Originally Posted by
GlobalNav
Furthermore, the notion of "setting up a democracy" is mythological BS. Supporting a democracy like Ukraine, yes, but trying set up a democracy where it does not exist and the people have demonstrated no resolve keep it, is just plain nonsense and a waste. (re: Iraq and Afghanistan, et al.)
On the other hand, in the case of supporting Ukraine itself, I don't give a flying &*$% whether Putin considers it NATO or not. In retrospect, I think western nations (e.g., USA) will be ashamed that they let Putin's threats limit our actions in support of Ukraine. I understand the caution, but Putin's words alone have delayed and diminished potential rescue of a courageous democracy with tremendous loss of life.
Setting up a democracy, because you want that, is going to fail. Supporting a population to set up their democracy is certainly realistic. Have another read, and I wrote to set up a democracy in Belarus, not in Russia. Russians are simply too much indoctrinated with Putin propaganda to have them ready for a transition to a democracy. Ukraine just needs some more support to come to a real democracy, the basics are there, just implementing further.
I think, the best situation for Russian Federation would be a break-up in the individual states, and from there, the states need their time to revert from dictatorship thinking to something like "the wishes of the people". Give them 50 years for that. And from there on, these individual states may federalize again, something along the mechanism of the EU. And, since each of these Russia break-up states are too small to exercise war aggression, things will get safer for NATO (-countries). Next step, seeing what happens with Russia, maybe Hungarians and Serbians start to scratch their head and realize that the way they operate might not be that well for the population. I just takes a lot of time.