I wonder if they'll try sticking nukes in Cuba again or maybe Venezuela. I seem to remember hints to that effect from the Kremlin recently.
come to think of it, if he wanted to stop NATO expansion to his borders, forming a hostile military alliance with Cuba and Venezuela and putting nukes in their borders might've been his best bet to do just that. There is no doubt the US would freak the f**k out over this and try to negotiate to remove those nukes and dissolve said alliance. US does NOT like it when they get a taste of their own medicine. And US was never going to just stop NATO expansion or meddling in the affairs of Ukraine and picking it off from Russia's sphere of influence and bringing it into the US's-
unless something caused them to. In case people haven't noticed, the US does whatever the f**k it wants on the worlds stage, regardless of what any other countries concerns or objections are.
More I think about this, the more I think this is probably the exact outcome that US planners at the highest level wanted. If you wanted to push Russia out of Europe, ostracize them and ensure US hegemony of Europe and get rid of a Russia that was gaining influence via EU energy dependence, well you couldn't have done a better job over the last decade or so needling them and then ask for a better outcome. Finland and Sweden are now talking about possibly joining NATO. Every NATO country is now stating their intentions to get serious on defense spending. 11 (including the US) were at the 2% of GDP threshold, while most were around 1.4 to 1.5% with a 3-4 being
pathetically low. Germany has stated it's intention to get serious on defense spending effectively immediately. Germany has also stated it's intention to build LNG infrastructure and import more LNG. US happens to be
the power in NATO. US happens to be the worlds largest exporter of weapons in the entire world. US also happens to be the worlds largest exporter of LNG in the entire world.
I feel terrible for the people of Ukraine and what's going on. Putin badly misjudged and miscalculated the entire situation. Think it's pretty clear that this was not rational, at all. It's not rational imo- bc they do not view Ukraine rationally as a meaningless pawn on the chessboard like the US does- they view Ukraine as existential to their existence- they view having it in their orbit/sphere of influence, having it as a buffer state to the West and ensuring it's never part of NATO as part of their vital national security interests- and it's not just Putin that has that view- many in the Russian government have that view. Putin has been talking about NATO expansion/Ukraine since the early 2000s, probably most notably at his speech in Munich in 2007. And thanks to WikiLeaks we have troves of leaked classified US state department cables all the way back from 2006 in which US ambassadors and diplomats on the ground have said the same thing- and they predicted back then exactly what happened in 2014 and what is happening right now.
The US played it's naive client government in Kyiv like a fiddle. Dangled NATO membership that they were never going to give them over there head, flooded them with lethal arms and encouraged them to get tough with Russia instead of try to make peace- knowing full well if sh*t hit the fan- we weren't going to actually get involved. Mearsheimer called it 7 years ago- he said the US was leading Ukraine on a path to get wrecked by their much stronger neighbor- and that the US isn't going to ever allow them into NATO which would give them an Article V defense guarantee and that the US wasn't going to send in troops or implement a no fly zone or declare war on Russia if Russia decided to invade Ukraine. Guy was a prophet. No one listened to him.