How does it matter to the “needs” of the american people what happens to Ukraine one way or the other?
Security guarantees also prevent nuclear proliferation. If Ukraine is defeated, the lesson many countries will learn is to have a strong nuclear deterrent.
You just ask question after question after question after question, with an extremely disproportionate amount of effort required between you and the person you are asking, and hope that the other side eventually gives up.
Edit: jakelazaroff pinned it down for me, "sealioning"
We know the amount spent in support of Ukraine. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the specific dollar valuation of the deterrence value of further assistance to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion.
If Ukraine regaining its pre-2022 (or pre-2014) borders is not worth a dollar value that exceeds the cost to achieve that outcome, then vardump's assertion of "money" as the reason is insufficient.
The full global consequences can be devastating.
What's the dollar value of that?
Sometimes your questions seem legitimate. Often they don't (they might be! but they don't read so).
But, this is probably getting a bit too meta and off-topic. Sorry for the derailment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
Now remember that this time everyone has nukes.
Likely as it is that research can indeed confirm this, given the depth & tone of your inquiry, perhaps the most immediate convincing experiment would be best: find someone you can employ to harass and threaten your property and your person, occasionally to devastating effect, alongside another person who can study your productivity and wealth before and after.
Perhaps with further similar efforts here you can even persuade some people to volunteer for half of that project free of charge.
To me, it seems like the people supporting American involvement in Ukraine are throwing about the same vague platitudes about “dictators” and “interests” without anything concrete to back them up.
At least Iraq and its neighbors had oil—there was a credible narrative that what happened there would directly hit Americans in their pocket books. American interest in Europe seems even more attenuated. It seems to be nothing more than romantic sympathy.
For example, the US needs many raw materials and manufactured goods. Our economy is extremely strong because we get these easily and with little friction. Other countries trust our trade deals so they enter into them willingly. And so whenever the US needs a new import, we get it quickly and cheaply. As a concrete example, NVidia gets prime access to foundries and components. Sure, they spend money on it, but our "interests" ensure that the process is frictionless. Any other country would have a harder time.
We also have near universal military access. No other country even comes close. We nearly have permission in advance to go anywhere. If US shipping is interrupted, no one complains when our navy goes and uninterrupted it. In fact we are welcomed. If a US citizen is taking hostage, governments from the area want to help us.
Also, maybe you've noticed that no one is even close to attacking the US. We are so strong that it would be suicide, and that's partly because of our own strength, but also because of our many allies who would back us up.
Finally, we have moral interests. I believe everyone should live in a system based on laws, should elect their own leaders, and should have basic freedoms. The more we spread liberalism and democracy the better the world is.
Sure, you can nitpick about counterexamples. The Iraq war is a perfect example of messing this up. And not every country loves us.
But if you cannot see that the majority of countries are overwhelmingly friendly towards the US, and that we get enormous military and economic benefits, then you are blind.
You’re starting off on the wrong foot. That’s just Reagan-Bush universalism and everyone who bought into that stupid ideology has been wrong about everything my entire lifetime.
The way you say it, the Iraq War was simply poor execution of a basically sound ideology. To the contrary, the Iraq War was a predictable outcome of the notion that democracy promotion is in America’s material interest, or that it’s worth our while to police borders around the world. That’s a bad idea, rooted in a Christian/post-Christian version of the Ummah and the Iraq War should have discredited that ideology. If you continue to buy into those mistaken premises, a repeat of Iraq/Vietnam/Korea is inevitable.
This doesn't respond to my comment at all. You're just calling stuff stupid.
In 2014, McCain absolutely nailed his prediction on Ukraine 2022. Did you?
The conclusion to draw from that is not that all conflict and cruelty outside the New World is irrelevant to Americans and their interests. You’re a bit older than me, but neither of us have experienced a world with a truly aggressive near-peer power. We’ve lived our entire lives on the laurels of our grandfathers’ victories in Europe and Asia. The resulting international system organized around fixed borders, the rule of law, and low barriers has allowed to flourish the multitude of mutually beneficial trade relationships that support literally the entirety of the only way of life either of has ever known.
It’s an unstable equilibrium. To not defend order against might risks knocking the whole thing down - and then who knows? Maybe we carry on with China and the rest of APAC while Russia dominates Europe? Maybe we live a decade or a generation of poorer, meaner, more isolated lives confined to the New World? Maybe the expansionary impulse brings them, eventually, to our shores?
The US has among the lowest levels of trade dependency of any country in the world. In 1960, which is remembered as a Golden Age, trade was just 10% of GDP. We would be just fine, probably better, living in a world where regional powers kept their back yards clean and the occasional border skirmish broke out. Even if that meant somewhat reduced trade.
Empire also imposes a demographic cost on america. Every time we destroy a country in a war trying to maintain the “rules based order” we have to accept a massive influx of refugees. In the long run these people will not be able to maintain the american system the founding population created.
Those two wars imo changed USA and put the country in debt and misalignment internally. Bush was an absolute catastrophy.
You can't point the fingers at the leaders. Even though the country is not a democracy, but a business club with only two parties, being funded by companies.
USA is no longer, and hasn't been for decades, very far from Russia in its cribbled walk towards war and destruction.
I can't see how the country can uphold its stance with their allies and when China makes their move, it will leave US on its own.
As for Europe, it might be a slow starter, but rather that than having to fight for even then smallest equality rights and options.
Wow, how I really dislike american politics and leadership, and its not just its current government.
...
And next thing you know, people who directly work for that drug dealer are all in your states government, and your way of life is slowly starting to get worse, and the only option you have is either go along and be constantly afraid, or revolt and risk of losing your life.
If you dont think it can happen, i envy your ignorance.
Do you think we exist in a vacuum? The whole reason we have foreign policy is because there are major dire ramifications to conflicts across the world. Especially, as we've seen the past century, in Europe.
I thought we had discredited that whole ideology—from Kissinger to Bush—but apparently we haven’t.
They are not the same: Clearly they are not the same.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30iht-edkissinger...
Most of the world didn’t like that system, along with most american liberals until five minutes ago. We even made movies mocking it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police.
Eisenhower thought that system should be temporary, and Jimmy Carter took pride that an american bomb was never dropped anywhere during his term.
Our foreign policy has been stuck in a doom loop of thinking that everything is like World War II for 70 years now. And whatever benefits we might have gained can’t possibly offset what we lost fighting pointless war after pointless war: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. We have spent trillions of dollars to make the world free for trade that has hollowed out the economy and enriched globalists.
That’s not even counting all the millions of people we have killed in the process of our liberal democracy jihad.
It had a rather pronounced affect on America. Some other countries too, I think.
Our trade with APAC dwarfs total European trade, and America has ~150k armed personnel deployed in the Pacific versus ~65k in Europe.
Europe can and should be able to manage Russia and Africa for us - this is what they did well until the 2000s. Both Dem and Republican admins since the Bush admin have been pushing for Europe to regain it's strategic autonomy.
Trump is absolutely mismanaging this relationship, but a broken clock is right twice a day.
If Europe goes to war America is in a higher state of defcon even if we try to pretend we’re uninvolved. Global trade would crash which means a lot of middle class jobs vanishing.
But the perception (even before Trump) was that our European allies can and should be able to hold down the fort in Europe, because it's increasingly looking like we cannot fight a two-continent war, and we at least have strategic depth in Europe, and not at all in the Pacific.
Another way is to sacrifice one continent.
I, and many others, can't stomach the second. Particularly when we built their security order, they certainly weren't managing Russia for us until the 2000s.
I agree and prefer this method, but certain European states (looking at you Germany) will also have to drastically increase military spending as well.
The pot of military financial aid also needs to go to Asian allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Philippines along with aligned states like Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and India.
> Another way is to sacrifice one continent
Which I dislike but is something the Trump admin has appeared to have chosen.
Yes, there's stuff in the news right now about Germany military spending - secretary of defense said they anticipated yet another increase package of 6.7B euros, and only got 1.2B.
Military spending is up dramatically from even 2 years ago, much less when you'd hear this argument from more dedicated hands, let's say, 2019, 2021.
It's a particularly poor timing to make the argument, because even if we elide every increase until Sunday, we're still left with Germany reacting to this by adding $100B over the next 4 years.
If if it wasn't out of date, I think it's important to state plainly the idea is: Europe needs to spend more in defense because the US decided to pull all support, even from things as simple as continuing to sell Europe defensive supplies as it fights Russia, and also hand chunks of Europe to Russia.
It's somewhat gut-wrenching to hear an out of date argument, in so many separate ways, as justification for rugging them completely. It causes nausea when its coupled to a shrug about broken clocks.
And what stopped Germany from doing so in 2022, or 2019, or 2014?
And this is why there is resentment in the US - we've been telling Germany (and other European) states to do this for decades.
I'll reiterate this again - China is the primary threat against the US. Russia is bad as well, but China is the bigger bad.
American soldiers are directly in the line of fire in Taiwan, South Korea, and Okinawa. Yet South Korea and Japan have both worked on maintaining military capacity and spending after brushes in 2011 and 2016.
And it's been Germany that has constantly undermined French and British attempts at a Pan-European force because German leadership does not want expeditionary capabilities that France and the UK needs [0], and France is the only EU state left that has a true world class MIC.
> It's somewhat gut-wrenching to hear an out of date argument, in so many separate ways, as justification for rugging them completely
Because the "spend more" argument from the US has been coming for 15 years now. And it takes 3-4 years just to on-ramp manufacturing capacity.
Devoting funding alone is not enough to ramp up manufacturing overnight. We have been warning about this for decades, and now Germany (and even some of our other allies like France and UK) now have to contend with this on their own.
I worked as a Dem staffer in the early 2010s and even I am in agreement with Trump about this - because this is a policy that even Obama was driving.
We've been warning your leadership that something like this would happen for 15 years now. Yet your leadership did not listen. When even a Dem like me who worked in NatSec Policy is frustrated, you know much of Europe has burnt any goodwill that remains.
[0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/12/the-joint-exp...
- "Our trade with APAC dwarfs total European trade"
I assume we have a shared understanding that more than just Europe was affected by WWII.
- "Europe can and should be able to manage Russia and Africa for us"
What does manage mean?
- "this is what they did well until the 2000s."
Was America involved in any of the management of Russia that went well prior to the 2000s?
- "Both Dem and Republican admins since the Bush admin have been pushing for Europe to regain it's strategic autonomy."
Europe certainly has strategic autonomy, no?
Overall, my impression is the argument completely elides NATO, the US role in it, and the US leadership role in it.
Absolutely, but they were 2 different wars with entirely different personas and leadership.
For example, China and Japan treat WW2 as having started in 1936-37 and don't really view or care about WW1 or the European theaters of WW2
And European dependencies in Asia were already autonomous at that point (eg. British India had it's own autonomous military and political leadership after the 1920s era reforms independent of London, Dutch Indonesia and it 1930s era reforms, and French Indochina as well as they largely retained the pre-colonization era leadership).
> What does manage mean
Problems on the European and African continent should be dealt with by our European allies. Ideally, the US provides some amount of support and armament, but strategy within Europe and France should fall onto individual European allies.
You saw this in Ukraine pre-2022 with the UK and Turkiye helping Ukraine rebuild it's armed forces, and in much of the Sahel with French armed forces tamping down on Islamism and Russian/Chinese backed factions.
> Europe certainly has strategic autonomy, no
The issue is, what is "Europe".
There needs to be a much stronger unification of posture and strategy amongst our European allies, but you would often see France and Germany clash because France wants to ensure a unified European force has expeditionary capabilities (because of French dependencies in the Pacific and Africa), but Germany constantly pushes back because they want to remain Central Europe first.
On top of that, individual European MICs directly compete with each other and extremely furiously. For example, Dassault, Eurofighter GmBH, and Saab trying to undercut each other in global fighter jet sales.
And finally, individual European states do not see eye to eye. For example, France+Italy tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Israel (a direct competitor to Turkiye) and targets the India (a competitor to Pakistan) and UAE (a competitor to Saudi) market.
But Germany+Spain tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Turkiye (a direct competitor to Israel), who tends to sell to Pakistan (a direct competitor to India) and Saudi Arabia (a direct competitor to UAE)
While we would all want the EU to be a truly unified union, in it's present form, individual nation states will continue to zealously guard their soverignity.
And even on the economic front - to continue using the India example due to the plan to finalize the EU-India FTA this year [0] - countries like Germany+Spain directly compete with France+Italy, especially in the Automotive and Pharma sectors (two of Europe's largest and most globally competitive sectors).
For example, German+Spanish+Czech automotive manufacturers like Volkswagen AG (includes Spain's Seat and Czechia's Skoda) largely invested in China during the 2000s but French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers like Renault-Nissan, Citroen/Fiat/Stellantis, and Piaggo (scooters yes but THE scooter in India) invested heavily in India. An EU-India FTA doesn't impact French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers but directly undermines and harms German+Spanish+Czech manufacturers.
And Indian biopharma companies (the only manufacturing industry that India is competitive at globally) are largely partnerships with French (Sanofi), British (GSK, AstraZeneca), Swiss (Novartis), Israeli (Teva), and Japanese (Takeda) players that directly compete with German firms like Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim that invested in China.
While at a macro-level a EU-India FTA is good for European autonomy from the US or China, it will undercut German+Spanish+Czech companies and benefit French+Italian+Romanian companies, and as such Germany has been lobbying against it (and India has retaliated by fining Volkswagen group $1.4B in back taxes and an additional $1.4B in interest [1] - an amount that will destroy VW Group's business in India [2] and maybe even globally depending on Chinese and NAM sales as it's an amount that's 17% of their net income).
And this is one of dozens of examples where individual European nation states do not have strategic alignment, and why when push comes to shove, they all ignore the EU and prioritize their own domestic needs.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-eu-agree-push-conc...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/india-...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/indias...
Apparently you have a vaster view.
Thank you.
Most of the blood, sweat, and tears of the UN and NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was European militaries like the Dutch, British, French, and Swedish.
The Clinton admin primarily provided air support and diplomatic cover, but most boots on the ground were European (and Canadian).
Lots of people forget that the UN was in Yugoslavia before the NATO intervention happened.
I would argue that we did our bid for European stability,
that everybody thought Ukraine would be quickly overrun.
We've taught them that it may or may not come at a high price, depending on which party happens to be in power at the moment.
Fast forward a few more years. Russia is encircling Kiev. Are we supposed to put American boots on the ground? Give them tactical nukes? Wouldn’t giving up then just “teach them” the same thing?
Oh wait...
you didn't read enough about wwii then. giving putin ukraine emboldens him further just like hitler
What’s next? “TSMC give us all trade secrets or we don’t defend Taiwan”?
You have all there benefited from these decades of being in that position.
Trump has already threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Taiwan if TSMC refuses to transfer technology to the US (thus effectively undermining Taiwan's own Silicon Shield defence strategy) and revitalise Intel: https://techsoda.substack.com/p/tsmc-faces-tough-choices-ami...
I hope Taiwanese leaders have the balls to say no -- it's not as if Trump has a stellar track record of honouring his word anyway. Besides, tariffs on Taiwanese chips will end up seriously hurting American companies like AMD and NVIDIA, so Trump might walk back the tariffs once Jensen Huang and Lisa Su pay sufficiently large bribes.