I'm skeptical of you claims about Hussein but I will admit less familiarity with it. Your claim about Russia's motives are bunk
> Russia "irrationally" invading the Ukraine may seem that way to us, but let’s see.
Invading one of their largest neighbors and ruining their relationship with a nation they had significant cultural exchange and trade with (including many of their weapons factories) is irrational.
But Russia's leaders didn't want a positive neighborly relationship they wanted to conquer Ukraine and restore the empire. Putin has given speeches on this comparing himself to the old conquering czars.
> Russias economy is just about entirely dependent on their petrochem industry. Without, their are broke.
True enough
> The reason why they still can compete in this market is their asset of soviet infrastructure and industry.
Much of the equipment is western and installed in the post Soviet period.
> A good majority of USSR pipelines run through the Ukraine.
Then they probably shouldn't have invaded in 2014? Almost seems like they made a bad irrational choice. They had other pipelines that bypassed Ukraine like NS1 and NS2 which didn't enter service due to the war
> I’m not saying it’s okay for them to invade, but i can see what they seek to gain
Please explain what they tried to gain. Ukraine wouldn't have objected to exports of gas through Ukraine if not for the Russian invasion and they already had pipelines that bypassed Ukraine.
> and why exactly they fear NATO expansion all that much.
They don't fear NATO expansion, they disliked it because it prevented them from conquering or bullying countries with threats of invasion. They've taken troops of the NATO border with Finland (and didn't even invade Finland when Finland joined NATO). Russia acknowledged the right of eastern European nations to join NATO and promised to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders.
> I personally don’t see a similar gain to be had from China invading Taiwan, at least right now. They have lots to lose and little to gain. Taiwans semiconductor industry is useless without western IP, lithography equipment and customers. There are even emergency plans to destroy taiwans fabs in case of invasion. And that’s beside the damage done to mainland China itself.
The fabs are a red herring, they're largely irrelevant. If China invades (which I hope doesn't happen) it will not be because of any economic gains. There are no possible economic gains that would justify the costs of a war. If they invade it will be for the same reason that Russia did, because of extreme nationalism/revanchism and trying to use that extreme nationalism to maintain popularity among the population.