Indeed, but one has to take the broader view hereby. Up to 90-s there was existencial struggle between two ideologies, between wannabe communists and pragmatic capitalists. This was backed up with real weapons of mass-destruction, which are used also in modern disputes. I saw this from inside the USSR and I can tell you, this was not a game. You see this vast arsenal of weapons, prepared for attacking West-Europe, rolling around in Ukrainian fields now. Quite literally, we did not have food to buy at some point, because there was The Horrible US and The Terrible Europe who wanted to eliminate us all. We know how this story ended.
Don't get me wrong, I respect your view as a living insider from ex-Soviet states, but for Indonesian context (and the likes of many cold war battlefields), the way I saw it (the Cold war) is just brothers against brothers fighting with their faraway masters order. And in the end the masters of that order doesn't even reward their dogs.
The world has changed since then and a lot of naivism/optimism has been noted meanwhile. At least we, Europeans, like to think we are some sort of new specie and finally found a persistant way toward peace and prosperity. Imagine now the shock of witnessing full scale war somewhere close to central part of Europe. We are truly insulted by Scholts behaviour, because he puts German citizen fears and hopes in front of other EU members. We feel offended when Macron puts hes relations with Putin and Russia in higher place than Estonian security, for example. We help Poland if Belorussia is sending immigrants to the border. Russia has occupied (sorry, liberated from nazis, but forgot to return to home for 45 years) half of Europe not so much time ago, so it is also very real threat for a whole Europe.
There's a saying for this:
Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
Another thing convincing us about the right path is the vawes of immigration, from south and east. If Syria is in war, refugees move en masse to Europe. If there is a Ukrainian war, refugees move in masse to Europe. If there is war in Libya, refugees move en masse to Europe. And we try to help all of those people, because it is a decent and moral thing to do.
I'm 50/50 with this. The Germans treat the refugee quite nicely, but some like the Eastern Europeans literally put humans in cages and set up hunting dogs...to hunt people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not siding 100% with refugees, if the Syrians used the same amount of efforts they use to get into Europe, Assad might be overthrown by now. But they choose to fled.
What we can do is to help people in need and sometimes we succeed doing that.
Taking refugee is not just a European thing, when Spain is busy with their expulsion of jews (and muslims), it was the Ottoman muslims that cater them...does this translate into gratitude centuries later ?
Europe preach, they must exercise what they preached...Universal human right, treatment of the weak...isn't this what people claimed to be part of European values ?
we wouldn’t even see 1/7 of the effort ( of what we saw in Ukraine ) to prevent it or punish the aggressor.
So For for rest of the world, Ukraine war is just like another war in this perspective.
It doesn’t add any new dimension to our national security or insecurity.
The problem for stand alone countries (the likes of you and mine) is the cost of doing such...you see there's a differing mathematics when it comes to cost benefit analysis that when it comes to the West is completely fine but is a matter of deep geopolitcal risks to the others.
If Europe criticize, condemn or even punish Russia, they're doing this knowing that they have each others back when shit comes to shove.
I give you one example...
Democracies must stand united in turbulent times and emphasise the importance of freedom, says You Si-kun, speaker of Ta...
www.lrt.lt
For the Europeans/West and many out there this is the big proof of Lithuania bravery that counterweight its tiny size with gigantic hears and courage able to do what other larger nations can't.
But it just happens that brave Lithuania, is doing this in the safety of NATO and EU umbrella (EU has its own mutual defense treaty) and from thousands of Km away. And they know Germany will bankroll them.
There's a saying :
Its easy to be brave when you know nothing will hurt you
The rest of the world doesn't have luxury of NATO article 5 or EU article 42.7 to play hero the like of Lithuania.
Its very easy to condemn Putin in the UN, just direct the nations UN reps to push the condemn button and wallaaaa...but in the end there's no reward for doing this and we have made a problem with Russia in the long run. Some of these countries are even dependant on Russia for their national security (arms imports).
