"A very good post! Have you ever considered the idea of "submerged empires"? Because I think what you are seeing within Ukraine is product of two "submerged" empires contesting each other for influence in territory that once belonged to them.
The key state here is not the US, but Poland. It is because of Poland that we have developed an awareness of and interest in Ukraine. One of the top policy thinkers in the US continues to be Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was born in Poland, and who married into the family of the former Czech president Benes. Brzezinski and those who agree with him have cited one fact tirelessly and that is "If Russia dominates Ukraine, then Russia again becomes an empire."
Brzezinski's policy therefore is to not allow Russia to become an empire by controlling Ukraine. He does this partially in the interests of the US, but to a much greater degree in the interests of Poland and other former Warsaw Pact countries. Their concept is a Europe whole and free, and Europe cannot be whole without Poland, and it cannot be free under Russian domination.
Poland, especially, resented Russian and then Soviet rule. They see it in their vital interest to keep it from occurring again.
Moreover, Poland (and Lithuania with it) were one of the greatest powers in Europe up until the end of the 18th century. Poland-Lithuania controlled much of what is now Western Ukraine all the way down to Odessa on the Black Sea. Their historical memory is just as self-serving and long as Russia's is. To them, it is not a historical fact that Ukraine belongs to a Russian sphere of influence. To them, Ukraine belongs to THEIR sphere of influence. Indeed, Ukrainian itself is similar to Polish. The faith is Catholicism in Western Ukraine, as it is in Poland and Lithuania. The EU, and NATO, are but stalking horses for this strategy. And if NATO and EU expand eastward to include Ukraine, then the center relationship of European power is no longer Paris-Berlin, but Berlin-Warsaw.
The same principle applies to the Baltic States, but that construct is Soviet in origin. Originally, there were four or five "Baltic countries" -- Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. The Second World War left the USSR with three "Baltic republics," the "Soviet Scandinavia" or "Soviet West," regarded as such because they were so different from, say Uzbekistan or Armenia. In Estonia, the submerged empire was the Swedish Kingdom. Even today, 28 percent of FDI in Estonia is Swedish, 25 percent is Finnish, and a distant third, 10 percent, is Dutch. Russian is less than 5 percent. The leading banks in Estonia are all based in Stockholm -- Swedbank, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken(SEB), and Nordea. Estonia is not only an EU member and NATO member, but an OECD member.
About your point of it submitting to Russian power, well, it just signed away territory stolen from it by Moscow in 1944 with a new border treaty. And the new government is going to liberalize some of the citizenship requirements for stateless persons. But I have a hard time imagining a parliamentary democracy that is well integrated into the Nordic economy coming under the direct control of Putinism as Crimea has."
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