An autocrat who struggles to remain in power buys his military’s backing with a higher budget. The way to do that is to threaten, posture, and trigger aggressio

An autocrat who struggles to remain in power buys his military’s backing with a higher budget. The way to do that is to threaten, posture, and trigger aggression elsewhere. Not sure how well Russia’s economy is doing during COVID, but they’ve been posturing with incessant propaganda against US, NATO, EU, vaccines and COVID measures all over social media in Eastern European NATO countries since the Obama sanctions, and even worse during Trump. They blame the west for all economic issues caused by COVID and now by Biden’s presidency they have installed some pro-Putin leaders as a result of the discontent. COVID may be an opportunity or pressure point causing these actions (less aggression-prone western allies with more internal issues). The bigger issue is the timing of aggressive standing not just in Ukraine, but also in Taiwan. If one is invaded and NATO/US gets busy, what stops the other one from triggering to take advantage of the distraction? If US has a weak response and the smaller NATO members get stomped anywhere, that could put fissures in NATO and embolden both aggressors to take over their juicy bites.