We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.
No one ever seems to want to discuss what to do about the bear going around poking everyone else.
The state of Russia is essentially better understood as a criminal gang masquerading as a country.
Those people primarily care for themselves. They know they can get away with a ton of insane and inhuman shit, as they calculate the other well-behaving party will back off. They however do not want to get nuclear consequences themselves, it is pure bluff.
Lots of institutional checks in America that post-Soviet Russia lacked.
You're right but given enough time of the "right" type of people entrenching their power (which of course may not be "one term" but that could be enough to put things on a path), and even the best of checks and defense mechanisms start to evaporate or just become a tool against what they were intended to defend.
Sure. If the GOP sweeps the midterms and 2028, and also seizes most legislatures and governships, and they all remain loyal to Trump, we will see a situation resembling post-Yeltsin Russia.