It's mostly a lie... but many Fox viewers believe it to be the whole truth.
I've seen discussions from a specific professor going back years (long before the actual invasion) talking about the dangers of exactly that. After it happened this specific person (forget his name) then started talking about how it was a consequence of the things he had been talking about for years.
You can disagree with the guy, but he's an academic who apparently has an expertise in that area, and I question whether or not you're dismissing it due to your own political bubble rather than because there may be some truth to it.
For example, on national TV in Russia this week, they are laying the groundwork to invade Kazakhstan right now, claiming that they need the uranium for Rosatom and that the "same nazi process in Ukraine could happen in Kazakhstan," meaning that the President of Kazakhstan is refusing to be a puppet of Putin lately.
These dynamics are extremely clear to anyone who spends even a small amount of time talking to someone from Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Chechnya, etc. But those voices are almost never heard, and instead Russian propaganda gets the air time.
Ok, I've seen an MD saying covid vaccines will give you AIDS. Must be true?
One person's opinion doesn't make the truth.
Plus, the idea that Russia had to invade a country to stop NATO expansion, if that's what's being asserted, is so farcical because countries want to join NATO to avoid getting invaded; it's a rather comical reversal. NATO expansion would stop really quickly if Russia would cease wanting to conquer neighboring countries; saying that Russia has legitimate security concerns just means that someone believes all these sovereign nations bordering Russia are not actually sovereign and should be part of Russia, which is again just repeating Russian imperialism as being right because it's right.
Plus, Putin has been pretty explicit in his writings on Ukraine, as he pretends to be a historian. Putin just wants to eliminate Ukraine as a nation and force Ukrainians to be subservient to Russians, it's all there out in the open in his writings. Denying this is kind of like trying to argue that Mein Kampf wasn't Hitler's real thoughts, and that Germany had to invade Poland and then the USSR simply for their own security concerns.
But if you can recall the name of this academic, it will be pretty quick to refute the specific claims made by other authorities in the area.
That this even has to be defended says more about your mindset than any damnation of the person in question.
And as I've said already, I don't recall, nor do I think it's worth the time or the effort to figure it out, certainly not for you.
Example from https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...
> The $21.7 billion in Pentagon funding is “for equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support,” according to a summary table accompanying the supplemental request.
And anyway, if the USA wants to keep benefitting from their empire they have to pay the costs to maintain and expand it. No more money, the empire shrinks and other countries take what's American now.
What would that be?
The USA de facto surrenders to Russia in the Ukraine war and Europe starts to buy gas from Russia again (if the USA can't protect us we have to buy protection somewhere else). Russia use European money to start buying European politicians again. Eventually they'll politically control all of Europe. Maybe not the UK.
China gets East Asia because a retreating USA must be seen with suspect there too.
The USA maybe keeps the Americas, which however are not very happy with them even now (the countries that don't speak English.) Some countries will try to jump ship to Russia and China. More colonial wars to follow.
Overall effect: reduced reach for American companies, products and services. A small side effect: we won't be here to discuss this on HN but on a site of another country/language. Eventually: switch to a different worldwide common language (France experienced that demotion around the 60s/70s - French was the previous lingua franca) and further reduction of reach. Eventually: a poorer USA.
Seen from outside the USA this doesn't look MAGA to me. The opposite of it. Hard to assess the impact on inequality, healthcare, tuition, etc. Maybe the USA will go the way of the European Nordic countries or they'll implode. I won't get into that.
Note that Wikipedia's statistics have China comprising just over 90% of the population of East Asia. In what possible world would China not be in control?
By analogy to the Manchus, you'd need an invasion from Japan or, I guess, Korea, that was supported by the PLA.
Military bases and alliances aren't a perfect proxy for political influence, but they're a pretty good one.
Russia's propaganda machine was caught off guard because Putin grievously miscalculated in ability to take over Ukraine, and kept the invasion so secret that there was barely any propaganda. But the propaganda campaign is kicking up again, and you can see it in some of the ghost comments on HN, even.
There are also folks caught up in pro-fascist organisations simply because they want to express their general anger at the world for not living up to their expectations.
Also, everything the media tells you is a lie to get everyone on one side.
Yeah, I doubt anyone really supports Russia, it's more like you are projecting them NOT supporting Ukraine and wasting money in that blackhole of corruption as "supporting Russia".
"You are with us or against us" - there is nothing in between for Democrats/NPCs.
Also, nation united against aggressive, genocidal war does great to improve cohesion and trust, and remove low level corruption.
So do that too.
"But that's socialism."
The vast majority of our support is in the form of weapons, and the vast majority of those weapons come from existing inventory.
Even the new spending is just money cycling back to US weapons manufacturers.
What good would weapons do to solve our domestic issues?