Cav's Place

Biden’s “we had a horrible plague, followed by two years of Covid” quip and the current revelations about one major element of Trump’s legacy seeming about to make its effects felt in a terrible way made me spare more than a passing thought to how much of a relief it is that Trump isn’t still in office, and wasn’t when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. I mean, with that guy there, it seems unlikely that NATO would have done much of anything and doubtful that the US would have imposed significant sanctions, which would have also led to the EU shying away from doing much of anything. Perhaps even more notably, it’s unlikely that the intelligence services would have offered the aid that allowed Ukraine to counter the initial offensive so well… Or to foil the plans to assassinate Zelenskyy.
So Zelenskyy was likely to have been taken out right away and Ukraine would have likely fallen completely, probably followed by Moldova, the question being whether the Baltic states would have followed suit or they’d be shivering in terror and waiting for Putin’s move, despite the fact that they’re NATO members, which would put the very existence of NATO into question and prove to any and all powerful bad actors that they shouldn’t be deterred by it… The first other consequence of that likely being that China would have also made its move against Taiwan by now, or at least would be about to do so. And we’d probably also have very real reasons for concern here in Romania, along with a border with Russia by now. And instead of being about to join NATO, Sweden and Finland would have been likely to bow down to Russia even more, just hoping that keeping their heads low enough would prevent them from being chopped off. And I’m sure that the list could continue.
What a terrible prospect that is. Not that such a scenario couldn’t materialize even now, and not that NATO, the EU or the US are doing what they really should be doing in response to Russian aggression, but just thinking about how much worse things could have been… In a way, I wonder whether Putin’s plans weren’t delayed by COVID-19, if he didn’t intend to make use of that first horrible plague if the literal illness wouldn’t have started spreading across the globe, and also taking a heavy toll on Russia. But, either way, instead of merely being relieved that such a scenario was avoided, we must be fully aware that a similar one may yet become reality and truly do everything to prevent that from happening, now as well as in the future.