If you watch the news much you are aware that there is a little country named Georgia bordering on Russia. Russia does not like Georgia, and since it is 1000 times bigger, it decided to squish Georgia like a bug. Not a hard decision- it was hardly even expensive, and the Russian military hardly broke a sweat. Easy, cheap, end of story.
Then about 1/3 of all the foreign capital in Russia was withdrawn. Then their stock market collapsed. Now they are surrounded by angry little countries, which, combined, have as many people as Russia does. And about half of them belong to NATO, meaning Russia is one inch from picking a fight with Western Europe and the US in addition to everybody else. And they totally can't afford that. Everyone hates them and they are forced to climb in bed with a bunch of tinpot dictatorships like Syria and Venezuela, who they will probably end up propping up, and that won't be cheap or easy, just embarassing.

This is called "The law of unintended consequences", by which we find out that things we were quite able to do, turn out to be things we really were NOT able to do, only now we are badly badly stuck. New car dealers totally exist on this law, for instance. And the government is about to print up $700,000,000,000 in fresh money because mortgage brokers do, too. It all happens because a) it is very hard to see the big picture until it is too late and b) when we really WANT to do something, and we CAN, we are unlikely to think any more, and we just pull the trigger instead.

One of the most valuable aspects of actual adulthood is learning how not to break the law unintended consequences. Or more accurately, learning how to avoid being broken by it.