The Cold War ended with economical victory of the West, and memetic victory of the Soviets. The economical defeat led to collapse of the Soviet empire. The memetic defeat results in the lack of will we see today.
It was a huge strategic mistake after the fall of communism not to use the opportunity to expose the crimes of the regime, and to remove the important people from power, just like it was done with Nazis. For example in Slovakia, the communists still have the power; they have to compete for it in democratic election and sometimes they lose, but they still have the advantage of decades of unopposed brainwashing on their side, and the skills and contacts of the former secret service. These days, Slovakia is technically a member of EU, but our government is communist, the prime minister is openly pro-Russian, the majority catholic church focuses on fighting homosexuality and liberalism, and some of my "friends" on facebook still insist that Ukrainians are attacking themselves, Russians are only trying to protect the innocent victims, and the evil Americans are spreading propaganda to start the war because that's all those evil mercenaries ever do, unlike us, peaceful Slavic brothers. So... this is one EU country, which happens to share a border with Ukraine. We will not be helpful, because we are already conquered memetically.
Samuel Huntington would be cheering if he were alive because he predicted that this is what would happen. We would have a multi-polar world and that a great deal of that polarity would be based on ethnicity and he used the Slavic countries as a prime example. The downside is he predicted a lot of small scale conflict under this system which we are seeing.
Some of the comments on the link by James_Miller exactly six months ago provided very specific estimates of how the events might turn out:
James_Miller:
Me:
"Russians intervening militarily" could be anything from posturing to weapon shipments to a surgical strike to a Czechoslovakia-style tank-roll or Afghanistan invasion. My guess that the odds of the latter is below 5%.
A bet between James_Miller and solipsist:
I will bet you $20 U.S. (mine) vs $100 (yours) that Russian tanks will be involved in combat in the Ukraine within 60 days. So in 60 days I will pay you $20 if I lose the bet, but you pay me $100 if I win.
While it is hard to do any meaningful calibration based on a single event, there must be lessons to learn from it. Given that Russian armored columns are said to capture key Ukrainian towns today, the first part of James_Miller's prediction has come true, even if it took 3 times longer than he estimated.
Note that even the most pessimistic person in that conversation (James) was probably too optimistic. My estimate of 5% appears way too low in retrospect, and I would probably bump it to 50% for a similar event in the future.
Now, given that the first prediction came true, how would one reevaluate the odds of the two further escalations he listed? I still feel that there is no way there will be a "conventional battle" between Russia and NATO, but having just been proven wrong makes me doubt my assumptions. If anything, maybe I should give more weight to what James_Miller (or at least Dan Carlin) has to say on the issue. And if I had any skin in the game, I would probably be even more cautious.