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We don't need to go as far back as Iraq.

The Saudis have been waging an offensive war for years in Yemen. Yet there hasn't been a single peep about cutting them off SWIFT, sanctioning their royal oligarchs, freezing their western assets, etc, etc.

It seems to send a message that yes, repressive petrostate dictatorships can get away with waging offensive wars... Well, at least some of them can.

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Oil, and by proxy money, protect them from anything people might want to do to them. People want their money, want their oil, so they turn a blind eye.

It's not shielding Russia nearly as strongly. Being a friend of the US is more important than having oil. American friends and allies can do no wrong to the eyes of the western world

It is in China's best interest that Russia is hostile to the US. I wonder what it would take for the US to form a military alliance with Russia?

> I wonder what it would take for the US to form a military alliance with Russia?

A head-and-shoulders decapitation of a regime change in Russia, Chinese irredentism over outer Manchuria, a Han-supremacist lebensraum movement targeting Asia east of the Urals…

Once Putin is gone, it may well happen that Russia and America become friendly.

Only a government change in the US would allow an alliance with Russia. Current US government is Russophobic to the core.

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