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Well said - whether it's spun as 'face' or 'prestige' or 'credibility', ultimately what matters is power and money. China is constantly embarrassing themselves with ludicrous overblown rhetoric and saber-rattling - their envoys still get received gratefully in the courts of the world, because they have money.
The thing is that a talented wordcel can always spin any course of action as being somehow conducive to 'credibility'. The Iraq War was originally intended not as nation building, but as a muscular demonstration of American military power and willingness to use it unilaterally against their enemies. Such a demonstration was hardly necessary - the destruction of two skyscrapers, though tragic, was not read by anyone as proof of imminent collapse of American hegemony. Once the war was concluded, the Credibility Fans simply shifted their reasoning. Now, rebuilding Iraq was necessary to restore American cred in the wake of disaster.
Would allowing Ukraine to join NATO without a peep have restored credibility? No, I think not. Rather, Russia is being exposed as weaker and more fragile than anyone supposed.
Why do you think they are "embarrassing themselves"? I mean, it's not what is considered respectable in the West, but would it be embarrassing for a Chinese person to behave this way?
Internationally, yes. I understand that this kind of bombast does well domestically, though.
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Russian reputation would be in a better place, IMHO, if they'd withdrawn to roughly Feb 24th lines in April when it was apparent Kiev would not fall, Putin had given a speech about how they'd "Taught the Nazis a lesson they won't soon forget" and declared victory. Doubling down with summer offensives and fall debacles and sham annexations has been the loss here. Ukraine is nowhere near NATO membership today, last year, next year, or any time in two decades.
That's not what NATO has said in the past (I believe the United States said that Ukraine would be allowed to join a few years ago) and it's not what Ukraine is saying now.
But you know, commentators like you would have told us that of course Poland or the Baltics or Finland would never be allowed to join NATO in the mid-90s. A commitment, like others, that the United States reneged upon. Funny how doing stuff like that isn't damaging to 'credibility' - almost like the only thing that matters in international relations is power and money. Russia's mistake was being weak and poor, and now all that's left is to decide whether they want to lose now or later.
A commitment the United States never made.
They could have simply not picked the fight, and kept selling Germans oil and gas.
I think we both agree that Russia should not have gone to war in the first place. But again, that would just be choosing a slow death rather than a quicker one. Ukraine would have been integrated into NATO, and then Russia could have been destroyed at Washington's leisure.
The United States did not really make a commitment, because I don't believe that commitments or agreements between enemies are binding. Commitments that cannot be enforced don't exist, and Russia is demonstrating right now their inability to enforce anything even on their own doorstep. But they certainly let the Russians think they made such a commitment!
Certainly agreements between enemies can be binding. One example would be a peace treaty. Penalty for breaking a peace treaty, ultimately, is resumption of hostilities. There was no treaty of any sort promising Russia that Poland or the Baltics or Finland would never be allowed to join NATO, and such a treaty is the only way the United States has to make such a commitment. So it's not some weird technicality; the United States plainly never made such a commitment.
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Fairness Russia didn’t have the option to just keep selling oil and gas to Germany. Population collapse was slowly occurring and they had to do something or Russia disappears in a generation. Probably get internally conquored by high birth rate chechens.
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While those are important, I think in this case actions towards or against credibility count a lot more than words. American credibility is riding high because the answer to "Would NATO (in particular US) forces risk their own lives or the risk of nuclear war in the event [enemy] invades my beloved homeland?" is much clearer than 12 months ago. Sure, Trump made comments skeptical of the alliance (IMO largely from a place that Western Europe was ignoring the costs of continued vigilance), but if the US is willing to spend billions and provide valuable resources like training and intelligence to help out a mere friend, it seems there's less doubt that they'd roll tanks and launch airstrikes to defend or retake small Baltic allies like they did for Kuwait in '91.
Fairweather allies are useless.
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