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This is the point I always have to disagree on. Stuff like HIMARS would absolutely be useful in a Pacific war. Javelins aren't just for killing Russian tanks, they're useful even against insurgents because they are a standoff infantry weapon that can blow up fortifications and stuff - they were expensive, but useful in Iraq. And artillery shells being depleted is a real issue against China, the logistics here are sort of fungible, and spending a lot of resources resupplying Ukraine is going to demand we replace that (we have to be prepared to fight more than just China, a military's job isn't only to prepare for the most obvious threat), and the resources that go into replacing those assets, plus their losses, will eat up resources that could go into the Pacific. Sending shells to Ukraine is going to cut down on our available R&D. It's really not accurate to frame it as us giving them outdated old junk that would have fallen apart anyway, they got some pretty high-end stuff, and this commitment depleted important reserves of the conventional arsenal.
To be clear, putting a stop to Russia's antics is not bad foreign policy, but the part I find frustrating is that I don't think this should be America's responsibility to this extent. The EU constantly goes on about how strong and independent it is, so Ukraine shouldn't even be Trump's ship to sink. But it somehow falls upon America to disentangle a conflict we have little to do with, suddenly everyone is demanding us to be world police.
lol, lmao even.
The US has been playing stupid games in that region for the 10-15 years preceding the war- they wanted that war, and they got it. And Trump is still responsible for it, given that the destabilization efforts continued under his administration; we can blame upper military brass for hiding shit all we want but at the end of the day it's still the responsibility of the guy at the top.
And we can discuss the fact the war had significant economic consequences for the
Fourth ReichGermany, too- the US took their cheap natural gas away (it wasn't the Russians that blew it up) and now they get to experience a 1973-style price shock in manufacturing because they were too stupid to figure out how to frack for themselves.It's unwise to meet NATO spending targets because every non-US nation in that alliance is very well aware that the way they actually pay for it is "the US does something that damages our economy, which causes our GDP to drop by about the same measure that it would if we were paying for our own defense". And paying for their own defense is something that grows the middle class, because the elites are forced to pay their own countrymen for it (this is the idea behind the military-industrial complex), which is why just taking the hit and allowing the US to break client economies is deemed acceptable in said client states.
And [as stated below] if the US is intending to bail out the middle class (which is why Trump II, a reformer, was ultimately elected over the arch-conservative Harris), amping up R&D in the military-industrial complex is the way to do it, because it forces the elites to take a step back from their current objectives of enclosure [no growth ever + environmentalism] and race war and actually start approving development projects for once.
So I think the appropriate question that Europe should be asking is "how much should Europeans allow the Americans to wreck the pan-European economy because they wanted to go to war with Russia for shits and giggles"? If I were Chancellor of the Fourth Reich, my protestations would be as loud as my contributions symbolic, and I'd only start making stuff the Americans might be directly dependent on if they go to war somewhere else... which is probably why their military-industrial policy is currently exactly that.
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"Responsibility" is a bad way to look at foreign policy. I support Ukraine because of potential outcomes.
Russia is our 2nd largest geopolitical enemy and ally to our largest. Resources destroyed in Ukraine reduces their overall power. Russia frequently attempts salami-slicing operations against the west using plainclothed soldiers, hacking, and political assassinations.
To me the biggest factor is that Russia's success would be a disaster for nuclear policy. Russia being able to do whatever they want and threaten nuclear war if anyone interferes encourages them to repeat their antics. It also encourages other parties to get their own nukes, either to defend against such actions or initiate their own.
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This seems plausible, but there is a claim the opposite direction that the Ukraine conflict gives the US and its allies cover to invest heavily in war materiel production while still notionally in a time of peace without large domestic or foreign suspicion about warmongering or wasteful spending. In 1941 the US benefited heavily from having already tooled up for lend-lease production and broadly expecting to get dragged into the conflict eventually. Designs for aircraft and tanks that would only get fielded later in the war were in development, and Iowa's keel was laid before Pearl Harbor.
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