First of all, let’s analyze Trump’s treaty with the Taliban.
- It was never approved by congress, so it was not legally binding.
- It was never agreed to by the government of Afghanistan, so it was not legally binding.
- Trump was a Russian agent, so it should have been dismissed on ethical grounds.
This means Trump’s treaty with the terrorists was never legal, especially for the first two reasons. Afghanistan now is at the very bottom of the Democracy Index for this year, as a result of Trump and Biden’s unilateral decision making and dealings with terrorists. For this reason, while the previous Afghanistan government had problems, it was not the right time to leave because it created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It was created by Carter, Reagan, Trump, and Biden.
The second thing is the Syrian Civil War has been funded, armed, and fought by the Russian army. It has seen massive crimes against humanity which would not have happened if it wasn’t for Russian support.
The third thing is that Russia supports North Korea to this day. As long as Putin is in power, the Kim dictatorship will have a powerful ally.Wikipedia
But how does all of this relate to Ukraine? Very simply, as long as the United States was willing to use our resources to help Afghanistan develop (which we did for 20 years) it was clear that the United States foreign policy was in at least one place preventing the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century to date. It gave clear evidence of deterrence that if Russia overstepped its bounds in Ukraine or Georgia there was good reason to believe that the United States would step in and intervene, preventing Russian war crimes in Eastern Europe. We supported Syrian rebels against Russian aggression, another example of deterrence against the Russian dictatorship. Also, the 2014 war in Ukraine died down simply because Obama threatened getting involved if Putin invaded the rest of Ukraine.
That threat worked. Deterrence works both directions.
But when the United States left Afghanistan and Biden blabbered on and on about how he doesn’t want to be using military force and want to focus on his (now failed) domestic agenda, it gave Putin the signal. In Putin’s eyes following Biden’s honoring of Trump’s dealings with terrorists, which again Congress never approved, the United States was now an insular and weak country in his eyes, and it took less than a year for Putin to start amassing his troops on the Union State’s border with Ukraine.
The fact that it took him several months to amass his troops on the border with Ukraine was no mistake. He did that because he was testing whether the West would show a sign of strength in the sign of Russian aggression. If the West had shown strength in Putin’s eyes before the war started, I doubt the war would have began at all, because it would have shown clear proof to Putin that invading Ukraine would be a tragic mistake.
Also, Putin will never use nuclear bombs. Anyone who thinks that needs to go study some international relations. As soon as he does that in a war of aggression in the modern era (especially considering nuclear bombs are significantly stronger than the ones the United States dropped on Japan) he is a dead man. He won’t do it. Putin never does anything which he believes will threaten his reign of terror. That’s how he has stayed in power for so long.
After amassing troops on the Ukrainian border for months, with no sign of Western retaliation (that would have been a great time to give Ukraine immediate NATO membership, it would have saved thousands of lives) and no strong sign of strength from the United States or the European Union, Putin saw a green light that now was a time to attack.
In the west you poke bear, in Russia bear poke you.
Why has the war gone on so long? Well, granted that Russia won’t use the nuclear bomb (because of mutually assured destruction, which doesn’t necessarily have to be from nuclear weapons, military tactics like the bombing of Dresden are just as effective) and NATO hasn’t done everything it can to end the war scared that sending more weapons to Ukraine will prompt Russia to use the bomb (again, a bad hypothesis of people who don’t understand game theory, Realpolitik, mutually assured destruction, or politics in general) Russia continues to test the limits of how it can invade the west. Economic sanctions won’t be enough.
It’s 1938 and this is Sudetenland. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was the annexation of Austria. Putin is Hitler. Biden is Chamberlain.
The only way to make sure that we don’t see the invasion of Poland (which would be World War III) is to make sure that this is the last action Putin does in his life.