In some ways, i kind of agree here. We wouldnt allow China, Russia, India, or any potentially hostile or rival power take a foothold in Canada or Mexico. We in fact have a long stated policy, The Monroe Doctrine, which officially states that this hemisphere is ours.
But, I disagree in that this was not the total provacation/invitation for Putins aggression.
NATO was exposed as weak before his invasion, our allies hadnt held up their end of the defense expenditures and it shows as they all are scrambling to make up for past neglect.
The Obama administration drew repeated red lines in the sand that were crossed multiple times. These incursions were met with symbolic bomb runs, sanctions or drone attacks.
Trump indicated an unwillingness to keep being the worlds shield and demanded the allies pay their share. Causing a perceived crack in the alliance, but, in reality it exposed how weak the EU countries had grown since the wall came down.
Biden has made it a priority to publicly purge the military of what he sees to be an undesirable element, the politically incorrect career members that really only want to kill people, blow sh!t up, and not sing kumbaya.
Biden's military leadership bungled its only major operation, the retreat from Kabul (how do you screw up a retreat? Seriously, hire the French as consultants if you cant do it right). No top brass was fired for the fiasco. Milley is still there. That failure called our logistical ablility into doubt and our unwillingness to support an ally was severely exposed.
Then, Biden committed a critical sin. He publicly said we would not meet a limited incursion in eastern ukraine with force and consistently indicated that we were unwilling to meet them on the field or in the air, because they have nukes and economic sway over europe.
Had we projected power. Possibly initiated a training excercise with Ukraine during Putins build up, joint armor ops, joint air ops.. anything other than a red line, maybe Putin would have backed down and we could have negotiated a solution before a whole country lay in shambles.
Such an action might have also given China pause on Taiwan. Rather than convincing her that we dont have the stomach to take on a bully and we likely wont isolate our largest trading partner like we did Russia.
