[…] And that was in the case of a blatant act of military aggression, now outlawed by the UN. If Russia ever were to destabilise and re-establish control over, say, the Baltic states, I suspect it would do so much as the EU and NATO and the USA destabilised and established control over Ukraine in January 2014. Maybe there would be mobs, maybe just an engineered change of government. No tanks would roll. But if they did roll, you have to ask, would the President of the USA, in the end, sacrifice Boston for Riga, or Warsaw or Prague? And why?
The absurd thing is that the expansion of NATO eastwards, and the needless and futile tensions which this has created in the area, make it possible that such questions might one day actually be asked. What if Russia, cornered, sanctioned, excluded, throbbing with wounded pride, convinced it is doomed to be partitioned and salami-sliced out of existence, one day gets its own Trump? If this does happen, those who now claim that Vladimir Putin is a ‘new Hitler’ might wish to recalibrate their rhetoric. We may find ourselves looking back on his reign as a period of enlightened, thoughtful despotism. Läs artikel