“This constant harping that you hear not just in the United States, but in European countries as well, is a Cold War relic,” said analyst Mark Sleboda on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program. “‘If we don't fight Putin over there, we'll have to fight him over here,’ you know, which was a constant propaganda refrain of the Cold War.”

“This [conflict] is entirely being forced on Russia, because if they don't take Ukrainian territory now, it's not even a question, they are directly told we will pump Ukraine full of as many weapons as possible,” he noted. “‘We will bring it into NATO and the EU, and we will weaponize and turn it into a battle platform against Russia,’ – Russia is left with no alternative.”

“NATO no longer wants any gray zones or gray spaces,” Sleboda explained. “They no longer want neutral countries. They want to be right up in Russia's face on their border, implementing what Rand in their grand geopolitical strategy for destroying Russia, overextending Russia, [and] competing for advantageous ground, defined as the pressure cooker.”

“This makes the United States look weak because if Biden does step aside and they say ‘I'm not physically and mentally competent to run,’ then the next question will be, ‘well, are you physically and mentally competent to remain president?’” said the senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute.

“What's going to happen now? I mean, what happens during the next six months? What happens at the convention? Everything is up in the air. So internationally there's just a great deal of concern of an America in turmoil.”

“Now the question is – and this is obviously the rather salient issue – whether you can keep creating all these alliances to keep out National Rally, and you can just keep whipping up hysteria every few years about National Rally,” Szamuely continued. “There's going to be a lot of anger and a lot of frustration among the French that France's problems are not being addressed.”