Stop right there. This is a new point you're introducing to this thread. My participation in this thread has been about me showing MrNiceGuy that conceding to Russia's demands to prevent this war would have entailed the loss of Ukraine's freedom and independence from Russia.
No, no I am not. The point we are both making is that Russia didn't disrupt the status quo, we did. We shifted Ukraine out of Russia's sphere and into ours. I take the position that we did through direct intervention, destabilization, covert operations, bribery, blackmail, etc. You can disagree with that, but whatever the case is Russia was clearly provoked into action. The same way we would have been had the roles been reversed, why? National interest. They don't want hostile military forces on their border the same way we didn't tolerate a fraction as much anywhere on *OUR HEMISPHERE*. We are actively threatening the Solomons over something far smaller in scale and scope.
Well, for one, they are awesome fighters. These are the kind of people you want as allies.
That's absurd. The Taliban were tenacious and skilled fighters. You pick allies who are useful to you. A third world country with no ability to project force or contribute meaningfully in a global military manner? That's not a valid candidate for a military ally.
Two, it's in our long-term interests to have more stable, liberal democracies in the world, especially in Europe, and fewer Russian-controlled countries.
That's clearly not true. We destabilize democracies all the time in an effort to put puppet regimes in to carry our water. We did that in Ukraine in 2014. It is our MO. Ukraine has become less democratic, liberal, and less free since Maidan, that is an objective fact beyond dispute. Russia is not a threat to the United States, outside of nukes. Aggravating and provoking a situation with a conventional military which is drastically weaker than you, but on rough parity strategically, it is a horrific idea. It leads that adversary to conclude they must resort to nukes in order to maintain stability.
Three, it's in our long-term interests to have a weakened Russia because Russia is our adversary.
Russia was/is dying long before Ukraine. The country is a demographic disaster in every imaginable way. We didn't need to provoke a war to achieve this. They are, at best, a regional power at this point.
Four, it's in our long-term interests to teach Russia a lesson that it cannot expand into Europe via force.
How is that?
And five, in addition to being in our interests, it's also the right thing to do. The Ukrainians need our help, The Ukrainians want to be more Western and less Russian, The Ukrainians want for themselves a stable, liberal democracy, and if we can help them win their independence and freedom without getting involved in a direct war with Russia, we should do so.
You don't get the claim morality here. You keep resorting to "right", that's bs. You were fine slaughtering democractic leaders and their people for decades, you are still fine doing it today. Those were free people choosing a path they wanted to follow and we *slaughtered* them for it. After you do that a few dozen times you don't get to talk about a moral duty.
Also, a lot of my argument is premised on the assumption that it's good for the U.S. to have the world be dominated by a Western, liberal order that has operated since the end of WWII. I understand you want the U.S. to be an isolationist country, but I don't agree.
I get you don't understand complex words. I have never been an isolationist. I am a "don't intervene in stupid no-win scenarios" kinda guy. Whatever happens in Ukraine means jack-squat to America. If every Ukrainian was melted into glass tomorrow, would we care? Maybe for a bit until agricultural prices settled down. However end of the day Ukraine is a meaningless country on the world stage. I don't harbor them any ill-will, I just don't care about them, certainly not enough to risk war over them.
What is clear is that you can't actually show a national interest motivation for the US. The closest you came is "weaken Russia", which would be viable if we were talking about a near-peer threat. We aren't. Russia's demographics are a joke. Their conventional military a laughing stock (even before this). Their economy a disaster. None of that indicates that we needed to engage in hastening the downfall of Russia by getting involved in Ukraine.
