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I just watched Patlabor 2 last night, about a civil war in post-Cold War Japan. The main theme is the following: The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur. Thus a government which does not plan for one-in-a-million scenarios is truly derelict and incapable of survival.
Nitpick: I get your point, but phrasing it like this is basically the gambler's fallacy. That's not how probability works.
You could ask though if, given the changed environment, the one-in-a-million event still has the odds of one-in-a-million. Or if one-in-a-million is really such a rare thing if you make a billion draws...
In retrospect, it seems like it was a bad idea for Western countries to assume that things were going to remain peaceful after the fall of the USSR. Glad to see the threat of war being taken seriously.
Definitely some elements of some western countries are guilty of what you're alleging, but I don't think enough to justify saying the countries themselves did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putin's successor is likely to be someone even less securely in power, and thus far less rational. I don't want to test our luck with what's left of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
This. You never count on the successor of a strongman to be rational. S/he is the successor of a strongman for a reason. And that reason is probably not rationality.
Stalin's successor was Khruschev, who dismantled Stalin's cult of personality, and reformed Stalin's system to an extent that Khruschev was removed from power without an incident by his own system, and lived happily ever after in retirement as the power transitioned to the next ruler.
Being the only ruler of Russia, over the past ~1000 or so years, to achieve that, namely:
1. Being removed from power (by term ending, elections lost, etc - not by their own will)
2. The removal happening procedurally, and not by disorder/coup/murder
3. Leaving the former ruler to live a decent life in retirement
Khruschev was a Ukrainian, see.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putin's successor is likely to be someone even less securely in power, and thus far less rational. I don't want to test our luck with what's left of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Please stop with this nuclear nonsense. There's enough nuclear warheads in EU to make sure nothing is left of major Russian cities in case somebody got too bald. Dictators aren't suicidal maniacs, they're "just" maniacs.