Which is kinda pointless in this day and age of aerial warfare, and it's also really unfair on those who live in that "buffer zone". That means they're basically just a throwaway crumple zone to Russia ready to be sacrificed. Who wants to be that? And if they do manage to take over Ukraine they still don't have a buffer zone because they'll be bordering with Poland and Romania.
Also, Russia has actually gained a huge border directly with NATO as a direct result of this war. It's really backfired in that regard. Finland wouldn't have joined NATO if Russia hadn't shown how dangerous they can be. They were perfectly happy with the status quo until this.
> It's not pointless when nuclear response depends on seconds
That's exactly why it's pointless. Those few hundred kms don't make any difference.
And in terms of launch warning it's the subs that are the most dangerous and always have been.
Don't forget we have Russia's own enclave right in the middle of Europe and nobody complains about that.
> Russia has repeatedly asked to join NATO, most recently with Putin asking Clinton in the early 2000s. Unelected men in suits always manage to shut it down.
Russia is a crime syndicate masquerading as a country. It's just incompatible with our standards and values and if they joined NATO they would have driven a wedge into it.
We have enough problems as it is with Hungary pivoting to Russia and Turkey turning autocratic. Russia joining would have destroyed NATO. Which is probably why they wanted to join. I doubt it was ever sincere.
I do agree the MIC makes the US do very bad things but at least we in Europe are allies by choice, not at gunpoint like the former Warsaw pact. It's no wonder that counties prefer our side to joining their sphere of influence.
A lot of problems because they are also starting to align with other autocratic regimes like Russia. This is why it was so hard getting Finland and Sweden to join.
> Kicking a dog repeatedly and then shooting it when it snaps at you is US foreign policy 101.
So the likes of Bucha are actually American’s fault?
Putin is welcome to what he has coming and the utter ruin the Russian military is facing is deserved. Russia deserves better leaders.
In terms of a nuclear threat, when was the last time that Russia genuinely faced the prospect of being hit by a first strike?
Russia has probably issued 20 such threats in the last year.
It didn’t ask repeatedly. It was on a membership onramp with other Eastern European countries and then Putin demanded to bypass political and other readiness processes and jump ahead and be admitted directly, and started scaling back cooperation when this jump-ahead proposal was denied.
Such a lost opportunity. It would have been much cheaper to dissuade them of that idea before this war. The Crimea stunt they pulled should have been the turning point, but instead we get almost no reaction. Now it's going to cost a lot of money and lives to throw them out. :-/
This "buffer zone" demand is much older than 30+ years. Putin wants another Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to invade his neighbors, to be called 'Putin the Conqueror'. Everything we see are his ambitions to rewrite history. He won't resort to nukes because then there is a risk of no one reading the history of the new glorious Russian empire by Putin the Conqueror, and that's against his life goals.
