Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I mean this post constructively, but let's say your fact is true and correct. You're Joe Biden or Jens Stoltenberg or Emmanuel Macron. You go into a meeting with Putin and you tell him, "in an objective moral sense, you are wrong here". How does that help solve the situation? What will Putin say?

Frankly, it's not enough to be right. You have to solve the actual problem jointly with your antagonist, and simply being right is not going to do this. In this respect, being right is useless, because it doesn't help.

Yes I hear what you're saying and in my personal life, I avoid Chinese products in particular as much as possible (which is not very often, I'm sorry to say). I do think that we should economically disassociate ourselves from China in particular. Russia I would be more hopeful of, even if it's a fool's hope, because I do see them as one leg of the triad of western civilization, and I have to believe that we can surmount our challenges with them.

But I don't think we can quarantine ourselves completely from China or Russia for the simple reason that we share a planet and need to collaborate on topics like climate change, AI, and nuclear disarmament. It's a horrible situation and it's only going to get worse.

Referring to other organisations or countries, is not steering the discussion away from Russia. That's a deflection from you, because it's easier (black/white) to focus entirely on Russia without considering international politics and events.

Nobody has sought to excuse Russian behavior... so for someone on about whataboutisms, you're introducing quite a bit of it yourself.

The same could be said about the US vetoing of resolutions. None of them have their hands clean in that regard.

Yes, but the UN can be bypassed, if the EU, US, and other trading blocs decided to apply sanctions. The point about the UN, is that it's still a mechanism for gaining support, even if the security council steps in to veto.

Think back to why I raised the UN as part of the discussion, although you'll have to consider more than Russia to do so.

In any case, sanctions are next to useless in doing anything to Russia.

I think a lot of the blame for the current situation stems from the foreign policy of George W Bush and the devils on his shoulder, not least of whom was Condoleeza Rice.

A decade after the USSR collapsed, Bush could have been magnanimous (as Clinton seemed to be) and said, OK Russia is back, as a republic. Russia - the country of Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy, the country that was allied to the US and the UK in WWI and WW2, the country that humbled Napoleon, the country that served as a Christian bulwark against Ottoman-Islamic expansion for centuries. The country that suffered the tragedy of a lunatic communist takeover at the same coincidentally unfortunate time that nuclear weaponry was invented, which exacerbated the tensions, could have been treated with more respect. Bush could have said, "Let's focus on building a friendship and strategic partnership with Russia in terms of trade and security, and basically ring-fence the Global North with western-minded nations."

But instead, enamored with the now obviously fallacious 'end-of-history' thesis; unhealthily distracted by a few savages hiding in the caves of Afghanistan; and offended by Russia's objections to the invasion of Iraq, Bush decided to court the less significant ejecta of the USSR's explosion - Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and so forth. In a recent interview about his reflections on working with Angela Merkel, Bush recalled that his biggest disagreement with Merkel was on Georgia's admission to NATO, where he wanted Georgia in, and she didn't. Imagine: one of his biggest regrets was not getting Georgia into NATO, rather than alienating Russia by expanding NATO in 2004 and withdrawing from the ABM treaty - unilaterally - in 2002.

If he had instead cultivated closer relations with Russia rather than the smaller states of eastern Europe, the security of the Baltics, Ukraine and the Caucuses might naturally been settled satisfactorily: much as Belgium no longer worries that Germany will storm its frontiers, the smaller former Soviet states might have had a similar trajectory.

Might have. Who knows. These are what ifs. There are admittedly a few reasons to think it wouldn't have been such an easy path (again, Russia is compelled by geography to be more authoritarian than other western countries would like), but I don't think we'd be in the dire situation we are in now.

True but the main sources of income won't be touched. The German gas agreement wouldn't be touched, nor would trade with India or China. The truth is that sanctions/restrictions only involves certain countries, and while it might hurt Russia somewhat, there are plenty of other markets or countries willing to trade under the radar.

If that’s true, the NATO sec general handled that situation with supreme incompetence.

I'm not so sure of that. Sanctions against Iran weren't relatively minor, and had a major effect on it's population for a rather long time. Same with Pakistan in the past. I suspect a nation like Russia could shrug off the effects of sanctions easily enough though, as they have close ties with both China and India, both being countries with existing agreements. In addition Russia would continue bringing in an income from it's arms sales worldwide.

Oh, I agree that they wouldn't want war with the West, but it's equally possible they see it happening eventually. Anyway, Ukraine, and other border countries could easily be taken without Western intervention, and the returns in accessible natural resources could offset any downsides of sanctions. Honestly, it's a lot like Hitler expanding in Europe before Poland was invaded... how long will the bluffs succeed before the Allies decide enough is enough?