Dictator Putin’s decision to put 125,000 troops on the border of Russia and Ukraine is one of two things:

1.) He will definitely invade and attempt to bring Ukraine (or at least geographical parts of it) back under Russian control or…

2.) It is one of the most expensive bluffs in political poker history.

Here is what I’m wondering (brace yourselves)… How much should the U.S. care?

Obviously, we don’t want Europe to dive into war with Russia over Ukraine, so I’m not suggesting we dip and let Eastern Europe fall into chaos. But I wonder why it is that when talking about Ukrainian border territory, the primary figures involved seem to be Russia and the United States? It seems odd to me that a country on the other side of the globe seems to be the lead negotiator re conflict in Eastern Europe. Am I crazy for wondering that?

Again, I’m not saying that we’re making wrong moves; I’m just curious as to why the U.S. isn’t leaning heavier on Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Poland, or any of the other countries in which this is happening in their own backyard? If they don’t care as much as we do, how much should we care? I don’t actually know the answer to this question… Of course, people will point out that we have the most dominating military on the planet, but let’s not pretend that Germany and the U.K. don’t have any military presence in Europe.

Just for reference, we have a similar problem brewing on the other side of the globe. Taiwan, I’m sure, is looking at the Ukraine situation very closely to see how the U.S. might react if something goes down. Remember, Taiwan is in a similar situation as Ukraine. Maybe our expanded involvement in Ukraine is primarily to show Taiwan what we’d do if China started lining up ships in the Taiwan Strait. Maybe that’s why we’ve taken the lead over the last month that this has been going on in Ukraine, and maybe that’s given the other powerful European countries the idea that they can sit back and watch the U.S. show off to China.

Now, I don’t want to throw the other European countries entirely under the bus because, in the past week, Germany did step up and threatened to put a stop to Nord Stream 2 (if you don’t know what that is, I’ve got an article coming on that, just know that’d be a huge blow to Germany). But nevertheless, the next few weeks will be interesting. Does Putin go into Ukraine? How does Europe respond? What does the U.S. do? I guess only time will tell.