@PonyPanda I think that implies that there's something magical about #2 leading to #3, and I think there's a natural explanation for that. Something about groupthink, excessive self-confidence, excessively underestimating an opponent, some human law about people feeling like they're in the "surround the downed opponent and kick it repeatedly" stage of an unfair fight.
And some people escape the trap, by responding in an actually thoughtful way. When the SMO kicked off and everyone put out their statement on Russia, most of them were *insane*, like the CEO was under such pressure that he was more terrified of demonstrating independent thought than he was of permanently maiming his own business, and a few were "war? yeah we don't like war. Ukraine has some refugees now and we're going to support them."
What I'm saying that however this happens, it's happened, and the resulting loss of respect has people looking for new international institutions. NATO's a warmonger provoker of war, so India won't join that. If you use American finance then the Americans can pull it and then point and laugh and mock your people for relying on it, so nobody wants that. Macron hasn't said "we want to join BRICS" but "please sirs may I attend BRICS" and one potential reason is that he wants to be able to talk with them, or Russia specifically. Is the UN also not good enough for *talking* now?