America had put Putin in a lose-lose position over Ukraine

A clever Romanian friend told me at the weekend that America had put Putin in a lose-lose position over Ukraine. He lost if he invaded Ukraine or if her permitted her to join Nato. This, I see, is true.

Romanians are much more cynical than the British. Some people I know in Romania (and one in Scotland) are asking themselves whether America (or a small number of powerful people in America) wanted a war. I do not believe this.

In the late 1940s the Americans encouraged the Ukrainian resistance to fight the Bolshevik government. In 1951 CIA estimated that some 35,000 Soviet police troops and party workers had been killed by the guerrillas, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but in the end the Americans did nothing to help them. Most of them had been defeated by 1956.

It had looked as if history was about to repeat itself but the Ukrainian forces are putting up much more resistance than could have been expected and this has bought Ukraine time to sway public opinion. 

The public in the developed world (and even in Russia?) will not allow the Ukrainian cause to be forgotten. 

In fact the United Kingdom, to speak of the country whose news I follow most closely, seems gripped by war hysteria. It's like the German waiters scare of 1910.