[Goose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/belarusian-of...03439.html

The war in Ukraine creates knock-on risks. Belarus is even less capable of starting a war with NATO than Russia, yet here they are talking about doing exactly that. The risk here, and in some other places around the world, is that an "ally" of one of the participants will do something stupid. This type of thing can easily happen when some underling takes a propaganda statement at face value and acts on it. The initiating country then calls for "help" from the ally, who is actually in a poor position to help but feels compelled to try. Ugly escalation can easily result from such actions.

There has been some discussion about how (if at all) the Ukraine war affects China's "plans" for Taiwan. IMO not much, but who really knows? Independent of this question however is the fact that the Ukraine conflict has significantly affected the politics in several NATO nations and has risked driving them away from strong NATO support. It has also encouraged separatists in the Balkans, who believe that NATO and the EU are to preoccupied with Ukraine (and now the middle east as well) to restrain their actions. It is totally possible (IMO likely) that something will break out in the Balkans. If it does, we need to hope it fizzles of it's own accord. Russia is undoubtedly stirring the pot in Serbia, and it could boil.

[Goose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/belarusian-of...03439.html

The war in Ukraine creates knock-on risks. Belarus is even less capable of starting a war with NATO than Russia, yet here they are talking about doing exactly that. The risk here, and in some other places around the world, is that an "ally" of one of the participants will do something stupid. This type of thing can easily happen when some underling takes a propaganda statement at face value and acts on it. The initiating country then calls for "help" from the ally, who is actually in a poor position to help but feels compelled to try. Ugly escalation can easily result from such actions.

There has been some discussion about how (if at all) the Ukraine war affects China's "plans" for Taiwan. IMO not much, but who really knows? Independent of this question however is the fact that the Ukraine conflict has significantly affected the politics in several NATO nations and has risked driving them away from strong NATO support. It has also encouraged separatists in the Balkans, who believe that NATO and the EU are to preoccupied with Ukraine (and now the middle east as well) to restrain their actions. It is totally possible (IMO likely) that something will break out in the Balkans. If it does, we need to hope it fizzles of it's own accord. Russia is undoubtedly stirring the pot in Serbia, and it could boil.