Im sure there's a commercial angle to the geopolitical gambit the USA/NATO played. The more countries in NATO the more USA military hardware gets sold to those countries. But this is more like the cream that the USA was shooting for. IMO the primary motivation was to continue expanding the Empire.NATO needs an enemy and somewhere to expand. Its no accident that the former Estonian PM has been calling for the break up of Russia. That's been the NATO dream for a long time. So much for NATO is a defensive alliance. No prizes for guessing what the AUST/USA/NATO response would be (and what the Ukraine Propaganda bots would say if China told them not to worry about China establishing a naval base in the Solomons because it would be purely defensive. The hypocrisy is so blatant that I simply reject the suggestion that the Ukraine Propaganda bots are not accomplices to the lying and warmongering.
No IMO its the geopolitical game that has been America's prime motivation for provoking this nuclear war. America is stuck in the Thucydides trap. It sees itself losing its hegemony to China (and now a China/Russia/BRICS alliance and together with the Ukraine Propaganda bots, it would rather see the world incinerated in a nuclear war than lose its top-dog status. Ironically the USA/NATO has hastened the loss of its hegemony because, I believe, it totally miscalculated how much the real majority of the world resents its bullying and warmongering.
