Thank you for reading, and your response.

So if Putin is not a Tsarist, what is he?

He's not a democratic leader.

He is an autocrat. And more to the point, he is an autocrat who operates with a 19th Century ethic and not a 21st Century ethic.

Yes... I am quite pro-NATO. For all of its warts and flaws, NATO has maintained peace among its members since its existence. Remember who started the last two world wars, and who they invaded to do it? Guess what... they're part of NATO now and they haven't invaded their neighbors as a result.

Prior to me joining Medium, I was a vocal opponent of NATO's bombing of Libya. I still think it was horrible. "Humanitarian wars" are an oxymoron and a weird product of 21st Century liberalist thinking.

It is entirely possible to be critical of NATO's misadventures in Afghanistan and Libya and the US's wrongful invasion of Iraq, while also being wholly opposed to Russia's invasion of conquest and genocide.

Bad behavior on the part of NATO and the US still doesn't excuse anything that Russia does. It is intellectually dishonest to suggest otherwise.

While NATO is not entirely peaceful, it has prevented violence on a scale that has engulfed the world in flames two other times.