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Comment by DamnYuppie | Hacker News Reader

I am well aware of Ukraine's geography and its consequences for Europe. You all have been fighting over that area quite viciously for the last 1000 years.

Question and I ask this honestly. What if Americans no longer care about global hegemony or the fate of Europe? As an American I am tired of the continual idea that we have to care about what happens in Europe and if anything bad happens there it is egg on our face. What about egg on Europe's face? They choose not to spend money on their defense and keep their end of the NATO agreement. I have no appetite to keep up our end of the NATO treaty in wartime if the other parties couldn't keep up their end in peacetime.

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Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

who rules the World-Island commands the world.

— Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 150

This was a book written by a British about continental Europe. I don't think it holds much value to America. It definitely would impact Europe, Britain, the ME, and North Africa. But honestly it will not have much of an impact on America in terms of our security. There will be impacts to global markets but none that would destroy or really hammer ours. This was written from the view point of European power, which hasn't existed since the end of WW2.

It is the consensus view of the foreign establishment. You can argue for an isolationist foreign policy. We do have a "big beautiful ocean" separating us from the problems of the world. But global powers have a way of competing with each other on a global scale. I'm partial to arguments against global empire because the metropole tends to become just another territory to administer (a kind of home colony). You can see this especially in Britain today. The problems of immigration and border controls at home are hard to separate from foreign policy. Look at a country with extreme border controls like North Korea and see they still need allies to survive. Hence North Korean soldiers dying on the battlefields of Ukraine.

If you want to argue for a renewed commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, I'm with you. Heck, I'm even there for Manifest Destiny (Canada as the 51st state, as Benjamin Franklin would have had it). But the downsides of a multipolar world are legitimate. Ideally we can maintain our global dominance without oppressing/degrading our own and allied populations.

I get what you’re saying, and I appreciate the thoughtful take. It's enjoyable to engage in an actual discussion about this instead of the usual knee-jerk reactions so thank you!

But here’s the thing. Great powers compete globally, but the real question isn’t whether America competes. It’s how, where, and at what cost. If we’re keeping influence by stretching ourselves too thin, ignoring our own problems, and paying Europe’s defense bill forever, then we’re setting ourselves up for failure just like Britain did.

Ukraine matters to Europe, not really to us. Losing Ukraine isn’t a crisis for America, but losing focus on our own borders, economy, and the Pacific definitely is.

I get that multipolarity has risks, but so does trying to be everywhere all the time. If European security is that important, then Europe should handle it. If they won’t, that’s on them.

If we don’t start prioritizing where America actually needs to be strong, we’re going to wake up one day and realize we’ve spent decades managing other people’s problems while letting our own pile up.

I agree with your take. We are stretched too thin and our "allies" have become frenemies. We need to fix our domestic problems or we won't have a country worth preserving. Certainly, at this rate we won't be strong enough to compete with a rising China.

I only point out the foreign policy consensus inherited from the Cold War is still operational among Atlanticists and other Ukraine war hawks. Stripping away the hysteria, we can accept there will be a cost to Russian dominance of Ukraine, if allowed. I expect the foreign policy establishment in State, CIA, and DoD will continue to try to torpedo Trump. But the China hawks are ascendant at the moment. The recent debacle with Zelensky at the WH is maybe the nail in the coffin for overt "Ukraine uber Alles" war hawks. (They say Personnel is policy. Remember that key architects and actors of Atlanticist policy have personal ties to Ukraine. Nuland is second generation Ukrainian-American. The Vindmanns are Ukrainian nationals. Personally, I would not be surprised if Ukraine saboteurs were implicated in the Trump assassination attempt in Butler. They feel, perhaps correctly, that Trump is an existential threat. Doesn't necessarily mean their problems should be our problems.)

I tend to agree that Russia, China, and Iran are our global competitors, that India and Brazil are dark horses, and that transnational Islam (supported by our foreign adversaries) is another wild card. Abandoning the liberal pieties of Pax Americana and retrenching along nationalist sovereignty lines appears to be the way forward with regard to the very real domestic problems you mention. Unconstrained international labor migration is a failure for domestic populations and needs to be largely reversed. Border security and foreign influence need to be addressed. These are civilizational problems as old as civilization itself. The pendulum is swinging back. Some people get it.

I also appreciate the occasional encounter with sensible HN readers who eschew the vitriolic rhetoric and try to argue objectively. Looking at your other recent comments I see you are in a similar boat as I am on HN. Good luck!

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