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That doesn't seem like there's any material benefit except perhaps to LNG suppliers, am I missing anything?
The status quo already greatly favored the United States. Neither Russia nor China were posing any threat to American interests. If it's all about posturing and letting everyone know who's the big dog, I don't think anyone could have forecast with any certainty that Russia could be held off by Ukrainian forces. We'd just been defeated by the Taliban and to sink billions into Ukraine and be defeated there as well would further the idea that America isn't such a formidable opponent.
A prosperous Russia seems far better for Europe and the world than a Russia with serious fears of collapse. Mutually assured destruction doesn't work if one party's destruction is already a foregone conclusion. At that point you're relying on Putin to care about American lives, and why would he?
A collapsed Russia also greatly increases the likelihood that someone spirits away a nuclear weapon and later detonates in an American city.
If your best argument is that we were right for the wrong reasons, I'll take that any day of the week.
A prosperous Russia would have gone right back to reassembling the Warsaw Pact and threatening the West. A collaborative and friendly Russia hasn't been in the cards for at least the past couple of decades, and it's categorically better to have a weak geopolitical adversary than a strong one.
This very much depends on the manner of its collapse. Anyway, it proves too much. Was the fall of the USSR also lamentable for the same reason?
Kind of; the way the USSR was dismantled is a cause both of the Russian government being what it is now, and also of the territorial disputes with Ukraine that are ostensibly the reason for a war that has a [however small] chance of turning nuclear.
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