Effete is right. You dogs are getting wagged. "#Ukraine" is like "Remember the Maine!" We are in a $54B (and counting) proxy war because the American people have been whipped into a frenzy by yellow journalists. Supposing the US succeeds in pushing back the Russians, what factions do you think will retain power in Ukraine after the smoke clears? Will it be incorruptible democratic peaceniks or newly empowered and freshly equipped paramilitary units that already waged eight years of ultranationalist war on their own ethnic-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine? Look to recent US exercises in nation-building as a guide to how this might go down.

#21, More than one person holds a different opinion than you. Those who have for years closely followed the developments in Ukraine appreciate that the MSM narrative that has influenced mainstream American public opinion about the war is extremely biased. On the other hand, Johnny-come-latelys regurgitate what they have been told since the beginning of 22.

#30, that view rests on the assumption that Russia is a hostile regime and ignores the US role in creating the perceived enemy through NATO expansion. NATO has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in this regard. (Cue: Russiagate arguments as proof of hostility.) Implicit in this view is the belief that geopolitics is a zero-sum game where the US is the global hegemon. However, the post-Soviet, US-led moment in time is slipping away. As you rightly observe, the attempt to maintain dominance is what the US investment in Ukraine is about: doubling-down on that worldview. John Mearsheimer calls it the great liberal delusion.

#33, I meant hostile to the US. To conflate Russia's hostility toward Ukraine with its hostility toward the US is the issue with which I take umbrage. NATO is just an ever expanding defensive organization, eh? Well, you know what they say: the best defense is a good offense.

El Buscador, I appreciate your thoughtful responses and links. I'm adding this note at the beginning of what I already wrote below because I don't have time to respond to you.

Fun fact: Did you know that the word Ukraine means "borderland" in Russian?

There are so many experts here who should be on the Disinformation Governance Board to curate the truth. It's hard to argue with such rigorous truth-seeking as illuminated in #45. Unless of course one were to try to understand The Other, then a counter argument could be found. But thanks to the DGB here, we may all be spared the burden of thought.

#43, I have trouble believing this is a resource war. That is a common theory that makes little sense given Russia's ample resources and absence of hunger. That it is a land grab for a strategic land bridge with naval access to the Black Sea is an argument I buy, but not a land grab for wheat or gas.

To address another of your points, "What's best for themselves" might have been to not enshrine the pursuit of NATO membership into the Ukrainian constitution in 2019. In the Western Hemisphere, the US allows states the right to self determination only to the extent that it violates the Monroe Doctrine. Soviet missiles in Cuba, for example, represented a foreign power at the US doorstep, which was unacceptable to Kennedy. Yet Kennedy avoided war by de-escalating. He secretly negotiated to remove US missiles from the Russian border in Turkey in exchange for Soviets removing their missiles from Cuba.

Not so NATO in Ukraine. NATO doubled-down. Under Trump and then even more so under Biden, NATO poured in weapons to Ukraine despite more than a decade of warnings from Moscow and a war in Georgia to prove they meant business about "no NATO." The Ukraine border nearly completes a military ring around Russia. And that long Ukraine border represents a significant proportion of the ring. A coordinated military ring around Russia would give those that control it the power to dictate policy, controlling land and sea trade and military routes. NATO has proven they don't want to let Russia in their club, a club intended to counter Soviet aggression (a self-fulfilling prophecy). So Russia has to believe they are the enemy; and the enemy is at the gate. Ukraine is not the enemy, Putin reckons, the US-led NATO coalition is.

I think Putin is enforcing his own sort of Monroe Doctrine. Let's call it the Moscow Doctrine. Is it a just war? Let the ethicists decide. Is it justifiable from a Russian preemptive national defense point of view? I can see it. Was it predictable? Yes. Hard to believe but not without warning. Is it what's best for Ukraine? Absolutely not.

#41, I agree war is horrible. (Who doesn't?) If we spent more time dwelling on the horrors of war, maybe there would be less of it. Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. Putin did not need the Ukrainians to sign the paperwork to see the growing NATO force depositing weapons near his border. Putin knew that prior to Zelenski, back in 2014, the US backed a regime change to remove another legitimately elected leader in Ukraine, Yanukovych, and install one that would pursue pro-NATO anti-Russia policies. The US-backed anti-Russia regime change next door must've been pretty alarming for ol' Cold War Putin, especially after NATO had denied his petition for membership. Indeed the first act of the new government was to outlaw Russian language. Russia responded to these events by annexing Crimea. Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated from there. Over the next eight years 17,000 eastern Ukrainians, including civilians men, women and children died at the hands of the Ukrainian military and paramilitary, a large number of whom were known Nazi ultranationalists getting a little of the ol' ultraviolence.

El Buscador, I appreciate your thoughtful responses and links. I'm adding this note at the beginning of what I already wrote below because I don't have time to respond to you.

Fun fact: Did you know that the word Ukraine means "borderland" in Russian?

There are so many experts here who should be on the Disinformation Governance Board to curate the truth. It's hard to argue with such rigorous truth-seeking as illuminated in #45. Unless of course one were to try to understand The Other, then a counter argument could be found. But thanks to the DGB here, we may all be spared the burden of thought.

#43, I have trouble believing this is a resource war. That is a common theory that makes little sense given Russia's ample resources and absence of hunger. That it is a land grab for a strategic land bridge with naval access to the Black Sea is an argument I buy, but not a land grab for wheat or gas.

To address another of your points, "What's best for themselves" might have been to not enshrine the pursuit of NATO membership into the Ukrainian constitution in 2019. In the Western Hemisphere, the US allows states the right to self determination only to the extent that it violates the Monroe Doctrine. Soviet missiles in Cuba, for example, represented a foreign power at the US doorstep, which was unacceptable to Kennedy. Yet Kennedy avoided war by de-escalating. He secretly negotiated to remove US missiles from the Russian border in Turkey in exchange for Soviets removing their missiles from Cuba.

Not so NATO in Ukraine. NATO doubled-down. Under Trump and then even more so under Biden, NATO poured in weapons to Ukraine despite more than a decade of warnings from Moscow and a war in Georgia to prove they meant business about "no NATO." The Ukraine border nearly completes a military ring around Russia. And that long Ukraine border represents a significant proportion of the ring. A coordinated military ring around Russia would give those that control it the power to dictate policy, controlling land and sea trade and military routes. NATO has proven they don't want to let Russia in their club, a club intended to counter Soviet aggression (a self-fulfilling prophecy). So Russia has to believe they are the enemy; and the enemy is at the gate. Ukraine is not the enemy, Putin reckons, the US-led NATO coalition is.

I think Putin is enforcing his own sort of Monroe Doctrine. Let's call it the Moscow Doctrine. Is it a just war? Let the ethicists decide. Is it justifiable from a Russian preemptive national defense point of view? I can see it. Was it predictable? Yes. Hard to believe but not without warning. Is it what's best for Ukraine? Absolutely not.

#41, I agree war is horrible. (Who doesn't?) If we spent more time dwelling on the horrors of war, maybe there would be less of it. Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. Putin did not need the Ukrainians to sign the paperwork to see the growing NATO force depositing weapons near his border. Putin knew that prior to Zelenski, back in 2014, the US backed a regime change to remove another legitimately elected leader in Ukraine, Yanukovych, and install one that would pursue pro-NATO anti-Russia policies. The US-backed anti-Russia regime change next door must've been pretty alarming for ol' Cold War Putin, especially after NATO had denied his petition for membership. Indeed the first act of the new government was to outlaw Russian language. Russia responded to these events by annexing Crimea. Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated from there. Over the next eight years 17,000 eastern Ukrainians, including civilians men, women and children died at the hands of the Ukrainian military and paramilitary, a large number of whom were known Nazi ultranationalists getting a little of the ol' ultraviolence.

#50, send us the stats on Russian hunger normalized against comparative stats for other major countries. You might be right, but that has never been my experience in visiting Russia.

#48, I would say the US-led NATO alliance has fought Russia. I stick by that. Without American support, this war would have been over by now. We (I say "we" because I am American, not a Russian troll) have actively discouraged peace talks when Zelenski said he would be willing to accept NATO-neutrality. We have already committed more funds to Ukraine than the entire military budget of Russia. And it didn't start after the Russian invasion. The arms were already pouring in beginning in 2017 and accelerating from there.

That, I believe, is why Putin struck when he did. He needed to make his move before Ukraine became too strong and a NATO member. Did he miscalculate? Yes, he faced more Western resistance than he thought he would after the non-response to Crimea and the blip in Georgia. Was there a better moment to make a move? Not by waiting. He saw that the West's gestures at a diplomatic solution would never lead to a compromise that would satisfy him, namely no NATO membership for Ukraine. Eventually Ukraine would become an official member. In the meantime, they would be a de facto member.

Given these factors, Putin saw opportunity to strike with a new PM in Germany, a politically vulnerable president facing an election in France, and Biden in the US, who could be anticipated to stick to the status quo. After all, Obama did not send weapons to Ukraine. Obama understood that Russia would view that as an existential threat and did not think it was worth the risk. Does the stiffer-than-expected resistance mean Putin's war will fail? Maybe. The readers of this blog certainly hope so. But it will be a cold winter in Germany without Russian gas. It will be an uphill battle for US politicians at the polls when Americans become drained by inflation. Many of the warmongers will be voted out. A faraway land will seem a lot less engaging after enough news cycles. After all, we don't have any boots on the ground "over there." But Russia is committed.

Ukraine is not a monolith. It is an ethnically fragmented country. The united, defiant Ukraine view doesn't pass the sniff test for a country that was embroiled in what amounts to a civil war for nearly a decade before the Russian invasion. You are right about the hate Russia thing. While many have a new and legitimate reason to hate Russia post-invasion, the Russia haters were already in power and at war with their own ethnically Russian population, which brings us back to my initial point: We are funding Nazis in Ukraine whether the mainstream media reports on it or not.

And #48, When you said, "Russia doesn't have enough land," it made me lol. Russia spans eleven time zones, has more arable land than all but two countries, and it's people constitute only 2% of global population.