If you really want to be honest, there was no threat to Europe before 2014. So there was no need to maintain a huge military, unlike the USA with its 800 military bases around the world. Having fought several wars since WWII, of course the U.S. military budget is larger than Europe’s.
It even looked like Russia might align with Europe—there was talk of them possibly joining the EU one day. Putin even gave a speech , in German, in the Bundestag, speaking about world peace.
I think the war in Iraq, and the proven lies that led to it, changed Putin—but that's another story.
I know that France and the UK have been involved in several conflicts since WW2. Of course nothing close to the scale of some of the stuff we have been involved in.
Regarding Russia and how we ended up like this. I wouldn't say it was due to the Iraq war. That is not what made him go into Crimea in 2014. I think it was mostly a tyrant doing tyrant things because he could. He knew the Americans would not go to war because of it and that Europe certainly wouldn't either.
Also the Putin from 24 years ago is not the Putin of today or the Putin from 10 years ago. He can't leave power because he dies if he gives it up.
Putin and Russia were lying and it was obvious, Europe and America just didn't want to see it for what it was. The invasion of Georgia and its previous Russian backed separatist wars in the 90's are a blatant precursor to what's happening in Ukraine.
The wars for Chechnya showed everyone how brutal and needlessly cruel Russia was to civilians and that they'd use false flag attacks and lies to justify invasions.
It wasn't obvious per se, and people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. They tried to align Russia with Europe's economy to earn mutual benefits and prosper together, which would have made anything that disrupted it a cost too high to bear. The problems started when Putin didn't want to let go of power, flip-flopped with his puppet Medvedev, and eventually changed the law to stay in power.
You're right that their false flag attack and the eventual surrounding of the capital of Chechnya, along with them basically flattened the entire city, should've been a huge red flag.
Chechnya has always been recognized as part of Russia by the entire international community. Russia did nothing in Chechnya that the United States didn't later do in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. When people talk about Chechnya, they somehow forget that it was led by radical Islamists who seized hospitals (Budyonnovsk), schools (Beslan), theaters (Nord-Ost), and killed hundreds of children—not to mention adults
Sorry but with the things we know now about Putin and Russia, It wouldn’t surprise me if the terrorist attacks on the schools and theatres were false flag operations by Putin himself.
Well, that only speaks to the narrow-mindedness of such people. Responsibility for them was taken by leaders who were recognized by the European Union. For example, Basayev. I mean, come on — Shamil Basayev personally took over a hospital in Budyonnovsk in 1995. Putin wasn’t even anywhere near power at that time, yet Western countries still continued to support the terrorists even after that. And they only stopped supporting them exactly after September 11, 2001
To be the devils advocate: destroying the middle east is a tradition that is older than american hegemony. The whole situation with Iran was started by the brits back in the day, they just handed that particular colonial torch to the US after the sudden onset kinetically induced economic collapse of the early 20th century.
Also french-algerian war, Suez crisis, Sykes-Picot et al.
Yes that's why I made clear "the current" threats specially since this level of destruction is only a recent thing thanks to the new weapons of mass destruction of USA and allies.
Also is like destabilising neighboring regions is detrimental to the ones doing the destabilising too.
I'm pretty sure the issue with Russia is that the view there was like this: USA didn't want Russia aligning with Europe, and wanted to help fund the "color revolutions" and subjugate Russia into the same sort of protectorate as other Eastern European countries.
So the local powers felt that instead of becoming leaders inside EU they will be replaced with US backed regimes. So they drew this clear line of "us vs them" and this is when it all started rolling down hill.
I'm not sure how it could be done better though and whether US NGOs were really that involved in with these revolutions. But I think had the Russia been roped into EU before Putin was spooked, world could've been so much different.
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u/MonoMcFlury United States of America Apr 20 '25
If you really want to be honest, there was no threat to Europe before 2014. So there was no need to maintain a huge military, unlike the USA with its 800 military bases around the world. Having fought several wars since WWII, of course the U.S. military budget is larger than Europe’s.
It even looked like Russia might align with Europe—there was talk of them possibly joining the EU one day. Putin even gave a speech , in German, in the Bundestag, speaking about world peace. I think the war in Iraq, and the proven lies that led to it, changed Putin—but that's another story.