I agree with you that blindly attacking war critics is ugly, especially for remote wars and wars of influence.
At the same time, nobody was surprised that Russia and NATO disagreed over whose sphere of influence Ukraine resided in. The “Ukraine Problem” and how it would culminate was making it into popular foreign policy writing 50 years ago, and was part of diplomatic and intelligence strategies long before that.
Putin is getting old and sick and made a play for his legacy, hoping NATO would be too war-anxious to act. That didn’t work out.
Critics should have their voice heard because there always new questions about how to proceed, or whether past choices were well made, but that conflict was prefigured for decades and is not an “everyone else’s war”.
At the same time, nobody was surprised that Russia and NATO disagreed over whose sphere of influence Ukraine resided in. The “Ukraine Problem” and how it would culminate was making it into popular foreign policy writing 50 years ago, and was part of diplomatic and intelligence strategies long before that.
Putin is getting old and sick and made a play for his legacy, hoping NATO would be too war-anxious to act. That didn’t work out.
Critics should have their voice heard because there always new questions about how to proceed, or whether past choices were well made, but that conflict was prefigured for decades and is not an “everyone else’s war”.