CID1990 wrote:SDHornet wrote:
Wasn't talking about Crimea, that battle has been lost. But what happens when Russia turns its eye on Israel or whatever ally we claim to be of that we are supposedly willing to go to war over. How (or can?) we determine which allies are worth fighting for? That is the dilemma I was referring to.
That's not going to happen. Read my reply to Jelly's question.
Russia may seem unpredictable, but in fact they are one of our most predictable adversaries. They act exclusively in their own strategic interests.
Now look at NATO. Russia views NATO as an existential threat. Russia doesn't FEAR NATO right now- because the string pullers currently are wet noodles. But Russia understands all too well that today's NATO, although wishy washy, has the military infrastructure to be tomorrow's Wehrmacht (as far as they are concerned)
DSU said the same thing I did- Russia's annexation of Crimea was a direct reaction to Ukraine and NATO courting each other.
In the longer sense, we have been spiking the football on the Russians since the wall came down. We gad a golden opportunity to make an ally out of them and instead we humiliated them by folding many former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. We did a few other things that were uncalled for.
The really frustrating thing here is that for all their faults, the Russians are natural allies. We will need them more in the next 50 years than we can imagine. We just need to recognize that they have a national inferiority complex coupled with a memory of being invaded and nearly squashed- we should take those things into account when we deal with them and the obvious way forward to having Russia as a partner will become evident even to an amateur.
To directly answer your question- Russia has no interest in our strategic allies like Israel.
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