The article makes a clear argument and the points can be discussed. I think John Mearsheimer's analysis is more accurate overall, but there are certainly blind spots there too.
And they are not mutually exclusive. Russia is imperial and Russia feels threatened.
Fortunately, I'm only following this from afar, but it's not nice to watch the disaster take its course. I found Mearsheimer's gloomy forecast from 2015 convincing.
I don't know the neocon milieu personally, but I really question their moral integrity. Always propagating escalations and wars that you lose afterwards.OK, if you get paid for it.
The US spending money to fund Ukraine has got to be close to the best defense investment ever.
The US got a direct proxy war that appears to be breaking Russia and didn't spend the life of a single US soldier. It collapsed Wagner which was a threat to all manner of developing nations. It fixed NATO unity practically overnight. And China got a glimpse of what would happen if they invaded Taiwan and probably set back the plans of Comrade Pooh by a decade or more.
By contrast, the US blew how much in Afghanistan and got not a damn thing?
We elect the government to use the tax money wisely.
Many find that, per dollar, nothing has been more effective in decades in strengthening nato allies, weakening a totalitarian state that routinely assassinates outside its borders, and stress testing a military supply chain.
Eisenhower noted in his account, Crusade in Europe, that (paraphrasing from memory) that "Few really understand the relationship between America's safety and prosperity and events far away in Europe."
They shouldn't. NGOs can't buy weapons for the military. Ukrainians would be fighting US soldiers a couple of decades from now if Russia were able conquer Ukraine in a few weeks as they were planning.
I disagree. Isolationism won’t work and we care about a A LOT more than just fans or even petrochemical region stability. We need to continue to “sue” (at the nation state level that means: maintain a military posture and cultural presence in the aforementioned regions) for freedom of trade in order to continue exporting our culture. The more our culture is exported the better off Americans tend to be.
America is at no risk of being invaded. However, should it let its allies go unaided, it will loose its footholds in Europe and Asia from which it projects its power (militarily, culturally, economically, etc). Geopolitics is not so simple as to be zero sum, but when it comes to Russian and US interests, it may as well be.
Iran has turned "Death to the Americans and Israelis" into a motto. If we stop projecting power, they will certainly attack again. Which may not justify Ukraine, but exiting world politics will just turn us into a target.
we're a target because of our recent approaches of the last 70 years. there are other approaches that other superpowers have taken that have been even more beneficial for them and don't turn them into a target from anyone, or an amorphous "they"
nobody is after "our way of life" as some of our leaders famously said, and if they are they already live in the US
"death to America" is a reaction to American intervention, it isn't arbitrarily created because of our ... alliances or predominant religion or musings or freedoms or anything else. the same for 9/11 which can easily be seen as a double crossing by someone the US courted who became disillusioned with America.
America's "national security" approach is its biggest threat to national security.
Tell me you do not understand logistics without saying you do not understand logistics. America cannot be invaded other than by mexico or canada. Do you have any idea what kind of effort it would take to support cross-ocean supply chains for a modern army? A modern army would run out of fuel in two days without constant resupply. And out of food in three.
MAGA chanting populists would argue that US is already being invaded by illegal immigrants. There's enough hostility between political groups in US to start a civil conflict if it can be fueled by money from a couple of state actors.
that perspective relies on being completely unaware of the conflicts that we don't get involved in at all (along with every other country)
first step is awareness, the second step is looking at the difference
and the only difference is if they're a well paying client for our defense contractors
the entire rationale of getting into a conflict just so an adversary there doesn't feel emboldened, or a completely different adversary elsewhere doesn't feel emboldened, is completely undermined by all the conflicts of allies that we don't get involved in
geopolitically this rationale disintegrates when a disruption in semiconductor production aren't the biggest threat to the US supply chain
what people need to understand that US support isn't about their cause. People seem to have misinterpreted that and are surprised by the reactions of the US people when they expected affirmation of their cause.
current support for US interventions is about not emboldening China to invade China and that's bolstered by reliance on semiconductors in the latter China. we'll find other rationale easily, our defense contractors and their warhawk friends will find other rationale. but right now, thats the resource we want to protect and it'll be clear when that has no legs to stand on.
This is wishful thinking.
Talk is cheap and maybe well paid for Nataliya Bugayova, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Frederick W. Kagan. Dying is for the plebs.