Is it just me or is Russia really bad at playing the game of international politics? Like, they want to keep NATO from placing military forces in countries that border on Russia. Cool beans! I see why they want that. But why then did they invade the Ukraine in 2014 and occupy the Crimean peninsula? Under what conceivable projections did they think invading a neighboring country would lead to anything other than a major influx of Russia-bordering countries to the NATO application procedure? Heck, there were talks about Georgia joining NATO for a while! And now they might be invading the Ukraine again, because they don’t like NATO expansion? It makes precious little sense.
Maybe this is just a side-show? Russia really isn’t threatened by NATO forces on their border. Or more accurately: NATO forces pose no greater threat to Russia on the Latvian-Russian border than they do at the French-German border. Europe is a very small place when war between industrialized nations is on the cards. It’s a shorter distance between Poland and the Belarussian-Russian border than the distance from the Belarussian-Russian border and Moscow. I’m arguing that these distances aren’t very relevant for ground-forces but of course jet-bombers and ICBMs barely notice those distances so they are even less relevant there.
So why kick up a fuss? They have a strong foothold in the Eastern Ukraine. Maybe they are under pressure? Why care about the Donbass? It’s not exactly full of gold mines and semiconductor factories… Coal and Soviet-era heavy industry is all. I thought Russia had enough of that already? Access to Crimea? No, that doesn’t track either, it doesn’t stretch far enough west. There’s always internal politics to keep in mind of course. Slavic unity, independence from the West… But people can’t eat those things and picking a fight with the West threatens trade relations that do support Russia economically.
So what are they up to?