You make a compelling case for abandoning Taiwan.
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So you want to go to war with the Russians so 400 guys in northern Virginia can remodel their kitchens? Won’t somebody think of the Raytheon executives?
false dichotomy. those kitchens are going to get remodeled anyway.
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Only thing I’ve really done so far is call out your incredibly Russia friendly narrative of who is responsible for what. No, obviously I would not support a war war against Russia over Ukraine. If the Ukrainian government wants aid, tech and some off the books people to do some shit, I guess I’d be fine with it. But you can just extend your question to actual NATO members, like you wouldn’t support a war war for any of them would you?
So the west precipitated the crisis by, checks notes, supporting self determination and increasing global ties and trade.
Thanks Putin.
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Well, I wouldn’t say I’m being Russia friendly, more US-skeptical. I don’t want to extend a security guarantee to Ukraine because it’s both provocative and not really in the US interests. Countries that are already NATO allies, like Latvia, sort of become a vital US interest exactly because they’ve been extended an alliance. Even though I don’t support the extension of the alliance. Slightly complicated, but consistent, right?
By the way, like seven people have reported my post where I linked to the logan roy “fuck off” video in response to your post. I don’t think that was out of line but if you disagree I’ll take a day (or two, or three, or ten, whatever you decide) ban if you say so.
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Oh lol nah I kind of deserved it
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What does any of this have to do with your willingness to sacrifice Ukranians’ safety and security? It’s like you don’t view them as free people with a right to determine their own allies.
What if the Ukranian people want the US to be involved? It’s not like we’ve forced them to accept the anti-tank missiles we’ve shipped them.
The Ukrainian people have agency.
There’s no scenario where Putin’s Russia leaves Ukraine alone to develop it’s nation and inevitably forge ties with powers that don’t see it’s sovereignty as an insult to their glorious history.
Ukrainian people know this full well, and over the years have made their choices. Sure seems to me they’ve chosen potential conflict with Russia over being willingly subjugated by Russia. It’s rather paternalistic to say it’s the wrong decision when it’s their nation and lives at stake.
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Are people willing to fight a war to preserve their ability to live well with subsidies from the EU? Is Russia a threat to those things? War is not automatically the worst alternative.
If Putin wants something that Ukrainians don’t want him to have, the goal should be to make the price of acquisition high enough to discourage Russia.
Nice to say when you’re a continent and ocean away from Russia.
What is Putin’s goal in a invasion? Take Kyiv and install a puppet government?
The US position wrt small countries bordering countries like Iran, Russia, and China is insanely hypocritical. If we want to make the world a better place we should start by ceasing to meddle in the affairs of the countries in the western hemisphere.
Russia geographically has huge issues around year round ports (there are literally only two options and one of those is literally in Crimea) and a total lack of any terrain feature that blocks anyone from invading Russia. They see these issues as central to their security situation, and since they haven’t gone a century without getting invaded that’s not an unreasonable point of view.
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Yeah. I think hypocrisy is dumb as a charge in general (everyone is a hypocrite get over it) but lol at America trying to tell anyone that they can’t just randomly invade countries because they feel threatened. Your “stewardship” of the world directly resulted in multiple civilian holocausts and the complete and total suppression through overwhelming and brutal state violence of any competing ideology to your greed based planetary death drive. So step down off that high horse please. You look ridiculous.
It would be one thing to say “We want power and we don’t want anyone else to have power so we are using violence or the threat thereof to achieve this aim” That would be honest. But to try and paint America as the good guys and putin/russia as the bad guys in any of this is loltastic in the extreme.
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I didn’t realize that some NATO member countries share a border with Afghanistan and Libya.
This is kind of a whatabout point, though. America doing horrible shit doesn’t imply the West should quietly let Russia gobble up more of Ukraine.
Just don’t try to pretend it’s altruistic. Or that there are good guys and bad guys. You’re fighting for a knife in the mud, fine. But don’t get mad when the other people try to grab the knife.
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Aren’t you English? You don’t get to talk down to Americans either lol. You aren’t wrong that everyone is a hypocrite.
The reality of the global situation is that the era of there being one Superpower playing Team America World Police is over. I fully expect the world to return to a more normal equilibrium with dominant regional powers who basically everyone in the region they dominate has to appease. In the Western hemisphere that will remain the US, but in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia it won’t be.
The Ukrainian people are in a regrettable situation and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with other nations helping them out militarily with military equipment. One nice thing about the modern world is that conventional war is basically obsolete as there’s no track record of anyone conquering anywhere without being forced to engage in wholesale genocide. Weapons are too small and too powerful. If you want to be the government of a place you either have to go to extreme lengths to repress the population or you have to give them what they want (which is usually you leaving). Holding a heavily populated area that doesn’t accept you is a great way to get stuck in some awful counterinsurgency sink hole.
Someone tell me about an outside nation annexing a chunk of territory that didn’t want them successfully in the last century. I’ll wait. I can nearly guarantee what you give me will be a genocide, the locals being basically OK with it, or the invader promptly leaving and letting a local government pay lip service to their dominance… and that last one more often than not doesn’t do a single goddamn thing for the invader on the ground. It’s a fig leaf for losing a COIN campaign.
I don’t think the US is a Good Guy here