If the Baltics were just imaginary land that everyone agreed was real, they'd have the same geopolitical relevance as they do now: a flag and a voice cheerleading the West on international fora and trying to convince the world that the duality of being both pro-Nazi and innocent victims of communism was a real thing that they could be in the war.
It just so happens that under Russian rule, Russian rulers will be making profit instead of Ukrainian rulers.
I think we're missing a couple of nuances here, no? Although it's a stretch to call them nuance. The way Ukrainian rulers have been making money has been through privatization. And because there's so much privatization we need to look at who owns Ukraine's economy. It's only escalated since Russia invaded, with national assets being sold off to foreign private sectors so cheaply that one has to wonder why they did it when the gains are a drop in the bucket compared to the direct aid they've been getting from Western public sectors.
If Ukraine emerges from this conflict with its own sovereignty, it'll be sovereignty over a flag, a presidential palace and a state framework that protects foreign companies' investments from hungry Ukrainians.
Russia doesn't need to do that. Burgerlanders already experience it through the magical way they render themselves blind to their government's behaviour unless it's projected onto China or Russia. Like how Trump is a Russian asset and China is turning Cuba into a staging ground for an invasion.
The Democrats knew this was going to happen. There's no way they couldn't. And I don't mean Democrat supporters, many of whom were vehement that Biden was fine like so many anecdotes in this thread recount. I mean the Democrat leadership, who manage his campaign and more than likely manage his presidency. Unlike the public, they have access to him. They have his medical records, the reports of his doctors and caregivers, everything. There's no way they didn't know this would happen if he debated.
They might start seeding support for a different candidate into their supporter's discourse after this, but they will have been planning for this outcome long ago. And when a left-leaning (left from a US Overton window) news platform hosts a debate that shows him up that badly and then publishes commentary like this, you have to wonder if that caused friction with the DNC or if they assented to it.
As the party starts singling out a replacement, the question I hope people start asking is why they didn't replace Biden earlier? Did they need to wait until the urgency of imminent elections made their new candidate more palatable? And if they don't replace Biden, why are they letting Trump win?
He gives lots of reasons, but if one of them isn't "oil-producing countries are starting to escape US hegemony and your gas-guzzling motor industry is on borrowed time" then I don't think he's really appealing to the US government's interests.
It doesn't matter what the people outside China think. The people inside China - on both sides of the Taiwan strait - think Taiwan is part of China. They all call themselves Chinese except the tiny minority that speak with American accents. There are indigenous ethnic minorities on Taiwan whose ancestors were not part of China, but they didn't call themselves 'Taiwan' because that's a Chinese word.
That first and second sound exactly like what happened in Hong Kong.