Regarding all the claims that the West is to blame for the current situation in Ukraine:

[The Magistrate]

6. I Would Not Bet The Farm, Sir, On Anybody Going To War To Defend Estonia

The whole system was based on the proposition no one would ever actually take the first step, actually cross a border and act like it was the nineteenth century and this sort of thing were normal in Europe. Once someone actually does it, and the sky does not fall on him and flatten him, the whole thing goes away like sweet dream. It does not matter that Ukraine was not part of NATO; the idea of 'collective security' is now as collapsed as it ever was in the thirties. No one has a compelling national interest in the independence of the Baltic states, or for that matter of Poland or Bulgaria or Romania or any of the other former Warsaw Pact powers. The only limiting factor is how far the aggressor state wants to go.