Weakness Is Lethal: Why Putin Invaded Ukraine and How the War Must End
understandingwar.org
understandingwar.org
This is wishful thinking.
Talk is cheap and maybe well paid for Nataliya Bugayova, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Frederick W. Kagan. Dying is for the plebs.
And they are not mutually exclusive. Russia is imperial and Russia feels threatened.
Fortunately, I'm only following this from afar, but it's not nice to watch the disaster take its course. I found Mearsheimer's gloomy forecast from 2015 convincing.
I don't know the neocon milieu personally, but I really question their moral integrity. Always propagating escalations and wars that you lose afterwards.OK, if you get paid for it.
Is this something that has been forgotten?
Many find that, per dollar, nothing has been more effective in decades in strengthening nato allies, weakening a totalitarian state that routinely assassinates outside its borders, and stress testing a military supply chain.
The US got a direct proxy war that appears to be breaking Russia and didn't spend the life of a single US soldier. It collapsed Wagner which was a threat to all manner of developing nations. It fixed NATO unity practically overnight. And China got a glimpse of what would happen if they invaded Taiwan and probably set back the plans of Comrade Pooh by a decade or more.
By contrast, the US blew how much in Afghanistan and got not a damn thing?
The same way 180+ other countries approach the situation
People really think the US supports their causes and they got another thing coming with that assumption.
Letting our allies to starve is a sure way to get invaded at some point
Iran has turned "Death to the Americans and Israelis" into a motto. If we stop projecting power, they will certainly attack again. Which may not justify Ukraine, but exiting world politics will just turn us into a target.
we're a target because of our recent approaches of the last 70 years. there are other approaches that other superpowers have taken that have been even more beneficial for them and don't turn them into a target from anyone, or an amorphous "they"
nobody is after "our way of life" as some of our leaders famously said, and if they are they already live in the US
"death to America" is a reaction to American intervention, it isn't arbitrarily created because of our ... alliances or predominant religion or musings or freedoms or anything else. the same for 9/11 which can easily be seen as a double crossing by someone the US courted who became disillusioned with America.
America's "national security" approach is its biggest threat to national security.
... the Capitol events suggest a different history
Tell me you do not understand logistics without saying you do not understand logistics. America cannot be invaded other than by mexico or canada. Do you have any idea what kind of effort it would take to support cross-ocean supply chains for a modern army? A modern army would run out of fuel in two days without constant resupply. And out of food in three.
first step is awareness, the second step is looking at the difference
and the only difference is if they're a well paying client for our defense contractors
the entire rationale of getting into a conflict just so an adversary there doesn't feel emboldened, or a completely different adversary elsewhere doesn't feel emboldened, is completely undermined by all the conflicts of allies that we don't get involved in
geopolitically this rationale disintegrates when a disruption in semiconductor production aren't the biggest threat to the US supply chain
what people need to understand that US support isn't about their cause. People seem to have misinterpreted that and are surprised by the reactions of the US people when they expected affirmation of their cause.
ah. *deleted*