Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

In the moral and geo political sewer, it doesn't really matter who or if one party or another is a fool - only who swings their bat hardest, last, at any given moment.

I'm not really sure it's a good comparison, though, since we don't tend to invade countries as an issue of territorial expansion.  Hell, we won't even make pr a state.

we may not invade country for territory, but we certainly largely failed to achieve the goals of eliminating influences of our boogeymen and changing regional balance of power in our own favor, for which we did invaded these countries.   

Russia really didn’t invade coubtries for territory either, they invaded to take territory to weaken or overthrow governments in neighbors too friendly to NATO.   But generally they did achieve these goals, and kept the territory in the bargain.

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ultimately,  the foundational truth is Russia occupies a fantastically important geographic position for the purpose dominating the Euroasia continent but lacks the economic scale or industrial organization to leverage that into the position of euroasia hegemon for herself.

China can supply the industrial organization and economic power needed by an euroasia hegemon but lacks the appropriate geographical position to easily be one herself.

Pushing Russia towards china would be foolish because between the two there is everything needed to dominate euroasia continent, and they share a border and have interior lines of communication that is largely immune to interference by an external sea power such as the US

The potential power of an euroasia hegemon would dwarve the potential power of the US.

So what we do to punish russia has to be mitigated by the consideration that one must never place Russia in a position where she feels she depends largely on china to sustain and develop her economy,  or that they have so much interest in common that it is no brainer for them to enter into a comprehensive alliance.