It only takes One side to make a war

As the world continues to walk a knife edge on the verge of the already-happening WWIII becoming an all-out, all-in affair - it is very evident that there are serious problems of understanding what is happening. 

For a start; people insist on analysing all wars as essentially the same, and essentially symmetrical - which is rooted in the deceptive notion that it takes two sides to make a war.  This is deceptive because, while true, it neglects to mention the actual alternative to war in some situation - which is allowing oneself to be "genocided": to be destroyed either as a nation, culture plus/minus physically. 

Genocide only takes one side; and war may be the only realistic alternative (and, of course, it may not work - and the social or material genocide may happen anyway). 

A further problem is to understand who is causing all the wars, and attempting escalations and widening of wars (including the engineering of multiple civil wars) - and what they are aiming-at. 

Because Modern Man does not have a coherent concept of evil, warmongering is nearly always explained in terms of some group attempting this-worldly advantage: getting power, money, sexual goals, and things like that. 

This is always partially true, because leadership classes (and to a lesser extent the masses) are motivated towards war by such considerations.  

Therefore material advantage could be described as a proximate cause of war. 

But at present, here-and-now in the world, the ultimate cause of war - the initiating and multiplying and underlying cause behind the proximate causes, is not material advantage - but a spiteful desire for causing destruction, pain, fear, despair - such an ultimate motivation has very seldom been operative at a strategic level in the past. 

For as long as such persons have power to do what they want to do; then they will continue to start and escalate wars - without regard to winning these wars, and without regard to gaining materially from them. 

Indeed; for this kind of individual and group; war aims include the destruction of what is supposedly their own side.

In other words "mutually assured destruction" is not a deterrent, but a desirable outcome. To be clear - the "best" outcome is a war in which each side simultaneously destroys the other. 

Therefore, when "assistance" is provided to one or other side, the real aim is to continue and escalate the war (and its destructiveness and miseries) and not to win the war.  

And, unless this motivation is noticed and acknowledged, then such individuals will probably get their way - because, given sufficient time and resources and in an almost universally morally bankrupt world such as we inhabit wars and the continual escalation of wars can be made impossible to resist.

When "provocations" are sufficiently extreme and frequent; then wars and escalations will occur sooner or later - excepting only when a group do not oppose their own annihilation (as seems likely to be the situation in Western nations).   

This is where we have been for more than two years, and where we continue to be as provocations continue, become more frequent, and more extreme. 

Yet a very large proportion of the population of the world (and especially Western nations) are utterly oblivious to their situation. And not negatively oblivious - but armour-plated and pre-immunized against discovering and knowing. It's yet another of those subjects where no external help can be expected, and the only hope is of more individual persons seeking to take responsibility for their world-understanding.