We're talking about a person who has less than 48 ours ago threatened nuclear Armageddon on the entire world. [1] You do not give in to the insane demands of such a person just as you do not give in to the tantrums of a child.
Strictly speaking, he said that bad things you're talking about would happen "if Ukraine joins NATO and tries to retake Crimea by military means." Not, as you seem to imply, just for the fun of it.
The U.S. has also threatened, or considered first-strike nuclear attacks several times (albeit not publicly) numerous times, as recently as 1997. Usually against smaller countries (the usual suspects) but also against the Russians in the event of an attack on Berlin during the 1961 crisis:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/10/jfks-fir...
So say what you want about the petulant madman - but really he was just pulling a move from Kennedy's playbook, essentially.
It is an economic one more than anything.
Germany, France and every European country wants Nord Stream 2 because it would greatly help their energy problems. The US doesn't, which is why it is pushing NATO to Ukraine, provoking Russia and looking for excuses to stop it: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...
A third of Ukraine (Russian speakers) don't want any part in the government operated by American allies in Ukraine and would rather be a part of Russia. They definitely do not want NATO there. If Russia did absolutely nothing, it would mean years of proxy war in Ukraine... which is to say there would definitely not be Nord Stream 2... which is exactly what the US wants and exactly what Russia doesn't.
The US is clearly the aggressor here.
including France https://www.dw.com/en/france-presses-germany-to-ditch-nord-s...
It might also be worth pointing out that Ukraine is not in NATO.
The whole situation feels strange to me and I can't help but thinking that a lot more is happening than we are told or made to believe.
Edit: the US seem the most active and effectively are the ones warmongering and it's hard to imagine that they care so much about Ukraine. But looking at Russian pipelines and China's Belt and Road perhaps they actually aim at creating a clash and a new iron curtain to prevent growing links between Europe and Russia/China in order to keep control of Europe.
And "they're within Russia's borders", but there sure seem to be a large number of them really close to the border of Ukraine. That raises concerns. Like, it's really easy to go from "all these troops are within our borders" to "all these troops are halfway to Kiev" within 48 hours. It's a force posture from which the Russian troops could trivially launch an invasion, and it's unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. That's concerning, at a minimum.
Russian troops are occupying substantial parts of Ukraine, which is a key part of the context of Russia massing additional troops on the border of Ukraine, in other, Russia and Belarus (the latter of which is a cooperating partner of Russia, just as the NATO countries the US is deploying troops to are of the US, but definitely still not within Russia’s borders.)
> while the US are depicted as the 'good guys' for moving troops abroad
The US troops are all deployed with the permission of the host governments in NATO allies. Like Russia’s troops in Belarus (which are “abroad and next to Ukraine”, in much larger numbers than US troops are “abroad and next to Russia”), and unlike Russia’s troops in Ukraine, which are an actual (not potential imminent) invasion and occupation.
But nice try.
NATO is a big alliance.
Poland is in NATO.
The U.S. is the strongest military power by a large margin.
Russia is amassing troops next to a country they've already invaded (see Crimea).
I don't see the dissonance here.
Just feels really strange.