What if they had a war and only one side showed up? Russia has been waging war on the West for at least 10 years, and the West hasn’t bothered to notice. This is not, to be sure, a conventional war, with Russian tanks invading Poland or Russian missiles hitting Pittsburgh. Moscow’s kind of war is more subtle and yet all the more effective — precisely because it does not compel an overwhelming response.
The war arguably began in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, a pro-Western country that sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and was anxious to join NATO. Rather than punishing Vladimir Putin for his aggression, the Obama administration later responded with a “reset” of relations. Putin was emboldened to aggress again: In 2014, his “little green men” — uniformed Russian soldiers with their insignia removed — invaded Ukraine. He annexed Crimea and turned eastern Ukraine into a Russian proxy state. This time the United States and Europe did respond with sanctions — but not strongly enough to dissuade him.
In 2014, a Russian antiaircraft missile shot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, killing 298 people. Instead of apologizing and paying restitution, Putin spread crazy conspiracy theories blaming the shoot-down on Ukraine, the CIA or some other culprit. In 2015, Putin entered the Syrian civil war to help a criminal regime commit war crimes against its own people. Not satisfied with killing Syrians, last month Russian mercenaries attacked a base that held U.S. forces in an apparent attempt to drive the United States out of Syria.
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