Quote Originally Posted by Outlaw
So again did the US underestimate badly both China and Russia in its soft power thinking?
Absolutely. Even with the War on Terrorism, the last decade-plus has been spent idealizing "soft power" and "smart power" while second tier powers continued to build their military strength. When measured on military manpower, budget, and nuclear weapons, Russia is second only to the United States, and has about double the combined strength of France (#4), United Kingdom (#7), Germany (#19), Turkey (#23), and Poland (#29).Even while the Russian Armed Forces undergoes its transformation, it still maintains approximately 49% of the world's nuclear weapons to provide strategic cover for their military and political policies.

When the Yanukovych government collapsed, none of the NATO powers were in any position to unilaterally or collectively respond to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity. And I don't think it was even politically feasible, given the internal political dynamics of Ukraine as well as the hesistancy of NATO in the face of what would of course be a very strong Russian rebuke. Aside for "democracy promotion" in Kiev for many years, there were no other efforts to build a strong civil faction that could control the rest of the country or resist external threats. Ukraine is 25th in military strength on the account of its size, but not its quality, leaving it with about 3% of the military capabilities of Russia.

Given these facts, the outcome is a foregone conclusion and it was missed not because Putin is some evil mastermind but because we in the West failed to fully appreciate the entirity of the situation and to do basic long-term analysis.