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Notes -
Inspired by a comment from Twitter;
Everyone is talking about the US relative decline, but they are really flexing his power in a way that we have not seen from Iraq
In one year they;
Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia
Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend
They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding
They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.
China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific
The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working
The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.
I doubt that these strategies will work or be healthy in the long term, but it is incredible to see how an ill and polarized country can still do whatever it wants without any reaction.
Most of this is just because Russia decided to impale itself on its revanchist delusions. The US had made no serious efforts to integrate Ukraine into NATO and showed every sign of being content with the frozen conflict status quo in the Donbas, but then Russia tried to flip the table over but ended up hurting itself in the process.
Germany absolutely deserves the L here. France and Germany have always been a bit jealous of Anglo hegemony over the collective West, which is why they make periodic calls for "strategic autonomy". But instead of Germany building up its military, it instead decided to do the stupidest possible option of bankrolling an ardent enemy of the EU and becoming massively overreliant on Russian gas with barely a whisper of "what could possibly go wrong". Sensible analysts knew it could become a liability, but Germany proceeded full-speed ahead anyways, despite countless protests from a succession of US presidents and other foreign leaders.
America was arming Ukraine (hence the very different outcome to 2014).
From Putin's perspective:
He can't reach an acceptable political settlement on Eastern Ukraine.
His enemies are arming Ukraine.
Russia's demographics and stockpiles are never gonna get better, while Ukraine's can.
Ukraine is considered a matter of supreme strategic importance he couldn't walk away from.
I suppose it looked like he had to strike. The US not having any intention of attacking didn't mean it wasn't looming.
Containment isn't a friendly strategy, and you may have to try to flip the table to prevent it.
Anyone who believes that nation-states act according to their rational interest should see Germany's absolutely irrational energy policy.
Ukraine demographics are even worse.
Russians stockpiles of weapons aren't doing too badly. They've had days when they fired more artillery ammo than the US Army procures in a year. And they're still not out, somehow. Also making 5 Kalibr cruise missiles a day, that's 1800 a year. Not too shabby for a gas pump country!
For comparison, that's about the amount of Tomahawk missiles US has fired since the first Iraq war.
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