Cons aren’t saying to give nuclear weapons to Russia, and that post wasn’t directed towards you
I think the scale of US support for Ukraine is probably unprecedented. The US spent something like $20 billion dollars of todays dollars, mostly in the last few years of the war. Charlie Wilson’s famous “double it” back in 1980 increased funding from like 10 million to 20 million dollars or something. It’s not easy to find exact numbers but I think spending maxed out at around a billion per year in late 1980s dollars. Call it two or three billion of today’s dollars. How much has the US spent in Ukraine? Something like eighty billion dollars so far? It’s hard to keep track. And that’s just what they’ve told us. Does the CIA have a black budget for Ukraine? Probably.
I have no idea how much Soviet support in Vietnam was, dollar wise. My understanding is that they couldn’t have fought the war without that support though.
But what really makes the difference is the threat to perceived core national interests. The US losing Vietnam didn’t really threaten a core national interest. Same thing for Afghanistan for the Soviets. Both were costly adventures abroad that weren’t really crucial to US or Soviet national interests. And that was reflected in the vague and muddled war aims that the US and Soviets had in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Is Ukraine different? I think so, because Putin and the Russian elite regard Crimea, Donbass, probably Odessa, and probably some other Ukrainian territories as Russian, Russian adjacent, whatever. As Obama said, the question of Ukraine is a core national interest to Moscow. So Russia will fight and die to settle the question of is Ukraine a Western-aligned country or in Russia’s sphere of influence. If we make ourselves a party to that fight then we’re challenging a core national interest of Russia. That’s dangerous in a way that fighting on the opposite side of Russia in, say, Syria, isn’t.
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For sure it gives China an idea of what might happen if China tries to invade Taiwan. I think the US Navy and Air force would get directly involved in this right away though. I’ll agree that the US support for Ukraine could help deter China from trying to invade Taiwan or some other neighbor.
Agree again, many people believe this wholeheartedly. America is probably at a 30 year high favorable rating in Europe. Three or four billion people in South America, Africa, and much of Asia are pretty unimpressed though.
Sure.
This is true but America doesn’t stop being a dominant superpower if it allows Ukraine to fall into Russia sphere of influence.
You did a good job of laying out some of the soft power/indirect benefits to the US successfully waging a proxy war against Russia. But I was talking about something a little bit different: not supporting Ukraine in the first place. Like, we just kept our hands off and Ukraine never thought they had US backing. Maybe there would still be a war, but let’s imagine that there wasn’t and Ukraine just ends up as something like Belarus. How does the Belarussification of Ukraine hurt the US?
US money spent in Ukraine is far more effective than money spent on missions with americans servicemen. it doesn’t come close to trillions what iraq and afghanistan cost. but it also doesn’t compare to lend-lease during WW2, which went to UK and USSR. so far ukraine support is smaller than total us military aid in say 2010s. you could say for once american aid is actually on the order of opposing force.
eg in charlie wilson’s war, the aid was enough to stop ussr in a grind. in ukraine, it’s enough to take back donbass militarily.
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incidentally, does anyone know why some US equipment costs so much? because they design it to work in these conditions.
the autumn rains have started in ukraine. time is running out until it will be much much harder to make it through the fields. for both motorized assaults, and for any soldiers fleeing an encirclement.
https://twitter.com/MariuszCielma/status/1577966157717463040
This is complete bullshit which is why Chamberlain is the only example and gets endlessly recycled. The most obvious counterexample is the Prague Spring and subsequent Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The US and the Western Bloc generally did absolutely nothing in response to this. The results were: a weakened Communist Bloc thanks to infighting around the invasion, detente between the US and USSR at the Moscow Summit a few years later, and an independent and democratic Czechoslovakia two decades later. Seems like a massive victory for doing nothing?
One of the reasons the US did nothing, by the way, is that they were already embroiled in the fucking Vietnam War. If you use 1968 to 1975 as your historical lens rather than 1938 to 1945, you will come to very different conclusions about the efficacy of a hardline approach.
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Music choices remain hilarious and ridiculous out of Ukraine for like every video. Their appreciation of techno and metal is not touched by anyone else
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Well on the one hand failing to support Ukraine from Russia when Russia is attacking them for trying to orient more toward the west sends a message to the next Zelensky (maybe some pro west politician in Iran or Georgia or Kazakhstan or whatever) that it is not really possible to orient westward without a defense treaty, when the US may want to enable a country gradually slipping into their orbit without the need to formalize full support up front.
Stymying Russia may also help stem the rise of authoritarianism in Europe and even USA as Russia supports these activities. But rather than thinking about what this means to Joe Sixpack, think about what it means to the specific political factions in Congress which are supporting the war. It’s basically Republicans who’d like to move the party away from Trump (neocons or whatever) and Democrats, both who are challenged by Russia’s support of Trump and his authoritarian ideology.
I know domino theory was a justification for LOL Vietnam, but to those factions in congress seeing Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, and even Trump it makes sense the challenge and drain Russia to limit their effectiveness and prevent another Lushashenko on NATO/EU borders, and hopefully help stem rising tide of growing authoritarianism around the globe.
While Iraq and Afghanistan were really about US conflict with the Islamic world post 9/11, this seems to be the first hot war in the rise of the new cold war pitting authoritarian China, Russia, and other allies of convenience against liberal Western Europe, USA, Japan, Korea, etc. which 50 years from now might be retrospectively seen as happening but largely fought economically for the last two decades
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It’s not exactly appeasement but you could also make the argument that North and South Korea offer a really stark contrast of a government supported by USA vs. a country the US let fall to authoritarian powers by ending their intervention before they achieved a total victory. I think there’s an reasonable argument that, in aggregate, there would be less human misery if USA had escalated, engaged China directly, and threatened them with nuclear weapons to win (as MacArthur supposedly lobbied for) if it meant North Korea did not exist and the whole country had developed like South Korea.
Maybe breaking the nuclear taboo a second time would have reduced the taboo and it would have led to other nuclear wars or maybe it would have cost another 100,000 lives and then there would have never been a North Korea and the US would have a really strong ally right on China’s border
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This is an incredibly good reason for the US to back Ukraine, even from the point of view of the average US citizen. You see that, right?
https://twitter.com/DonallGeoghegan/status/1578470776516186112?t=0_0_9nnddRpIXcI5ier5Cw&s=19
Even a chess master think pokers is the correct analogy.
I think the potential geopolitical benefits of completely sidelining Russia from international legitimately and influence are likely significantly underrated. (At least assuming US maintains minimally competent leadership.)
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The person who disagrees with you is literally more upset about expanding NATO than about Russian genocide. Reducing Russian power is not a good thing if their genocide is not a bad thing.
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Vietnam and Korea are not contradicting when you think in terms of Kim Il Sung being an authoritarian and Ho Chi Minh being a freedom fighter who just aligned with authoritarian communists because they were the only ones who would support them against imperialism. We viewed him as an extension of Mao when he was really the George Washington of his county. Somewhere along the way USA got it wrong by switching from thinking in terms of freedom vs facism to thinking in terms of capitalism vs communism.
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I should probably read more about the Vietnam War from non-US-centric sources. Do you have a book or perhaps I may be so lucky as to get an article you recommend on the subject?
True but that is after quite a while. South Korea was mostly authoritarian until 1987. 320000 South Koreans got sent to fight in Vietnam because they had an authoritarian government that was aligned with the US.
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I did start with “true”. Did you notice that?
But that’s a lot of alternate history and no one knows what the situation in 2022 would be if things in 1952 happened differently.
Things were quite shitty in South Korea in the 50s and 60s. It was the poorest country in the world or very close to it.
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I got Vietnam in high school, but it was very US-centric, and actually liberal: the US was super paranoid about communism taking over the world, and we should not have gone, but we did, and then My Lai happened, and then Tet, and then we decided to pack it in. The perspective and aims of the Vietnamese were basically ignored, and that is a blind spot for me.
What’s dishonest?
There’s more to Korea remaining poor for 20 years than the legacy of Japanese occupation and it has a lot to do with the same thing that led them to send 320000 people to fight in a war for the US.
If the US had not fought in Korea (or set up to fight there immediately after WW2) it would have been a Soviet satellite. Poland was in a similar position. The US did not fight in Poland. Czechoslovakia a few years later. Poland a little different because Russia was already there. In South Korea the US and USSR raced to meet in the middle.
Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam is the best book I have read on the war. I don’t remember if or how this specific topic is addressed in that book but my understanding is that basically Ho Chi Minh was begging for support of the allies to make Vietnam a free country and US instead tried to give France back imperial colonies to prevent De Gaulle aligning with the Soviets in the 1950s.
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