"The United States has experience, for better or worse, in fomenting unrest that has overthrown regimes in Chile and Iran, stirred anticommunist forces in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and enabled militant insurgencies against the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s. These activities serve as blueprints that can be tailored for these three former Soviet states. Ultimately, the goal need not be pushing them into revolution or expecting pro-Western liberal democracies to follow but merely putting in motion steps that exploit Putin’s fear of losing control of this crucial sphere of influence."

I predict that like Afghanistan and Iraq, people will only understand and accept that they've been hornswoggled yet again with the passage of time. Three to five years from now, someone will write the definitive book or long form article on how the American empire threw Ukraine under the bus in the name of [overextending and unbalancing Russia](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html). Who will it be? I'm hoping, someone with enough of a mainstream reputation that it's taken seriously.