In all seriousness though, IMO, the way the Administration has handled all this has been awful. When you constantly push a Russian attack is “imminent,” “coming any moment,” “Putin’s made up his mind,” for weeks at a time - but then nothing happens - it degrades credibility on the world stage. It shows either our intel isn’t as reliable as they think it as, or they’re overhyping things for whatever reason. Not saying that nothing will happen, but the constant “it’s about to happen” narrative loses effectiveness very quickly. Obviously you want to take precautions like asking citizens to leave, moving the embassy, etc. but the constant fear-porn onslaught from officials at every Department is draining. If anything, it’s going to provoke aggression from the Russians. With the Administration insisting an invasion is coming, if Putin did decide to nothing now, he would come across as weak. And they’ve already shown all their cards by stating there would be no American troop intervention and sanctions would be the main response. How does telling the enemy exactly what you’re going to do and not do help persuade them towards your interests?
And the mixed messaging doesn’t help either. Today the Pentagon said “Russian President Vladimir Putin] has not conducted another invasion in Ukraine yet, and we still think there's time to prevent that” but Biden himself said days ago that Putin “had decided” to invade. So which one is it? We’re embarrassing ourselves on the world stage right now.