully the lack of clannishness like in Iraq and Afghanistan means that regime change will be a little more effective this time, although I'm not holding my breath for good governance or anything.
What do you think would have happened to Mexico in 1983 if they had decided that they just had to be a member of the Warsaw Pact, and host Soviet military bases and SCUD missile installations? What do you think is happening to Venezuela now?
No one ever answers this one
You don't even have to use a Cold War example. What do we think would happen to Mexico today if it tried to let China set up naval bases on its coasts?
No one answers it because it's a loaded question. Ukraine was not attempting to join NATO or have US or NATO military bases and missile installations when Russia invaded.
https://www.unian.info/politics/10437570-ukraine-s-parliament-backs-changes-to-constitution-confirming-ukraine-s-path-toward-eu-nato.html
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Because communist Cuba is right over there, has been since most of the Cold War, and once the poser of the hypothetical Mexican question is reminded of that they tend to quietly drop the topic to avoid acknowledging that their gotcha-hypothetical already came to pass, but with a different conclusion than they wanted to imply.
Sanctions and spycraft, obviously.
We already know what came to be of a country neighboring the post-WW2 Americans that wanted foreign security guarantees, hosted military assets, and more. It was not invaded, let alone annexed on revanchist grounds. Spied on, attempted assassinations galore, a half-baked dissident landing, and sanctioned for decades, but not invaded by the regional great power.
Cuba was pointedly never made a member state of the Warsaw Pact.
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The US did invade Cuba, it was just half-assed and the invaders lost.
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Cuba didn't get fucked up because the USSR backed off from their threatening plans, and Cuba is a small poor country that doesn't have any ability to threaten the USA, most notably, no land border. The USA was willing to go full kinetic to stop the USSR building out nukes in Cuba.
Ukraine or hypothetical Mexico are large, share land borders that make some flavor of invasion much more plausible, and the West or hypothetical China didn't back off from their (less threatening than nukes) plans.
I am fairly confident that the USA would go kinetic to prevent a Chinese naval base in Baja California, if the spycraft and diplomacy failed.
Also to be clear, the Russians are trigger happy retards and going into Ukraine was dumb and disproportionate to the threat they faced.
They are, and I think they/Putin reacted from a place of wanting Russia to be a superpower or empire again rather than just a nation. Putin is a Soviet Union KGB creature.
BUT - they've gained quite alot of valuable agricultural land (which might be very important in the coming century), industrial areas and natural resources like oil, gas, and rare earths, haven't they? Ukraine was always poor but quite a big portion of the valuable real estate worth trillions of $ have fallen to the russkies, unless I was badly misinformed on this.
The fundamentals are actually against agricultural land becoming more valuable over time, populations are declining while productivity per acre continually improves.
What of the worldwide soil erosion?
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In this context, has the dictator of the US been writing essays for decades about how Mexicans don't really exist, how they're really confused Americans who have been mislead by a regime of HitlerNazis, how Mexican land is rightfully part of the USA because of some confused historical nonsense about the Aztecs, has already invaded Canada and also the USSR has publicly refused to allow Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact, host Soviet military bases and SCUD missile installations?
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