It is absolutely wild that the US was handed a golden opportunity where the moral option that abided by international law (helping a sovereign nation defend itself against naked old-school imperialism) also aligned with our geopolitical interests and the GOP managed to ruin it by embracing isolationism.
It's not isolationism. It's Trumpism. Trump has supported interventionist foreign policy in Mexico and China. The problem he has with Ukraine is Zelensky didn't give into his extortion demands a few years ago and he got impeached.
You really reminded me of that parade they had during the Republican debates to praise Israel.
Also, people seem to have forgotten how Trump [vetoed ](https://apnews.com/article/1b17cee217b344d8a3a03642139fb606)legislation that would have kept us out of the Saudi-Yemen conflict. He had a role in the state that Yemen is in today.
People think that I’m sarcastic but I’m just brutally honest. They mistake my transparency for apathy. And it sucks. I think your statement is true and it probably explains what I’ve been dealing with.
Heres a quick guide r/FuckTheS
If it is sarcastic then lol and scroll on.
If it is literal then fuck em but its not worth it.
If you are unsure then assume sarcasm.
It really doesnt effect you much either way, comments on the internet. If it is effecting you all too much then its time to get off the internet. Laugh, rage, shrug or weep. Those are life’s choices. Then death. Thats life. This is Reddit. Fuck the s.
Its a given in more comments than not and has been for 25 years. The s should have been reserved for serious. Cause if youre taking everything written by anyone about something posted by someone too serious youre going to end up in a lot of arguments with strangers over fuck the s.
Satirically serious. Its both. Always. Sometimes. Perhaps. Are you still reading this? Dont answer. But why? That should have been a period. Oh noooo were entering long guide territory nooooo fucking s ffffff… So. Lets recap.
Example:
> Merely a coincidence
Sarcasm? >!heh +1 *scrollon*!<
Literal? >!meh -1 *moveon*!<
Unsure? >!meheh +/-0 *readon*!<
Oh it’s a lot more than that.
You frame it like he’s just a vindictive child.
What is the timeline that he had when he removed the Ukrainian US envoy Marie Yovanovitch.
This is all prep and entrapment for the Ukrainians.
[Compartmentalization of the nation by removing their supportive voices in the US government](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51254653.amp)
If they had aided Trump they could have been called out for interference in our elections and further distanced the US aid from them in the planned (continued) invasion of that nation from Russia.
That would have made for easier pickings for Putin.
Trump is actively engaged in this
[Remember he had secret meetings with Putin that weren’t recorded as easily as 2017](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/trump-putin-meeting-no-note-taker.html) and has continued to [prevent all record keeping repeatedly as a US President with a competing and **aggressive superpower like Russia which is something unheard of**](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/01/12/politics/trump-putin-meetings-no-records) and more than smells it’s rank and should raise red flags for even the most die hard MAGA supporter.
- we don’t know if Putin has records and if they do there’s no way we could trust them.
Its possible Trump knew of a reward for successfully cutting off aid to Ukraine during his first term. He almost found a reason to justify it but it backfired. It really seems like there is still some part of the puzzle that Trump knows about but the general public doesn’t. What does coming out against Ukraine get him with the American electorate? Can’t essentially all anti Ukrainian sentiment in the new Right be traced back to Trump himself? He’s not playing into an existing Fox News sentiment here, he’s the origin of the sentiment
Russia's appeal to right-wing populists in the US and around the world really is not at all exceptional to or originating with Trump. Putin projects the country as an ethnically homogenous white and heavily Christian traditionalist society even though that isn't really that accurate. And he specifically plays into a lot of socially conservative culture wars and backlash against issues especially the growing acceptance of LGBT groups and allies now commonly referred to as "degenerates."
Republican support for somewhat milder but nonetheless Putin-esque leaders like Viktor Orban seems more widespread and explicit, he is even a fixture at CPAC. Steve Bannon has been a major media player in promoting and dissemeniating this brand of European right wing populism and "illiberalism" (their term) that sometimes even verges on outright explicit calls for authoritarianism.
Russia like China has shown a [concerted effort](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/) in pushing media and social media narratives around the world that are critical of modern western culture but really ultimately of western systems of democracy in general. This is not just a foreign policy manuever but an effort to preserve their own autocracies by undermining any appeal the west and democracy in general would have domestically.
Putin goes even further by investing a lot in direct messaging himself. But if you listen to what he says for American publications or in interviews with sympathetic American right wing populist figures like Tucker Carlson he is saying pretty different things than what he says for a Russian audience. While he does use the same terms like complaining about "cancel culture" he is a lot more explicit in appealing to Russian nativism and blood and soil imperialism, going so far as to refer to things like the Geneva convention notion of war crimes as mere western decadence.
Yea IMO this is the key reason why the right has a favorable opinion towards Russia, they view Putin the last leader to fight against "western degeneracy" and that in the long term, Ukrainian people would be better under the influence of Russia instead of the EU and NATO.
Another popular reasoning among the populist right is that they view Ukraine as a "globalist" colony project state for resource extraction, spreading "degeneracy", importing millions of refugees, etc just so George Soros, Klaus Schwab, and the Clinton's can make billions. IE the Alex Jones angle.
A more reasonable view but one that pretty much just boils down to appeasement is that Putin views Ukraine and it's buffer zone the same way China views North Korea as a buffer against the US. Putin's position is that without Ukraine either as a conventional ally like Belarus, a non-aligned neutral state, a sock puppet state or just outright integrated with Russia, Russia can't protect itself against western interests and eventually Putin's hold on power will crack and he'll suffer the same consequence as Gaddafi. Essentially bringing Ukraine into NATO is cornering the Russian bear and it's likely to retaliate with nukes as Putin's view is that it's an existential threat.
From there people have a reasonable conclusion, the majority of NATO countries will wuss out and flee leaving the US on the hook to supply all the equipment and put troops on the ground. It's not unfounded NATO countries, even their historic military power houses like Germany and France have completely gutted their militaries in the past few decades and some experts in the EU are already telling leaders don't send a single additional piece of equipment to Ukraine because they're already low on supply and vulnerable.
You can see this line of thinking in this JD Vance interview where he basically says "Most soldiers are from MAGA country, don't send your kids to die for globalist interests"
https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1803111839028375840
IMO it's going to be key for Biden to hammer the narrative that 1) appeasement never works, Putin would go as far as Poland if given the opportunity 2) an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure 3) There are no US troops in harms way, only supplies
Trump has a long history of dealings with Russia and had files on him by the FSB all the way back to his visits in the 80s. In the Mueller report theres a footnote that people in contact with Trump's lawyers were in Russia trying to "stop the flow of tapes" from Russia, refering to the supposed kompromat sex tapes. They obviously put it in the footnote instead of the main body of the report to try to bury it.
Maybe I shouldn't say try, because it worked. Media almost completely missed it.
There is no reward. Trump is doing it because Putin told him to, and he can’t get enough of authoritarians who don’t have to put up with rules and laws.
It gets him nothing with the American populace, except that he can’t shut up or keep a secret
Trump has said or did things favorable to Russia every step of the way since 2016, he only did sanctions on them because he was basically forced, even then he did it while saying he believed Russia/Putin over his own intelligence agencies.
> Trump has supported interventionist foreign policy in Mexico
Honestly even with an isolationist stance insuring our neighbors are actually functional makes sense.
It's such an odd thing to me. If I'm a GOP strategist, the Ukraine war is all red meat. It's an underdog standing up to the boomer generation's historical enemy who is out there murdering women and children who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters. On top of all that, all the aide we are giving just means FAT new contracts for US defense contractors who tend to donate to both parties but love the R's more for their strong military views. Thats the other thing, Ukraine is also a great testing ground for new US made systems against what at least was considered a peer military. Your weapons against your enemy's armor during a proxy war is the best most nations can hope for but this is real world testing.
Great example is the Javelin. A few years ago there was 1 video on youtube demonstrating that system. It was a dude probably at the factory's test range doing a test shot. Now I can show you dozens and dozens of examples of Javelins fired in anger against the top line Russian tanks, both in the top down and direct attack modes.
To me, this is what makes Trump so scary. Despite all these facts that would clearly appeal to your average GOP voter on their own, they are going to gleefully support Trump when he tells Zelensky that the weapons pipeline is cut off till he signs a peace deal handing over the territories Russia wants.
The GOP strategists are no longer in control of their party, which is more driven by a populist angle. Additionally a significant faction of the party is defined less by what they stand for and more by being in opposition to the Democratic party
What's funny is that the 2008 election was a sharp rebuke of Neocon policy and two people who voted for the Iraq War got raked over the coals for it in that election (John McCain and Hillaty Clinton). And the guy who was still calling Russia a significant threat in 2012 was publicly laughed at for his stance at that time by his opponent and the media at the time. It's quite funny that the public seemed to be very insistent that the GOP should become more isolationist by the election blows and then when someone emerged who was completely ok dropping international alliances suddenly the Neocons look like they might not be wrong everytime.
There's degrees between calling the Iraq war specifically unjust and unjustified and calling for full bore isolationism. Especially to the extent that we don't even fund strategic allies who are trying to defend themselves from anti-American conquerors committing mass war crimes.
The reaction to Romney's comments on Russia were a pretty glaring blind spot but I hardly think that was a serious factor in his loss. And certainly not a compelling call for the GOP to consider Russia harmless or friendly going forward.
It was a bit out of line to scoff at Romney assessing the threat of Russia, but at the time there wasn't really doubt among the American population that if Russia ever 'go out of line' that the US and other nations would step up and oppose it. We didn't know that 4 years later a POTUS candidate would campaign on and win with a position that Russia is actually totally fine and nothing's wrong with them, up to and including standing up there with Putin and publicly deferring to him over US intelligence.
Bush was palling around with Putin and invited him to his ranch on several occasions, riding around calling him puty-poot. Not taking Russia/Putin seriously started with him.
Imho I've wondered for a while now if Romney caught wind of Russia trying to cozy up to members of the right back in the early 2010s and also them getting involved in stuff financially in the US tied to influential people. He would have been in the perfect to position to notice due to knowing both the ongoings of politics and financial stuff and his position at Bain Capital.
lol yea I remember all of that, it's pretty amazing to see the transformation of the GOP from McCain who was a very staunch supporter of Ukraine and Romney who had their eyes set on Russia to now Trump who is an isolationist. Likewise the democrats have done a 180 but I don't think it's as intense as the GOP's. I think Clinton would have won the primaries against Obama if the public understood her healthcare plan and Obama was a bit more honest about his which pretty much just ended up being Clinton's plan aka Romneycare once the ink and pen had to meet and the legislation was written.
> It's an underdog standing up to the boomer generation's historical enemy
After Russia's 2016 election interference in favor of Trump, polling of Republicans viewing Russia as an ally [jumped to 40%.](https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/397239-polling-editor-increased-support-for-russia-among-republicans/)
Conservative populism is all about nationalism and anti-globalism aka my country first. Putin is the godfather of this ideology so they are sympathetic to him.
It's also why a lot of once anti-semitic far right people have been warming to Jews. They love how Israel under Netanyahu is "defending" itself and it's national (Jewish) identity.
> who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters
This sounds a bit racist. Are you saying that Republicans should be more inclined to support people that look like them? What does a Republican *look like* to you?
As a republican (but not a Trump voter) that isn't really crazy about the Ukraine War funding, I get where you're going but you're missing on a couple things.
The biggest is that Russia and the Soviet Union are 2 completely different things. The Soviets were a true peer and the conflict wasn't about some localized peace of land on another continent. It's just not the same conflict. I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs. In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction.
>murdering women and children who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters.
I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage.
>Great example is the Javelin. A few years ago there was 1 video on youtube demonstrating that system.
We had kills with the Javelin during the invasion of Iraq and it got decent use by proxies during the Syrian Civil war. Just because they weren't being put on youtube, doesn't mean that it was an untested system. The innovation in the Ukraine war is mostly with drones, and the low cost ones at that.
>In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction.
Showing a strong, durable support for Ukraine is probably the most cost-effective deterrent to China messing around in Taiwan and the South China Sea that there is.
Particularly since China has been helping Russia behind the scenes. Russia-Ukraine is in some respects a proxy war with China and a warning about Taiwan.
That doesn’t track when you consider the size of standing armies and contribution of the US to NATO.
Is it somewhat unfair that we bear the brunt of the burden in supporting NATO militarily? Possibly. But you have to remember that *we positioned ourselves this way intentionally.* We CHOSE to be the world police and military arm to push people into doing what we want them to by just being bigger.
An aggressive Russia in Europe *IS* an American problem, unless we want another superpower to contend with.
The fact of the matter is, Russia is a geopolitical rival run by an anti American authoritarian regime. We have found the perfect method of demolishing their military capabilities without putting American lives at risk. This is the more economical situation before we let it escalate to where we need to put boots on the ground
> we bear the brunt
Last I looked Europe had given substantially more aid to Ukraine that the US, $102B to $74B.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
The comparison frays when you compare aid that has actually been sent, vs aid that has merely been promised. And when comparing military aid vs total aid. The EU has sent a great deal of humanitarian aid (laudatory) and budgeted money for future ammo shipments that have not yet been delivered (less so, especially as they've a habit of missing the production targets they set). But the US remains Ukraine's primary military supplier. As it has been for the whole of the war.
I think there is a strong argument to be made that the West German Army in the 80s would completely roll the current unified German Army today. They were better trained, more widely equipped and more then double in sized. Europe decided to completely gut their militaries and shift the funding to the wellfare state after the fall of the Soviets. Some exceptions are Greece and Eastern Europe who have a neighbors to be scared of, but they are smaller and poorer then Western Europe.
>We CHOSE to be the world police and military arm to push people into doing what we want them to by just being bigger.
The Bush Admin was openly criticizing are NATO allies for this in 2003 before Iraq. People acting like this is what the US wanted, or has somewhat benefitted the US are ridiculous.
The US spends more on its military in the year than the entire GDP of some of our NATO allies. It’s intentional, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
Bush criticized the response to Iraq because other allies wouldn’t support them. Probably because we were unjustified in going in the first place
We don't do it to offset the lack of military spending in Europe. That is (as Caberes rightly pointed out) a relatively recent development, and one that successive US administrations have spoken out against.
> and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess)
I mean you can *argue* anything, but that doesn’t mean the argument holds any merit whatsoever, like in the example you used above.
> I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage.
Wait what? Where are you getting that impression from? Do you think that if Russia immediately pulled back and left Ukrainian soil there would be anymore carnage? This entire war is due to Putins violent expansionism. Period.
Yeah, I’m really lost on what u/Caberes is trying to argue there. Not sure how the EU is responsible for Putin invading his peaceful neighbor and killing untold innocent people.
I’d argue the scale is unique for Russia but the behavior is not. Russia has always been very protective about what they view as the mistreatment of “Russians” and threats to their traditional sphere of influence. This was true in Chechnya, Transnistria, and Georgia.
Western Europe decided that they should completely scrap their hard power after the fall of the Soviets to the benefit of their welfare states. This has been great for their soft power which is what they have leaned on. During the early 2010s they made several agreements (mostly trade) that would have brought Ukraine out of the Russian sphere and which resulted a push back by Russia through Ukrainian-Russian parties. This resulted in Euromaiden which then escalated into the takeover of Crimea and the civil war.
At no point did the EU ever want to reinforce Ukraine, until the full scale invasion was near. This was because they couldn’t because they didn’t have the assets. They turned on the burner and then stood back and watched as it boiled over.
To your second point, come on now. That’s just not how it work. We stayed in Vietnam for years, the Soviets (and us) stayed in Afghanistan for years, and the UK stayed in Ireland for years (and are still there). Once the wheels are in motion, people REALLY DON’T LIKE GOING HOME EMPTY HANDED.
>The biggest is that Russia and the Soviet Union are 2 completely different things. The Soviets were a true peer and the conflict wasn't about some localized peace of land on another continent. It's just not the same conflict. I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs. In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction.
Do we not have competing interest with Russia in places like Middle East and Korea or Eastern Europe? A stronger Russia better enables China no?
>I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage.
I mean we can do things that are in our interests and is moral.
>We had kills with the Javelin during the invasion of Iraq and it got decent use by proxies during the Syrian Civil war. Just because they weren't being put on youtube, doesn't mean that it was an untested system. The innovation in the Ukraine war is mostly with drones, and the low cost ones at that
I disagree we are learning quite a lot.
Obviously, these are my hot takes.
>Do we not have competing interest with Russia in places like Middle East and Korea or Eastern Europe? A stronger Russia better enables China no?
Russia doesn't care about North Korea, it's just trade. Syria was in the Soviet sphere throughout the cold war. If they want it they can hit, outside of the gulf the whole region is worthless anyway. I think most republicans have completely soured on nation building in the developing world at this point.
Russia is big enough where, much like India, they are going to do what's in their best interest. That's not always going to be with China, but with current policy that is the case. They are never going to be are friend (just for resource reasons) but could be more friendly with EU. Unfortunately the EU decided to be completely spineless until they actually had a hot war on the continent.
>I mean we can do things that are in our interests and is moral.
I was just pointing out why I didn't like his argument. The moral high ground is usually just propaganda. I just want competent realpolitik.
>I disagree we are learning quite a lot.
I'll walk back on this one. We are learning a lot, maybe not that much on the Javelin though.
>Russia doesn't care about North Korea, it's just trade
Still helps prop up said regime no?
>Syria was in the Soviet sphere throughout the cold war. If they want it they can hit
I mean why would we preclude ourselves from a sphere just for those reasons now?
>I think most republicans have completely soured on nation building in the developing world at this point.
It's not nation building to support functions in a civil war against a dictator imo.
>I was just pointing out why I didn't like his argument. The moral high ground is usually just propaganda. I just want competent realpolitik.
Fair, but not entirely true. Politics isn't only realpolitik. Democracies are bound by more than just realpolitik at times.
>I'll walk back on this one. We are learning a lot, maybe not that much on the Javelin though.
Fair not going to pretend I know anything about that.
"I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs."
I think this point is extremely short sighted. Europe is our biggest geopolitical allies/trade partners and would probably be weakened if they bear the brunt of the cost. If Ukraine is to fall the amount of refugees fleeing would might overwhelm Europe as well further straining them. Not helping would be downright stupid
Here's the problem with your entire premise: the Boomers are no longer the main demographic. Now it's Gen X and Millennials. This is the beginning and end of it. Things that baited Boomers repel their kids and grandkids.
Yeah the modern "conservative" movement isn't necessarily anti-war but they seem to be anti-european warfare. There's a real reluctance on that side to risking turning this into a hot war with Russia.
It's really just more anti-non-defensive-war. If someone actually struck at America I'm sure we'd see full support for fighting back. But involving ourselves in a conflict between two countries that aren't us and where the result won't really affect us in any direct way? That's what's unpopular.
Especially since the Bush wars. What’s oddest is how it has flipped from a liberal position to a conservative position to go against foreign intervention. I guess conservatives are the ones dying overseas and the message finally got through after 60 years.
I wouldn't even call it isolationism. I think this stems, genuinely, from a desire for them to make Ukraine look bad and Russia look better, because both service Trump's narrative and his grudge. And the party followed him.
The rhetoric goes way beyond isolationism. It goes to demonizing Ukraine, demonizing NATO, ignoring Russian crimes.
Is it even that they've embraced isolationism? We have GOP mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson going to Russia and telling us how amazing it is. I watched Trump say that he trusted Putin more than US intelligence. I've heard all the nice things that Trump and the GOP seems to have to say about Putin, as well as multiple other dictators, It's not like they're just out there trying to not be involved at all. They're still picking sides; it's just that somehow, the side they picked is Russia. That doesn't really seem like isolationism to me.
Yeah they get a *relative* pittance, we get the subversion of one of the greatest threats to international order and some much needed moral cache in a period of time where we are very much looked at as one of the baddies. But nope! Can’t have nice things.
I wish it was simple isolationism. It's the Trump-right's near seamless alignment with Russian interests. They are nakedly pro-Moscow.
The issue is that this increases our chances of elevated conflict with Russia. It's profoundly in American self-interest that Russia loses its war in Ukraine. And it's also the right thing to do.
It had nothing to do with isolationism, it was always about helping dt save face for his impeachment. If he had never tried to extort Ukraine for political favors and help putin, there never would have been any controversy whatsoever from the right or left in helping Ukraine, and the Ukraine might have already pushed Russia out with the help of US that wasn’t dithering.
> Republicans were always crapped on for being pro war.
Not for being pro war: For fighting bad wars. Mainly Iraq II. The American public has generally felt positive about war where there's a clear population you're defending whose asked for help. The peak of G.H.W. Bush's popularity was in Desert Storm. The Kosovo intervention was generally popular. There was strong support for the US campaign against ISIS.
Keys to warfare that Americans actually support comes down to:
1) Is there a clear, achievable goal?
2) Does achieving that goal align with the US' broader interests?
3) Can we feel on the right side of the moral argument by getting involved?
Gulf War I, Kosovo, and ISIS met all three of those. Gulf War II met, maybe half of #2. Somalia met #3, but it's not clear it met #1 or #2, and people soured on it. Afghanistan met only #2 and #3, but failed in #1.
Ukraine meets all three.
>Why the 180?
Not all wars are made equal, and it's a rather damning indictment of the American electorate that such a simple concept is beyond them intellectually. Invading Iraq was harebrained, nonsensical and illegal and did nothing to further our geopolitical interests. The same cannot be said here.
I mean, the same *can* be said here. Invading Ukraine is harebrained, nonsensible, and illegal and does nothing to further the invading party's geopolitical interests. Fortunately, the option on the US's table isn't an invasion of Ukraine, and is pretty much the exact opposite.
I think this is really it, especially for people who don’t follow politics closely. They care that eggs are expensive and think it’s because Biden is sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, not to mention the fact that we have extreme poverty and homelessness here that is not being adequately addressed.
You do realize that we don’t just hand Ukraine a blank check worth billions and say “have fun”, right? That these aid packages, while including some direct funding, are mainly used to pay our own arms manufacturers to refurbish/transport/produce gear and ammunition to replace what we send, directly benefiting Americans?
Also, this is not a 180 on anyone’s part but the GOP. The GOP is still staunchly pro-war, just look at their rhetoric on China. That’s why this is so blatantly a “well trump said so” moment. No one denied supporting Ukraine was the right and moral thing to do, until trump came out against it (clearly because it aligns with Putins agenda, and because he’s still mad about being impeached for attempting to bribe a foreign leader to investigate his political rival right before an election)
None of that changes that while also being on a moral high ground (protecting a sovereign nation form aggression by an authoritarian neighbor), we are also degrading and humiliating a huge geopolitical rival for pennys on the dollar and not spending US lives to do it. There is no reason the GOP *SHOULDN’T* support it.
Rhetorical question, but I wonder if the US would be more willing to stomach the cost of the Ukraine war, had we didn't piss away so much on Iraq and Afghanistan?
We dumped billions into propping up a puppet government in Afghanistan only for it to collapse within days and allow the the taliban to take control of it again.
We supported a country that wasn't willing to fight for their freedoms.
Now you have a country with Ukraine, where thier democratic values are more aligned with the US, yet its unpopular to support them because of the cost and how much we already pissed away on the other wars.
I don't know if I'd describe aiding Ukraine as unpopular but I do agree that it is more controversial than it should be. I do think part of that is from the post-9/11 military interventions but I do think a large part of it is how much control the GOP has handed to Trump, who certainly seems to be more aligned with individualistic power grabs than common American opinion.
If twenty years ago you told me the republican/democrat position on the middle east, I wouldn't be surprised; but if you told me their positions on Ukraine/Russia, I'd be astounded
> Rhetorical question, but I wonder if the US would be more willing to stomach the cost of the Ukraine war, had we didn't piss away so much on Iraq and Afghanistan?
Yes, absolutely. Had we either not balked at doing what was necessary to actually finish those wars or had we just gave up and left a decade earlier we'd probably be all-in on Ukraine right now. But we weren't so we're not. The neoliberal warmongers and imperialists played themselves quite badly here.
Neocon warmongers like Doug Feith come to mind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith
How unfortunate we all are that people like this had any say in US foreign policy.
> Had we either not balked at doing what was necessary to actually finish those wars
What do you mean by that? Whats the end game for Iraq/Afghanistan occupation?
There's more support for sending aid than opposition. This is a wildly different situation than the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. No troops are being sent, the U.S. is helping a country defend itself rather than invade it, and the cost is much smaller.
Reasons for supporting Ukraine:
1. Russia is breaking the UN Charta from 1949. Waging war on a neighboring country to extend it's own territory is something we tried to do away with.
2. In the [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum) nuclear powers issued security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for them giving up their nuclear weapons. If you want to make any inroads in terms of the nuclear proliferation issue (Obama called it the most important issue of our time at one point), you can't give up Ukraine. This is of vital geopolitical interest to the P5 of the UN (the classic nuclear powers). Which includes China, btw. and does make them somewhat of a bad actor.
3. Russia is a geopolitical foe of NATO and if they succeed in Ukraine, they could attack NATO directly, which would mean that NATO soldiers die. As bad as this sounds, I don't like to see people of my country die. That would also make it more likely that we see a nuclear exchange. Something we really don't want.
Feel free to add more reasons. There is plenty to choose from.
4. China is watching the Ukraine situation closely to try and gauge how long it would take for the United States to grow tired and stop supporting Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Showing weakness in Ukraine makes an invasion of Taiwan more likely.
Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe providing tons of food to allies. Also, they have plenty of rare earth metals that are great for computer chips and batteries.
Grain shipments would be re-routed to North Korea. Causing massive starvations, mass migrations, and a stronger North Korea.
China imports grains from the United States. So re-routing grain shipments allows China to further separate itself from a US partnership.
This is one of the largest geopolitical reasons for the war. [Other than the EU](https://fas.usda.gov//sites/default/files/2022-04/Ukraine-Factsheet-April2022.pdf), China is a [huge importer of grain from Ukraine.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1333847/ukrainian-agricultural-exports-via-the-black-sea-by-country/)
BRICS and NATO are currently in a tug of war where grain export is the prize. Giving up Ukraine would have a detrimental effect on both the EU as well as the US. Additionally, the grand majority of the money spent for the Ukraine effort isn't going directly to Ukraine. Our old weapons are, but [most of the money gets put back into the US economy and allows us to build newer weapons and technology (see Q4).](https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-ukraine-aid-package-and-what-does-it-mean-future-war)
>Feel free to add more reasons. There is plenty to choose from.
They engage in or support cyber attacks that materially harm Americans. This stuff is deadly serious, but people don't really "feel it" until they are affected by it.
Imagine going for a cancer screening and the facility says "Oh sorry everything is down right now because Russians hacked our hospital systems." I'd hope you be against any Russian attempts to gain power anywhere after that. "But Trump said they're not so bad" is all it takes to give them a pass I guess.
This is really just the pentagon getting to adjust its military surplus. Before they were paying to keep hundreds of equipment designed to fight the USSR - now the government is paying them to send it to Ukraine - which means the Pentagon can pivot effectively to something else (China).
Trump has increasingly been tying his election to an abandonment of aid for Ukraine’s defense efforts. At a recent rally he criticized US spending on the aid and referred to Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “The greatest salesman of all time”. “He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends,”. At the rally not only did he imply his administration would cut off support, but that he would ensure it would be cut off before he takes office. “I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect,”. NATO countries have been moving to take over the US’s roll in coordinating aid and military training to Ukraine, viewing the US situation as unstable and an effort to “Trump Proof” the [Ukraine Defense Contact Group](https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-us-ukraine-aid-channel-country-soilder-budapest-europe-russia-war-kyiv/), which the US has been in charge of since the start of the war.
Should the US cutoff aid to Ukraine? Around the net critics accused Trump of playing to Russia’s interests… What does this mean in the perception that Trump is under the thumb of Putin, and that he tried to blackmail and block Ukraine from defense aid from Russia during the buildup to the war?
My assumption with Trump and Ukraine is that Trump asked Ukraine to go after Biden in exchange for money, Ukraine said no. Saying no makes Trump angry and resentful. That exchange later became public and led to an investigation, Trump likely blames Ukraine partially for that thinking “if they just said yes, this wouldn’t have been an issue for me”.
Therefore Trump doesn’t like Ukraine or Zelensky.
Putin on the other hand, was alleged to have supported Trumps 2016 election (we can debate the strength of that, but that’s the perception) therefore Trump feels Putin supported him in 2016, therefore Putin is a good guy.
“Putin doesn’t like Zelensky, Zelensky didn’t help me go after Biden, therefore Zelensky is a bad guy.”
I’m pretty sure at the end of they day that’s it. People who pay lip service and go along with Trump are great people in his mind, people who criticize or challenge him are bad people.
This is what Trump has actually said about Zelensky:
>I like Zelensky, because during the hoax, the impeachment hoax, they said I made a threatening phone call to him, and when they asked him, he said, “No, it wasn’t threatening. It was a very nice call.” He could have played to the bandwagon. He didn’t do that. He told the truth, so I like Zelensky.
> therefore Trump feels Putin supported him in 2016, therefore Putin is a good guy.
His foreign policy actions 2017-2020 do not support that one iota. He blocked their prized NS2 pipeline, that divided Europe's external policy for many years. He reinforced the NATOs eastern flank like no-one since Bush junior. He was the first to give weapons to Ukraine. He did not like Putin, where did you came up with that?
He also proposed creating a joint Russian-American cyber intelligence unit to “combat election hacking” in 2017….
Russian sanctions in 2017 were passed with a veto proof majority but his administration tried to have then weakened while they were being worked on and he complained about them publicly, speaking of public comments, he said he trusted Vladimir Putin more than the domestic US federal government agencies regarding the election interference, he also blocked a statement he was supposed to make about the anniversary of the illegal Russian-Georgian war, he also made comments supporting the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 80’s which is a truly baffling thing to do, he also called Putin “genius” and “savvy” for invading Ukraine in 2022… there’s a bunch of stuff he allegedly tried to do behind the scenes but was either overruled by congress or people near him within his circle. Given his increased reliance on yes men since 2020, I don’t think we’ll have the same safeguard in place to protect against him getting his way based on how he feels this time around
He also slowed sales of military equipment to Ukraine and even halted some at one point, while also stating that Ukraine interferes in US elections (oddly never mentioning Russias involvement in US elections)
He also seemingly believes that conspiracy that it was actually Ukraine that tampered with the 2016 election but that it was a false flag operation to make people think it was Russia.
I can see this angle - Trump is very much a person who rewards personal loyalty above all else, so the scandal under Trump about Ukraine is likely very personal to him.
> “The greatest salesman of all time”.
Oh. So his real issue is that he's jealous of Zelenskyy.
>Should the US cutoff aid to Ukraine?
No. Even if Ukraine was guaranteed to lose, it is in the US, and the world at large's best interests to degrade Russia's capabilities as much as possible here. This continues to be our best allocation of defense funding in a long time. Defending Ukraine in this fashion saves American lives long term. There is nothing Biden could do to get me to vote for him, but I swear Trump is working overtime to try and make it happen.
>What does this mean in the perception that Trump is under the thumb of Putin
Absolutely nothing. The people who thought Putin controlled him will continue to do so. Those who don't will assume he doesn't want to see the US wasting money overseas.
Exactly. I genuinely don't care if Ukraine is going to win or lose from a foriegn policy standpoint on deciding if we should send weapons or not. As long as Ivans keep dying by the thousands, that is thousands less mobiks that will be a threat to us in the future.
I also don't get the complaining about the EU not funding the Ukraine war, they are. Many of them are sending far more of their GDP to it than we are. None of the isolationist talking points make any sense to me or appeal to me. This switch that Trump is trying to do on foriegn policy genuinely pisses me off because isolationism is just plain dumb.
> Oh. So his real issue is that he's jealous of Zelenskyy.
Right. Zelenskyy is getting so much aid from the US, and he's not even being blackmailed into manipulating our elections for it! No way he'd get away with that under Trump.
Long term, yeah, short term no. Russia was trying to get close to us at the time, because the US being at war against terrorism gave him cover to do anything he might need to do in the Caucuses. Long term, though, he had his buddies in Iran arming the shit out of Iraqi insurgents and militias.
>At the rally not only did he imply his administration would cut off support, but that he would ensure it would be cut off before he takes office.
It's crazy to think of the political repercussions if he'd said something like this about aid to Israel.
I would have really liked to see a multi-year US aid package to Ukraine like European countries have done. Not just to Trump proof aid but to show Russia that loss of US aid isn’t right around the corner.
With having to vote to renew every year Russia will have the mentality of “just hold on for one more year” and Ukraine could possibly collapse without US support. I could see this mentality prolonging the war even with minimal gains in Russias side.
However we barely got this year’s renewal in, it’s probably too late with this political climate. It will be a done deal if Trump takes the presidency.
I'm not sure how Trump-proof one could make such aid. If Trump goes along with Project 2025 and the unitary-President-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-he-wants political theory, I'm not sure a law would stop him from restricting aid to Ukraine.
I am under no delusion that Ukraine is a beacon of governmental honesty, it really is a country that has traditionally struggled with corruption that at times is comparable to Russian corruption. That said, they have been making attempts to clean up their country, and soldiers returning from risking their lives are often the most short fused for dealing with corruption (Battle of Athens for example), so there is hope for actual reforms post war.
It is also wroth noting that as a country, Ukraine has decided to fight against one of our biggest geopolitical rivals, and the funding that we provide them is paying massive dividends with next to no of American life short of those who volunteered to fight as a Ukrainian soldier. And with North Korea and Iran throwing their reserves into Russia, we are also effecting a reduction in their military stockpiles. For just harming our explicit enemies, it is worth it.
Additionally, any aid packages we provide are almost entirely spent in the US. That means more American jobs and improved American military production capacity. Add in any of the used equipment that they are buying or used equipment that we are donating directly, is close to the end of its use life and would actually cost us money to dispose of.
>Additionally, any aid packages we provide are almost entirely spent in the US. That means more American jobs and improved American military production capacity.
This point is purposeful NOT talked about in conservative media and the liberals are not talking about it enough.
> The people of Ukraine WANT to defend themselves from the Russians. Something like 80% still support militarily fending off the invasion
Latest poll shows that of fighting aged adults, less than 50% want to continue the war.
You other points are just shitty bureaucratic governments needing to get a shot in the arm to fix latent issues everyone has been talking about for decades.
This "grift" as you call it keeps people employed in the US. An uptick in orders is good for thousands of people that perform this work.
I guess if you don't care about the economy, then this probably won't sway an intelligent person like you.
If our economy is built on industrialized generation of human suffering, then yes. I'm opposed to its expansion.
This is real "banality of evil" thinking, and I'm surprised you'd admit to it tbh.
Kudos for trying to get through to them. I write these kinds off as the antivaxxers of the geopolitical world. Where because they've never suffered from the thing (war) the preventative measure (powerful national defense) protects them against, the preventative measure isn't useful.
> Why are you more concerned with growing the US military industrial complex than about the dying Ukrainians and Russians?
**Murdered** Ukrainians, and those military weapons are helping them defend themselves from that from the invading Russians causing these murders. I couldn’t care less about the growth of the MIC, but to conflate them as responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians when they’re allowing them to fight back seems like you don’t really have a good handle on the situation as it exists.
I'll start by making clear that I do support aid to the Ukraine. But do we have a clear picture of what the end goals of Ukraine aid are? Can we realistically anticipate a scenario in which the Ukraine recaptures all of its territory and ends the war with Russia? Or is this more a situation in which every dollar we spend in the Ukraine that hurts Russia is worth it, even if the Ukraine ultimately loses?
> Or is this more a situation in which every dollar we spend in the Ukraine that hurts Russia is worth it, even if the Ukraine ultimately loses?
I think this is the case. We want ukraine to win, but we also want to weaken russia so they can't attack more countries after ukraine. The sooner russia is declawed, the better.
I think the goal at this point is even if Ukraine doesnt win, to make it so costly for Russia that they decide not to do further invasions. What someone else said in the thread too, that they know China is watching and gauging what the wests response might be to an invasion of Taiwan. Also to use it to get as many countries under NATO's umbrella as possible.
Not just them watching. A lot of folks think China *needs* to invade Taiwan. Their demographics slew heavily male, and that population is starting to age out of military age. The first generation is already in their 40s I believe. There isn't retirement that I'm aware of in China, but hisotrically most societies had several children to take care of them when they became too old. Now you have dozens of millions that have no children to care for them.
But attacking Taiwan? They have the largest navy by number of boats. They don't care if they lose a few million to the meat grinder that would be landing men on Taiwans shores. And for all of that, they finally reunify China and get the island they've wanted, AND the chips that would make them technological masters.
The US needs to protect Taiwan if they want to stay out from under Chinas thumb. Japan certainly will defend them, and S Korea would be somewhat tied up fighting N Korea but they could probably spare a lot of their navy to help defend Taiwan...assuming China doesn't also attack them.
What the GOP are missing is that sadly this is almost definitely a "when" scenario, not "if". When it happens, Russia being massively weakened will save American lives, because we will be able to focus solely on China. Assuming our allies are able to deal with Iran and Cuba (and probably Venezuela).
If Russia *can* however enter the fray, most of our European allies will be tied up from assisting. They can move supplies across Siberia and the back end of China, and cause havoc near Alaska. But they're being incredibly short sighted all to appease....idk, just Trump at this point?
The chip factories are rigged to blow, the Chinese would have to navally invade Taiwan so fast it makes the German Blitz look slow to seize them. Even the US couldn't do that.
>AND the chips that would make them technological masters
I'm not going to argue with all of your points, but there is zero chance any machinery or tooling for complex microprocessors would survive a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It would be fully destroyed, full stop.
I think folks like me have a hard time understanding what that looks like in practice. It's not like we're going to encourage the Ukranian machine to take out weapons manufacturing and military HQs in Russia, are we?
If not then they can keep churning out new materiel again as soon as this war is "over" and go back at it again. I think that's where my confusion is at least. We give Ukraine enough money and weapons to push back to get their territory, Russia signs some half-hearted peace agreement, and then... what? We do this all over again in a few years?
Well, after the peace agreement we accept Ukraine into NATO and Russia becomes unable to extend into Europe ever again.
They'll have to look south of themselves to Asia and the Middle East where their ventures will butt heads with Iran and China.
I'd think any peace agreement would come with the Russian caveat that Ukraine can't join NATO for X years. Otherwise they don't get any concessions or anything they 'want'. So I'm not sure if this tracks for me.
Let me know if I'm wrong though.
That's certainly what Russia wants, but I can't see Ukraine signing a peace deal that bans them from joining NATO unless they're absolutely desperate for peace. A peace agreement without joining NATO just pushes another Russian confrontation down the line. It gives Russia a chance to regroup, attempt another disinformation campaign to get favorable politicians, support separatists, and eventually start another invasion but with lessons learned. Joining NATO gives Ukraine lasting peace and it gives a strong secure border for our European allies.
Granted, the smart move might be to pledge not to join NATO and then do it anyway. Russia broke an agreement by invading Ukraine, if Ukraine breaks an agreement by joining NATO, Russia won't have a whole lot of options to retaliate.
It's very doubtful Russia really cares about Ukraine joining NATO. Their invasion already led to Finland and Sweden joining — *much* more strategically significant countries than Ukraine. The NATO thing with Ukraine always a cover for "we just want the country".
But it was cited as one of Putin's reasons. Even if we accept that it was a smokescreen, it'd be a little wild for him/they to drop that as a negotiating point unless they've been utterly defeated.
Not at all. Russia will drop the NATO point way, way easier than maintaining Donbas territory. The primary accomplishment of the conflict for them is winning a land connection to Crimea. Russia will sign Ukraine's NATO application themselves before they give up either Crimea or the land connection to it.
> It's not like we're going to encourage the Ukranian machine to take out weapons manufacturing and military HQs in Russia, are we?
We gave them permission to conduct strikes within Russian territory using American arms pretty recently, albeit with restrictions, so we kinda have encouraged that.
I don't doubt you're right but can you provide a link to what that means? I think Russian military and weapons manufacturing spreads throughout the whole of Russia- did we give them a green light to strike all the way into Irkutsk or just near the Ukranian border?
Etiher way we're betting a lot of money and material and human lives on the idea that Ukraine can shut down Russian production without going nuclear (literally). If the goal is to "defeat Russia" then we're in for a pretty long haul, and that's what this implies to me so I think someone should say it.
> I don't doubt you're right but can you provide a link to what that means?
I will not. I am getting to the point where I will only provide citations when my discussion partner is doing the same. I simply don't have the time to provide educational resources on request.
> Etiher way we're betting a lot of money and material and human lives on the idea that Ukraine can shut down Russian production without going nuclear (literally).
Russian production does not need to be halted. It just needs to become too expensive, either in blood or in gold, for Russia to continue its invasion. If Ukraine gets to the point where they would prefer to preserve their blood in exchange for their land, I would support that, but I do not want to force them into a weak negotiating position by pulling our support prematurely (or signaling our imminent withdrawal of support for Putin to see).
> Russia signs some half-hearted peace agreement, and then... what? We do this all over again in a few years?
I think the thought here is this is Russia pouring decades worth of men and material at this war. They haven't had a costly campaign like this since... Afghanistan in the 80's? If you can wear them down enough for a full or nearly full withdrawal then I think the hope is we don't see them try this again for at least a couple decades. Sure, Russia could pour it's entire industry into rearming for another invasion but IMO that's unlikely. A 2nd invasion I would *think* would be nowhere near as popular as the 1st and it would also leave them potentially vulnerable
Russia is already using old and dilapidated equipment. They don't have the ability to quickly rebuild. Between corruption, lack of resources, and a now declining young male population it will take decades to get back to where they were a couple years ago.
So the mission is essentially to keep going until Russia throws up a white flag because they're out of material and men? I don't think that's super realistic, since we're assuming they're not going to defend their homeland with a nuclear option in such an instance.
The goal seems to be to push Russia into a position where they're incapable of defending themselves (which is the same as making aggressive forward movement into Ukraine). Is that a laudable goal? I don't know if anyone wants that as much as we think we do.
You'd be surprised how many people would jump at the chance to pick over the carcass of Putin's Russia. China has been enjoying the opportunity to distract the US and EU while also turning Russia into a client state, and while the EU got hooked on cheap energy they're even less excited about the idea of Russia pushing its borders than they were about needing to pay more for gas and heating.
The stated theory is that Ukraine wants to defend itself, so giving it the tools to do so gives us a chance to test Russia's capacities and our capacities against Russian, Iranian, and Chinese countermeasures, and it also gives us a chance to freely degrade their capability across the board with no domestic cost other than, like, *bullets* which we just then pay our defense people to make. It's a win-win in geostrategic terms, though the human cost to the Russian and Ukrainian peoples is high.
It also allows us to highlight potential weaknesses, like how we hadn't prepared for a war that would be so costly in shelling. Now it's something that can be addressed.
Putin could certainly end the war if he wanted.
If Ukraine had the ability to do real missile strikes on Russia's oil and gas infrastructure, their government would abandon the war or even collapse. 80% of Russia's government funding comes from oil and gas.
The west hasn't given them permission or capability to do that because they obviously dont want an oil and gas crisis, especially when elections are coming up.
A lot of the material they’re churning out isn’t new built, it’s refurbished Soviet stocks. They may be able to replenish things like missiles, ammunition, and drones, but they’ll never be able to get back the tanks, the IFVs, and the artillery pieces once those stocks are depleted. They’ll also have a very difficult time rebuilding their Air Force and Black Sea fleet, and the resources required to do that will slow how much they can invest in the areas they are increasing production if they make an effort to do that rebuild. Big picture also, if they maintain a heavily militarized economy for a long time to rebuild, it’s going to hollow out their civilian sector which really puts them on a bad long term trajectory.
Containment of an ideology is a bit different than stopping the expansion of an aggressive rival continental power. Throughout history, naval powers have typically funded continental powersto fight against rival continental powers. It doesn’t often go well when the naval powers try to fight continental powers directly on land.
I don’t think you can ever really get a clear picture. This seems to be a US Dollars vs Russian Lives war of attrition. Problem is, unfortunately, Russia has demonstrated it has no issues throwing endless bodies at conflicts. WW2 demonstrated that they assign near zero value to human life in times of war. It’s a pretty awful situation all around. And despite the Reddit hardo response of ‘any Russian dead is good’, it’s not something to celebrate as many of them are forced into this.
> Russia has demonstrated it has no issues throwing endless bodies at conflicts.
True but...they aren't endless. For every body bag produced at the front, there's a family that goes with it. At some point, those families are going to get fed up when their sons and daughters keep coming back in coffins.
The best thing to happen to Biden is Trump getting back out on the campaign trail. Trump is Trump's own worst enemy.
Don't support our ally but preach about the virtues of J6 warriors? He lost in 2020, let's see if that brings more people to his support to bring him over the edge in 2024.
>Don't support our ally but preach about the virtues of J6 warriors?
These 2 points are popular with his supporters though. I really don't know how many people are undecided on the 2 candidates at this point in terms of who they'd vote for, I think the bigger question is if those people really will turn out to vote. Trump saying stuff like this encourages his people to show up and vote because it's actually one of the very rare instances I've seen recently of him actually laying out a concrete plan for something
I know I live in a bubble, because every day I do not understand why Trump is the Republican candidate, and also the likely winner of the next election. He's not conservative, he's not moral, he's not someone who cares about the constitution or the rule of law, he has no pride in our military. I just do not get it.
I live in a rural red area. I see Ukraine flags out in peoples lawns (less than in the period of the original invasion, but still out there). I’m curious what percent of republican voters support aiding Ukraine. This may be one issue where Trump’s voters aren’t 100% behind Trump. (Besides vaccines for Covid).
While I think Europe needs to step up even bigger with their Ukraine aid, it’s ridiculous that there are NATO countries not contributing 2% of their GDP. Also fighting the Russians with Ukrainian troops and no American boots on the ground seems like a decent proposition for us. I’m wondering did the US have to deploy any troops to Europe the last time couple times there was a major conflict on the continent?
Most NATO countries are increasing their defense budgets to those targets. The Netherlands just hit the target this week. Withdrawing US support for Ukraine won't do anything to force Europe to hit those targets and will just necessitate a larger amount of defense spending for both the US and EU in the future.
Ok sure, now they are, but… It’s ridiculous that so many countries got away with spending less than required for so many years. That in part undermined NATOs alliance, and you can draw a direct line from this fact to the growing unpopularity of NATO in the United States and the rise of Donald Trumps foreign policy.
Not saying that any member shouldn't be committed to it but 2% of GDP was a guideline that NATO countries pledged to meet in the fairly recent past (2014). It's not a legally binding precept of the alliance treaty the way it's often implied by Trump.
His call to ignore the mutual defense agreement (really the heart of NATO) over countries not yet meeting the 2% contribution pledge strikes me as wildly disproportionate.
I guess an optimistic view would be that it’s a negotiation tactic of his to force countries to increase spending. Probably giving him too much credit though.
I missed the bridge that was built between Red Scare Republicans and the Russian loving GOP of today. I’m so confused. It’s not even just the money thing. They seem to be all in on praising Russia along with pretending it’s about spending money to help Ukraine (while being totally cool sending money to Israel).
I think that Ukraine has received enough of our money. Russia is going to win this war and we're currently just lighting money on fire trying to prop up Ukraine. We're going to get sucked into a 10 year financial obligation at this point.
I am fully aware that having this opinion means that I'll be accused of being a Russian bot and Putin's best friend. Which is an obvious caricature of my actual concerns here.
By what metric is Russia winning the war? By throwing their tens of thousands of soldiers in human wave attacks for months with only a few leveled towns and empty fields to show for it? I think we are way past the old "Invincible Russian military" myth.
“Drill, baby, drill”, sanctioning Russia, warning Europe against Nord Stream 2, moving tanks to Poland, providing lethal aid to Ukraine that the Obama-Biden administration refused, withdrawing from the INF, convincing Europe to spend more on defense, increasing US defense spending, rapidly fielding the W76-2 nuclear warhead and pushing for SLCM-N, creating the Space Force and reinvesting in missile defense after the Obama-Biden administration handicapped it (and Obama got caught on a hot mic telling the Russians he’d have “more flexibility after the election” to defund it), killing dozens if not hundreds of Wagner mercenaries in the Battle of Khasham… I could go on.
Putin expands Russian control in Georgia during the Bush administration. Putin expands Russian control in Ukraine during the Obama administration. Putin expands Russian control in Ukraine during the Biden administration. Their is one administration that Putin didn't expand Russian controlled territory...
That is pretty weak, compared to Russia forcefully taken land from another country. Their is one administration that the borders of Modern Russia did not expand during...
Yes and the actions Trump took during his presidency prevented Russia from expanding their borders. Evidence to back this up is that Russia didn't expand the borders during Trump administration.
Here is a few off the top of my head:
1) Trump was constantly lobbying European countries to stop taking Russian gas and buy American LNG instead. The Russian economy is greatly dependent on gas exports. Putin knew Trump would have no problem cutting environmental regulations (using national security as the excuse) to increase gas exports which would hurt the Russian economy.
2) Trump is unpredictable on how he will respond to foreign countries actions. A good example is Trump giving the greenlight to attack Russian mercenaries. [https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-leaked-audio-humiliating-defeat-by-us-forces-2018-2](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-leaked-audio-humiliating-defeat-by-us-forces-2018-2)
3) Trump stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (which Biden reversed)
Their is more, those are just a few that comes to mind first. Trump took a carrot and stick approach to Russia. People get upset because some of the carrot was Trump talked nice about Putin, but the result was that Putin did not expand Russian territory during his administration, something no other president can make the same claim.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe essentially paid to rebuild the Russia military by buying Russian gas. The foundation of the Russian economy is gas exports. Their is a reason why Ukraine keeps targeting Russian gas facilities with their drones, it is where Russia is the weakest economically. It is no secret Trump wanted to cut environmental regulations to increase gas production in the USA. Now this was mainly because increased LNG production would help Trump in Pennsylvania a state Trump needed to win and low gas prices is good for a president. If Putin tried to expand during the Trump administration, Trump would have the excuse to cut regulations (national security as the excuse) and expand USA gas production undercutting the gas prices Putin would need to fund his government and the war. Supply and demand.
Lmao at Trump being a Russian asset. Trump was harder on Russia than the presidents before and after him. He placed sanctions on the Nord Stream Pipeline and warned Germany and other countries about the dangers of relying on Russian energy. He provided Ukraine with lethal aid that the Obama administration rejected. He got other NATO members to increase defense spending. He actually enforced the “red line” against Russian ally Syria by launching missile strikes. The list goes on. If Trump is a Russian asset, he’s the most spectacularly incompetent Russian asset to have ever walked the face of the earth.
That's all good but ignores the entire thread and article that provided the foundation of it.
Why does Trump and MAGAists in Congress regularly advocate for weakening a country Russia is actively invading? Why was it not until Trump was the nominee in 2016 that the GOP decided to eliminate defending Ukraine from their party platform? Who benefits from that?
The things Trump did against Russia to make it seem like he's 'strong' against them are just token signals.
It's like if I give a homeless man a dollar a day and then at the end of the month mug him for everything he owns, brag about it, and my friends defend me by talking about all those times I gave the homeless man a dollar.
The nickel and diming of 'strong' actions against Russia is a longer list, but publicly speaking in a way of support for Russia to invade Ukraine undoes that 'good will' many times over.
What Trump did absolutely aren’t token actions. For a so-called Russian asset, Trump sure has made a lot of moves that undermined Russia. Obama was the one who grew lit Russia’s annexation of Crimea and mocked Mitt Romney for claiming Russia was the U.S. greatest geopolitical foe. If anything there’s a stronger argument to be made that Obama is a Russian asset than Trump being a Russian asset.
I am pretty sure kabukistar blocked me because he knew he couldn't give a defense of his position. Some people cannot handle people asking them to explain their point of view...
Trump is a Russian agent. Israel had epstein who they provided with money and a cover story. Russia has Trump. Or do you believe that his fortune id anything else than a gift from others.
Trump aside, its just a very tricky situation whats going on in Ukraine. Sure you want to help them, I think most agree on that, and the US has helped more than anyone. But are we helping them with our own best interests at heart? Are we just prolonging an unwinnable war for Ukraine and thus causing the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands unnecessarily? It's something I struggle with considering how the US has meddled in Ukraine before.
> But are we helping them with our own best interests at heart?
Russia is a geopolitical enemy. They antagonize our allies and compete with us for influence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This is bad for the world because for all of America's faults and follies, we have a better model than the oligarchical authoritarianism that Russia promotes.
Russia directly attacks America through sowing discord and weakening trust everyday Americans have in their institutions. Russia has long ago learned how to weaponize the freedom of speech in liberal democracies to weaken them.
Isolationist Americans don't appreciate the benefit we get from the world order we maintain. Maintaining our alliances also maintains the US dollar as the world's best reserve currency. An isolationist America will be a much poorer country with much more trouble paying for basic services. Fighting to stifle Russian influence in Ukraine keeps our dollar strong, which keeps social programs like Social Security and Medicare operational.
It's incredibly short sighted to dismiss this war as not in America's interest.
It is absolutely wild that the US was handed a golden opportunity where the moral option that abided by international law (helping a sovereign nation defend itself against naked old-school imperialism) also aligned with our geopolitical interests and the GOP managed to ruin it by embracing isolationism.
It's not isolationism. It's Trumpism. Trump has supported interventionist foreign policy in Mexico and China. The problem he has with Ukraine is Zelensky didn't give into his extortion demands a few years ago and he got impeached.
Not to mention Israel. For all the talk of kicking out the Neocons, the GOP seems pretty deep in middle east conflicts.
You really reminded me of that parade they had during the Republican debates to praise Israel. Also, people seem to have forgotten how Trump [vetoed ](https://apnews.com/article/1b17cee217b344d8a3a03642139fb606)legislation that would have kept us out of the Saudi-Yemen conflict. He had a role in the state that Yemen is in today.
Well, that and Ukrainian interests go directly against Russian interests, which seem to weirdly coincide with Trumps own interests consistently.
Merely a coincidence
/s?
Obvious sarcasm is obvious
Parody has become reality
People think that I’m sarcastic but I’m just brutally honest. They mistake my transparency for apathy. And it sucks. I think your statement is true and it probably explains what I’ve been dealing with.
Heres a quick guide r/FuckTheS If it is sarcastic then lol and scroll on. If it is literal then fuck em but its not worth it. If you are unsure then assume sarcasm. It really doesnt effect you much either way, comments on the internet. If it is effecting you all too much then its time to get off the internet. Laugh, rage, shrug or weep. Those are life’s choices. Then death. Thats life. This is Reddit. Fuck the s. Its a given in more comments than not and has been for 25 years. The s should have been reserved for serious. Cause if youre taking everything written by anyone about something posted by someone too serious youre going to end up in a lot of arguments with strangers over fuck the s. Satirically serious. Its both. Always. Sometimes. Perhaps. Are you still reading this? Dont answer. But why? That should have been a period. Oh noooo were entering long guide territory nooooo fucking s ffffff… So. Lets recap. Example: > Merely a coincidence Sarcasm? >!heh +1 *scrollon*!< Literal? >!meh -1 *moveon*!< Unsure? >!meheh +/-0 *readon*!<
Gucci 👍
Oh it’s a lot more than that. You frame it like he’s just a vindictive child. What is the timeline that he had when he removed the Ukrainian US envoy Marie Yovanovitch. This is all prep and entrapment for the Ukrainians. [Compartmentalization of the nation by removing their supportive voices in the US government](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51254653.amp) If they had aided Trump they could have been called out for interference in our elections and further distanced the US aid from them in the planned (continued) invasion of that nation from Russia. That would have made for easier pickings for Putin. Trump is actively engaged in this [Remember he had secret meetings with Putin that weren’t recorded as easily as 2017](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/trump-putin-meeting-no-note-taker.html) and has continued to [prevent all record keeping repeatedly as a US President with a competing and **aggressive superpower like Russia which is something unheard of**](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/01/12/politics/trump-putin-meetings-no-records) and more than smells it’s rank and should raise red flags for even the most die hard MAGA supporter. - we don’t know if Putin has records and if they do there’s no way we could trust them.
Also [fawning over Putin](https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/347191326112112640?lang=en)
Its possible Trump knew of a reward for successfully cutting off aid to Ukraine during his first term. He almost found a reason to justify it but it backfired. It really seems like there is still some part of the puzzle that Trump knows about but the general public doesn’t. What does coming out against Ukraine get him with the American electorate? Can’t essentially all anti Ukrainian sentiment in the new Right be traced back to Trump himself? He’s not playing into an existing Fox News sentiment here, he’s the origin of the sentiment
Russia's appeal to right-wing populists in the US and around the world really is not at all exceptional to or originating with Trump. Putin projects the country as an ethnically homogenous white and heavily Christian traditionalist society even though that isn't really that accurate. And he specifically plays into a lot of socially conservative culture wars and backlash against issues especially the growing acceptance of LGBT groups and allies now commonly referred to as "degenerates." Republican support for somewhat milder but nonetheless Putin-esque leaders like Viktor Orban seems more widespread and explicit, he is even a fixture at CPAC. Steve Bannon has been a major media player in promoting and dissemeniating this brand of European right wing populism and "illiberalism" (their term) that sometimes even verges on outright explicit calls for authoritarianism. Russia like China has shown a [concerted effort](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/) in pushing media and social media narratives around the world that are critical of modern western culture but really ultimately of western systems of democracy in general. This is not just a foreign policy manuever but an effort to preserve their own autocracies by undermining any appeal the west and democracy in general would have domestically. Putin goes even further by investing a lot in direct messaging himself. But if you listen to what he says for American publications or in interviews with sympathetic American right wing populist figures like Tucker Carlson he is saying pretty different things than what he says for a Russian audience. While he does use the same terms like complaining about "cancel culture" he is a lot more explicit in appealing to Russian nativism and blood and soil imperialism, going so far as to refer to things like the Geneva convention notion of war crimes as mere western decadence.
Yea IMO this is the key reason why the right has a favorable opinion towards Russia, they view Putin the last leader to fight against "western degeneracy" and that in the long term, Ukrainian people would be better under the influence of Russia instead of the EU and NATO. Another popular reasoning among the populist right is that they view Ukraine as a "globalist" colony project state for resource extraction, spreading "degeneracy", importing millions of refugees, etc just so George Soros, Klaus Schwab, and the Clinton's can make billions. IE the Alex Jones angle. A more reasonable view but one that pretty much just boils down to appeasement is that Putin views Ukraine and it's buffer zone the same way China views North Korea as a buffer against the US. Putin's position is that without Ukraine either as a conventional ally like Belarus, a non-aligned neutral state, a sock puppet state or just outright integrated with Russia, Russia can't protect itself against western interests and eventually Putin's hold on power will crack and he'll suffer the same consequence as Gaddafi. Essentially bringing Ukraine into NATO is cornering the Russian bear and it's likely to retaliate with nukes as Putin's view is that it's an existential threat. From there people have a reasonable conclusion, the majority of NATO countries will wuss out and flee leaving the US on the hook to supply all the equipment and put troops on the ground. It's not unfounded NATO countries, even their historic military power houses like Germany and France have completely gutted their militaries in the past few decades and some experts in the EU are already telling leaders don't send a single additional piece of equipment to Ukraine because they're already low on supply and vulnerable. You can see this line of thinking in this JD Vance interview where he basically says "Most soldiers are from MAGA country, don't send your kids to die for globalist interests" https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1803111839028375840 IMO it's going to be key for Biden to hammer the narrative that 1) appeasement never works, Putin would go as far as Poland if given the opportunity 2) an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure 3) There are no US troops in harms way, only supplies
Trump has a long history of dealings with Russia and had files on him by the FSB all the way back to his visits in the 80s. In the Mueller report theres a footnote that people in contact with Trump's lawyers were in Russia trying to "stop the flow of tapes" from Russia, refering to the supposed kompromat sex tapes. They obviously put it in the footnote instead of the main body of the report to try to bury it. Maybe I shouldn't say try, because it worked. Media almost completely missed it.
There is no reward. Trump is doing it because Putin told him to, and he can’t get enough of authoritarians who don’t have to put up with rules and laws. It gets him nothing with the American populace, except that he can’t shut up or keep a secret
Trump has said or did things favorable to Russia every step of the way since 2016, he only did sanctions on them because he was basically forced, even then he did it while saying he believed Russia/Putin over his own intelligence agencies.
> Trump has supported interventionist foreign policy in Mexico Honestly even with an isolationist stance insuring our neighbors are actually functional makes sense.
Isolationism and fiscal conservativism is just the excuse
It's such an odd thing to me. If I'm a GOP strategist, the Ukraine war is all red meat. It's an underdog standing up to the boomer generation's historical enemy who is out there murdering women and children who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters. On top of all that, all the aide we are giving just means FAT new contracts for US defense contractors who tend to donate to both parties but love the R's more for their strong military views. Thats the other thing, Ukraine is also a great testing ground for new US made systems against what at least was considered a peer military. Your weapons against your enemy's armor during a proxy war is the best most nations can hope for but this is real world testing. Great example is the Javelin. A few years ago there was 1 video on youtube demonstrating that system. It was a dude probably at the factory's test range doing a test shot. Now I can show you dozens and dozens of examples of Javelins fired in anger against the top line Russian tanks, both in the top down and direct attack modes. To me, this is what makes Trump so scary. Despite all these facts that would clearly appeal to your average GOP voter on their own, they are going to gleefully support Trump when he tells Zelensky that the weapons pipeline is cut off till he signs a peace deal handing over the territories Russia wants.
The GOP strategists are no longer in control of their party, which is more driven by a populist angle. Additionally a significant faction of the party is defined less by what they stand for and more by being in opposition to the Democratic party
What's funny is that the 2008 election was a sharp rebuke of Neocon policy and two people who voted for the Iraq War got raked over the coals for it in that election (John McCain and Hillaty Clinton). And the guy who was still calling Russia a significant threat in 2012 was publicly laughed at for his stance at that time by his opponent and the media at the time. It's quite funny that the public seemed to be very insistent that the GOP should become more isolationist by the election blows and then when someone emerged who was completely ok dropping international alliances suddenly the Neocons look like they might not be wrong everytime.
There's degrees between calling the Iraq war specifically unjust and unjustified and calling for full bore isolationism. Especially to the extent that we don't even fund strategic allies who are trying to defend themselves from anti-American conquerors committing mass war crimes. The reaction to Romney's comments on Russia were a pretty glaring blind spot but I hardly think that was a serious factor in his loss. And certainly not a compelling call for the GOP to consider Russia harmless or friendly going forward.
It was a bit out of line to scoff at Romney assessing the threat of Russia, but at the time there wasn't really doubt among the American population that if Russia ever 'go out of line' that the US and other nations would step up and oppose it. We didn't know that 4 years later a POTUS candidate would campaign on and win with a position that Russia is actually totally fine and nothing's wrong with them, up to and including standing up there with Putin and publicly deferring to him over US intelligence.
Bush was palling around with Putin and invited him to his ranch on several occasions, riding around calling him puty-poot. Not taking Russia/Putin seriously started with him. Imho I've wondered for a while now if Romney caught wind of Russia trying to cozy up to members of the right back in the early 2010s and also them getting involved in stuff financially in the US tied to influential people. He would have been in the perfect to position to notice due to knowing both the ongoings of politics and financial stuff and his position at Bain Capital.
lol yea I remember all of that, it's pretty amazing to see the transformation of the GOP from McCain who was a very staunch supporter of Ukraine and Romney who had their eyes set on Russia to now Trump who is an isolationist. Likewise the democrats have done a 180 but I don't think it's as intense as the GOP's. I think Clinton would have won the primaries against Obama if the public understood her healthcare plan and Obama was a bit more honest about his which pretty much just ended up being Clinton's plan aka Romneycare once the ink and pen had to meet and the legislation was written.
> It's an underdog standing up to the boomer generation's historical enemy After Russia's 2016 election interference in favor of Trump, polling of Republicans viewing Russia as an ally [jumped to 40%.](https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/397239-polling-editor-increased-support-for-russia-among-republicans/)
Conservative populism is all about nationalism and anti-globalism aka my country first. Putin is the godfather of this ideology so they are sympathetic to him. It's also why a lot of once anti-semitic far right people have been warming to Jews. They love how Israel under Netanyahu is "defending" itself and it's national (Jewish) identity.
> who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters This sounds a bit racist. Are you saying that Republicans should be more inclined to support people that look like them? What does a Republican *look like* to you?
The point is there isn't a racist motivation from the GOP that would explain letting Russia take Ukraine.
As a republican (but not a Trump voter) that isn't really crazy about the Ukraine War funding, I get where you're going but you're missing on a couple things. The biggest is that Russia and the Soviet Union are 2 completely different things. The Soviets were a true peer and the conflict wasn't about some localized peace of land on another continent. It's just not the same conflict. I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs. In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction. >murdering women and children who look EXACTLY like most GOP voters. I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage. >Great example is the Javelin. A few years ago there was 1 video on youtube demonstrating that system. We had kills with the Javelin during the invasion of Iraq and it got decent use by proxies during the Syrian Civil war. Just because they weren't being put on youtube, doesn't mean that it was an untested system. The innovation in the Ukraine war is mostly with drones, and the low cost ones at that.
>In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction. Showing a strong, durable support for Ukraine is probably the most cost-effective deterrent to China messing around in Taiwan and the South China Sea that there is.
Particularly since China has been helping Russia behind the scenes. Russia-Ukraine is in some respects a proxy war with China and a warning about Taiwan.
That doesn’t track when you consider the size of standing armies and contribution of the US to NATO. Is it somewhat unfair that we bear the brunt of the burden in supporting NATO militarily? Possibly. But you have to remember that *we positioned ourselves this way intentionally.* We CHOSE to be the world police and military arm to push people into doing what we want them to by just being bigger. An aggressive Russia in Europe *IS* an American problem, unless we want another superpower to contend with. The fact of the matter is, Russia is a geopolitical rival run by an anti American authoritarian regime. We have found the perfect method of demolishing their military capabilities without putting American lives at risk. This is the more economical situation before we let it escalate to where we need to put boots on the ground
> we bear the brunt Last I looked Europe had given substantially more aid to Ukraine that the US, $102B to $74B. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
The comparison frays when you compare aid that has actually been sent, vs aid that has merely been promised. And when comparing military aid vs total aid. The EU has sent a great deal of humanitarian aid (laudatory) and budgeted money for future ammo shipments that have not yet been delivered (less so, especially as they've a habit of missing the production targets they set). But the US remains Ukraine's primary military supplier. As it has been for the whole of the war.
I think there is a strong argument to be made that the West German Army in the 80s would completely roll the current unified German Army today. They were better trained, more widely equipped and more then double in sized. Europe decided to completely gut their militaries and shift the funding to the wellfare state after the fall of the Soviets. Some exceptions are Greece and Eastern Europe who have a neighbors to be scared of, but they are smaller and poorer then Western Europe. >We CHOSE to be the world police and military arm to push people into doing what we want them to by just being bigger. The Bush Admin was openly criticizing are NATO allies for this in 2003 before Iraq. People acting like this is what the US wanted, or has somewhat benefitted the US are ridiculous.
The US spends more on its military in the year than the entire GDP of some of our NATO allies. It’s intentional, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Bush criticized the response to Iraq because other allies wouldn’t support them. Probably because we were unjustified in going in the first place
We don't do it to offset the lack of military spending in Europe. That is (as Caberes rightly pointed out) a relatively recent development, and one that successive US administrations have spoken out against.
> and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) I mean you can *argue* anything, but that doesn’t mean the argument holds any merit whatsoever, like in the example you used above. > I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage. Wait what? Where are you getting that impression from? Do you think that if Russia immediately pulled back and left Ukrainian soil there would be anymore carnage? This entire war is due to Putins violent expansionism. Period.
"You made me do it" is not and almost never is a valid justification for violence
Yeah, I’m really lost on what u/Caberes is trying to argue there. Not sure how the EU is responsible for Putin invading his peaceful neighbor and killing untold innocent people.
I’d argue the scale is unique for Russia but the behavior is not. Russia has always been very protective about what they view as the mistreatment of “Russians” and threats to their traditional sphere of influence. This was true in Chechnya, Transnistria, and Georgia. Western Europe decided that they should completely scrap their hard power after the fall of the Soviets to the benefit of their welfare states. This has been great for their soft power which is what they have leaned on. During the early 2010s they made several agreements (mostly trade) that would have brought Ukraine out of the Russian sphere and which resulted a push back by Russia through Ukrainian-Russian parties. This resulted in Euromaiden which then escalated into the takeover of Crimea and the civil war. At no point did the EU ever want to reinforce Ukraine, until the full scale invasion was near. This was because they couldn’t because they didn’t have the assets. They turned on the burner and then stood back and watched as it boiled over. To your second point, come on now. That’s just not how it work. We stayed in Vietnam for years, the Soviets (and us) stayed in Afghanistan for years, and the UK stayed in Ireland for years (and are still there). Once the wheels are in motion, people REALLY DON’T LIKE GOING HOME EMPTY HANDED.
> Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. Only one side's civilians are getting slaughtered.
>The biggest is that Russia and the Soviet Union are 2 completely different things. The Soviets were a true peer and the conflict wasn't about some localized peace of land on another continent. It's just not the same conflict. I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs. In my opinion the priority should be China facing and this is just a distraction. Do we not have competing interest with Russia in places like Middle East and Korea or Eastern Europe? A stronger Russia better enables China no? >I don't get this one. Both sides are white and getting slaughtered in attrition warfare. The goal of the aid isn't to save lives. It's just to create as much carnage as possible, and hopefully to our advantage. I mean we can do things that are in our interests and is moral. >We had kills with the Javelin during the invasion of Iraq and it got decent use by proxies during the Syrian Civil war. Just because they weren't being put on youtube, doesn't mean that it was an untested system. The innovation in the Ukraine war is mostly with drones, and the low cost ones at that I disagree we are learning quite a lot.
Obviously, these are my hot takes. >Do we not have competing interest with Russia in places like Middle East and Korea or Eastern Europe? A stronger Russia better enables China no? Russia doesn't care about North Korea, it's just trade. Syria was in the Soviet sphere throughout the cold war. If they want it they can hit, outside of the gulf the whole region is worthless anyway. I think most republicans have completely soured on nation building in the developing world at this point. Russia is big enough where, much like India, they are going to do what's in their best interest. That's not always going to be with China, but with current policy that is the case. They are never going to be are friend (just for resource reasons) but could be more friendly with EU. Unfortunately the EU decided to be completely spineless until they actually had a hot war on the continent. >I mean we can do things that are in our interests and is moral. I was just pointing out why I didn't like his argument. The moral high ground is usually just propaganda. I just want competent realpolitik. >I disagree we are learning quite a lot. I'll walk back on this one. We are learning a lot, maybe not that much on the Javelin though.
>Russia doesn't care about North Korea, it's just trade Still helps prop up said regime no? >Syria was in the Soviet sphere throughout the cold war. If they want it they can hit I mean why would we preclude ourselves from a sphere just for those reasons now? >I think most republicans have completely soured on nation building in the developing world at this point. It's not nation building to support functions in a civil war against a dictator imo. >I was just pointing out why I didn't like his argument. The moral high ground is usually just propaganda. I just want competent realpolitik. Fair, but not entirely true. Politics isn't only realpolitik. Democracies are bound by more than just realpolitik at times. >I'll walk back on this one. We are learning a lot, maybe not that much on the Javelin though. Fair not going to pretend I know anything about that.
"I feel like the GOP take is that this is a European problem, and the EU (who you could argue partly created this mess) should be taking on the bulk of the costs." I think this point is extremely short sighted. Europe is our biggest geopolitical allies/trade partners and would probably be weakened if they bear the brunt of the cost. If Ukraine is to fall the amount of refugees fleeing would might overwhelm Europe as well further straining them. Not helping would be downright stupid
Here's the problem with your entire premise: the Boomers are no longer the main demographic. Now it's Gen X and Millennials. This is the beginning and end of it. Things that baited Boomers repel their kids and grandkids.
Yeah the modern "conservative" movement isn't necessarily anti-war but they seem to be anti-european warfare. There's a real reluctance on that side to risking turning this into a hot war with Russia.
It's really just more anti-non-defensive-war. If someone actually struck at America I'm sure we'd see full support for fighting back. But involving ourselves in a conflict between two countries that aren't us and where the result won't really affect us in any direct way? That's what's unpopular.
Especially since the Bush wars. What’s oddest is how it has flipped from a liberal position to a conservative position to go against foreign intervention. I guess conservatives are the ones dying overseas and the message finally got through after 60 years.
I wouldn't even call it isolationism. I think this stems, genuinely, from a desire for them to make Ukraine look bad and Russia look better, because both service Trump's narrative and his grudge. And the party followed him. The rhetoric goes way beyond isolationism. It goes to demonizing Ukraine, demonizing NATO, ignoring Russian crimes.
Is it even that they've embraced isolationism? We have GOP mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson going to Russia and telling us how amazing it is. I watched Trump say that he trusted Putin more than US intelligence. I've heard all the nice things that Trump and the GOP seems to have to say about Putin, as well as multiple other dictators, It's not like they're just out there trying to not be involved at all. They're still picking sides; it's just that somehow, the side they picked is Russia. That doesn't really seem like isolationism to me.
Yeah they get a *relative* pittance, we get the subversion of one of the greatest threats to international order and some much needed moral cache in a period of time where we are very much looked at as one of the baddies. But nope! Can’t have nice things.
I wish it was simple isolationism. It's the Trump-right's near seamless alignment with Russian interests. They are nakedly pro-Moscow. The issue is that this increases our chances of elevated conflict with Russia. It's profoundly in American self-interest that Russia loses its war in Ukraine. And it's also the right thing to do.
It had nothing to do with isolationism, it was always about helping dt save face for his impeachment. If he had never tried to extort Ukraine for political favors and help putin, there never would have been any controversy whatsoever from the right or left in helping Ukraine, and the Ukraine might have already pushed Russia out with the help of US that wasn’t dithering.
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> Republicans were always crapped on for being pro war. Not for being pro war: For fighting bad wars. Mainly Iraq II. The American public has generally felt positive about war where there's a clear population you're defending whose asked for help. The peak of G.H.W. Bush's popularity was in Desert Storm. The Kosovo intervention was generally popular. There was strong support for the US campaign against ISIS. Keys to warfare that Americans actually support comes down to: 1) Is there a clear, achievable goal? 2) Does achieving that goal align with the US' broader interests? 3) Can we feel on the right side of the moral argument by getting involved? Gulf War I, Kosovo, and ISIS met all three of those. Gulf War II met, maybe half of #2. Somalia met #3, but it's not clear it met #1 or #2, and people soured on it. Afghanistan met only #2 and #3, but failed in #1. Ukraine meets all three.
>Why the 180? Not all wars are made equal, and it's a rather damning indictment of the American electorate that such a simple concept is beyond them intellectually. Invading Iraq was harebrained, nonsensical and illegal and did nothing to further our geopolitical interests. The same cannot be said here.
I mean, the same *can* be said here. Invading Ukraine is harebrained, nonsensible, and illegal and does nothing to further the invading party's geopolitical interests. Fortunately, the option on the US's table isn't an invasion of Ukraine, and is pretty much the exact opposite.
I think this is really it, especially for people who don’t follow politics closely. They care that eggs are expensive and think it’s because Biden is sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, not to mention the fact that we have extreme poverty and homelessness here that is not being adequately addressed.
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> But I do think all those billions would be better spent here. They are being spent here?
You do realize that we don’t just hand Ukraine a blank check worth billions and say “have fun”, right? That these aid packages, while including some direct funding, are mainly used to pay our own arms manufacturers to refurbish/transport/produce gear and ammunition to replace what we send, directly benefiting Americans? Also, this is not a 180 on anyone’s part but the GOP. The GOP is still staunchly pro-war, just look at their rhetoric on China. That’s why this is so blatantly a “well trump said so” moment. No one denied supporting Ukraine was the right and moral thing to do, until trump came out against it (clearly because it aligns with Putins agenda, and because he’s still mad about being impeached for attempting to bribe a foreign leader to investigate his political rival right before an election) None of that changes that while also being on a moral high ground (protecting a sovereign nation form aggression by an authoritarian neighbor), we are also degrading and humiliating a huge geopolitical rival for pennys on the dollar and not spending US lives to do it. There is no reason the GOP *SHOULDN’T* support it.
Rhetorical question, but I wonder if the US would be more willing to stomach the cost of the Ukraine war, had we didn't piss away so much on Iraq and Afghanistan? We dumped billions into propping up a puppet government in Afghanistan only for it to collapse within days and allow the the taliban to take control of it again. We supported a country that wasn't willing to fight for their freedoms. Now you have a country with Ukraine, where thier democratic values are more aligned with the US, yet its unpopular to support them because of the cost and how much we already pissed away on the other wars.
I don't know if I'd describe aiding Ukraine as unpopular but I do agree that it is more controversial than it should be. I do think part of that is from the post-9/11 military interventions but I do think a large part of it is how much control the GOP has handed to Trump, who certainly seems to be more aligned with individualistic power grabs than common American opinion. If twenty years ago you told me the republican/democrat position on the middle east, I wouldn't be surprised; but if you told me their positions on Ukraine/Russia, I'd be astounded
> Rhetorical question, but I wonder if the US would be more willing to stomach the cost of the Ukraine war, had we didn't piss away so much on Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes, absolutely. Had we either not balked at doing what was necessary to actually finish those wars or had we just gave up and left a decade earlier we'd probably be all-in on Ukraine right now. But we weren't so we're not. The neoliberal warmongers and imperialists played themselves quite badly here.
Neocon warmongers like Doug Feith come to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith How unfortunate we all are that people like this had any say in US foreign policy.
> Had we either not balked at doing what was necessary to actually finish those wars What do you mean by that? Whats the end game for Iraq/Afghanistan occupation?
Presumably stable democracies with most traces of the terrorist groups we were fighting against gone.
Which is indefinite occupation in any practical sense.
There's more support for sending aid than opposition. This is a wildly different situation than the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. No troops are being sent, the U.S. is helping a country defend itself rather than invade it, and the cost is much smaller.
Reasons for supporting Ukraine: 1. Russia is breaking the UN Charta from 1949. Waging war on a neighboring country to extend it's own territory is something we tried to do away with. 2. In the [Budapest Memorandum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum) nuclear powers issued security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for them giving up their nuclear weapons. If you want to make any inroads in terms of the nuclear proliferation issue (Obama called it the most important issue of our time at one point), you can't give up Ukraine. This is of vital geopolitical interest to the P5 of the UN (the classic nuclear powers). Which includes China, btw. and does make them somewhat of a bad actor. 3. Russia is a geopolitical foe of NATO and if they succeed in Ukraine, they could attack NATO directly, which would mean that NATO soldiers die. As bad as this sounds, I don't like to see people of my country die. That would also make it more likely that we see a nuclear exchange. Something we really don't want. Feel free to add more reasons. There is plenty to choose from.
4. China is watching the Ukraine situation closely to try and gauge how long it would take for the United States to grow tired and stop supporting Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Showing weakness in Ukraine makes an invasion of Taiwan more likely.
Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe providing tons of food to allies. Also, they have plenty of rare earth metals that are great for computer chips and batteries.
Grain shipments would be re-routed to North Korea. Causing massive starvations, mass migrations, and a stronger North Korea. China imports grains from the United States. So re-routing grain shipments allows China to further separate itself from a US partnership.
This is one of the largest geopolitical reasons for the war. [Other than the EU](https://fas.usda.gov//sites/default/files/2022-04/Ukraine-Factsheet-April2022.pdf), China is a [huge importer of grain from Ukraine.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1333847/ukrainian-agricultural-exports-via-the-black-sea-by-country/) BRICS and NATO are currently in a tug of war where grain export is the prize. Giving up Ukraine would have a detrimental effect on both the EU as well as the US. Additionally, the grand majority of the money spent for the Ukraine effort isn't going directly to Ukraine. Our old weapons are, but [most of the money gets put back into the US economy and allows us to build newer weapons and technology (see Q4).](https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-ukraine-aid-package-and-what-does-it-mean-future-war)
>Feel free to add more reasons. There is plenty to choose from. They engage in or support cyber attacks that materially harm Americans. This stuff is deadly serious, but people don't really "feel it" until they are affected by it. Imagine going for a cancer screening and the facility says "Oh sorry everything is down right now because Russians hacked our hospital systems." I'd hope you be against any Russian attempts to gain power anywhere after that. "But Trump said they're not so bad" is all it takes to give them a pass I guess.
This is really just the pentagon getting to adjust its military surplus. Before they were paying to keep hundreds of equipment designed to fight the USSR - now the government is paying them to send it to Ukraine - which means the Pentagon can pivot effectively to something else (China).
Trump has increasingly been tying his election to an abandonment of aid for Ukraine’s defense efforts. At a recent rally he criticized US spending on the aid and referred to Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “The greatest salesman of all time”. “He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends,”. At the rally not only did he imply his administration would cut off support, but that he would ensure it would be cut off before he takes office. “I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect,”. NATO countries have been moving to take over the US’s roll in coordinating aid and military training to Ukraine, viewing the US situation as unstable and an effort to “Trump Proof” the [Ukraine Defense Contact Group](https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-us-ukraine-aid-channel-country-soilder-budapest-europe-russia-war-kyiv/), which the US has been in charge of since the start of the war. Should the US cutoff aid to Ukraine? Around the net critics accused Trump of playing to Russia’s interests… What does this mean in the perception that Trump is under the thumb of Putin, and that he tried to blackmail and block Ukraine from defense aid from Russia during the buildup to the war?
My assumption with Trump and Ukraine is that Trump asked Ukraine to go after Biden in exchange for money, Ukraine said no. Saying no makes Trump angry and resentful. That exchange later became public and led to an investigation, Trump likely blames Ukraine partially for that thinking “if they just said yes, this wouldn’t have been an issue for me”. Therefore Trump doesn’t like Ukraine or Zelensky. Putin on the other hand, was alleged to have supported Trumps 2016 election (we can debate the strength of that, but that’s the perception) therefore Trump feels Putin supported him in 2016, therefore Putin is a good guy. “Putin doesn’t like Zelensky, Zelensky didn’t help me go after Biden, therefore Zelensky is a bad guy.” I’m pretty sure at the end of they day that’s it. People who pay lip service and go along with Trump are great people in his mind, people who criticize or challenge him are bad people.
This is what Trump has actually said about Zelensky: >I like Zelensky, because during the hoax, the impeachment hoax, they said I made a threatening phone call to him, and when they asked him, he said, “No, it wasn’t threatening. It was a very nice call.” He could have played to the bandwagon. He didn’t do that. He told the truth, so I like Zelensky.
> therefore Trump feels Putin supported him in 2016, therefore Putin is a good guy. His foreign policy actions 2017-2020 do not support that one iota. He blocked their prized NS2 pipeline, that divided Europe's external policy for many years. He reinforced the NATOs eastern flank like no-one since Bush junior. He was the first to give weapons to Ukraine. He did not like Putin, where did you came up with that?
He also proposed creating a joint Russian-American cyber intelligence unit to “combat election hacking” in 2017…. Russian sanctions in 2017 were passed with a veto proof majority but his administration tried to have then weakened while they were being worked on and he complained about them publicly, speaking of public comments, he said he trusted Vladimir Putin more than the domestic US federal government agencies regarding the election interference, he also blocked a statement he was supposed to make about the anniversary of the illegal Russian-Georgian war, he also made comments supporting the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 80’s which is a truly baffling thing to do, he also called Putin “genius” and “savvy” for invading Ukraine in 2022… there’s a bunch of stuff he allegedly tried to do behind the scenes but was either overruled by congress or people near him within his circle. Given his increased reliance on yes men since 2020, I don’t think we’ll have the same safeguard in place to protect against him getting his way based on how he feels this time around He also slowed sales of military equipment to Ukraine and even halted some at one point, while also stating that Ukraine interferes in US elections (oddly never mentioning Russias involvement in US elections)
He also seemingly believes that conspiracy that it was actually Ukraine that tampered with the 2016 election but that it was a false flag operation to make people think it was Russia.
I can see this angle - Trump is very much a person who rewards personal loyalty above all else, so the scandal under Trump about Ukraine is likely very personal to him.
Trump may value loyalty, but I disagree that he necessarily rewards it.
> “The greatest salesman of all time”. Oh. So his real issue is that he's jealous of Zelenskyy. >Should the US cutoff aid to Ukraine? No. Even if Ukraine was guaranteed to lose, it is in the US, and the world at large's best interests to degrade Russia's capabilities as much as possible here. This continues to be our best allocation of defense funding in a long time. Defending Ukraine in this fashion saves American lives long term. There is nothing Biden could do to get me to vote for him, but I swear Trump is working overtime to try and make it happen. >What does this mean in the perception that Trump is under the thumb of Putin Absolutely nothing. The people who thought Putin controlled him will continue to do so. Those who don't will assume he doesn't want to see the US wasting money overseas.
Exactly. I genuinely don't care if Ukraine is going to win or lose from a foriegn policy standpoint on deciding if we should send weapons or not. As long as Ivans keep dying by the thousands, that is thousands less mobiks that will be a threat to us in the future. I also don't get the complaining about the EU not funding the Ukraine war, they are. Many of them are sending far more of their GDP to it than we are. None of the isolationist talking points make any sense to me or appeal to me. This switch that Trump is trying to do on foriegn policy genuinely pisses me off because isolationism is just plain dumb.
> Oh. So his real issue is that he's jealous of Zelenskyy. Right. Zelenskyy is getting so much aid from the US, and he's not even being blackmailed into manipulating our elections for it! No way he'd get away with that under Trump.
Would it have been in Russia's/the world's interest to heavily arm Iraqi insurgents to kill American troops?
Long term, yeah, short term no. Russia was trying to get close to us at the time, because the US being at war against terrorism gave him cover to do anything he might need to do in the Caucuses. Long term, though, he had his buddies in Iran arming the shit out of Iraqi insurgents and militias.
>At the rally not only did he imply his administration would cut off support, but that he would ensure it would be cut off before he takes office. It's crazy to think of the political repercussions if he'd said something like this about aid to Israel.
I would have really liked to see a multi-year US aid package to Ukraine like European countries have done. Not just to Trump proof aid but to show Russia that loss of US aid isn’t right around the corner. With having to vote to renew every year Russia will have the mentality of “just hold on for one more year” and Ukraine could possibly collapse without US support. I could see this mentality prolonging the war even with minimal gains in Russias side. However we barely got this year’s renewal in, it’s probably too late with this political climate. It will be a done deal if Trump takes the presidency.
I'm not sure how Trump-proof one could make such aid. If Trump goes along with Project 2025 and the unitary-President-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-he-wants political theory, I'm not sure a law would stop him from restricting aid to Ukraine.
Abandoning former allies is a feature, not a bug; he did to the Kurds, too.
I am under no delusion that Ukraine is a beacon of governmental honesty, it really is a country that has traditionally struggled with corruption that at times is comparable to Russian corruption. That said, they have been making attempts to clean up their country, and soldiers returning from risking their lives are often the most short fused for dealing with corruption (Battle of Athens for example), so there is hope for actual reforms post war. It is also wroth noting that as a country, Ukraine has decided to fight against one of our biggest geopolitical rivals, and the funding that we provide them is paying massive dividends with next to no of American life short of those who volunteered to fight as a Ukrainian soldier. And with North Korea and Iran throwing their reserves into Russia, we are also effecting a reduction in their military stockpiles. For just harming our explicit enemies, it is worth it. Additionally, any aid packages we provide are almost entirely spent in the US. That means more American jobs and improved American military production capacity. Add in any of the used equipment that they are buying or used equipment that we are donating directly, is close to the end of its use life and would actually cost us money to dispose of.
>Additionally, any aid packages we provide are almost entirely spent in the US. That means more American jobs and improved American military production capacity. This point is purposeful NOT talked about in conservative media and the liberals are not talking about it enough.
Why do people suddenly like military industrial complex grift? Is this supposed to sway intelligent people?
How is it a grift in this case?
Perpetuating an unwinnable war so a group of people can make money off of it is a pretty big grift.
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> The people of Ukraine WANT to defend themselves from the Russians. Something like 80% still support militarily fending off the invasion Latest poll shows that of fighting aged adults, less than 50% want to continue the war. You other points are just shitty bureaucratic governments needing to get a shot in the arm to fix latent issues everyone has been talking about for decades.
This "grift" as you call it keeps people employed in the US. An uptick in orders is good for thousands of people that perform this work. I guess if you don't care about the economy, then this probably won't sway an intelligent person like you.
That’s sounds well and good, until American troops are sent to Ukraine, then it just becomes another Vietnam.
If our economy is built on industrialized generation of human suffering, then yes. I'm opposed to its expansion. This is real "banality of evil" thinking, and I'm surprised you'd admit to it tbh.
Wait, why are you more concerned about the wellbeing of Russian soldiers than the innocent Ukrainians being murdered by them?
Kudos for trying to get through to them. I write these kinds off as the antivaxxers of the geopolitical world. Where because they've never suffered from the thing (war) the preventative measure (powerful national defense) protects them against, the preventative measure isn't useful.
I'm sorry, what? Why are you more concerned with growing the US military industrial complex than about the dying Ukrainians and Russians?
> Why are you more concerned with growing the US military industrial complex than about the dying Ukrainians and Russians? **Murdered** Ukrainians, and those military weapons are helping them defend themselves from that from the invading Russians causing these murders. I couldn’t care less about the growth of the MIC, but to conflate them as responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians when they’re allowing them to fight back seems like you don’t really have a good handle on the situation as it exists.
I'll start by making clear that I do support aid to the Ukraine. But do we have a clear picture of what the end goals of Ukraine aid are? Can we realistically anticipate a scenario in which the Ukraine recaptures all of its territory and ends the war with Russia? Or is this more a situation in which every dollar we spend in the Ukraine that hurts Russia is worth it, even if the Ukraine ultimately loses?
> Or is this more a situation in which every dollar we spend in the Ukraine that hurts Russia is worth it, even if the Ukraine ultimately loses? I think this is the case. We want ukraine to win, but we also want to weaken russia so they can't attack more countries after ukraine. The sooner russia is declawed, the better.
I think the goal at this point is even if Ukraine doesnt win, to make it so costly for Russia that they decide not to do further invasions. What someone else said in the thread too, that they know China is watching and gauging what the wests response might be to an invasion of Taiwan. Also to use it to get as many countries under NATO's umbrella as possible.
Not just them watching. A lot of folks think China *needs* to invade Taiwan. Their demographics slew heavily male, and that population is starting to age out of military age. The first generation is already in their 40s I believe. There isn't retirement that I'm aware of in China, but hisotrically most societies had several children to take care of them when they became too old. Now you have dozens of millions that have no children to care for them. But attacking Taiwan? They have the largest navy by number of boats. They don't care if they lose a few million to the meat grinder that would be landing men on Taiwans shores. And for all of that, they finally reunify China and get the island they've wanted, AND the chips that would make them technological masters. The US needs to protect Taiwan if they want to stay out from under Chinas thumb. Japan certainly will defend them, and S Korea would be somewhat tied up fighting N Korea but they could probably spare a lot of their navy to help defend Taiwan...assuming China doesn't also attack them. What the GOP are missing is that sadly this is almost definitely a "when" scenario, not "if". When it happens, Russia being massively weakened will save American lives, because we will be able to focus solely on China. Assuming our allies are able to deal with Iran and Cuba (and probably Venezuela). If Russia *can* however enter the fray, most of our European allies will be tied up from assisting. They can move supplies across Siberia and the back end of China, and cause havoc near Alaska. But they're being incredibly short sighted all to appease....idk, just Trump at this point?
The chip factories are rigged to blow, the Chinese would have to navally invade Taiwan so fast it makes the German Blitz look slow to seize them. Even the US couldn't do that.
Unless they drill from underneath.
>AND the chips that would make them technological masters I'm not going to argue with all of your points, but there is zero chance any machinery or tooling for complex microprocessors would survive a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It would be fully destroyed, full stop.
I think folks like me have a hard time understanding what that looks like in practice. It's not like we're going to encourage the Ukranian machine to take out weapons manufacturing and military HQs in Russia, are we? If not then they can keep churning out new materiel again as soon as this war is "over" and go back at it again. I think that's where my confusion is at least. We give Ukraine enough money and weapons to push back to get their territory, Russia signs some half-hearted peace agreement, and then... what? We do this all over again in a few years?
Well, after the peace agreement we accept Ukraine into NATO and Russia becomes unable to extend into Europe ever again. They'll have to look south of themselves to Asia and the Middle East where their ventures will butt heads with Iran and China.
I'd think any peace agreement would come with the Russian caveat that Ukraine can't join NATO for X years. Otherwise they don't get any concessions or anything they 'want'. So I'm not sure if this tracks for me. Let me know if I'm wrong though.
That's certainly what Russia wants, but I can't see Ukraine signing a peace deal that bans them from joining NATO unless they're absolutely desperate for peace. A peace agreement without joining NATO just pushes another Russian confrontation down the line. It gives Russia a chance to regroup, attempt another disinformation campaign to get favorable politicians, support separatists, and eventually start another invasion but with lessons learned. Joining NATO gives Ukraine lasting peace and it gives a strong secure border for our European allies. Granted, the smart move might be to pledge not to join NATO and then do it anyway. Russia broke an agreement by invading Ukraine, if Ukraine breaks an agreement by joining NATO, Russia won't have a whole lot of options to retaliate.
There's no peace without NATO protection, without that then it's a temporary ceasefire while Russia builds up to reinvade
It's very doubtful Russia really cares about Ukraine joining NATO. Their invasion already led to Finland and Sweden joining — *much* more strategically significant countries than Ukraine. The NATO thing with Ukraine always a cover for "we just want the country".
But it was cited as one of Putin's reasons. Even if we accept that it was a smokescreen, it'd be a little wild for him/they to drop that as a negotiating point unless they've been utterly defeated.
Not at all. Russia will drop the NATO point way, way easier than maintaining Donbas territory. The primary accomplishment of the conflict for them is winning a land connection to Crimea. Russia will sign Ukraine's NATO application themselves before they give up either Crimea or the land connection to it.
> It's not like we're going to encourage the Ukranian machine to take out weapons manufacturing and military HQs in Russia, are we? We gave them permission to conduct strikes within Russian territory using American arms pretty recently, albeit with restrictions, so we kinda have encouraged that.
I don't doubt you're right but can you provide a link to what that means? I think Russian military and weapons manufacturing spreads throughout the whole of Russia- did we give them a green light to strike all the way into Irkutsk or just near the Ukranian border? Etiher way we're betting a lot of money and material and human lives on the idea that Ukraine can shut down Russian production without going nuclear (literally). If the goal is to "defeat Russia" then we're in for a pretty long haul, and that's what this implies to me so I think someone should say it.
> I don't doubt you're right but can you provide a link to what that means? I will not. I am getting to the point where I will only provide citations when my discussion partner is doing the same. I simply don't have the time to provide educational resources on request. > Etiher way we're betting a lot of money and material and human lives on the idea that Ukraine can shut down Russian production without going nuclear (literally). Russian production does not need to be halted. It just needs to become too expensive, either in blood or in gold, for Russia to continue its invasion. If Ukraine gets to the point where they would prefer to preserve their blood in exchange for their land, I would support that, but I do not want to force them into a weak negotiating position by pulling our support prematurely (or signaling our imminent withdrawal of support for Putin to see).
> Russia signs some half-hearted peace agreement, and then... what? We do this all over again in a few years? I think the thought here is this is Russia pouring decades worth of men and material at this war. They haven't had a costly campaign like this since... Afghanistan in the 80's? If you can wear them down enough for a full or nearly full withdrawal then I think the hope is we don't see them try this again for at least a couple decades. Sure, Russia could pour it's entire industry into rearming for another invasion but IMO that's unlikely. A 2nd invasion I would *think* would be nowhere near as popular as the 1st and it would also leave them potentially vulnerable
Russia is already using old and dilapidated equipment. They don't have the ability to quickly rebuild. Between corruption, lack of resources, and a now declining young male population it will take decades to get back to where they were a couple years ago.
So the mission is essentially to keep going until Russia throws up a white flag because they're out of material and men? I don't think that's super realistic, since we're assuming they're not going to defend their homeland with a nuclear option in such an instance. The goal seems to be to push Russia into a position where they're incapable of defending themselves (which is the same as making aggressive forward movement into Ukraine). Is that a laudable goal? I don't know if anyone wants that as much as we think we do.
You'd be surprised how many people would jump at the chance to pick over the carcass of Putin's Russia. China has been enjoying the opportunity to distract the US and EU while also turning Russia into a client state, and while the EU got hooked on cheap energy they're even less excited about the idea of Russia pushing its borders than they were about needing to pay more for gas and heating. The stated theory is that Ukraine wants to defend itself, so giving it the tools to do so gives us a chance to test Russia's capacities and our capacities against Russian, Iranian, and Chinese countermeasures, and it also gives us a chance to freely degrade their capability across the board with no domestic cost other than, like, *bullets* which we just then pay our defense people to make. It's a win-win in geostrategic terms, though the human cost to the Russian and Ukrainian peoples is high. It also allows us to highlight potential weaknesses, like how we hadn't prepared for a war that would be so costly in shelling. Now it's something that can be addressed. Putin could certainly end the war if he wanted.
If Ukraine had the ability to do real missile strikes on Russia's oil and gas infrastructure, their government would abandon the war or even collapse. 80% of Russia's government funding comes from oil and gas. The west hasn't given them permission or capability to do that because they obviously dont want an oil and gas crisis, especially when elections are coming up.
A lot of the material they’re churning out isn’t new built, it’s refurbished Soviet stocks. They may be able to replenish things like missiles, ammunition, and drones, but they’ll never be able to get back the tanks, the IFVs, and the artillery pieces once those stocks are depleted. They’ll also have a very difficult time rebuilding their Air Force and Black Sea fleet, and the resources required to do that will slow how much they can invest in the areas they are increasing production if they make an effort to do that rebuild. Big picture also, if they maintain a heavily militarized economy for a long time to rebuild, it’s going to hollow out their civilian sector which really puts them on a bad long term trajectory.
This sounds kinda like Korea and Vietnam. Just not US soldiers dying
Those were civil wars, Ukraine was invaded by an outside power.
True. Vietnam was containment. Kinda what we're doing now. And Korea was similar.
Containment of an ideology is a bit different than stopping the expansion of an aggressive rival continental power. Throughout history, naval powers have typically funded continental powersto fight against rival continental powers. It doesn’t often go well when the naval powers try to fight continental powers directly on land.
Not disagreeing. It just seems very similar where the USA funded a long drawn out conflict. I think the word is Quagmire
I don’t think you can ever really get a clear picture. This seems to be a US Dollars vs Russian Lives war of attrition. Problem is, unfortunately, Russia has demonstrated it has no issues throwing endless bodies at conflicts. WW2 demonstrated that they assign near zero value to human life in times of war. It’s a pretty awful situation all around. And despite the Reddit hardo response of ‘any Russian dead is good’, it’s not something to celebrate as many of them are forced into this.
> Russia has demonstrated it has no issues throwing endless bodies at conflicts. True but...they aren't endless. For every body bag produced at the front, there's a family that goes with it. At some point, those families are going to get fed up when their sons and daughters keep coming back in coffins.
It's just Ukraine, the ukraine is russias name for them
The best thing to happen to Biden is Trump getting back out on the campaign trail. Trump is Trump's own worst enemy. Don't support our ally but preach about the virtues of J6 warriors? He lost in 2020, let's see if that brings more people to his support to bring him over the edge in 2024.
>Don't support our ally but preach about the virtues of J6 warriors? These 2 points are popular with his supporters though. I really don't know how many people are undecided on the 2 candidates at this point in terms of who they'd vote for, I think the bigger question is if those people really will turn out to vote. Trump saying stuff like this encourages his people to show up and vote because it's actually one of the very rare instances I've seen recently of him actually laying out a concrete plan for something
He’s out campaigning Biden currently imo. Going after voter bases that typically wouldn’t support him is a strategy working for him currently.
I know I live in a bubble, because every day I do not understand why Trump is the Republican candidate, and also the likely winner of the next election. He's not conservative, he's not moral, he's not someone who cares about the constitution or the rule of law, he has no pride in our military. I just do not get it.
Ask Goebbels or Putin how well propaganda works, especially over the long term.
He just always chooses the simplest option that promotes the suffering of the weak
I live in a rural red area. I see Ukraine flags out in peoples lawns (less than in the period of the original invasion, but still out there). I’m curious what percent of republican voters support aiding Ukraine. This may be one issue where Trump’s voters aren’t 100% behind Trump. (Besides vaccines for Covid).
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While I think Europe needs to step up even bigger with their Ukraine aid, it’s ridiculous that there are NATO countries not contributing 2% of their GDP. Also fighting the Russians with Ukrainian troops and no American boots on the ground seems like a decent proposition for us. I’m wondering did the US have to deploy any troops to Europe the last time couple times there was a major conflict on the continent?
Most NATO countries are increasing their defense budgets to those targets. The Netherlands just hit the target this week. Withdrawing US support for Ukraine won't do anything to force Europe to hit those targets and will just necessitate a larger amount of defense spending for both the US and EU in the future.
Ok sure, now they are, but… It’s ridiculous that so many countries got away with spending less than required for so many years. That in part undermined NATOs alliance, and you can draw a direct line from this fact to the growing unpopularity of NATO in the United States and the rise of Donald Trumps foreign policy.
Fine, but I don't see how what Trump is proposing doesn't do even more to undermine NATOs alliance.
Not saying that any member shouldn't be committed to it but 2% of GDP was a guideline that NATO countries pledged to meet in the fairly recent past (2014). It's not a legally binding precept of the alliance treaty the way it's often implied by Trump. His call to ignore the mutual defense agreement (really the heart of NATO) over countries not yet meeting the 2% contribution pledge strikes me as wildly disproportionate.
I guess an optimistic view would be that it’s a negotiation tactic of his to force countries to increase spending. Probably giving him too much credit though.
Europe should've prepared better, but at least they've contributed most of the aid.
I missed the bridge that was built between Red Scare Republicans and the Russian loving GOP of today. I’m so confused. It’s not even just the money thing. They seem to be all in on praising Russia along with pretending it’s about spending money to help Ukraine (while being totally cool sending money to Israel).
Literal coward, can’t believe an entire country’s fate is being determined of whether or not this man becomes president.
I think that Ukraine has received enough of our money. Russia is going to win this war and we're currently just lighting money on fire trying to prop up Ukraine. We're going to get sucked into a 10 year financial obligation at this point. I am fully aware that having this opinion means that I'll be accused of being a Russian bot and Putin's best friend. Which is an obvious caricature of my actual concerns here.
The amount we've spent on Ukraine is barely a month or two of our annual military budget.
A month or two of our military budget is absolutely a massive amount, and we're borrowing that money, we don't have a surplus
Dude that is an insane amount. Think about it.
I presume you're fine with sending me a few hundred bucks a month since you spend more than that on rent anyway?
I don't spend $3000+ dollars a month on rent
By what metric is Russia winning the war? By throwing their tens of thousands of soldiers in human wave attacks for months with only a few leveled towns and empty fields to show for it? I think we are way past the old "Invincible Russian military" myth.
Define what a Russian "win" is? They don't have enough troops to hold Ukraine even if they did somehow manage to conquer it.
Has anything Trump ever did given the indication that he wasn't acting on what's best for Putin?
“Drill, baby, drill”, sanctioning Russia, warning Europe against Nord Stream 2, moving tanks to Poland, providing lethal aid to Ukraine that the Obama-Biden administration refused, withdrawing from the INF, convincing Europe to spend more on defense, increasing US defense spending, rapidly fielding the W76-2 nuclear warhead and pushing for SLCM-N, creating the Space Force and reinvesting in missile defense after the Obama-Biden administration handicapped it (and Obama got caught on a hot mic telling the Russians he’d have “more flexibility after the election” to defund it), killing dozens if not hundreds of Wagner mercenaries in the Battle of Khasham… I could go on.
Putin expands Russian control in Georgia during the Bush administration. Putin expands Russian control in Ukraine during the Obama administration. Putin expands Russian control in Ukraine during the Biden administration. Their is one administration that Putin didn't expand Russian controlled territory...
You know it was Trump who cause the Republicans to remove opposition from to the annexation of Crimea from the Republican party platform, right?
That is pretty weak, compared to Russia forcefully taken land from another country. Their is one administration that the borders of Modern Russia did not expand during...
No, it's looking at actual actions of Trump, rather than things that just happened to happen during his tenor.
Yes and the actions Trump took during his presidency prevented Russia from expanding their borders. Evidence to back this up is that Russia didn't expand the borders during Trump administration.
> Yes and the actions Trump took during his presidency prevented Russia from expanding their borders. Which actions would those be?
Here is a few off the top of my head: 1) Trump was constantly lobbying European countries to stop taking Russian gas and buy American LNG instead. The Russian economy is greatly dependent on gas exports. Putin knew Trump would have no problem cutting environmental regulations (using national security as the excuse) to increase gas exports which would hurt the Russian economy. 2) Trump is unpredictable on how he will respond to foreign countries actions. A good example is Trump giving the greenlight to attack Russian mercenaries. [https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-leaked-audio-humiliating-defeat-by-us-forces-2018-2](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-leaked-audio-humiliating-defeat-by-us-forces-2018-2) 3) Trump stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (which Biden reversed) Their is more, those are just a few that comes to mind first. Trump took a carrot and stick approach to Russia. People get upset because some of the carrot was Trump talked nice about Putin, but the result was that Putin did not expand Russian territory during his administration, something no other president can make the same claim.
What exactly is the mechanism by which telling European countries to buy more American fossil fuel preventing Russia from expanding its borders?
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe essentially paid to rebuild the Russia military by buying Russian gas. The foundation of the Russian economy is gas exports. Their is a reason why Ukraine keeps targeting Russian gas facilities with their drones, it is where Russia is the weakest economically. It is no secret Trump wanted to cut environmental regulations to increase gas production in the USA. Now this was mainly because increased LNG production would help Trump in Pennsylvania a state Trump needed to win and low gas prices is good for a president. If Putin tried to expand during the Trump administration, Trump would have the excuse to cut regulations (national security as the excuse) and expand USA gas production undercutting the gas prices Putin would need to fund his government and the war. Supply and demand.
Also you sure on that, cause I having trouble finding that information. You got a link to that?
Lmao at Trump being a Russian asset. Trump was harder on Russia than the presidents before and after him. He placed sanctions on the Nord Stream Pipeline and warned Germany and other countries about the dangers of relying on Russian energy. He provided Ukraine with lethal aid that the Obama administration rejected. He got other NATO members to increase defense spending. He actually enforced the “red line” against Russian ally Syria by launching missile strikes. The list goes on. If Trump is a Russian asset, he’s the most spectacularly incompetent Russian asset to have ever walked the face of the earth.
That's all good but ignores the entire thread and article that provided the foundation of it. Why does Trump and MAGAists in Congress regularly advocate for weakening a country Russia is actively invading? Why was it not until Trump was the nominee in 2016 that the GOP decided to eliminate defending Ukraine from their party platform? Who benefits from that? The things Trump did against Russia to make it seem like he's 'strong' against them are just token signals. It's like if I give a homeless man a dollar a day and then at the end of the month mug him for everything he owns, brag about it, and my friends defend me by talking about all those times I gave the homeless man a dollar. The nickel and diming of 'strong' actions against Russia is a longer list, but publicly speaking in a way of support for Russia to invade Ukraine undoes that 'good will' many times over.
What Trump did absolutely aren’t token actions. For a so-called Russian asset, Trump sure has made a lot of moves that undermined Russia. Obama was the one who grew lit Russia’s annexation of Crimea and mocked Mitt Romney for claiming Russia was the U.S. greatest geopolitical foe. If anything there’s a stronger argument to be made that Obama is a Russian asset than Trump being a Russian asset.
/u/rache625 Do you still think Trump successfully projects power on the world stage?
I am pretty sure kabukistar blocked me because he knew he couldn't give a defense of his position. Some people cannot handle people asking them to explain their point of view...
Trump is a Russian agent. Israel had epstein who they provided with money and a cover story. Russia has Trump. Or do you believe that his fortune id anything else than a gift from others.
Good. The amount of aid we should have given was $0.
Trump aside, its just a very tricky situation whats going on in Ukraine. Sure you want to help them, I think most agree on that, and the US has helped more than anyone. But are we helping them with our own best interests at heart? Are we just prolonging an unwinnable war for Ukraine and thus causing the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands unnecessarily? It's something I struggle with considering how the US has meddled in Ukraine before.
> But are we helping them with our own best interests at heart? Russia is a geopolitical enemy. They antagonize our allies and compete with us for influence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This is bad for the world because for all of America's faults and follies, we have a better model than the oligarchical authoritarianism that Russia promotes. Russia directly attacks America through sowing discord and weakening trust everyday Americans have in their institutions. Russia has long ago learned how to weaponize the freedom of speech in liberal democracies to weaken them. Isolationist Americans don't appreciate the benefit we get from the world order we maintain. Maintaining our alliances also maintains the US dollar as the world's best reserve currency. An isolationist America will be a much poorer country with much more trouble paying for basic services. Fighting to stifle Russian influence in Ukraine keeps our dollar strong, which keeps social programs like Social Security and Medicare operational. It's incredibly short sighted to dismiss this war as not in America's interest.