I have noticed that a lot of people including yourself after what has happened have great difficulty in distinguishing an attempt at analyzing the motivies of Putin with agreeing with Putin.
When you analyze a muder to determine the motives that led to the murder, that is not the same as empathizing with the killer or spreading his "iies." The purpuse of understanding the motive of a killer is to be able to figure out who did it and why.
In this case we know who the "killer" is. But motive is still relevant because it tells us what his next actions might be.
The error you make is assuming that I am somehow running the errand of Putin because I make an attempt at undersanding his motives. How is that any different than accusing anyone who analyze the motives of serial killers for somehow advocating their actions.
It is a petty accusation.
As for "Putin know we will never attack him." Unlike you I don't presume to have direct access to what is going on inside Putins head.
You could throw the same argument right back at us. We knew how vocal Russians had been about NATO expansion, yet we kept doing it. Hence we must have been convinced Russia would never attack. To play devils advocate: Why on Earth did we need to expand NATO in the first place then, if Russia would never attack?
Even Ukraine right before the attack, did not beleive Russia would attack.
The point is that it is both possible to think no attack is immiment and to entertain the possibility that it could happen in the future. You cannot know what the future holds. For any nation thinking long term it doesn't seem far fetched that Russia would consider having Ukraine as a NATO member would make their borders insecure.
You don't build up your military and defenses for the current 4-year term president or prime minister of a country. You do it for long term. Security policy and framework has to work well even when the situation on the ground changes.
Does the US think an attack on the US is immiment? Of course not! So why does the US have a military at all? Because you need to prepare to the future. You need to consider the fact that realities can fundamentally change in the future.
