War between Russia and the West seems nearly inevitable. No self-respecting nation facing inexorable encirclement by an alliance of hostile neighbors can allow such pressures and forces to continue indefinitely. Eventually it must protect its interests through military action. Indeed, Russia already has resorted to military action: in Georgia in 2008, after that Russian neighbor initiated a war with Moscow designed to severely curtail Russia’s influence in its own neighborhood, and in eastern Ukraine, after the West encouraged and fostered a 2014 revolution that upended an elected Ukrainian leader whose foreign and economic policies tilted toward Russia.
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