There’s a simple solution to prevent conflicts like the one in Ukraine: expand NATO membership. It has turned out to be a n effective tool at preventing land wars in Europe.
Lower-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; no need to fight a large-scale war.
Upper-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war.
Highest-cost scenario: No capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war.
(It'd be nice if NATO memberships were magical anti-war talismans. The reality is far more complex.)
One is for NATO (or another European military alliance) to be so powerful and cohesive in their relations to Russia, that Russia have no choice but to deal with it. This was presumably the false assumption that lead to the current war. (I really, really hope it was a false assumption).
The other option would have been to thaw relations, perhaps acquiescing to a few demands and showing more compromise. Say what you want about Russia - and there's a lot bad to say. But much worse actors have received much nicer treatment by the west. Think about everything that's been done to accommodate China since the end of the cold war, to say nothing of the likes of Saudi Arabia.
Instead a middle path was picked, and now we have war.
How could the cause of a conflict be the solution to preventing that conflict? Doing almost anything except attempting to expand NATO membership would have prevented the conflict in Ukraine.
I think the most likely outcome of this war is Ukraine gets split into 2 buffer states, one as a client to Russia and the other as a client to the EU/US. US can't afford to spend the hundreds of billions it would take for Ukraine to win (1000's of tanks, artillery pieces, IFVs, etc) and Putin can't back down now or he'll lose face and be toppled from leadership.
Just imagine if the international community took a firmer line on the US during GWOT - half a million lives could've been saved.
Edit: Was the US justified in fomenting death squads Latin America because those countries embraced socialism against the wishes of the United States? No? Then why is Russia entitled to a full-scale invasion over Ukraine's western aspirations?
The problem with dictators like Putin is that they always overestimate their own judgments and nobody tells them when they're wrong. You could be the smartest guy of the world, if you run a whole country, are insanely rich, and constantly surround yourself with Yes-men, then your perception of reality will fail at some point. It's inevitable.
He seems to. Putin's clear goal is "Make the Russian Empire Great Again". He's been grumbling since the fall of the USSR that, for the first time in centuries, Russia is a second-rate, "or even a third-rate" power. He wants to turn that around. His role model is Peter the Great. His model of world power is the 19th century, when the British Empire, the Imperial German Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and France had multiple medium-sized wars over land.
This is a guy who was personally hammered by the fall of the USSR. The USSR had huge national security organizations and most of them were laid off. Putin himself was driving a cab for a while around 1990. There's a mindset amongst the former national security tough guys that they are supposed to be in charge. Now they are again. The strong rule; the weak cower. Such is the way of the world.
Post-USSR capitalism was a disaster for Russia. People starved. The population dropped. That produced demand for a "strong leader", a long-standing theme in Russia. Weak Russian leaders have been disasters. (Kerensky, Gorbachev, etc.) Now, Russia again has a strong leader who bows to no one. Putin is popular.
He can't afford to lose a war, though. Russian leaders who lose wars do not live long. He wouldn't survive to retire to a golf course in a warm climate.
This is hugely oversimplified, and someone who knows more Russian history could do much better.
The Russian Empire is probably more accurate (he has repeatedly specifically referenced Peter the Great); the USSR he has portrayed as simply a poorly managed intermediate stage of historical Russia.
Five months later the Georgia war happened.
They did because Ukraine was in the verge of joining, knowing that once it was done, they would not be able to attack anymore.
Plus, NATO being historically a shield, not a sword, Russia stance was basically the equivalent of stating "to look for safety or we kick your ass".
Where did you get this incorrect information? Joining NATO non-negotiably requires checking a few boxes, one of which is having all your borders settled and under no dispute. Ukraine did not fit this requirement and thus could not have been on the verge of any such thing. They had stated their desire to join, then canceled (under Yanukovych), then re-stated it, but they were never even close to being admitted.
You can tell me the operations were justified. I'm yet to be convinced that the Russian regime should not feel threatened by them.
Unfortunate geopolitical consequences of the conflicts are unfortunate.
Before you have a military industrial complex, you need the industrial complex, or at least the capacity to develop one. Smaller countries with scant resources are vulnerable to sanctions so they generally don’t have this capability. The bigger countries try and get nukes. Who’s left?
If WW1 Germany and France had the industrial capacity then any modern developed country does. The dislocation will just be more wrenching. Dislocation can include losing the war.
- Shifts in political alignment of members can, similarly, do strange things and lead to bad situations. Take Hungary—right now they just look maybe just a tad down the path toward authoritarianism, but what if that turned into a civil war? What if the government that you're allied with gets into a bit of the good ol' genocide? Serb/albanian type situation, or maybe just your run of the mill widespread political purges? On the one hand there's some moral obligation to intervene, plus the legitimate interests of neighboring states in countering severe violence and instability in their vicinity; on the other hand now you and anyone else who's considering intervention, in the alliance or not, has a bit of a dilemma on their hands. It complicates an already complicated situation.
- As an alliance grows stronger it invites reaction from opponents. This doesn't make those reactions "right" (I'm very aware that this is one argument for why Russia invaded) but it's a fact. The reaction needn't be war, but might be creation or expansion of opposing alliances. Larger alliances, more shared borders in more places... that's a recipe for world war.
Every member you add is, in a sense, a long-term liability and threat to the stability of the alliance. These arrangements are not purely beneficial, in practice, including for members.
I agree, but it is too late to do any good for Ukraine now. We need to industrially produce an end to the conflict, or give it over to Russia.