War

As early as 1994 President Clinton warned against the dangers of NATO expansion. The Soviet Union and later Russia needed buffer countries to protect them from invasion and one of those was Ukraine. The Russians continually reminded the west of their concern about their safety but they were ignored. As the 12 NATO countries during the cold war expanded to 27 countries, Putin became more concerned and expressed his concern on a number of occasions. During the early 2000's Bush pushed for Ukraine to join NATO but France and Germany opposed it fearing escalation with Russia. The West was well aware of Putin's concern about Ukraine joining NATO but they kept pushing the idea. Finally in order to bring his concern to the forefront Putin invaded with a small force thinking the West would heed his pleas but when they did not he increased his war effort to where we are today. If the West had agreed not to allow Ukraine into NATO this war could have been avoided. To date an estimated 400,000 have been injured or killed and it will take $500 billion to rebuild Ukraine. This is just after a little over two years of war and there seems to be no end in sight. The important question now is have we reached the point where if Russia begins to lose the war will this force Putin to use nukes. Polls show American support for the war is waning and this will continue until the war just winds down to a fizzle and all those people will have died in vain and the country of Ukraine will be trashed.