Well, Putin massed his troops on the Ukraine border, waited a few days for the international reaction, had a chuckle to himself and then crossed the border.
Because the response from Western countries was piss-poor. No build up of arms on the Western border of Ukraine, no massing of naval assets in the Med and Baltic.
Instead, empty rhetoric.
Because Germany relies on Russian Gas. Which Putin rightly assumes means the West cannot retaliate.
Globalism fails. Again.
You cannot, absolutely must not do business with people that view you as a military or ideological adversary either in the past or present. Because at some point, you need to be able to square up to them, or they will trample over you.
With Germany hamstrung through lunatic energy policies, I wonder how far Putin will push. Estonia? Latvia? Could Poland, Romania, The Czech Republic all fall? Could Putin push back to the old cold-war borders?
Could even Germany itself eventually fall? I mean, give it one harsh winter where Putin turns off the gas tap, what do Germany do then?
This is where I've watched with despair the lunacy of the globalist movement and their green agenda. It's all well and good whipping up a narrative about global warming and getting the public to invest in electric cars and renewable energy to continue consumerism and keep the money in the economy churning around to make it look like all is well. But there are those of us that have posted about the lunacy of such actions before and how they are just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Western democracy is the best fucking thing about the West. We (should) have the freedom to be who we are, do what we want and not have any interference. Or so it used to be. There was no issue with Trans rights, no special interest group wanted to be any better than another. All everyone wanted was to have equal power, equal opportunity, and have equal rights.
We got there and then some people said that wasn't enough. Some people created new issues to fight over.
And then the West descends into a morass trying to debate the problem of who gets beneficial or preferential treatment to get a leg up.
All the while strong leaders like Putin look to the West and laugh as the strongest Western nation, America vote a geriatric, mentally deficient husk of a man to lead them. America is so weak now it's embarrassing. Embroiled in virtue signalling and the woke agenda, expending energy on nothing-burger ideological box-ticking insanity.
The Elite in the West got such a bloody nose in 2016 with Brexit and the election of Trump, they lost sight of what matters for ordinary people: security. Instead they got Biden installed as president and are reaping the rewards. Of course they are rewarded with even more money as military stocks soar and the price of energy go through the roof. The people that control the money and media always win.
It's those at the bottom that can't afford to heat their homes, it's those at the bottom whose children die on foreign soil. It's always those at the bottom that lose.
I do hark back to a time when the poor at least got some of the crumbs from the table of the rich: good pensions, stable employment and the like.
Now the greedy rich want everything and give nothing back. No paying their dues. Tax is offshored, weakening our governments and their ability to invest in military assets.
Nope. No need for security, no need for society, no need for community, no need for nationhood under the globalist ideology. We all trade together and suffer together.
Except Putin isn't beholden to the globalist types. Neither is Xi Jinping. Russia has enough of what it needs and cannot be sanctioned into compliance. China has vast reserves of cash to keep them going for decades and now own a fair chunk of Africa and Australia. They've stolen enough technological information to give them almost parity with the West. Or enough to concern Western military leaders.. The Middle East has their energy reserves and own a huge chunk of Western real estate along with massive investment in Western markets.
These adversaries have been very canny and have played the greedy Elites in the West.
Sadly it's us at the bottom that pay the price.