No war

The United States has followed the Monroe Doctrine established in 1823 which states that other countries cannot establish any threat to the US in the western hemisphere. Since the end of the cold war in 1991 Russia has feared NATO expansion and has drawn a red line when it comes to Ukraine. It was their Monroe Doctrine as they see NATO expansion into Ukraine and a direct threat to their security and in fact such expansion as a declaration of war. In 2008, Burns, then the American ambassador to Moscow, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” After the Soviet Union fell in 1991 the former satellite countries started to join NATO and Russia watched as 19 countries moved closer to the west and joined NATO. Then in 2008 the NATO countries announced that they wanted Georgia and Ukraine to join and this is when Russia said no more. Their view of the Monroe Doctrine saw these countries right on their border as threat to their security. Georgia thinking that NATO would come to their rescue tried to pull away from Russia but that resulted in Russia taking military action to keep Georgia in line. In 2014 the Russian backed leader in Ukraine, Yanukovch is ousted in a coup and Russia reacts by taking over Crimea. To put this in perspective consider how the US would react if China put a military force in Mexico. Just prior to the start of the war Putin asked for a guarantee that Ukraine will not be asked to join NATO but his plea is rejected. If at that point the US would have agreed there would be no war.