I just feel extremely sad about the mass quantity of events like this happening right now because they are all aggregate to huge negative effects but the average person knows nothing of it. It feels so unfixable.
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For a sense of scale (only scale, money is definitely not the most important criteria), the EU currently spends twice as much on their military as Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...
So if (when) American support disappears, I expect Russia to continue to not go anywhere fast while wasting a lot of lives in the process. I also expect this to surprise Putin, as he thinks Russia is a Great Power and therefore can only be stalling if Ukraine is supported by another Great Power and doesn't recognise that (1) Russia isn't, and (2) the EU kinda is, sort of, when it feels like acting with unity rather than as 27 different nations.
The sole reason Russia invaded Ukraine was that it was flirting too much with NATO.
Putin might be a lunatic, but he is not stupid.
The EU is closer to being one than Russia is today, and even then the EU is only kinda a bit of one in some measures but not all.
Finland is a member.
Lithuania is a member.
The sad reality is that your logic is just a twisted pretzel to support the position you wish to take which is you support Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The US military industrial complex is a huge beast that needs an enemy to exist. There is so much money in the game.
The USA did not make Russia attack Ukraine.
When I search for list of superpowers, I get superheroes — obviously nobody on Marvel or DC is going to be listed as having "Russia" as their superpower, but this does illustrate what it is that search engines do these days, and it's not objective truth.
Was it the one where the USA, along with the UK and Russia, all jointly signed an agreement to respect Ukraine's (and several other post-USSR nations') independence and sovereignty in their existing borders (as of 5 December 1994), including an obligation to seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used", so that Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons it had accidentally inherited from the USSR?
Put it another way: given your stance on the US mil-ind complex, do you think this war would stop if the USA completely vanished from the international scene?
Because the EU is right next door and also doesn't want Russia thinking it can do stuff like this.
Sure, but also in writing this reply, "cia superpower list" to see if they had anything "authoritative" got me CIA's paranormal research: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00792r000...
> Do you have a good authoritative source that lists the superpower countries that does not include Russia?
In most cases, the statement I see is that the USA is "the", singular, superpower. So none of my sources are lists.
What counts as a "good authoritative source", for you? And when?
Samuel P. Huntington was highly rated in his day, but "The Lonely Superpower" was 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20060427150630/http://www-stage....
RAND I think still are, and this was 2019, "Russia Is a Rogue, Not a Peer; China Is a Peer, Not a Rogue": https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE310.html
Is nationalinterest.org "authoritative"? "What Happens When America Is No Longer the Undisputed Super Power?", 2020: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-happens-when-ameri...
I could link to Wikipedia, which says of Russia "potential" superpower (along with the EU, China, and India), not currently an extant superpower. But that's not what I'd call "authoritative".
And this is the point where I got that link to the CIA's paranormal research. The CIA's World Factbook doesn't even describe the USA as a "superpower", at least not at the time of writing: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-stat...