>>46232
>Putin needs a war scare for domestic political purposes
If that were the case, then what should we say about Biden and Zelensky, both of with are hovering around 35% approval
>2008 and 2014 as reactive and interprets the present situation as a reaction to an anti-Russian turn by Zelensky since 2021
This is not an original observation. For example, back in September 2021 the US/NATO-affiliated (!) RAND corporation published an analysis of Russian military interventions, concluding that:
>“Changes on the ground in post-Soviet Eurasia, particularly in Ukraine, that create an external threat or the perception of a rapid change in the regional balance or Russia’s status in ways that contradict Russian interests should be seen as potential triggers for Russian military action. Moscow will not hesitate to act, including with force, in its immediate neighborhood. Second, Russia does seem to act in ways consistent with a desire to avoid losses when it comes to regional power balances. Moscow has intervened when it perceived regional balances to be shifting away from a status quo that was favorable to Russian interests. … In short, prevention of imminent loss could push Russia to act.”
and
>“if we examine all of Russia’s interventions that meet the threshold described in this report, it becomes clear that the majority occurred before Putin’s rise to power … most importantly, there is broad consensus today among Russian elites on foreign policy matter … [there is] little firsthand evidence to suggest that Putin’s personal predilections are a primary driver of Russia’s interventions.”
As you can imagine, coming from RAND, and thus presumed by everyone to be more anti-Russian/anti-Chinese/anti-Iranian tripe, the author of this article drew a lot of "friendly-fire" flak (as you would guess, such flak came from other lobby organizations funded by US military contractors, but interestingly also Ukrainian media ;-)
Publication: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA444-3.html
Commentary by Robinson: https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2021/09/28/what-motivates-russian-military-intervention/
>Invasion is a military reality...
Thanks, but you can save your peroration on realpolitik for someone else. It was a sarcastic quip cued on his whimsical use of "China" and "China". (A country cannot invade itself because to invade is to forcibly intrude into another country's territory.)
>but some local insurgent group called the KMT occupies it is useless.
Today you can find KMT people which are in some respects politically closer to the CCP than to the DPP. On the other hand the DPP seems to be wholly west-liberal in its convictions (or maybe one should say pseudo-west-liberal, like the Japanese LDP)
>negotiating its autonomy is useless in the long run
I know that such a political autonomy will be circumscribed by the realities of the surrounding security apparatus. But still, you don't know this for sure, you don't know how useless it would be for them (notice that I said "politicians in Taipei", I did not say DPP [as things stand today, some of them may have to flee or be prosecuted if/when a re-unification happens], and as I mentioned there are other political forces that can find more common ground with the CCP, including some in the KMT), and you don't know how long the "long run" coud be. So, no, I still believe that the best course is not to burn bridges and eventually seek negotiation.