Also look at what is happening in Europe and the Ukraine war.
After the weak and inept leadership shown by France and Germany in their response to Russia's aggression the hopes for a EU defense capability is all but finished.
Eastern European countries would rather have the US to defend them [1].
And I think more appreciation needs to be given to the US for supporting Ukraine in those early days because if Russia over-ran Kyiv it's quite possible that Belarus, Moldova, Estonia etc could have been next. US military leadership can credibly be argued to have saved Europe.
Why on earth would Russia invade its closest ally? It is alarming that we see such confident justifications of US foreign policy from people who don't know the basic facts of IR and world history.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography"
A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries. The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state of war in its bid to conquer Ukraine through overwhelming force.
“Russia’s goals with regards to Belarus are the same as with Ukraine,” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told Yahoo News. “Only in Belarus, it relies on coercion rather than war. Its end goal is still wholesale incorporation.”
According to the document, issued in fall 2021, the end goal is the formation of a so-called Union State of Russia and Belarus by no later than 2030. Everything involved in the merger of the two countries has been considered, including the “harmonization” of Belarusian laws with those of the Russian Federation; a “coordinated foreign and defense policy” and “trade and economic cooperation … on the basis of the priority” of Russian interests; and “ensuring the predominant influence of the Russian Federation in the socio-political, trade-economic, scientific-educational and cultural-information spheres.”
And countries like Poland are seeing a unique opportunity to fill the power vacuum in order to change the government to one that isn't interested in being part of Russia's sphere of influence.
If Putin was successful in Ukraine it's not inconceivable he would have rather have invaded rather than risk it becoming pro-EU, joining NATO etc.
After the weak and inept leadership shown by France and Germany in their response to Russia's aggression the hopes for a EU defense capability is all but finished. Eastern European countries would rather have the US to defend them [1].
And I think more appreciation needs to be given to the US for supporting Ukraine in those early days because if Russia over-ran Kyiv it's quite possible that Belarus, Moldova, Estonia etc could have been next. US military leadership can credibly be argued to have saved Europe.
[1] https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1661710156944535554