@bharring, yes but the US stayed another 20 years.

@o.m., in the past the situation was managed by accepting so-called spheres of influence. But my point is just that the intrinsic value of mainland Ukraine is not the one issue at stake.

"holding Ukraine is not a vital national interest of Russia" - that proceeds from the wrong assumption. The demonstrable ability to hold captured territory against the West is now the issue, not the intrinsic value of Ukraine itself.

@JoeW, the stakes for Russia would be the degree of internal political destabilisation resulting from defeat, and the extent to which a hostile foreign bloc will then be confidently on their doorstep. Really, the only way Russia would accept defeat in Ukraine, is if the political destabilisation came first.

If it's so easy to create democratic facades - "liberal states for show" - it makes you wonder if we're living under one.

@NoDataDumpNoContribution, I don't think anyone is denying that stockpiling is useful for war, the question asked whether there were reasons other than preparing for war. The point is that it is also useful under peace to have stable prices and steady supply. China says it is reacting to new uncertainties in the world, and top of those uncertainties is likely the prospect of the sanction-happy West seeking to coerce China with sanctions for one reason or another. China does not necessarily need to anticipate and be preparing for traditional war, it can just be preparing for sanctions.

"There is not much the US or EU can do to regulate Russian companies exchanging Rubel for cryptocurrency" - in fact there's not much they can do, short of war, to regulate the exchange of rubles for any foreign goods and services. The usefulness of cryptocurrency - rather than direct trade in rubles - is primarily to protect the counterparties to the Russian trade from secondary action by the US state, or to allow companies directly under US jurisdiction to secretly bust the sanctions. It's just the electronic form of gold in suitcases.

I think the sense in which "snap" is being used, is when the election seems to have been called under political circumstances where it might have seemed unlikely that the incumbent would want to go to the polls, or appears to be a sudden political gambit. So Sunak is calling a "snap" election, even though the timing is roughly normal, because he could have delayed until December, so dire does it already look for him.

@JoeW, you think it's opinion that US sanctions might be why there is a move away from US-controlled finance?

@quarague, the question was whether governments had "managed" to reduce immigration in recent decades - implicitly casting it as a struggle between governments and immigration. There is a frame challenge in that I deny that such a struggle exists. Moreover, I've pointed out that the timeframe of 50 years selects a period where there has been a nadir in the wider policies necessary for enforcement of immigration control without causing the capitalist class to engage in industrial action and deploying private wealth to political agitation and attacks on democratic governments.