The USA could invade a middle Eastern country tomorrow morning and face ZERO sanctions and have nowhere near the amount of anger thrown at them ... is the point ..
It's correct, neither are right ofcourse
I’m not going into the finer points of the interventions the West has made… but there’s a few significant distinctions and general points to be made between our interventions then and the intervention Russia is making in the Ukraine.
1. Ukraine is a democratic country, Iraq and Afghanistan were governed by horrible regimes
2. Russia has systematically undermined Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty by supporting the separatist groups in 3 regimes. The West’s stated aim was to promote democracy by force (with ulterior motives)
3. this is a 19th century style land grab by Russia because they do not respect Ukraine’s right to nationhood
4. this isn’t about NATO, the reason Ukraine has accelerated its NATO application is because of Russian aggression
5. Putin has deliberately undermined Europe’s (particularly Germany’s) reliance on Russian oil and gas and to use this as leverage as he pursues this war
6. Russia is testing the west over Ukraine to cause splits in NATO as part of a wider geopolitical push to restore regimes/territory that was once part of the USSR. Putin is on record as saying the USSR’s collapse was ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.’ Scarily, War games indicate that Russia always beats NATO in the Baltic states.
The West’s interventions in the Middle East have been problematic and ultimately misguided. However, that does not mean what Russia is doing is ok. Russia needs to be stopped here or the aggression will continue and risk a real confrontation between Russia and NATO.