Ragey, I would hardly call NATO an ally... They have consistently been shown to have no balls at all.
Also, the Russia Vs Ukrane war is much messier than just Big man vs Small man. Ukraine is no poor, weak country fighting against its oppressor. Ukraine is and has been well known for being an incredibly corrupt country, just not necessarily in the wider media.
BUT no i am not saying that Russia deserves or should have ukraine or and ukraine shouldnt be supported. All I'm saying is that it's way more in-depth than face value.
The Ukraine/Russia war and everything that has happened lately have shown that Russia is nowhere near as strong as they think/ public perception think they are
European nations have shown no balls, I won't argue with that and it's been a political gripe of mine for years, although likely for different reasons to you. I've long advocated for Europe to bolster it's defences and I'm a believer that European nations only survive in the future if they form a federal state. As they currently are, they are too divided to coherently tackle the big players as Russian, China and the USA have all demonstrated. A federal Europe with a suitable military and combined economy would not have been pushed around so easily. Unfortunately I feel the same divide and rule tactics European nations employed during the colonial era to great success are going to be applied back on Europe with similar success. I can't see Europe uniting and I think it is a continent in decay with delusions of their own importance and superiority. 20 years ago, the EU combined economies were larger than the USA. Now, they are about 75% the size. Even factoring in Brexit, they've still been outstripped by the USA. The USA has a can-do attitude to innovation, Europe has a can't-do attitude. It is staggering that with all the wealth and education, Europe lags so badly behind the USA and Asian nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in tech.
A particular example which sticks in my mind with this is in Britain we developed a technology called the Sabre engine with a company called Reaction Engines. This is a combined jet/rocket engine that had the potential to have drastically cut the cost of space travel by essentially allowing the creation of space-faring planes that could utilise standard runways and take up a fraction of the fuel costs whilst being reusable. The technology had been proven and the advance air cooling was truly revolutionary. What happened? The investors pulled the plug and the British government refused to support it so now it's dead. The chance for Britain to carve out a huge niche in the space industry just dropped, even as their concepts were being proven to work.
Nobody is saying Ukraine is perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it is still the case of an autocratic regime with a history of violence against it's neighbours attempting a land grab against a neighbour (again). Bear in mind Russia played a pretty big role in creating the corruption in Ukraine as it had it's fingers all through it's political system prior to the Euromaidan. In fact it was Russia attempting to corruptly exert more control over Ukraine which kicked off the Euromaidan in the first place, as they got their puppet president to unilaterally declare Ukraine was not going to look for closer integration with the EU and instead would integrate with Russia, flying in the face of what he had campaigned on.
In addition, western nations and Russia had signed an agreement that, in exchange for Ukraine giving up it's nuclear arsenal, it's security would be guaranteed by both sides. Russian tore that up twice and the west refused to honour it. They got completely screwed over.
The issue of corruption in Ukraine and the issue of their territorial integrity and sovereignty are not linked. Russia isn't invading Ukraine to fix issues with corruption. As part of attempting to join the EU, Ukraine would have been pressured to deal with the corruption. That has been blown apart quite literally now.
Indeed Russia is nowhere near as strong as people thought, which is why it's crazy that Europe are so powerless to stand up to them. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's and the combined armies of the UK, France and Germany could most likely pummel the Russians at this stage, yet Europe is too feeble and cowardly to take the necessary action. However the point stands, if Trump is attempting to undermine Russia, THIS is the key battleground to do it. It's had more impact on Russia than any other world event and yet at no point has the USA really turned the screw on Russia, yet they have turned the screw on Ukraine repeatedly. This flies in the face of the claim Trump's actions are calculated to bring Russia down.
