States clamoring to join NATO is certainly true but irrelevant to the psychology of the Russians and how they viewed themselves and the world post-collapse of the Soviet Union. I am not making excuses for Putin or justifying him in any way as I have made clear one million times since this war began. Nonetheless, as I have said to my friends for 20 years, there was complete ignorance coming from Washington on how to deal with Russia — complete. I lived there for 30 years, married 3 Russian women, and naming things “seat at the security council” and other such “perks” means little when dealing with them. Putin is a villain and a murderer there is a good chance that he would have sooner or later attacked Ukraine but no one in the West except for Ambassador Burns ever really understood how significant of a sore spot for Russia the unification of the Slavic brothers are — Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. We can act from our position of power which we have since 9/11 and disregard Russia’s sensibilities but that doesn’t make us right. Russia is wrong for invading Ukraine. We are just as wrong for invading Iraq. That was a lawless act and one that neo-cons undertook thinking they were somehow making us safer — and making a lot of money. Once we broke that seal on do-whatever-you-wantism, we pretty much told Putin, “do what you gotta to do” but there will be circumstances. Again, Russians are mentally incapacitated because their entire reality, and their entire history, is built on a lie, making it that much harder for an IR professional dealing in accepted truths to deal with psychopaths dealing in absolute lies.