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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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The core of your argument as I understand it is that sending weapons to Ukraine is going to make Russia weaker. Now, on the one hand, this is axiomatically true inasmuch as your weaken any power by killing its people. And I definitely think Ukraine wants everything it can get. So I don't think sending weapons to Ukraine is stupid necessarily.

But on the other hand, it seems very clear that supporting Ukraine is weakening NATO's military capability through irreversible arms transfers and that the war has given Russia the opportunity to strengthen and modernize its armed forces, even as it has taken numerous losses. So I think the basic idea at the core of your argument ("fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here") is questionable because it appears that Russia's army will be stronger after the war, even if they lose. And, on the other hand, I don't think the odds of Russia attacking NATO are particularly high, so I am not sure we're really fighting them over there to stop us from fighting us over here. (If anything I suspect Russia juicing its armed forces and NATO giving its arms away to Ukraine increases the risks of Russian aggression against NATO, although I still sort of doubt anything comes of it.)

So, unless NATO attacks Russia before they can reconstitute their forces or the weapons transfers are much more effective than NATO's brass foresees, it seems plausible that after a certain point arms transfers might do more harm to NATO than good. This seems less true to me of, say, shells, if we can still produce a surplus, than, say, Patriot interceptors or mine-clearing vehicles.

Of course, on the gripping hand, there's the argument that, basically, NATO has nukes, so it could go bone dry on conventional munitions and it wouldn't really adversely effect their security against Russia. I do think there's something to this argument. But unless I missed something it's not the argument you're making.

How's that for a fair address of the core of your argument, with some extra arguments for your consideration thrown in for good measure?