While I would agree that Russia was an aspect of the motivation for those incursions, I disagree that it is the total explanation. Russia is an aspect of a larg

While I would agree that Russia was an aspect of the motivation for those incursions, I disagree that it is the total explanation. Russia is an aspect of a larger picture. After all, we don't go to war with Nations simply because they exist or are influential anywhere. There's a larger picture, just as the war in Ukraine is part of a larger picture than "freedom" or any other such condescending explanation. The mainly-Russia explanation is also too convenient on a number of counts. First, in this current era of anti-Russian sentiment, it offers the large number of people that were responsible for the widely panned Iraq invasion an "out" that is, just now, socially acceptable. These are people that are still neurotic about their attachment to the accepted situation that the predicate for the invasion was a lie. A neuroticism that is evident for anyone paying attention to what they still write with some consistency. All national strength and well-being has an economic basis. Especially military projection. One can't separate our percieved interest in "getting Russia out of the Middle East", or some such, from economic interest. Or at least from economic calculus. Anyone attempting to sell such a tale should be suspect (not you, necessarily). There are other massive red flags that indicate what the Iraq invasion was about, in terms of a larger picture. These stare in the face anyone willing to look, as they hide in plain sight. At the same time, at least one is inclusive of both the Russia and oil angles. I won't talk about that one. Look harder. Reinterpret crucial data for that era in a different manner from what we are widely told its nature was (and is). Its actual nature is sensible. What we are told about it is not. The other motivation is military positioning, but has a scope that is well beyond Russia and China.