Cav's Place

It’s not just that they don’t respect the Olympic Truce, but Russia seems to make a point of violating it specifically, and just when either they or China, their key allies, are the hosts. I mean, the war with Georgia was during the 2008 Summer Olympics in China, the annexation of Crimea, and the start of the ongoing war with Ukraine, was during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, and now the looming threat of an actual invasion of Ukraine came during the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. True, as it could have likely been determined after the pact between Russia and China announced before the Games began, despite the repeated Western claims of the contrary, the invasion itself didn’t materialize during the Olympics, but the preparations themselves count, at least from my point of view, and the preparations seem more or less completed, both in Russia and in the separatist regions, and they’re also working on the justifications for an attack, so as of tomorrow they actually are likely to act… If they’ll need to, the only reason why I wouldn’t be quite as certain as Biden was last night being just that they may continue to take advantage of the West’s weakness and reluctance to engage in conflict to get what they want, or at least enough of it, by other means.
I see that there was even a study, published in September, analyzing Russia’s behavior and what works and what doesn’t against their expansionism, but the same mistakes continue to be made. It’s not just that the chance offered by Georgia in 2008 was refused, even though it was, from that very moment, pretty much certain that such an opportunity will not come again during Putin‘s lifetime, but nothing was even learned, so the same thing happened in 2014 and it’s likely to happen again now, and possibly in the future as well. Yes, the threat created some unity, but at the same time it continues to expose deep differences and intolerable weaknesses, all of which are adeptly exploited by Russia, and not just in Europe.
The only thing that works is a show of force, not backing down, pushing back harder than Putin pushes forward, but that’s not happening. There’s talk of red lines that may well not even need to be crossed and unspecified sanctions that are likely to be watered down even if some would be implemented, but those didn’t do any good after the annexation of Crimea and won’t help any more now either. As for what actually would help, the actual defense of Ukraine, that was specifically rejected, as was the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO in the foreseeable future, what’s more likely now being that it’ll actually be completely barred from doing so, which would be a major victory for Putin, and maybe one he’d be content with for the moment… Until next time. But that’s not just a loss for Ukraine, as it was for Georgia, but it’s an embarrassment for NATO. It doesn’t look good for the EU either, and it’ll have serious negative consequences, but it’s worse for NATO, because it essentially amounts to violating the very reason why it was founded! When the Baltic States were most at risk, they were protected and accepted, but now when Ukraine is in that position, and when Georgia also was, and possibly also Moldova, these very states are rejected, being denied the very protection NATO was created to offer… Which makes me wonder why does it even exist anymore, if it restricts itself to only actively covering the countries that are safe.