People are saying this is an act of war. This is not an act of war. But an act of war connotes a military response.
You're putting words in people's mouths. I have not seen a single person advocate a military response.
This is because we don't understand local cultures. What happened in Libya is that HRC bought the whole line about Libya being primed for democracy by a bunch of smooth talking locals. This did not happen, and now Libya is an Islamist hellhole. The fact is that when we see some freedom fighter in East Europe claiming Russian oppression, they might have other motives at play, and Americans are pretty vulnerable to people talking about their love of democracy. The worst case scenario is if America involves itself in accord with what are essentially small-minded local nationalists against other local nationalists.
Do you realize that you just said we don't understand local cultures and then claimed to know the interests and motivations of people in the countries around Russia? As for Russian oppression of Eastern Europe, all you need to do is look at history to see the Russians oppressing Eastern Europe over and over again. If you forget the lessons of history you are doomed to repeat them, and I'm quite sure the people running those countries next to Russia have little desire to see history repeat itself in that way.
And on that topic, you never answered how you would respond if Russia were stationing troops in Mexico, writing a bunch of treaty obligations with Mexico, and then treating American hostility to such events as cause for war. Because this is what we are doing WRT the Baltic states.
I've told you multiple times this is irrelevant.
I think this whole thing about "Russian agents everywhere" is just a sign of American nationalist paranoia.
I wouldn't know, as I don't know anyone who says 'Russian agents everywhere'. This sounds like something that I would hear from a Russian propaganda source, as it is a wildly distorted view of how Americans think.