Just to Sum Up.

So Russia gets nervous about NATO pushing into Ukraine. Fine. People should understand it, including Americans, who were ready to go to war over Cuban missile crisis.

Putin organizes a real diplomatic blitzkrieg. Lavrov and Putin meet dozens of western leaders in less than a month. Yet, all he gets is a middle finger.

Now the question. Was it worth it? What was the damn point? Just to stick it to him? Let's think about it.

On the one hand we have war, deaths, stress, fear, anger. Anger in Russia, anger and fear in Ukraine, which would emerge from it half destroyed and scarred for a very long time. We have unprecedented economic warfare, that can easily send the whole world into recession. Just heard on NPR that US pension funds alone have lost 70 billion of their value due to their holdings in Russian companies.

We have new Iron Curtain. We have rampant censorship all over the globe. We have Russia pushed back into the command and control economy and autocracy, with plenty of small private companies doomed to fail, in these climate of un-accessible markets and un-accessable credits. Millions of lives ruined, lives of people who have nothing to do with the decision making. Tourism, cultural exchange, learning about others -- all dead.

And again: Was it worth it? Was it that difficult to make a deal? What about adults in the room. US is the strongest country in the world, was it that difficult to say, OK, Russia. We know that you are insecure and paranoid. We are not going to use nukes against you, but fine, if you feel that worried, hell with you. Let's have neutrality in Ukraine.

Of course, some professional Russophobes would claim that it was all pretext. That Putin wanted to invade and to restore Soviet Union. That he never gave a damn about NATO. But what if he did? Why not make an agreement that "neutrality holds" only until you respect borders of Ukraine. End of story.

In other words, there were plenty of ways to find a compromise and bet on peace, rather than on war.

And now what? Hysteria, paranoia, summary punishment, disruption and splitting of the world. World economy is on the brink, China is benefiting right and left. Cooperation everywhere -- from climate to future pandemics -- in shambles. And all this because Biden and Blinken enjoyed showing their middle finger to Putin? Or because they hoped to put Russia to heal? What an idiotic hope, when Russia gets ten times stronger in adversity. In the long run, the country that size and that rich in resources, natural and human, will only emerge stronger. Russia always needed a mobilizing project, and now it got one.

It is more than reaping the storm. It is reaping backwardness, militarism, distrust, hatred. It is not the behavior of a magnanimous winner, but of a petty loser. It is sickening and discouraging. And it sure does not bode well for the future. No matter how many sanctions are invented, and how many European countries rounded up and unified. All of it is fake, camouflaging serious rot, serious failure to confront real life challenges. So let's have the Sanction Olympics, let's repeat, "Russia, Russia, Russia," fifty million times, let's have the war in the center of Europe. Let it bleed. Who cares, as long as we've shown Putin the finger.’

—By Vladimir Golstein,

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