A couple of viewpoints: The West has collectively been so focused on capitalizing on their self assigned 'peace dividends' after the fall of the USSR that they

A couple of viewpoints: The West has collectively been so focused on capitalizing on their self assigned 'peace dividends' after the fall of the USSR that they actually believed that business partnership would change the CCP - and they forgot that the KGB was still very much an existential threat.. The current problem came about because the West has come too late to the realization that the EU (and even NATO) will not survive Putin's undermining at their borders.. 1. Those are West-centric viewpoints. I too used to be starry-eyed about the Stars and Stripes and had a similar West-centric viewpoint. However, I could not reconcile the contradictory values of the Iraq Invasion of 2003 and the Nuremberg/UN Charter specifications. If Nuremberg or UN Charter 'laws' were valid, how could the US, etc justify a war of aggression invading Iraq which was not an imminent threat to any other country at the time. (In fact it had been badly degraded by twelve years of heavy sanctions, including the Allbright 'worth it' sanctions which started to starve the general population and the 500,000 children which were said to have died during them.) Once my mental switch occurred, I looked at previous and later declarations of 'threats'. Around 2003 also, we started to hear how Venezuela was a 'threat to the US'. Venezuela? A threat? Now, come on!. Then I saw that any country which not say 'How high?' when commanded to jump by the US was also considered to be an adversary to be regime-changed or destroyed. That has continued for nearly two decades now of unipolarity power. Disagree with the US, and you're going to receive 'Democracy' from the bombers overhead. 2. Another point above, is that the 'peace dividends' after the fall of the USSR were non existent. That was because the Cold War was never considered to be finished by the US, otherwise NATO would have been disbanded at the same time as was the Warsaw Pact. Also the Cold War was not a victory by the US, as is commonly believed. The Cold War was a Draw, as both the US and the Soviets were bankrupted by the Cold War at around the same time. The US went from the World's biggest creditor nation in 1980 when Reagan became President to being the World's biggest debtor nation by the end of the 80s when Reagan stepped down. The US was fortunate in that they had the 'Credit Card' of the World's Reserve Currency. That allowed the US to continue on as before, seemingly victorious as it 'printed' money, whilst the National Debt continued to grow and grow and the country was de-industrialised because it couldn't really afford to improve itself. The crumbling infrastructure of today is a stark pointer to this collapse. The national Debt is now well over 30 trillion dollars, and it's an impossibility to restructure the US economy without the country collapsing completely into chaos. Meanwhile, the Soviets/Russia were fortunate in that they DID NOT have the World's Reserve Currency. That meant that they started from a lower, much more manageable level of debt when they were forced to restructure their whole economy completely during the 2000s. Yes, things were horrific in the depths of bankruptcy. Yes, it took more than ten years, but after those bad times, Russia is now a country with hefty foreign reserves, and has a very good positive balance of accounts. Thirty years after the 'end' of the Cold War, the Soviets/Russians are in better shape overall than the US. 3. EU (and even NATO) will not survive Putin's undermining at their borders.. You're looking at things with too short a look at history. Things didn't start in 2022. It was NATO that started changing borders back in the late 90s with the Wars that broke up Jugoslavia. It was NATO that split off Kosovo from Serbia. At that time, Russia said that was a bad move and it was a bad precedent for future border changes. As usual, the Russians were disregarded by the West. Now, when the boot is on the other foot, the West is screaming 'It's not fair!'. Regarding the Ukraine, it was the West, EU and NATO that provoked the Maidan Coup in 2014. It was McCain and Vicki "Fuck the EU" Nuland that bragged they'd spent five billion dollars to 'bring in democracy'. There was no 'Think of the civilians!' calls by the MSM during the whole seven years that the Ukrainian army were shelling civilians in the breakaway provinces. There was only deathly silence from the MSM regarding the 14,000 civilians killed during that time. There was no outcry in the UN about those. There were TWO(!) Minsk Agreements negotiated between Kiev and the two breakaway provinces but Kiev and the EU participants, France and Germany, refused to honor them. Note that Russia was not a party to the Minsk Agreements, and kept complaining that Kiev, France and Germany were not following through with what they had committed to. For more than seven years. Anyhow, we (mainly I) have digressed greatly from from our original 'rules-based order' discussion. I will end it here.