Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

Is can at least be in principle by objective,  Ought can ever be more than subjective at best and worse then worthless when impracticable or manifestly self defeating in practice.    Your ought is not someone else’s ought.   Ought does not excuse, change or mitigate the material consequence of its pursuit.

Might-makes-right isn't a good recipe for international relations.

balance of power, or might, is the only good recipe for international relations.   any excess of power corrupts absolutely as the behavior of the US with invasion of iraq and arbitrary unilateral withdrawal from essentially all treaties governing what it can do to establish nuclear hegemony since 2003 shows.   Preventing the US from being able to further nullify what is really the only check on US ability to go where it wish and does what it wishes is made all the more vital when the US has proven to have become so degenerate since the end of the cold war as to prove capable of putting a trump at the trigger of half of the world’s nuclear arsenals.   The only such check, or balancing power to american power, available in the next 5-10 years is the Russian strategic nuclear deterrence.    So a US controlled NATO must not have Ukraine,  nor must any EU that, when push comes to shove, proves too short sighted or spineless to do anything but be totally permissive of the American geostrategic agenda in Europe.