Bloomberg. It is laughable to think that Russia, a country bleeding citizens and fast spiraling to Third World status, is any kind of a threat to Europe, the US, or the world. Putin’s “incursion” into Crimea was nothing of the sort, Crimeans are Russian, and want to be a part of Russia, in the same way that the borderlands of Georgia wished to secede from the Western-installed stooge government in 2008. How much NATO build-up can ride on those talking points of an “assertive” Russia? American taxpayer-funded NATO surrounds Russia, and weapons paid for by those same taxpayers are now being sent to the “front lines”, goading Putin into making one tiny wrong move. Trip-wires have been set up via recklessly expansive NATO membership, and if Russia gets into a skirmish with one, we all have to chip in. Auto-interventionism.