I don’t think states are fooled by those things. US can say “Iraq had nuclear weapons” and people can trust it, but states have somewhat competent intelligence agencies that will give their assessment.
Intelligence is good at motivations and trends but recently there’s been some major failures in projecting outcomes.
USA turning isolationist was predicted, it was however a faster and harder turn than projected.
Ukraine I think was projected to just turn out much like Putin wanted. A quick grab of the territories he considered disputed, he gets a nice show of force meanwhile Europe gets to suffer treaties to play nice with Russian economy again until next time that hopefully is in the far future while gearing up their own military might yet under USA’s wing.
The reality where Ukraine didn’t fold and Russia was exposed as a Paper
Tiger and the majority of Europe as a Steel Garfield was in neither’s interest.
And the unjust thing is that who suffers is largely the smaller neighbours of Russia that have done their part and more, but are still globally seen as investment risk because the major players have shown that they’re quite willing to break rank in the name of self-interest.
In other news, no one believed the UK and US when they warned Ukraine for a Russian invasion because they lied about Iraq before. source
I don’t think states are fooled by those things. US can say “Iraq had nuclear weapons” and people can trust it, but states have somewhat competent intelligence agencies that will give their assessment.
The lies are for the pretense, to fool us.
Intelligence is good at motivations and trends but recently there’s been some major failures in projecting outcomes.
USA turning isolationist was predicted, it was however a faster and harder turn than projected.
Ukraine I think was projected to just turn out much like Putin wanted. A quick grab of the territories he considered disputed, he gets a nice show of force meanwhile Europe gets to suffer treaties to play nice with Russian economy again until next time that hopefully is in the far future while gearing up their own military might yet under USA’s wing.
The reality where Ukraine didn’t fold and Russia was exposed as a Paper Tiger and the majority of Europe as a Steel Garfield was in neither’s interest.
And the unjust thing is that who suffers is largely the smaller neighbours of Russia that have done their part and more, but are still globally seen as investment risk because the major players have shown that they’re quite willing to break rank in the name of self-interest.