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Comment by YLYvYkHeB2NRNT | Hacker News Reader

Stingers are really productive /sarcasm. Let's put this to work for something good. Stingers only cause harm.

Not everyone is a pacifist willing to live in slavery. Sometimes people need weapons to defend themselves.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse."

-John Stuart Mill

Thinking nothing is worth a war is not the problem the US has with war, historically.

Quite true, but the war at hand is clearly one of defense (for the Ukrainian side).

Maybe the same applied to the British Empire of John Stuart Mill’s time.

It took Pearl Harbor to get America involved in WW2.

Prior ~80% were against doing anything to resist Hitler that might result in violent conflict.

America was famously “isolationist” at the time, yes. Obviously one is talking about US policy after WWII and up until the present.

The US needs Stingers to defend either themselves or a current NATO member exactly how?

Because clever replies like "got news to catch up":

Hint: neither the US or NATO members are directly involved in the war between UA and RU, or any other war (yes, the US is always at war with other nations.)

US giving away billions in equipment for a foreign actor and thus creating the need to replenish stock is all on them.

You have roughly a year and a half of news to catch up to. Start with European news.

Degrading the Russian military through a proxy war is the cheapest and safest way to defend our NATO allies in Eastern Europe. Regardless of whether Russia eventually wins or loses in Ukraine, their military capabilities are being shattered and will take decades to rebuild.

https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-d...

It is not cheap. It costs many lives.

It is incredibly cheap in terms of dollars spent by NATO to kneecap the Russian military and prevent future expansion.

The US spent trillions for decades preparing for this sort of fight, all the way up to Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars stuff… and it turned out that something like 20% of one year’s US military budget (and some very brave, determined allies) does the trick.

Cheap for the USA. It's for the Ukrainians to decide whether the cost in lives is worth paying. As long as they're willing to keep fighting there's no downside for us in supplying weapons.

If US and NATO countries did nothing and Ukraine would lose the war, next step Russia would attack Poland or Baltics, and China would attack Taiwan.

in this case correct action would have been to attack russia preemptively /s

We live in a time of historically unparalleled peace due to unthinkably dangerous weapons. An unlikely Nash equilibrium.

World War 3, then later WW 4 with sticks and stones and all that.

We need them to give to Ukraine, no? I would suggest they are preventing harm in that case.

Edit:

The mods here apparently think responding to the Russian influence campaigns on their site is worthy of a shadow ban.

Why do we need to give them to Ukraine?

If Ukraine fights off Russia, then the chances of Russia invading a NATO country would fall to almost zero. It would also substantially reduce the chances that China invades Taiwan. Those would both be very expensive to the US. Much cheaper just to give Ukraine weapons.

Those are the upsides, what are the downsides if Ukraine still loses, or gets split up like Korea, anyways?

Is the net balance in favour of supplying weapons? This is the type of analysis I've not seen done yet across thousands of articles, essays, blog posts, etc...

Even if Ukraine ultimately loses some of their sovereign territory, supplying them with weapons is a cheap way to degrade Russian military capabilities with no risk to US forces or our NATO treaty allies. What we have spent on military aid to Ukraine is a tiny fraction of our overall military budget so for the USA there is really no downside. Regardless of who loses, we still win. Some people may be uncomfortable with putting it in such stark amoral terms but that is the geopolitical reality of how such decisions are made.

The downsides that you mentioned increase if you don't supply them weapons.

Even if Ukraine loses with the weapons, it loses less hard than without them, and can push for a split, for example, instead of a full annexation.

I assume you mean downsides geopolitically, because the financial costs are sunk either way.

There are several losing states (complete annexation, split like Korea). However, there are only two main ways Ukraine can lose. The world can stop sending free weapons or even with free weapons Ukraine is defeated.

It's hard for me to think of any way that "the west stops sending weapons" is not more likely to result in Russian or Chinese aggression. Is China more emboldened by "US arms without US military personnel lost a war" or "the US can be counted on to lose interest in any conflict over 2 years"?

So it doesn't matter what the downsides are[0]. It seems like no matter what, the US is better off helping Ukraine.

[0] Unless Putin pushes the big red button. But that topic has been written about extensively.

It seems possible for the Russian decision makers to be so angered that they will want to take revenge, to spend their built up political/technological/social/cultural capital to intentionally weaken the US, EU, etc.

Nuclear weapons are practically an all-or-nothing proposition, but nowadays there a lot of other ways to deliver some intermediate amount of 'revenge'.

And it's a lot easier to destroy then create, as the war has shown, I estimate the asymmetry is easily 100 to 1. That is to say $1 of novichok, or whatever nasty means, can easily cause $100 worth of damage, and the combined economic size difference isn't even 20 to 1.

Though I'm just spitballing the numbers here.

Because if we don't, Russia will show the world that might makes right. And China will take Taiwan, etc.

Like peace in society, international peace exists because aggressive elements make an economic calculation, and stay calm. Once that math changes you get riots and wars.

Like when the US gave stingers to the Afghani, we don't support Ukraine for moral reasons (perhaps partly) but mainly because it's in our interest.

To be fair, might absolutely does make right in international politics still. The only reason we are even talking about Ukraine is that the Russian 3-day invasion totally failed and open up the opportunity for the west to sanction them and support Ukraine.

It weren't for that fact, the ability for countries like Germany to trade oil with Russia still would have totally overridden any possibility of sanctions.

And the West very frequently does not get involved in areas where terrible things are happening so long as those areas aren't really in their interests.

Which doesn't justify Russia in any form shape or way. Personally, because it's individuals we aren't involved in international politics and we are still perfectly valid in criticizing Russia for being hilariously evil.

And because in the world of might makes right, Russia is also losing.

So it doesn't really matter. Any Russian who tries to make this argument might be correct in calling out hypocrisy, but their weak and stagnant nation lacks the might to make the right.

The people who live in Afghanistan are called Afghans.

The currency of Afghanistan is called Afghani.

Afghans have said that they are annoyed that even after 20 years of U.S. presence in Afghanistan, people still aren't getting this right.

> Because if we don't, Russia will show the world that might makes right.

America has already shown that.

Ukraine got invaded by a foreign power that is committing war crimes, taking territory that isn't theirs and repeatedly threatening other neighboring countries.

Ukraine was guaranteed protection of its then current borders by the US, Russia, and the EU nations if it agreed to give up it's nuclear weapons.

A quick google gave me this as a top result: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-put...

We should have given them this support when Russia took crimea, but didn't. The least we can do now is follow through on our agreement.

(Plus all of the other reasons in this thread -- there are fantastic reasons for the western nations to support Ukraine's defense separate from those I'm referring to here)

That is not what anyone agreed to. You can read the "The US-Russia-Ukraine Trilateral Statement and Annex" of 1994 yourself:

https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/deterrence...

> That is not what anyone agreed to. You can read the "The US-Russia-Ukraine Trilateral Statement and Annex" of 1994 yourself:

That is absolutely what was agreed to, you can read the Budapest memorandum right here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Specifically the US, UK and Russia agreed to.

> 1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.[7]

> 2. Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory.

> 3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

> 4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

> 5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against the signatory.

> 6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.[8][9]

In this. case the "signatory" is Ukraine.

IMO, the war crimes thing, unless very egregious, is not a very good argument. Because if there is a war, there will be war crimes, and wartime-legal actions that are as bad as war crimes, too. Basically, you start a war, you awaken the monster, and everything that happens is your responsibility. A "small" amount of war crimes is par for the course. The US did it, too!

> Basically, you start a war, you awaken the monster, and everything that happens is your responsibility.

Correct, Russia invaded Ukraine and committed war crimes. Thus why Russia can be penalized for those war crimes as a country, even though the crimes were committed by individual soldiers.

> if there is a war, there will be war crimes

And if you have a city, people will commit crimes too. Should we not punish those either?

> IMO, the war crimes thing, unless very egregious, is not a very good argument. Because if there is a war, there will be war crimes, and wartime-legal actions that are as bad as war crimes, too. Basically, you start a war, you awaken the monster, and everything that happens is your responsibility. A "small" amount of war crimes is par for the course. The US did it, too!

I don't know I think the scales of rape and torture of civilians by Russia in Ukraine is pretty egregious.

Because Ukraine is a democratic state/western ally being invaded by it's much bigger and meaner neighbor and will cease to exist if we do not help them defend themselves.

We don't have to give them to Ukraine, but doing so generally furthers our interests.

Is Ukraine actually a democracy right now? Last I read all of Zelensky's opposition parties were arrested and made illegal. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-cons...

This a misreading. Specific pro-Russian parties were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_Ukraine

> On 20 March 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a ban on 11 political parties for ties with Russia: Opposition Platform — For Life, Party of Shariy, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Leftists, Derzhava, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists Party and Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

Quite a few other parties remain in Parliament:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_Ukraine#P...

Given history - one such party helped Russia take Crimea in 2014, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Unity - that seems reasonably prudent in the pursuit of still being able to be a proper democracy in the future.

But if the people vote for a party, should they not be allowed to be in power? I mean that is the definition of democracy, right? The people in Donbas, Crimea, etc. voted for many of these claimed pro Russian parties.

No, during a war and martial law, it’s best not to let enemy sympathizers run your government. No one gets free elections if Russia annexes you.

Democracy isn’t a suicide pact; you don’t have to let Hitlers take power in a crisis. Ukrainian law provides for martial law, and their Supreme Court upheld the bans. That’s democracy functioning too.

Curious, it appears it’s not as prevalent as I would expected - to see an obvious injustice and cruel atrocity being committed - and feel satisfaction seeing that the victim is getting assistance.

>Why do we need to give them to Ukraine?

You don't have to, but I would regard it as prudent: so that the USA - and many other countries - don't become like, or part of, Russia. Think of Ukraine as being somewhat similar to Vietnam. If Ukraine falls, then Taiwan is fucked, North Korea will fuck Japan and just plain say goidbye to Europe (socialist bastards that we are).

Domino theory was false in the Vietnam War. "Contagion" didn't spread further than Laos and Cambodia, and the Vietnamese themselves deposed the Khmer Rouge in favor of moderates due to the latter's extremism and massacres.

> Think of Ukraine as being somewhat similar to Vietnam.

You mean that the invasion by America into Vietnam is similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

To kill Russian invaders.

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